“Hunky Ben!” exclaimed Buck, who had recovered by that time. “I wish you had turned up half-an-hour since, boy. You might have saved my poor friend Leather from a monster who came here and carried him away bodily.”
“Ay? That’s strange, now. Hows’ever, worse luck might have befel him, for the troops are at my heels, an’ ye know what would be in store for him if he was here.”
“Yes, indeed, I know it, Ben, and what is in store for me too; but Death will have his laugh at them if they don’t look sharp.”
“No, surely,” said the scout, in a tone of real commiseration, “you’re not so bad as that, are you?”
“Truly am I,” answered Buck, with a pitiful look, “shot in the chest. But I saw you in the fight, Ben; did you guide them here?”
“That’s what I did—at least I told ’em which way to go, an’ came on in advance to warn you in time, so’s you might escape. To tell you the plain truth, Ralph Ritson, I’ve bin told all about you by your old friend Mr Brooke, an’ about Leather too, who, you say, has bin carried off by a monster?”
“Yes—at least by a monstrous big man.”
“You’re quite sure o’ that?”
“Quite sure.”
“An’ You would know the monster if you saw him again?”