"Sit here." Augustus took one of the giant's stools. "I have a few words to say to this man: in the mean while, one of you"—turning to Penn and Carl—"hasten to the sink, and ask Stackridge to send me as many men as he can spare. Bring a couple of the prisoners—we shall need them."
"I'll go!" Carl cried with alacrity.
"And," added Pomp, "if there are any wounded needing my assistance, have them brought here. I shall not, probably, be able to go to them."
While he was giving these directions, with the air of one who felt that he had a momentous task before him, Bythewood sat on the rock, his head heavy and hot, his feet like clods of ice, and his heart collapsing with intolerable suspense. The gloom of the cave, and the strangeness of all things in it; the sight of the corpse near the entrance,—of Toby, at Virginia's suggestion, wiping up the pools of blood,—Virginia herself perfectly calm; Penn carefully untying and straightening the pieces of rope that had served to bind Lysander,—all this impressed him powerfully.
"I suppose," said he, "I am to be treated as a prisoner of war."
Pomp smiled. "Answer me a question. If you had caught me, would you have treated me as a prisoner of war?—Yes or no; we have no time for parley."
"No," said Augustus, frankly.
"Very well! I have caught you!"
Fearfully significant words to the prisoner, who remembered all his injustice to this man, and the tortures he had prepared for him when he should be taken! But he had not been taken. On the contrary, he, the slave, could stand there, calm and smiling, before him, the master, and say, with peculiar and compressed emphasis, "Very well! I have caught you!"
"You promised that not a hair of my head should be injured."