The corporal pushed the tin plate from him. He felt strangely moved. He had thought of his cousin as wholly bad, and now he found good mingled with the evil. He turned round.
“Dick, old man,” he said in an unsteady voice, “you might make good yet, if you tried.”
His cousin laughed harshly. “Not me, you know better. What were you after me for? Whisky-running? Yes! I thought so. That’s bad enough for a man of—a—my antecedents. But there are worse things credited to Koona Dick, as you’ll learn. I’ve got too far. What is it that fellow Kipling says? ‘Damned from here to Eternity’? That’s me, and I know it.”
“You can pull up!” urged the other. “You can make reparation.”
“Reparation!” exclaimed the other. “Ah! you are thinking of—Joy—my wife, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” answered the corporal simply.
Dick Bracknell’s mood changed swiftly. “What’s Joy to you?” he demanded hoarsely. “You know her, you’ve talked with her, consoled her, I don’t doubt. What’s she to you?”
As he spoke his tones became violent, and he half threw himself out of the bunk, as if he would attack his cousin. The Indian started to his feet, and his one eye glared at the officer malevolently. The corporal did not move. As his cousin shouted the question the blood flushed his face, and in his heart he knew that he could not answer the question with the directness demanded.
“Don’t be a fool, Dick,” he replied quietly. “I never saw Joy Gargrave till four days ago, and if I talk of reparation, well, you’ll own it is due to her.”