'How?' I asked. He spoke under his breath. I adopted the same tone.
'You will know by, and by,' he answered, with a wink. 'Sometimes we find a traitor in the camp; or we catch a spy. Then--but you need not fear. Drawing-room practice to-day. There is no one in them.'
'In them?' I muttered, unable to take my eyes from his face.
He nodded. 'Ay, in them,' he answered, smiling at my look of consternation. 'Time has been I have known one in each, and cross-bow practice. That makes them squeal! With powder and a flint-lock--pouf! It is all over. Unless you put the butter-fingers first; then there is sport, perhaps.'
Little wonder that after that I paid no attention to the shooting, which had begun; nor to the brawling and disagreement which from the first accompanied it, and which it needed all the general's authority to quell. I thought only of our position among these wretches. If I had felt any doubt of General Tzerclas' character before, the doubt troubled me no more.
But it did occur to me that Ludwig might be practising on me, and I turned to him sharply. 'I see!' I said, pretending that I had found him out. 'A good joke, captain!'
He grinned again. 'You would not call it one,' he said dryly, 'if you were once in the leather. But have it your own way. Come, there is a good shot, now. He is a Swiss, that fellow.'
But I could take no interest in the shooting, with that ghastly tale in my head. I felt for the moment the veriest coward. We were ten in the midst of two thousand--ten men and four helpless women! Our own strength could not avail us, and we had nothing else under heaven to depend upon, except the scruples, or interest, or fears of a mercenary captain; a man whose hardness the thin veil of politeness barely hid, who might be scrupulous, gentle, merciful--might be, in a word, all that was honourable. But whence, then, this story? Why this tale of cruelty, passing the bounds of discipline?
It so disheartened me that for some time I scarcely noticed what was passing before me; and I might have continued longer in this dull state if the Waldgrave's voice, civilly declining some proposition, had not caught my ear.
I gathered then what the offer was. Among the matches was one for officers, and in this the general was politely inviting his guest to compete. But the Waldgrave continued firm. 'You are very good,' he answered with perfect frankness and good temper. 'But I think I will not expose myself. I shoot badly with a strange gun.'