“No,” he answered, “we are not hungry.”
“How can you expect a man to have an appetite when he’s going to be murdered?” growled Sanderson.
The bandit did not understand, and merely looked at him gravely.
“It’s too bad,” went on the American, “to leave the world, when a man has made a fortune and is able to enjoy it. Why, I ought to live twenty-five years yet. I am only forty-seven.”
“And I am not yet seventeen,” said Bernard.
“Yes, it’s hard luck for us both. And to think Cunningham has doomed us to all this! I’d like to wring his neck. If I had gone it would have been different.”
Bernard felt too despondent to defend his friend. In his secret heart he felt that Cunningham ought to have managed somehow to come back and save them from the doom which now awaited them.
“It is half-past eleven,” said the American, drawing out his watch, which, perhaps because it was only of silver, the bandits had not confiscated.
“Then we have half an hour to live. If only Mr. Cunningham would appear in that time!” sighed Bernard.
Slowly the minutes passed, but there was no arrival.