The Way of an Eagle - Ethel May Dell (i read books TXT) 📗

with a care equal to any woman's, smoothed back her hair, and improvised a pillow for her head.
And afterwards she knew that he sat down by her, out of sight but close at hand, a silent presence watching over her, till at last, worn out with grief and the bitter strain of the past weeks, she sank into natural, dreamless slumber, and slept for hours.


CHAPTER V
THE DEVIL IN THE WILDERNESS

It was dark when Muriel awoke--so dark that she lay for a while dreamily fancying herself in bed. But this illusion passed very quickly as her brain, refreshed and active, resumed its work. The cry of a jackal at no great distance roused her to full consciousness, and she started up in the chill darkness, trembling and afraid.
Instantly a warm hand grasped hers, and a low voice spoke. "It's all right," said Nick. "I'm here."
"Oh, isn't it dark?" she said. "Isn't it dark?"
"Don't be frightened," he answered gently. "Come close to me. You are cold."
She crept to him shivering, thankful for the shielding arm he threw around her.
"The sunrise can't be far off," he said. "I expect you are hungry, aren't you?"
She was very hungry, and he put a biscuit into her hand. The very fact of eating there in the darkness in some measure reassured her. She ate several biscuits, and began to feel much better.
"Getting warmer?" questioned Nick. "Let me feel your hands." They were still cold, and he took them and thrust them down against his breast. She shrank a little at the touch of his warm flesh.
"It will make you so cold," she murmured.
But he only laughed at her softly, and pressed them closer. "I am not easily chilled," he said. "Besides, it's sleeping that makes you cold. And I haven't slept."
Muriel heard the news with astonishment. She was no longer angry with Nick, and her fears of him were dormant. Though she would never forget and might never forgive his treachery, he was her sole protector in that wilderness of many terrors, and she lacked the resolution to keep him at arm's length. There was, moreover, something comforting in his presence, something that vastly reassured her, making her lean upon him almost in spite of herself.
"Haven't you slept at all?" she asked him in wonder. "How in the world did you keep awake?"
He did not answer her, only laughed again as though at some secret joke. He seemed to be in rather good spirits, she noticed, and she marvelled at him with a heavy pain at her heart that was utterly beyond expression or relief.
She sat silent for a little, then at length withdrew her hands, assuring him that they were quite warm.
"And I want to talk to you," she added, in a more practical tone than she had previously managed to assume. "Mr. Ratcliffe, you may be in command of this expedition, but I think you ought to tell me your plans."
"Call me Nick, won't you?" he said. "It'll make things easier. You are quite welcome to know my plans, such as they are. I haven't managed to develop anything very ingenious during all these hours. You see we are, to a certain extent, at the mercy of circumstances. This place isn't more than a dozen miles from the fort, and the hills all round are infested with tribesmen. I hoped at first that we should get clear in the night, but you were asleep, and on the whole it seemed best to lie up for another day. We might make a bolt for it to-morrow night if all goes well. I have a sort of instinct for these mountains. There is always plenty of cover for those who know how to find it. It will be slow progress, of course, but we will keep moving south, and, given luck, we may fall in with Bassett's relief column before many days."
So with much serenity he disclosed his plans, and Muriel marvelled afresh at the confidence that buoyed him up. Was he really as sublimely free from anxiety as he wished her to believe, she wondered? It was difficult to think otherwise, even though he had admitted that they were governed by circumstance. She began to think that there was magic in him, some hidden reserve force upon which he could always draw when all other resources failed.
Another matter had also caught her attention, and this she presently decided to investigate. She had never thought of Nick Ratcliffe as in any sense a remarkable person before.
"Did you actually carry me ten miles?" she asked.
"Something very near it," said Nick.
"How in the world did you do it?" Her interest was quickened. Undoubtedly there was something uncanny in this man's strength.
"You're not very heavy, you know," he said.
His arm was still around her, and she suffered it; for the darkness still frightened her when she allowed herself to think.
"Have you had anything to eat?" she asked him next.
"Not quite lately," said Nick. "I've been smoking. I wonder you didn't notice it."
His tone was somehow repressive, but she ignored it with a growing temerity. After all, he did not seem such an alarming person on a nearer acquaintance.
"Does smoking do as well as eating?" she asked.
"Much better," said Nick promptly. "Care to try?"
She shook her head in the darkness. "I don't think you are telling the truth," she said.
"What?" said Nick.
He spoke carelessly, but she did not repeat her assertion. A sudden shyness descended upon her, and she became silent. Nick was quiet too, and she wondered what was passing in his mind. But for the tenseness of the arm that encircled her, she could have believed him to be dozing. The silence was becoming oppressive when abruptly he broke it.
"See!" he said. "Here comes the dawn!"
She started and stared in front of her, seeing nothing.
"Over to your left," said Nick. And turning she beheld a lightening of the darkness high above them.
She breathed a sigh of thankfulness, and watched it grow. It spread rapidly. The walls of the ravine showed ghostly grey, then faintly pink. Through the dimness the boulders scattered about the stream stood up like mediaeval monsters, and for a few panic-stricken seconds Muriel took the twining roots of a rhododendron close at hand for the coils of a gigantic snake. Then as the ordinary light of day filtered down into the gloomy place she sighed again with relief, and looked at her companion.
He was sitting with his chin on his hand, gazing across the ravine. He did not stir or glance in her direction. His yellow face was seamed in a thousand wrinkles.
A vague misgiving assailed her as she looked at him. There was something unnatural in his stillness.
"Nick!" she said at length with hesitation.
He turned sharply, and in an instant the ready grin leaped out upon his face. "Good morning," he said lightly. "I was just thinking how nice it would be to go down there and have a wash. We've got to pass the time somehow, you know. Will you go first?"
His gaiety baffled her, but she did not feel wholly reassured. She got up slowly, and as she did so, her attention was caught by something that sent a thrill of dismay through her.
"Don't look at my feet, please," said Nick. "They won't bear inspection at present."
She turned horrified eyes to his face, as he thrust them down into a bunch of fern. "How dreadful!" she exclaimed. "They are all cut and gashed. I didn't know you were barefooted."
"I wasn't," said Nick. "I've got some sandals here. Don't look like that! You make me want to cry. I assure you it doesn't hurt in the least."
He grinned again as he uttered this cheerful lie, but Muriel was not deceived.
"You must let me bind them up," she said.
"Not for the world," laughed Nick. "I couldn't walk with my feet in poultice-bags, and we shall have some more rough marching to do to-night. Now don't you worry. Run along like a good girl. I'm going to say my prayers."
It was flippantly spoken, but Muriel realised that it would be better to obey. She turned about slowly, and began to make her way down to the stream.
The sunlight was beginning to slant through the ravine, and here and there the racing water gleamed silvery. It was intensely refreshing to kneel and bathe face and hands in its icy coldness. She lingered long over it. Its sparkling purity seemed to reach and still the throbbing misery at her heart. In some fashion it brought her peace.
She would have prayed, but she felt she had no prayer to offer. She had no favour to ask for herself, and her world was quite empty now. She had no one in her heart for whom to pray.
Yet for awhile she knelt dumb among the lifeless stones, her face hidden, her thoughts with the father whose loss she had scarcely begun to realise. It might be that God would understand and pity her silence, she thought drearily to herself.
The rush of the water drowned all sound but its own, and the memory of Nick, waiting above, faded from her consciousness like a dream. Her brain felt numb and heavy still. She did not want to think. She leaned her head against a rock, closing her eyes. The continuous babble of the stream was like a lullaby.
Under its soothing influence she might have slept, a blessed drowsiness was stealing over her, when suddenly there flashed through her being a swift warning of approaching danger. Whence it came she knew not, but its urgency was such that instinctively she started up and looked about her.
The next instant, with a sound half-gasp, half-cry, she was on her feet, and shrinking back against her sheltering boulder in the paralysis of a great horror. There, within a few yards of her and drawing nearer, ever nearer, with a beast-like stealth, was a tall, black-bearded tribesman. Transfixed by terror, she stood and gazed at him, waiting dumbly, cold from head to foot, feeling as though her very heart had turned to stone.
Nearer he came, and yet nearer, soundlessly over the stones. His eyes, gleaming, devilish, were to her as the eyes of a devouring monster. In her agony she tried to shriek aloud, but her voice was gone, her throat seemed locked. She was powerless.
Close to her, for a single instant he paused; then, as in a lightning flash, she saw the narrow, sinewy hand and snake-like arm dart forward to seize her, felt every muscle in her body stiffen to rigidity in anticipation of its touch, and shrank--shrank in every nerve though she made no outward sign of shrinking.
But on the instant, with a panther-like spring, sure, noiseless, deadly, another figure leapt suddenly across her vision. There followed a violent struggle in front of her, a confused swaying to and fro, a cry choked instantly and terribly, the tinkling sound of steel falling upon stone. And then both figures were on the ground almost at her feet, locked together in mortal combat, fighting, fighting like demons in a silence that throbbed with the tumult of unrestrained savagery.
Later she never could remember how long it took her to realise that the second apparition was Nick, or if she had known it from the first. She felt herself hovering upon the brink of a great emptiness, a void immense, and yet all her senses were alive and tingling with horror. With agonised perception of what was passing, she yet felt numbed: as though her body were dead, but still contained a vital, tortured soul.
And it was thus that she presently saw Nick's face