“Yes. It’s not much further than Banda. I’ll be all right.”
Hatch opened his mouth, gasped, and was silent. The situation was beyond speech—even beyond swearing. Loch interpreted his silence.
“You needn’t come, Hatch,” he said, quietly.
Hatch found his voice. “Thank you, sir,” he replied, bitterly. “My neck is to be broke, and I’m to be insulted into the bargain. And well you know that I don’t care a darn for lions or niggers, but only for the ’orrible crawly things that drops on you. And probably stingers,” He carefully adjusted the bandage round Loch’s head. “Stingers. And probably down your back.”
Loch laughed, croakily. “Tie the other sleeve round your neck, and come on.”
He turned up the long track, wondering why ties were so hard to walk on, and why they seemed to be set at such irregular intervals. Two short steps and a long, two long steps and a short, a rest—“Loch, I want you. Loch, I want you.”—He heard nothing but that, saw nothing but the glimmer of the wet steel he must follow. And Hatch, after one wild gesture that took to witness the flashing sky, the wet woods, and the ruins of Number eight fuming by the right-of-way, limped after him, his mouth screwed into a dolorous whistle.
A fair young man, with nice blue eyes, was sitting at a table, pleasantly and peacefully sticking dead beetles on pins. The light of a shaded lamp shone on his quick fingers, on the jewelled wing cases of his prey, and out of the screened window before him, in a long beam. Now and then he murmured Latin words, and scribbled on little slips of paper.
A fox-terrier and a black boy lay asleep in one corner of the room.
Suddenly the black boy sprang up, and the dog began barking furiously. And there came into the room what might have been the blood-stained ghosts of two men.