"We are a mere handful. We have dwindled
to four white men among a host of dark. Relief is not even within a
remote distance of us, and we are already bordering upon starvation.
We may hold out for three days more. And then"--his breath came
suddenly short, but he forced himself to continue--"I have to think of
my child. She will be in your hands. I know you will all defend her to
the last ounce of your strength; but which of you"--a terrible gasping
checked his utterance for many labouring seconds; he put his hand over
his eyes--"which of you," he whispered at last, his words barely
audible, "will have the strength to--shoot her before your own last
moment comes?"
The question quivered through the quiet room as if wrung from the
twitching lips by sheer torture. It went out in silence--a dreadful,
lasting silence in which the souls of men, stripped naked of human
convention, stood confronting the first primaeval instinct of human
chivalry.
It continued through many terrible seconds--that silence, and through
it no one moved, no one seemed to breathe. It was as if a spell
had been cast upon the handful of Englishmen gathered there in the
deepening darkness.
The Brigadier sat bowed and motionless at the table, his head sunk in
his hands.
Suddenly there was a quiet movement behind him, and the spell was
broken.
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