Perhaps Basil Traherne doubted it, for he too went a step nearer and held out his hand, saying, “Let me—”
She put her hands impartially in theirs, and jumped lightly down, sayings “Thanks,” as impartially.
The natives watching the strange newcomers with wonder and fear, began to chatter eagerly among themselves. If the big bird of prey had seemed uncanny and awesome, these strange creatures it had disgorged as it dashed to its death, scarcely seemed less so. All three were protected and disfigured with flying-helmets and leather aviation coats—odd enough sights to European eyes when seen for the first time. What must they not have looked to those untraveled natives of isolated, rock-bound Rukh!
The priest turned and said a word to one of the gape-mouth crowd—a lithe, sinewy youth more scantily clad than the others, a grotesque cipher, picked out in red, green and ochre, branded on one gleaming shoulder, and but for his rag of loin-cloth, stripped for his master’s running, which was his office in life. The priest spoke, and the runner instantly made off at great speed towards the distant castle.
The travelers had taken off their helmets now, and a new murmur of wonder ran through the little cluster, while a half look of intelligence just showed on the priest’s face.
“That last ten minutes was pretty trying,” Major Crespin said, in the tone of a man who half apologizes, half defends some premeditated deed he knows apt to be censured. “I don’t mind owning that my nerves are all of a twitter.” He fumbled inside his thick leather coat, and pulled out a flask. “Have a mouthful, Traherne?” he asked with a nonchalance a shade overdone, as he unscrewed it and poured out a generous dram.
“No, thank you,” Traherne said easily, helping Mrs. Crespin out of her coat.
“You won’t, I know,” Crespin said to his wife with a feebly jocular turn of the flask-top—now a cup—in her direction. “I will!” he drank off the brandy. “That’s better!” He refilled the cup and drank again. “And now, where are we, Doctor?”
“I have no notion,” Traherne confessed as he threw off his own coat.
“Let’s ask the populace,” Crespin suggested cheerfully. Traherne nodded, not too encouragingly, and Crespin went up to the still chattering crowd—in which the priest alone stood silent and grimly observant, watching the pale intruders intently through narrowing eyes. The natives shrank back in open fear as Crespin came up to them—all but the priest; he stood his ground, and even, at the half salutation the Englishman gave, salaamed slightly, but almost contemptuously.