"Tally up a couple of hundred dollars' worth of bills," he asked me, "and sling them at those scoundrels."
It was a funny thing for me to be counting out the sum to be paid for my own capture and handing it over to those brutes, but I did it automatically. I really did not feel, or hear, or see anything quite as if I were awake; and when I read over what I have written, it seems so jerky and disconnected, that I have often tried to make it read more smoothly, but then I don't think it would give you quite the impression it still gives me. Incidents just seemed to happen; they did not seem to have any connection, but went on, one after another, till I woke up standing over Hopkins's cash-box and paying those ugly brutes.
I ought to have hated and loathed Hopkins, but somehow or other I didn't—none of us did, I fancy—and remembering, as if it were in a dream I had just wakened from, the gallant way he had led that charge, I felt awfully sorry for him, and forgot that, but for him and his partners, Captain Hunter would not be lying dead on that hill above me, nor many others—how many, I dare not think.
"Captain Hunter is killed. That brute with the black beard shot him," I blurted out; and it may seem funny to you, but I knew that he would be just as sorry as I was. His face twitched. "That is Schmidt," he said.
"He died trying to rescue me," I said, and something seemed to stick in my throat. I could not keep it back, and threw myself on the floor and sobbed and sobbed till tears came.
Even now I don't feel in the least ashamed of myself, and I know that I was absolutely too played out to mind then.
"I'm sorry, Glover, I'm mighty sorry, but it would have been up against you if he had hauled you back."
He said it so seriously, that a faint idea of what he meant flashed through my mind, and I remembered the second attack which I had listened to whilst I was being carried down the hill, and the endless stream of coolies pouring up the hill.
"Why?" I gasped.
"Come here," he said, stretching out his hand and drawing me gently to him. "Guess there ain't no blood on it 'cept my own," he added bitterly, as I half drew back. "You and your chum, young Foote, were the last to shake that hand, youngster, and you wouldn't have seen me again an' been still jumping around but for that and one thing besides." I remembered then that Toddles and I had shaken hands with him when he had been exchanged for Ping Sang.