CHAPTER XVI
Before the Windāhgil party returned on the following day a council of war was held, at the conclusion of which the Colonel’s face assumed a very different expression from that which it habitually wore. The four men met in his study, where the accounts, assets, and liabilities were laid before the financial authority, who scanned them with keen and practised eye.
After what appeared to the others, and especially to Willoughby and his father, an astonishingly short examination, he raised his head and asked these pertinent questions: “I see your next bill, £12,437 14s. 10d., falls due in March,” he said. “After that, there is nothing more to be met but station expenses for another year, against which there will, of course, be the wool clip. You have 54,786 sheep, more or less, on the run. Is that so?”
“Half of which are to die this winter, Hubert says. Oh, yes—they’re all in the paddocks,” replied the younger Dacre, in a tone of reckless despair, while the Colonel’s face set with steadfast resolve, yet showed by the twitching of his lips how severe was the repression of feeling—how tense the strain of anxiety.
“Never mind about that just yet,” said Barrington Hope. “We’ll see into the available assets first. About this next bill, Colonel; how do you propose to meet it?”
“By the sale of sheep, I suppose. There is no other way. And if this drought comes to pass I am informed they will be next to valueless. How is the next one—of equal amount, and another still, to be paid? In such a case I see nothing but ruin staring me in the face. Good God! that I should have brought my poor children to such a pass!”
Here the brave soldier, who had fought with cheerful courage on more than one battle-field, when comrades lay dead and dying around him—who had been the first man across the breach when the rebel artillery were mowing down his regiment like swathes of meadow grass at Delhi, appeared quite unmanned.
“It will never do to give up the fight before the end of the day, Colonel,” said Mr. Hope, gently. “As a military man, you must know that reserves may come up at any moment. I will promise to give you a decided answer at the end of our colloquy. But we must move according to the rules of war.”
“You must pardon me, my dear sir,” said the Colonel, with a faint smile. “I trust not to embarrass the court again; but the fact is, I am a child in commercial affairs, and the probable loss of my children’s whole fortune touches me too acutely.”
“Have you any advice to offer, Hubert?” queried Hope. “I understand we are all here on terms of friendly equality.”