“I fancy so, but I don’t want to go till we’ve found out something from the girl. She will be able to tell us what’s going on inside. Nor do I want to trek by night if we can hold on till morning and then slip away quietly. They’ll be shy of trying to cross the open space in daylight if they think we’re still there.”
He stuffed his treasures into a big haversack, slung two bandoliers round his neck (we had loaded our sporting .303 into clips and packed it into bandoliers), filled my empty thermos from the teapot on the table, got his rifle, and started off, saying as he went:
“Get all the loads roped up in case we have to scuttle quick.”
I went over to the tent, where I found Forsyth had fixed up the girl in one of our beds, dressed her shoulder, fitted her out with a suit of his silk pyjamas (he is particular about his underclothing), and was rubbing her arms with something or other. She could move her fingers by now, and the swelling had gone down a lot. They were carrying on a conversation, both speaking rather slowly.
As I came in, she looked up, and seeing me caught hold of my hand with a torrent of words rather too quick for me to follow exactly with her strange accent, but it was mostly thanking me for getting her away from the gate. Feeling distinctly embarrassed, I murmured something about “nothing to make a fuss over.”
“Are you feeling better now?” I asked.
“Yes, much better already.”
“You’ve got some luck, old man,” said Forsyth, “to get a chance of rescuing a girl like this. Jolly nice-looking and lots of pluck. She must have been through hell, but no whining.”
He had a final look at her arms and then pulled the blankets up over them.
“What about her shoulder?” I asked.