At length he raised his face and looked upon us, that is to say, upon my lord, Mountain, and myself, sitting close round a small fire, which had been made for privacy in one corner of the camp.
“My lord, to be quite frank with you, I find myself in two minds,” said he. “I think it very needful I should go on, but not at all proper I should any longer enjoy the pleasure of your company. We are here still upon the water-side; and I think the risk to southward no great matter. Will not yourself and Mr. Mackellar take a single boat’s crew and return to Albany?”
My lord, I should say, had listened to Mountain’s narrative, regarding him throughout with a painful intensity of gaze; and, since the tale concluded, had sat as in a dream. There was something very daunting in his look; something to my eyes not rightly human; the face lean, and dark, and aged, the mouth painful, the teeth disclosed in a perpetual rictus; the eyeball swimming clear of the lids upon a field of blood-shot white. I could not behold him myself without a jarring irritation, such as, I believe, is too frequently the uppermost feeling on the sickness of those dear to us. Others, I could not but remark, were scarce able to support his neighbourhood—Sir William eviting to be near him, Mountain dodging his eye, and, when he met it, blenching and halting in his story. At this appeal, however, my lord appeared to recover his command upon himself.
“To Albany?” said he, with a good voice.
“Not short of it, at least,” replied Sir William. “There is no safety nearer hand.”
“I would be very sweir[11] to return,” says my lord. “I am not afraid—of Indians,” he added, with a jerk.
“I wish that I could say so much,” returned Sir William, smiling; “although, if any man durst say it, it should be myself. But you are to keep in view my responsibility, and that as the voyage has now become highly dangerous, and your business—if you ever had any,” says he,—“brought quite to a conclusion by the distressing family intelligence you have received, I should be hardly justified if I even suffered you to proceed, and run the risk of some obloquy if anything regrettable should follow.”
My lord turned to Mountain. “What did he pretend he died of?” he asked.
“I don’t think I understand your honour,” said the trader, pausing, like a man very much affected, in the dressing of some cruel frost-bites.
For a moment my lord seemed at a full stop; and then, with some irritation, “I ask you what he died of. Surely that’s a plain question,” said he.