White Fire

by John Oxenham

His mind was still in a state of confusion; his thoughts were almost as broken as his body. He remembered facing the bristling brown men. He could see their shaggy heads and twisted faces, their white teeth, their gleaming eyes, and the whirl of their brandished weapons. After that all was blurred, and broke off into sudden darkness. He had a dim remembrance of intense strain and a sudden snap. He groped for the ends of the broken threads, but they were hidden in the outer void. He was still very weak.

He accepted gratefully all that was done for him, but for the most part lay in silence. His sufferings were great, but no word of complaint ever passed his lips. If he had permitted himself any such, it would have been that he still lived when his leader died. To all he was a monument of patient resignation.

So great was his depression, and so slow his recovery, that it was decided at last to send him home, as the only hope of full recuperation. He acquiesced, as he had done in everything they suggested, but in this matter with evident reluctance. He thought it unlikely he would ever return. His heart had been in the work, but he had been tried and found wanting. The work, he said to himself, was for abler and more faithful hands.

So the mission schooner carried him to the nearest port of call, and in due course he was lying in a deck chair carefully swathed in plaids, and the great steamer bore him swiftly homewards.

The story of the martyrdom and of his heroic defence of his old friend: how they two had gone up alone to the peaceful assault of an island of the night; how he had fought for his leader till he could fight no longer, and had fallen at last wounded to death across his dead body,—it had all preceded him. The very sailors were proud to have him on board. The officers made much of him in an undemonstrative way. The ladies fluttered round his chair like humming-birds, and loaded him with attentions.

And he suffered it all in silence. He was still very weak. How could he turn his sick soul inside out to these strangers, and what good to do so?

He had not yet decided what course to take when he got home. He had thought and thought, till he was sick of thinking, sick of himself, sick of life. Ah! why had he not died with the brave old man out there on the shore of the creek behind the rocks? Why had his nerve given way at that supreme moment? Why had this bitter cross been laid upon him? Far better to have died—far easier, at all events. But easier and better run opposite ways as a rule, and have little in common.

Should he confess the whole matter, and retire from the field and find some other way of life? Truly he felt no call to any other work. This had been the one desire of his life; he had grown from youth to manhood in the hope of it. He believed he could still be of service when once he got over the effects of his present fall. Should he not rather bury the dead past, with God as only mourner, and start afresh?—to fail once more when the strain came again, he said to himself with exceeding bitterness. He grieved over his lapse as another might grieve over a deliberate crime. But he postponed any final decision as to the future till he should feel stronger in mind and body.

There was a noted writer on board, a realist of realists. He sought impressions at first hand. He cultivated the sick man's acquaintance, greatly to his discomfort.

"Mr. Blair," he said, sitting down by his side one day, "I would very much like to know just how you felt, and what you thought of, when you were fighting those brown devils. Won't you tell me?"