The men munched them greedily, despite their uncomforting properties. A time was coming when a rotting log that harbored store of grubs would seem a treasure-house to them.
The bayonets did not hack out a trail as rapidly as they had on the day before, and they had made no more than three miles and a half when night shut down. Yet, slow as the advance was, only half a dozen men were up with it, and, when Burrell would have gone back for the others, his wounded leg crumpled under him. Without a word, Lieutenant Roberts joined Sullivan, and it was midnight when the pair brought in the last straggler they could find. Three were still missing, and the Captain forbade further search. "They'll have to take a chance," he said. "H'm."
When the next day broke, merely a lightening of the gloom under the dripping branches, Lieutenant Roberts rose stiffly from the pool that had formed about him in the night and stood, blue-lipped and shaking, over the Captain, whose tortured leg would not permit him to do more than raise himself on one elbow. The two officers faced the situation together. They needed no words. All about them lay the forest of that deadly central valley. Somewhere beyond it, unattainably far for the majority of the men, rose the western rampart of the island. For thirty-six hours they had had no food but hell-apples, the fever was growing on them, and three-fourths of the command, any doctor would have said, could not march a mile.
The Captain spoke at last, staring sullenly at the ground. "Call the men, will you?" he asked. "H'm. I reckon it's time to split."
Roberts' face brightened. "I'll make it out all right," he declared. "Never felt huskier in my life. I could break world's records from here to a plate of grub."
Only ten men of the seventeen who were left responded to the call. The others, roused from the stupor of deep sleep, merely stared up vacantly and muttered, so Roberts let them lie. "Boys," said Burrell, when they had formed a little circle round him, "'most of us need a lay-off. H'm. So we're goin' to rest up here for a couple of days and then push on slow. Mr. Roberts and a couple of you can plug ahead now, though, so's to have some grub cooked up to meet us. I reckon we'll raise a famine in Nalang. H'm. Roberts, who'll you take with you?"
Despite the lightness of the officer's tone, every man knew what he asked for, and as the subaltern's eyes swept round the circle, shrewdly weighing each man's serviceability, shoulders squared and faces took on looks of quite ferocious good cheer.
"I seen you first, sir," Terry Clancy cried all at once, and stumbled to his feet.
"I've got a fine healthy appetite, myself," Sullivan remarked plaintively. "I'm with you for a sprint, Lieutenant."
"You're too old, Clancy," said Roberts kindly. "I want yearlings for this. And you, Sullivan,"—his voice held good-natured condescension, as he glanced down at his own bulging chest and sturdy limbs,—"you're too spindly. You're liable to double up, any time."