The hammock-bearers, who feared their new master rather more than the old, came up at the double; bundles were thrown hurriedly on to woolly crowns; the tired men swung into line; and the little camp grew empty.
Amadu, limping behind the hammock, laughed.
"If it be the will of Allah, I shall see that big gun make even a bigger hole in more than one heathen's head!"
CHAPTER XXI
RELIEF
Hilton Dane sat with a fouled rifle across his knees in an angle of the stockade protecting what had been the hospital camp. It was, however, a hospital no longer, for some of the sick had recovered, and the rest had died. Dane considered that he might have saved more of them had he been more skilled in medicine, but he had done his best according to his abilities; and none of the poor wretches seemed to blame him. Still, there were times when he felt like a murderer as some unfortunate sufferer's eyes turned in his direction, beseeching help, and he could do nothing but watch him die. They died, for the most part, as apathetically as they had lived, the heathen with the uncomplaining stolidity which had carried them through much hardship and cruelty, and those who followed the prophet testifying that it was Allah's will.
Dane remembered it all that morning as he looked round upon the remnant left him, for it seemed hardly possible that any would see another day. When the pestilence relaxed its grip he had resumed the mining, until the tribesmen hemmed them in. Once the foe tried to storm the camp, and failed so signally that beyond creeping up and firing into it, they had not repeated the attempt until the preceding night, when a few succeeded in passing the defenses. These, however, did not survive very long. On the other hand, the garrison could not get out, and though they had no lack of water, one cannot subsist upon fluid alone, and there was very little else.
The men lay about the stockade with their rusty guns beside them, the negro, Bad Dollar, filing his matchet, as he did continually. The man Dane called Monday, however, crouched close beside him. A curious friendship had sprung up between the two, and they would talk long together with mutual satisfaction, though neither of them fully understood his companion.
A ravine cut the camp off from the forest in the rear, and beyond the front stockade the ground fell steeply to the river. There was forest across it, but only the tops of the higher trees rose out of the mist which shrouded all the plain below.
"You tink Cappy Maxwell perhallups come to-day, sah?" asked Monday.