"And he is our superior officer," concluded Ronald. "Hello, Norton!"
The Doctor and the Lieutenant exchanged cool salutations. The faces of the others were clouded, but the Doctor was as serene as the clear blue sky overhead. "Haven't you heard?" asked Forsyth, in astonishment.
"What's the odds?" queried Norton, with a cynical shrug of his broad shoulders. "So far, we have one life and one death; at the end of one we meet the other—how does it matter, when or which way?"
"It matters to me," said Ronald, huskily, "whether I die like a soldier or like a beast."
"'Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,'" quoted Norton, suggestively. "Clay we were in the beginning and clay we shall be at the end. 'Dust thou art; to dust shalt thou return.'"
Lieutenant Howard's white teeth showed in a sarcastic smile, but he said nothing. He seemed interested and even amused by the surgeon's point of view.
"That's all very well for you," retorted Ronald, "because you're a selfish brute, with water in your veins instead of a man's blood. If you loved a woman——"
The Lieutenant instantly stiffened. His smile disappeared, leaving a frown in its place, and Norton's face changed, almost imperceptibly. "If I loved a woman," he said, "I would protect her at the risk of my own life, my own happiness, my own soul. If need be, I would protect her even from herself. If I loved a woman she should think of me in just one way—as her shield."
For the sheerest fraction of an instant his eyes met Howard's, openly and unashamed; then, with another shrug of his shoulders, he turned away, saying, "I must go back to my lint and my bandages—we may need them before long."
Forsyth went back to the trading station, and the other two continued their uneasy march around the parade-ground. "I think," said the Lieutenant, "that the sane, reasoning men in the settlement, outside the ranks, ought to get together and talk to the Captain."