"Come round with the ships and report to me at Balaclava."
Jim saluted once more, and spurred away.
The distance was only some twenty miles, an easy two hours' ride. The dangers lay in the hostile country and the prowling Cossacks, for in the long defile from the farm to the Belbec, and then again in the broken country between the Belbec and the Katcha, there were a thousand places where a rider might be picked off from the hill-sides and never catch a glimpse of his adversary.
However, it was no good thinking of all that, and Jim was not one to cross bridges before he came to them, or to meet trouble half-way. His big brown had a long, easy stride which was almost restful to his rider, and Jim had a seat that gave his horse the least possible inconvenience, and between them was completest sympathy and friendship.
And as to the dark, unless he absolutely ran into Cossacks he reckoned it all in his favour. It kept down his pace indeed, but at the same time it hid him from the watchful eyes on the hill-sides and the leaden messages they might have sent him.
He received warm commendation for that night's ride, but, as simple matter of fact, he enjoyed it greatly, and had no difficulties beyond keeping the road in the dark and making sure it was the right one. Plain common-sense, however, bade him always trend to the left when cross-roads offered alternatives, and after leaving Mackenzie's he never set eyes on a soul till he found the Belbec an hour before midnight, and rode up through the wreathing mists of the river-bed to the highlands beyond.
The dew was drenching wet and the night cold, but he got into his big fur coat, which had been rolled up behind his saddle, and suffered not at all.
His thoughts ran leisurely back to them all at home,--Gracie, and Mr. Eager, and his grandfather, and Lord Deseret, and Mme Beteta, and his father's amazing revelation concerning her. He wondered whether they would ever learn the truth, and if not, how the tangle would be straightened out. He thought dimly, but with no great fear now, that they would probably both be killed if there was much fighting such as that at the Alma, so there was no need to trouble about the future.
Charlie Denham, indeed, never ceased to philosophise that it was always the other fellow who was going to be killed; but if every one thought that, it was evident, even to Jim's unphilosophic mind, that there must be a flaw somewhere.
Anyway, when a man's time came he died, and there was no good worrying oneself into the blues beforehand.