“I remember,” said Kavanagh. “And how is your prisoner getting on? He has not slipped away yet, has he?”
“Sorra a bit of it, he seems quite plazed to be living with dacent people for a change. He tould the interpreter that it was a mighty great friend of the Mahdi’s ye killed; a man some people reckoned very holy—a faker he called him. At least, a man like that lived up by that cavern ye discovered.”
“I don’t know who he was,” said Kavanagh, “but I wish he had recovered. He was a game one that, to fight as he did after he got his death-wound.”
Sergeant Barton, who came up just then, heard this last remark, and said, smiling—
“That is true enough, but his opponent must have a good bit of pluck, too, it seems to me.”
“Not so much as you think,” replied Kavanagh, meditatively. “I do not say it out of mock modesty, but it is a simple fact that fear of that sharp edge made me strain all my faculties to keep it at a distance. But I was horribly afraid of it all the same.”
“Well, I suppose that the other was afraid of your bayonet point, if you come to that.”
“I don’t believe it; he did not mind it more than a pin, if he could only kill me at the same time.”
Here an officer came up and asked Kavanagh how he was; adding, “I have good news for you. We shall reach Korti to-day, and then you will be more comfortable.”