When the interpreter put my question, Usi shook his head, and turned his back upon me, as if he cared to hold no further converse with a craven. "I would go myself," he muttered, "if I had ever been taught to shoot with pipes that are no longer than the honeycomb."
"Hearken unto my words," I spoke in the style of his own oration, "O slayer of bears, the English heart hath as much endurance and contempt of peril, as ever was bred in the Lesghian or the untamed Svân. From this adventure I will not turn back, by reason of terror or the love of life. Do thou consider these things apart, while I hold counsel with the Captain of brave men."
Forty-two of us there were in all, without counting old Kobaduk or the fluent interpreter,—the one disabled by length of years, the other by prolixity of tongue. Time had failed us to muster more than twenty-two Caucasians, and eighteen British miners, with Strogue and myself to make up the force; but a match as we thought for twice that number of Ossets, or any other savage tribe. And we had the advantage of knowing much more about their proceedings than they could know of ours; for Usi (who had left us the day before to search his burned hut for the celebrated gun) had made the best of his time in other ways, skirting the highlands round the valley at a prudent distance, and learning from a goatherd's boy what the proceedings of the morrow were to be. All these things I put plainly before Strogue as the commander of the expedition, and he fell in at once with the Bear-slayer's plan; while Jack Nickols (as the best rifle-shot among us and a first-rate climber) volunteered to be Usi's partner in the dangerous enterprise among the cliffs. So we three, Nickols, Usi, and myself, made every preparation we could think of, and set off with a quick step right early, in advance of the main body.
In some of his tempers, Strogue was a very provoking and irritating fellow, and he knew it, I think; or he must have known it, whenever he looked at Bat Strogue in the glass. But now I thought more of him than I had ever thought before, because he behaved so kindly to me. For it must be remembered that I had not always put up with his brag, and his cynicism, and contempt, or pretended contempt of women, and many other little ways that rasp the quiet Briton.
"Let Jack Nickols go; don't you go, George," he said to me, I daresay a dozen times; "what matter if he gets a prod through the lungs? Take a lot of gabble out of him, if he ever came round again; if he didn't, one coxcomb the less. He does think Treble X of himself; while you are always so ready to learn,—it's a pleasure to hold a conversation with you. And when a man comes to know you, George, he finds you not half such a fool as he thought! That is my experience at any rate, although I have seen too much of men to pretend to know much about them. But nobody need look twice at you, to understand you thoroughly. I am wanted here of course; but let that cock-headed young Nickols go; nobody would ever miss him."
"Captain," I replied with emphasis, for I knew that he loved the title,—all the more perhaps as being of home-growth,—"should I be worthy of your friendship if I allowed a young fellow quite a stranger to the case to undertake my duty?"
"Well, well! God bless you! I shall never see you alive again. But I'll make a rare example of the fellow that runs you through, dear George. I wish I had bought a six-shooter in London; however, the Lord be with you. Be sure you kill four of them before you drop. That sham Hafer belongs to me, mind, after all the tricks he has played me."
This was not encouraging; but there seemed to be no way out of it. Neither was there any genuine pluck in my volunteering; for as a mere question of selfishness, Dariel's life was worth to me a hundredfold as much as mine. Another thing was, that I had never felt sure whether nature had afforded me a decent share of that British pith, and presence of mind, and calmness, of which the father reads in the despatch, and says, "Thank God we are not going down the hill yet!" while the mother's eyes run over, and the brother wonders whether he could do the like, if the pinch came to his own short ribs.
Some people declare that dreams will tell us, when we can remember them, what our genuine nature is. If so, I have been told both ways; in some visions, running like a niddering, in others standing firm as a pyramid. And now I found myself quite at a loss, although my mind felt firm enough, whether the body would toe the mark, stand steadfast, and act to orders.
Happily there was not much time for dealing with speculative terrors, for we had to keep on at a rapid pace, to do any good with our ambuscade. The sudden snowfall of the Sunday morning had not been so heavy on this northern side, but the track was very rough and crooked, as well as steep and slippery. So that Nickols and myself were ashamed to find the supple vigour of youth no match for the wiry endurance and practised precision of that ancient mountaineer. Then, at the crown of a terrible defile, he looked back, and ordered us to lie close, while he crept down a narrow channel flanked with trickling combs of snow.