“No,” he said. “I’ve got through with it now, and it will only reopen the sore if I stay here. I will go across to Father Doyle’s.”
The new officer, who had never got down to crude things, such as the fight on Felizardo’s mountain, or the march over the pass, looked at him in astonishment.
“I should have thought you would have been glad enough to be clear of the outfit. I know if I could afford to resign I should go to-morrow. There’s not much pleasure or glory in commanding a company of savages, who will probably bolt at the first shot and leave you to be boloed.”
Basil shrugged his shoulders, and then crossed the plaza to Father Doyle’s house, where he took off his uniform for the last time, presently coming down in civilian clothes.
“It’s over now,” he said briefly, as he selected a cigar from his host’s box.
Father Doyle nodded. “When I first met you I knew it must come to this before long. There was never room for you in the Service. What are you going to do now?”
Basil stared out across the bay towards Felizardo’s mountains. “I am not quite sure yet,” he answered slowly. “But I think—I think I shall go to Igut first.”
The priest had been expecting that answer, and had given much thought to the question of how Basil’s going was to be prevented. He had conceived several good schemes for delaying him; but now that it had come to the point, none of them seemed likely to be of the slightest avail. It was not an easy matter in which to interfere, especially as Basil, though perhaps his closest friend, was not one of his flock. So finally he said nothing about it, trusting that by the morning something might occur to make his intervention possible.
“I should like to see Felizardo again,” Basil went on: “It is curious how he and I have come into one another’s lives,” and then, suddenly, he began to tell the other man the whole story, beginning with the fight on the slope of the volcano, when he surprised the outpost and captured Felizardo’s daughter, and carrying it down to the time when Father Doyle himself came into it; only, he omitted all mention of Mrs Bush, though he did not gloss over the ways of Bush himself; and both what he left out, and what he said, made the priest more than ever anxious to stop him from going to Igut.
The sun was just setting when he finished, and a dozen or so tao passed the house on their way up from the beach; then, following them, came two strange natives, one of whom was carrying a heavy basket. A moment later, “They are coming here. They look as if they wanted you, Hayle,” the priest said.