The head of the column, just then emerging from the gorge, heard that shout, and answered it with a bugle flourish, as they fixed bayonets and rushed forward to charge. At the same moment, a cheer and the boom of a gun on the left proclaimed that the other half of the column had at that moment reached the plain, and were also bearing down on the enemy’s flank.
But Atherton saw and heeded nothing but that tall heroic figure on the carriage. At the first sound of the troopers’ shout Forrester had turned his head, smiling, and raised his carbine aloft, as though to wave answer to the cheer. So he stood for a moment. Then he reeled and fell back upon the gun he had saved.
Chapter Seventeen.
An Official Report.
Scarfe, on the return of the skating party to Wildtree, found himself the hero of the hour. Whether the risk he ran in rescuing his old schoolfellow from his icy bath had been great or small, it had resulted in saving Jeffreys’ life, and that was quite sufficient to make a hero of him. Percy, easily impressed by the daring of any one else, and quite overlooking his own share in the rescue, was loud in his praises.
“How jolly proud you must feel!” said he. “I know I should if I’d saved a fellow’s life. That’s never my luck!”
“You lent a hand,” said Scarfe, with the complacency of one who can afford to be modest.
And, to do Scarfe justice, until he heard himself credited with the lion’s share of the rescue, he had been a little doubtful in his own mind as to how much of it he might justly claim.