“Ze Voivoda say he exhausted of waiting,” said Milosch, coming up with a handkerchief, which he proceeded to tie over Wylie’s eyes.
“Now go, go!” entreated Wylie of Maurice. “You must think of the girls, as I ought to have done yesterday instead of playing the fool.”
Maurice wrung his hand and withdrew, slowly and reluctantly. At the edge of the wood he turned, hearing his friend’s voice raised angrily. “For heaven’s sake, leave me my hands free!” Wylie cried, but Maurice gathered that the demand was refused. He went on into the clearing, and sat down beside the extinguished fire, a prey to the deepest despondency he had ever known. Without Wylie, how were he and the hapless girls to face the trials before them? He himself might be the next sacrifice to the savagery of the brigands, and what would then become of Zoe and Eirene, since neither fear nor avarice seemed potent to restrain their captors? Wylie’s resourcefulness, his restless energy, his cheerfulness, and the underlying force of character which manifested itself only occasionally, but was therefore all the more telling, had made him a tower of strength, and Maurice felt bitterly his own comparative futility. His life had taught him to exercise a certain amount of initiative, clogged by the habit, inculcated as a duty, of weighing the merits of a question before deciding on it, but while he was thinking, Wylie would act—would have acted, rather. The thought swept over Maurice with desolating effect. The man of action was taken, the man who could only feel sure of himself in the humdrum routine of daily life was left. It did not occur to him that Wylie had not grown to his full mental height in a day, or that he himself might draw from the depths of his present desolation the experience which would complete the measure of his manhood.
“Maurice, how slack you look!” cried Zoe, putting out a dishevelled head gingerly at the door of the hut. “Mind you tell Captain Wylie that he must give us some more kabobs for breakfast.”
“All right. They’ll be ready. Provided,” with a sudden happy inspiration, “that you promise faithfully to eat them before you begin to talk. It’s no good my—our cooking if you let the things get cold when they ought to be eaten at once.”
“I promise, honour bright!” said Zoe, and Maurice began to collect wood for a fresh fire, half fearing that orders for the march would be issued before he had time to do any cooking. But the brigands came back into camp and sat down round their own fire with the evident intention of taking their ease, and when the girls came out of the hut they found Maurice busy toasting his face as well as a bountiful supply of kabobs.
“Where’s Captain Wylie?” they cried.
“What did you promise?” asked Maurice repressively. “Sit down and begin at once, and I’ll be doing some more.”
“Maurice, you are eating none yourself,” cried Zoe, having kept her promise until hunger was satisfied. “And where is Captain Wylie? He didn’t get his face nearly as much burnt as you do.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere about, I suppose,” mumbled Maurice. “Have some more?”