Mr Gobbitt’s business instinct overmastered his fear, and he sat up suddenly. “Do you mean that Mr Gumpertz knew?”
Once again the Scotchman shrugged his shoulders. “It is quite possible,” he said dryly. “And if we had taken a slightly different route, you would have bought it, not knowing.”
The merchant lay back again thinking of many things, of his present danger, of his narrow escape from buying land having such undesirable inhabitants, of his deposit which he might not return to claim. Then he happened to glance upwards and received the greatest shock of his life, for there, amongst those grisly treasures of the village, was the head of Albert Dunk.
John Mackay looked round sharply at the cry, and hurried to his employer’s side. As soon as the Scotchman could make sense out of the other man’s almost incoherent utterance, he reached up and pulled down the trophy, which he placed beneath a blanket in the corner; then he gave Mr Gobbitt half a glass of neat brandy, the only liquid they had, and strove, without much success, to calm him down.
“We shall get out of it all right, we shall get out of it,” he repeated. “And then we’ll get Basil Hayle to come along, and clear out this gang.”
“Can’t we go now?” the merchant asked feebly.
“And be cut to pieces before we’ve gone a quarter of a mile? No, we must stay here, and chance beating them off when they attack to-night. Then they’ll probably leave us alone altogether.”
It is always a weary job, waiting for savages to come and attempt to kill you, but it becomes even more than a weariness when you are half-mad with thirst, when you know there is water near by and you dare not go to it. John Mackay found it long; and the Scouts and carriers found it long; but it is doubtful whether Mr Joseph Gobbitt, lying in the corner, was conscious of the passage of time. His thoughts were just one long nightmare, in which Albert Dunk’s head, Commissioner Gumpertz, two dead carriers outside, and a bearer cheque for six thousand dollars played the principal parts. Once only was his mind clear for a few minutes; and that was when he remembered Albert Dunk’s bearer cheque for ten thousand pesos—five thousand dollars. That had been cashed just as the drawer was starting for this same district. How he wished that head could speak! Then he fell a-shuddering at the idea.
John Mackay watched the sun set with unusual interest, possibly because he did not expect to see it rise again. “The attack will come soon now,” he remarked to the serjeant, who was endeavouring to smoke, despite his parched mouth.
The little man nodded. “Yes, Senor. I, for one, am glad I went to Mass last Sunday. There was a girl who asked me to meet her afterwards”; then, for the fiftieth time, he tried the action of his carbine ….