“If the General don’t take it up, I’ll expose him myself!” snarled Captain Keeling, with the public spirit which so endeared him to his superiors.
“I believe you, my boy!” cried the rest in chorus, which broke off into shouts of welcome as an exhausted young man rode a very meek horse painfully into the space before the tent. With unwonted discretion, Brian declined to state the result of his mission otherwise than by nods and winks, but by the way he brandished the despatch which he insisted he must deliver to Colonel Bleackley forthwith, the others guessed he had been successful. But while he waited for his audience he could not resist telling the rest how uncommonly cool they were here—which was naturally soothing to men who felt that they were rapidly frizzling away,—and to prove his words, describing the terrible mortality in the General’s camp. That Colonel Bleackley heard what was said was clear when he had read the despatch, though his bearer professed to have awakened him from sleep.
“You are acquainted with the contents of this, I suppose, Captain Delany?”
“I am, Colonel. The General would likely think it better in case the despatch got destroyed.”
“Sir Henry was of course unaware when he wrote that my spies report Umarganj to have been evacuated by the enemy. I doubt whether I am justified in pushing forward, on the strength of an order dictated in the state of health you describe. In case of the General’s death I might incur very grave censure.”
Brian felt Captain Keeling bristling behind him, and anticipated him hastily. “Believe me, Colonel, if Sir Henry were unhappily to succumb, he’d rise from his grave to haunt y’ if you did not push forward.”
“You are acquainted with his probable course of action in any circumstances whatever, apparently.” Colonel Bleackley looked at Brian without any particular affection. “Better go and rest and get something to eat. So valuable a person must not come to harm, if I am to escape the attentions of the General’s ghost.”
Brian went off vowing angrily that he was not going to rest—not he! A snack of something to eat, and he was good for the day’s work yet. Besides, it was no use trying to sleep in this heat; he had tried it at the other camp, and it meant dying before you could wake up—in the case of other people, he explained hastily in answer to interested enquiries. But whether it was that the double journey had taken more out of him than he knew, or that it really was cooler here—owing to the drier air—than near the river, it is certain that he was fast asleep when Captain Keeling lifted the flap of his tent and looked in, and on being addressed merely grunted and went to sleep again.
“Poor beggar! let him sleep. He deserves it,” said Sir Dugald Haigh, looking over Captain Keeling’s shoulder.
“I know he deserves the best we can give him. That’s why I thought he ought to come on this reconnaissance.”