At last he chose Red Hannigan and Peter Kelley, two men of his own kind, bull-necked, thick-limbed and heavy-shouldered. The Captain handed him one of the two tins of bacon. "We'll look for you back," he said, "long about—H'm—day after to-morrow. Or day after that. H'm."
The eyes of the officers glinted into each other. "Sure," said Roberts, gravely shaking his commander's hand. "Come along, you fellows."
Twelve days later a party from Nalang found Lieutenant Roberts, the first white man to win across Samar, sitting contentedly on the beach in the sunshine, forty miles above the town, eating snails and aimlessly tossing the shells at what had been his feet. Red Hannigan and Peter Kelley were never found, for Roberts never could remember where they left him.
After the departure of the rescue party, apathy settled over the camp in the valley. The Captain straightened his bad leg and lay back with closed eyes. The others lay about him, dozing. Even the worst of the fever-victims only cried out occasionally. Beside the relief of not having to march, cold and wet and hunger and sickness were little things.
It was well on in the afternoon when Clancy was roused by a sound which puzzled him. Stumbling out of camp, he came upon a sight which struck him speechless.
Sullivan, sitting astride a mouldering log, was wrenching off strips of sodden bark and digging his fingers deep into the punky wood. Suddenly the meaning of it burst on Terry. "Quit that!" he cried. "Quit it, I tell you."
Sullivan, glancing up, had the grace to redden. Then he lowered his eyes, and resumed his pecking. "I don't care," he muttered defiantly. "I'm hungry enough to eat anything."
Clancy turned away. Presently, from behind a clump of undergrowth, there came the sound of ripping bark. For a while Sullivan, still busy, preserved discreet silence. But his grin broadened slowly, and at last he sang out, "Hi, Terry! Pick for the little white ones. The others has kind of soured, I reckon."
There was no answer. After a time another man limped out, watched Sullivan for a little, and soon the sounds of the chase rose from another secluded spot. There was no element of sociability in those meals as yet.
Then came a slow succession of days not so tremendously hard to bear, as the pangs of hunger faded into the milder discomfort of starvation, and the fever felled them one by one. Days so like each other that only the calendar notched in the grip of the Captain's revolver kept their count.