In this crisis, he would have sacrificed ten years of his life to have old Martin with him. But Martin Brent had been in his grave for years.
He had no-one like him to rely on.
The situation was agonizing to Hector. This was his first great experience as an officer and he knew that not only his own men but every man in the Police would judge his capacity as an officer by his present success or failure. Besides, Frances—his dreams of progress—everything he most desired was dependent on this one issue. He had built up a thousand visions with victory in this trial as their foundation. To fail now—after pushing his men and himself to exhaustion, after hounding the enemy on and on for twenty desperate hours—would mean the end.
Then, above even these things, there was the country. Its eyes were on him. Colonel Stern looked to him. He had it in his power to save a welter of bloodshed, to smash the revolt, to bring its leader to the scaffold—if he could only find the trail.
But the trail was lost.
He remembered, too, the newspapers, in his mind's eye saw headlines like these:
REBELS TOO SMART FOR POLICE.
INSPECTOR ADAIR'S FAILURE.
RESULTANT LOSS OF LIFE.
LET HIM RESIGN.
He heard, too, in imagination, the sneaking, mocking whispers of malice and jealousy condemning him on every side.
He went on searching relentlessly; but in his heart the spectre of defeat had already risen.
Till, all at once, the light came—sent, once more, by Destiny. With Mason, his trumpeter, he had moved off to a flank, on the slope of a hill, covered with small bushes, the crest just above them. Suddenly the bushes on the crest parted and an Indian appeared. Mason threw his carbine to his shoulder.