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It was Shubert's Fantasia Impromptu this time, and there was absolute silence as it ended. The little shabby countess gave them a moment for recovery, and then, whirling about on the stool, she said, with only a trace of accent: "That is my farewell. Tomorrow I leave for the home-land." There was a chorus of questions at this and that ended the music.
For eleven days in August every soul of the company, including Mrs Shubert's babies, travelled wet to the skin. At night great log fires were kindled and the Overlanders sat round trying to dry themselves out. Then the trail lifted to the foothills. And on the evening of the 15th of August there pierced through the clouds the snowy, shining, serrated peaks of the Rockies.
The next morning, all being quiet, the Buchanan boat was launched. A couple of fairish paddles were chipped out of bits of driftwood, and a towline a hundred feet long was made of lariats. Thurstane further provisioned the cockle-shell with fishing tackle, a sounding line, his own rifle, Shubert's musket and accoutrements, a bag of hard bread, and a few pounds of jerked beef.
One driver had been lanced mortally. One muleteer had been shot through the heart with an arrow. Another arrow had scraped Shubert's ankle. Another, directed by the whimsical genius of accident, had gone clean through the drooping cartilage of Phineas Glover's long nose, as if to prepare him for the sporting of jewelled decorations. Two mules were dead, and several wounded.
The Baron had fallen fast asleep in his chair; but Flemming sat listening with excited imagination, and the Professor continued in the following words, which, to the best of his listener's memory, seemed gleaned here and there from Fichte's Destiny of Man, and Shubert's History of the Soul. "Life is one, and universal; its forms many and individual.
I haf sent Kelly along to look after them a leetle und make them keep a goot watch. We are shust as safe as bossible. Und to-morrow we will basture the animals. It is a goot blace for a gamp, Leftenant, und we shall pe all right in a tay or two." "Does Shubert's leg need attention?" "No. It is shust nothing. Shupert is for tuty." "And you feel perfectly able to take care of yourselves here?"
At a sign from Thurstane another muleteer bound up the wound with the sleeve of Shubert's shirt, which he slashed off for the purpose. Kelly said, "Never mind me, sir; it's no great affair, sir." "Two killed and two wounded," thought the lieutenant. "We are losing more than our proportion."
"I can, Liftinant." "You may try it." "Can I take me gun, Liftinant?" demanded Sweeny, who was extravagantly fond and proud of his piece, all the more perhaps because he held it in awe. "Yes, you can take it, and Glover can have Shubert's. Though, 'pon my honor, I don't know why we should carry firearms. It's old habit, I suppose. It's a way we have in the army."
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