第26章 Chapter II.(7)

"But you don't think--" The Colonial stared at him with wide open eyes; then he glanced round at the Captain's tent.

"Yes, I think that-- Go and fetch his great-coat; we'll put him in it. If it is no use talking while a man is alive, it is no use talking when he is dead!"

They brought his great-coat, and they looked in the pockets to see if there was anything which might show where he had come from or who his friends were. But there was nothing in the pockets except an empty flask, and a leathern purse with two shillings in, and a little hand-made two-pointed cap.

So they wrapped Peter Halket up in his great-coat, and put the little cap on his head.

And, one hour after Peter Halket had stood outside the tent looking up, he was lying under the little tree, with the red sand trodden down over him, in which a black man and a white man's blood were mingled.

All the rest of the night the men sat up round the fires, discussing what had happened, dreading an attack.

But the Englishman and the Colonial went to their tent, to lie down.

"Do you think they will make any inquiries?" asked the Colonial.

"Why should they? His time will be up tomorrow."

"Are you going to say anything?"

"What is the use?"

They lay in the dark for an hour, and heard the men chatting outside.

"Do you believe in a God?" said the Englishman, suddenly.

The Colonial started: "Of course I do!"

"I used to," said the Englishman; "I do not believe in your God; but I believed in something greater than I could understand, which moved in this earth, as your soul moves in your body. And I thought this worked in such wise, that the law of cause and effect, which holds in the physical world, held also in the moral: so, that the thing we call justice, ruled. I do not believe it any more. There is no God in Mashonaland."

"Oh, don't say that!" cried the Colonial, much distressed. "Are you going off your head, like poor Halket?"

"No; but there is no God," said the Englishman. He turned round on his shoulder, and said no more: and afterwards the Colonial went to sleep.

Before dawn the next morning the men had packed up the goods, and started.

By five o'clock the carts had filed away; the men rode or walked before and behind them; and the space where the camp had been was an empty circle; save for a few broken bottles and empty tins, and the stones about which the fires had been made, round which warm ashes yet lay.

Only under the little stunted tree, the Colonial and the Englishman were piling up stones. Their horses stood saddled close by.

Presently the large trooper came riding back. He had been sent by the Captain to ask what they were fooling behind for, and to tell them to come on.

The men mounted their horses to follow him; but the Englishman turned in his saddle and looked back. The morning sun was lighting up the straggling branches of the tall trees that had overshadowed the camp; and fell on the little stunted tree, with its white stem and outstretched arms; and on the stones beneath it.

"It's all that night on the kopje!" said the Colonial, sadly.

But the Englishman looked back. "I hardly know," he said, "whether it is not better for him now, than for us."

Then they rode on after the troop.