The question struck shame to the wounded man; he checked his overflow of passionate sobbings. The other spoke again, “It was not the voice of a Greek—yet I thought I had saved that gallant boy—the ball meant for him is now in my side.—Speak again, young Englishman—on whom do you call?”
“On her who will weep my death too bitterly—on my mother,” replied Valency, and tears would follow the loved name.
“Art thou wounded to death?” asked the chief.
“Thus unaided I must die,” he replied; “yet, could I reach those waters, I might live—I must try.” And Valency rose; he staggered a few steps, and fell heavily at the feet of the chief. He had fainted. The Greek looked on the ghastly pallor of his face; he half rose—his own wound did not bleed, but it was mortal, and a deadly sickness had gathered round his heart, and chilled his brow, which he strove to master, that he might save the English boy. The effort brought cold drops on his brow, as he rose on his knees and stooped to raise the head of Valency; he shuddered to feel the warm moisture his hand encountered. It is his blood; his lifeblood he thought; and again he placed his head on the earth, and continued a moment still, summoning what vitality remained to him to animate his limbs. Then with a determined effort he rose, and staggered to the banks of the stream. He held a steel cap in his hand—and now he stooped down to fill it; but with the effort the ground slid from under him, and he fell. There was a ringing in his ears—a cold dew on his brow—his breath came thick—the cap had fallen from his hand—he was dying. The bough of a tree, shot off in the morning’s melee, lay near;—the mind, even of a dying man, can form swift, unerring combinations of thought;—it was his last chance—the bough was plunged in the waters, and he scattered the grateful, reviving drops over his face; vigour returned with the act, and he could stoop and fill the cap, and drink a deep draught, which for a moment restored the vital powers. And now he carried water to Valency; he dipped the unfolded turban of a Turk in the stream, and bound the youth’s wound, which was a deep sabre cut in the shoulder, that had bled copiously. Valency revived—life gathered warm in his heart—his cheeks, though still pale, lost the ashy hue of death—his limbs again seemed willing to obey his will—he sat up, but he was too weak, and his head dropped. As a mother tending her sick firstborn, the Greek chief hovered over him; he brought a cloak to pillow his head; as he picked up this, he found that some careful soldier had brought a small bag at his saddlebow, in which was a loaf and a bunch or two of grapes; he gave them to the youth, who ate. Valency now recognised his saviour; at first he wondered to see him there, tending on him, apparently unhurt; but soon the chief sank to the ground, and Valency could mark the rigidity of feature, and ghastliness of aspect, that portended death. In his turn he would have assisted his friend; but the chief stopped him—“You die if you move,” he said; “your wound will bleed afresh, and you will die, while you cannot aid me. My weakness does not arise from mere loss of blood. The messenger of death has reached a vital part—yet a little while and the soul will obey the summons. It is slow, slow is the deliverance; yet the long creeping hour will come at last, and I shall be free.”
“Do not speak thus,” cried Valency; “I am strong now—I will go for help.”
“There is no help for me,” replied the chief, “save the death I desire. I command you, move not.”
Valency had risen, but the effort was vain: his knees bent under him, his head spun round; before he could save himself he had sunk to the ground.
“Why torture yourself?” said the chief. “A few hours and help will come: it will not injure you to pass this interval beneath this calm sky. The cowards who fled will alarm the country; by dawn succour will be here: you must wait for it. I too must wait—not for help, but for death. It is soothing even to me to die here beneath this sky, with the murmurs of yonder stream in my ear, the shadows of my native mountains thrown athwart. Could aught save me, it would be the balmy airs of this most blessed night; my soul feels the bliss, though my body is sick and fast stiffening in death. Such was not the hour when she died whom soon I shall meet, my Euphrasia, my own sweet sister, in heaven!”
It was strange, Valency said, that at such an hour, but half saved from death, and his preserver in the grim destroyer’s clutches, that he should feel curiosity to know the Greek chief’s story. His youth, his beauty, his valour—the act, which Valency well remembered, of his springing forward so as to shield him with his own person—his last words and thoughts devoted to the soft recollection of a beloved sister—awakened an interest beyond even the present hour, fraught as it was with the chances of life and death. He questioned the chief. Probably fever had succeeded to his previous state of weakness, imparted a deceitful strength, and even inclined
