“Don’t be a fool,” said Mansel, looking along his barrel into Ellis’ eyes. And then: “Put up your hands.”
I thought the fellow would have fallen down in a fit, for all the blood in his body seemed to go into his face, which grew more black then red, and he put a hand to his throat as though he were choking.
Rose Noble lay as he had fallen, flat on his back.
“Put up your hands,” said Mansel.
Ellis did so.
“You in the cap,” said Mansel, addressing the man who had driven, “take your seat in the car and turn her round.”
When this was done, he bade them take up Rose Noble and put him into the car. They did so. Then he called the bearers to stand by Ellis’ side.
“You three will follow the car, with your hands above your heads. Drive on.”
The car moved off, but for a moment it looked as though the three pedestrians would rebel. However, I suppose they thought better of it, for, after looking at one another, like sulky dogs, with one accord they turned, and, using what dignity they could, walked out of the courtyard and down the road. Carson and Rowley followed as far as the bend; and that was the finish of a passage which was to spoil forever my enjoyment of “strong” playacting, be it never so excellently done: for this was the real thing, and to this day the bare remembrance of the affair will quicken the beating of my heart and set my nerves tingling.
Here let me say that Mansel was a good deal troubled about Rose Noble, fearing that the blow he had dealt him might prove fatal, for, as I afterwards learned, he had been a famous boxer, but had long abandoned the sport for fear of killing his man.
However, as I shall show, he need have felt no concern.
Before we returned to the well, the six of us sought for points at which a man could play sentry with some success. This was by no means easy because of the woods, but, after a while, we found a ruined shrine on the top of a hill, which commanded the road for some way beyond the bend, and all that side of the estate. The shrine was about six hundred yards from the house, but there was no point nearer one half so valuable. With a sentinel there, we should be safe upon three sides, for to our north lay the river, and from the shrine you could watch the east and south: but the west was the devil. Search as we would, we could find no point at all whence the eye could observe so much as a third of the ground, and I think it would have taken four sentries to make that side secure. We had, therefore, perforce to be content with the hilltop beyond the great well. We did no more than settle these points that afternoon, nor did we visit them again the next day, but thereafter, from dawn to sunset, they were to be regularly occupied. This, to our great inconvenience: but it could not be helped.
We had scarce got back to the well and found that the water had risen eighteen inches in the last three hours, when the landlord of the inn arrived.
He was full of the strangers, who had stopped to ask their way at the inn and had lately returned in such disorder of mind, and was plainly agog to know their business and what was afoot.
We told him that of them we knew nothing till ten days ago, when they had stopped us in a forest with plain intent to rob. We told how we had bayed them, and how I had crippled their car, and supposed that it was sheer rage and a desire to revenge that injury which had induced the villains to dog us to Wagensburg. But, Mansel added, he imagined we had settled their hash, and, unless they were passing venomous, we should not be troubled again.
“All the same,” said he, “they are armed, and I’m taking no chances at all. So, when you come up to see us, come by day, for by night all men look alike, and we don’t want to hurt our friends.”
The landlord seemed perturbed at our tale, because, while Ellis and the driver had presently left in the car, the other malefactors were proposing to stay at his inn. Rose Noble, who was still unconscious, had been carried upstairs to bed, and, though no German had been spoken, the others had made him know that they must have lodging and food. They had not asked for a doctor, and seemed untroubled by the condition of their friend: except for one battered suitcase, they had no luggage: their manner was overbearing and such as might be expected of lawless men.
We purposely offered him cold comfort, and, such was his agitation to think that he had been saddled with such undesirable guests, that the poor man displayed little interest in what he had come to see, and, merely inquiring what headway we were making against the springs, abstractedly accepted an order for supplies and set off on his way back to Lerai, like a man in an ugly dream.
By sundown we had taken another seventeen feet of water out of the well.
We were so much exhausted with our labour that not one of us was fit to descend, but we were all highly pleased to think that our net gain that day had been twenty-three feet and a half, and that now but thirty-nine feet
