The sound of his own laughter drove him from the tent. He went out. As he strained his eyes over the desert, the waste Infinity that had claimed him, he seemed to be brought nearer to the naked sincerity of things. There was no pity for him and no excuse; but neither was there condemnation. He knew himself, and he knew the hour of his redemption. Ex oriente lux! It was as if illumination had come with that fierce penetrating dawn that was beating the sand of the desert into fire.
Ah—that was a shot! The outpost stood a hundred yards to the left of him reloading. A black head started up behind a curve of rising ground, a bullet whizzed by, and the man with the musket fell in a little cloud of sand.
And now the bullets were crossing each other in mid-air. The camp was surrounded.
Tyson called up his twenty men and ran to his tent for arms. The papers were still there in the box of cartridges.
He hesitated for a second. He realized with a sudden lucidity that if he died, and those damning documents were found, there would be a slur on his memory out of keeping with the end. He could not have it said that the last words he had written had been an apology and a lie.
He tore the papers across, once, twice—no time for more—and rushed into the desert, his heart beating with the brutal, jubilant lust of battle.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN MEMORIAM
Later on news came of that heroic stand made by Tyson and his men—a mere handful against hundreds of the enemy. He had led them in their last mad rush on a line of naked steel; he had fallen first, face downwards, pierced through the back and breast. He died fighting.