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Then Peter said, "Well, anyhow, at least he didn't die!" The stranger crossed his hands upon his knees. "Peter Simon Halket," he said, "it is easier for a man to die than to stand alone. He who can stand alone can, also, when the need be, die." Peter looked up wistfully into the stranger's face. "I should not like to die myself," he said, "not yet. I shall not be twenty-one till next birthday.
After a while Peter Halket took out from his belt a small hunting knife with a rough wooden handle. A small flat stone lay near him, and he passed the blade slowly up and down on it, now and then taking it up, and feeling the edge with his finger. After a while he put it back in his belt, and rose slowly, taking up his small bundle and walked away to the tent.
On the way back, a hut with a chimney was built for him at each stopping-place, and on the twenty-eighth of December Major Halket writes from "Tomahawk Camp:" "How great was our disappointment, on coming to this ground last night, to find that the chimney was unlaid, no fire made, nor any wood cut that would burn.
But in addition to the above source of reconciliation, Halket became day by day more captivated by the beauty of the country, with its undulating surface, its wooded clumps, its magnolias, tulip-trees, camellias, laurels, passion-flowers, and palms, its bright-coloured birds, and all the rest of the beauties for which it is famous all over the world.
The riem was so tight round his neck he couldn't drink but slowly, and there was Halket holding it up to him! If the Captain had looked out! W-h-e-w! I wouldn't have been Halket!" "Do you think he will try to make Halket do it?" asked the Englishman. "Of course he will. He's the Devil in; and Halket had better not make a fuss about it, or it'll be the worse for him."
Stephen roped his companions to himself, and scaled the rocks in the dark, as Lovel, in the 'Antiquary, leads the Wardours and Edie Ochiltree up the crags of the Halket Head. Next day, the outcasts were hospitably received by Mr. Milner, Collector of Customs at Poole. Stephen had to remain for some time on the spot to look after the salvage of the cargo.
Thus was he dedicated to his art, and at the same time separated to a certain degree from his Quaker brethren. Not long after this he violated every principle of the Quaker dispensation by volunteering under Major Sir Peter Halket to go in search of the remains of Braddock's army.
"Peter Simon Halket," he said, "is it the trumpet which gives forth the call to battle, whether it be battered tin or gilded silver, which boots? Is it not the call? What and if I should send my message by a woman or a child: shall truth be less truth because the bearer is despised? Is it the mouth that speaks or the word that is spoken which is eternal?
He had left England to escape phthisis; and he had gone to Mashonaland because it was a place where he could earn an open-air living, and save his parents from the burden of his support. "What's Halket doing over there?" he asked suddenly, raising his head. "Weren't you here this morning?" asked the Colonial. "Didn't you know they'd had a devil of a row?"
After a while he threw two more large logs on the fire, and took the flask out of his pocket. He examined it carefully by the firelight to see how much it held: then he took a small draught, and examined it again to see how much it had fallen; and put it back in his breast pocket. Then Trooper Peter Halket fell to thinking. It was not often that he thought.
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