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"You and 'the Pirate' have become quite thick together, Stanninghame," said Rainsford one day, meeting him alone. "Well, why not?" answered Laurence, rather shortly, resenting the inquisitional nature of the question. Then point blank, "See here, Rainsford. Why are you all so down on the man? What has he done, anyway?"
Fare thee well, Umtagati," jeered the chief's daughter shrilly. Was he awake asleep and dreaming or dead? All these questions did Laurence Stanninghame ask himself by turn as he recovered his confused and scattered senses; and there was abundant scope for such conjecture for, in truth, the place wherein he found himself was a strange one.
Yet she was something more than a child now, quite a tall slip of a girl at the angular age; but there was nothing awkward or angular even then about Fay Stanninghame. "Well, hitch up the pony to the rail there," he went on. "Those two scamps can take him in when they are tired of careering around and whooping like Sioux on the war-path."
Laurence Stanninghame, however, who knew the ways of similar countries, albeit a new arrival in this, inquired for that functionary's favourite bar. The reply was prompt and accurate withal. In a few minutes, seated on stools facing each other, he and the object of his search were transacting business. The latter did not seem entirely satisfactory.
You can render service in kind darned much so. I don't want you to pay any shot towards the outfit. See here, Stanninghame, if you go up country with me now, you'll come back a fairly rich man, or " "Or what?" "You'll never come back at all." In spite of his normal imperturbability, Laurence was conscious of a quickening of the pulses.
Two spears whizzed past him with a vicious, angry hiss, one burying itself deep in the stem of the tree-fern just behind him, the other flying into empty space, but grazing his ear by very few inches indeed. Then, in the wild, barking, hoarse-throated yell, blood-curdling in its note of hate and fury, Laurence Stanninghame realized that he was in a tight place a very tight place.
"You're not the only one, Stanninghame no, not by a long, long chalk," said Rainsford ruefully, as they were talking matters over one day.
And then, indeed, was amazement wild, incredulous, bewildering amazement his dominant feeling, for by the light thus obtained he saw that the hut was tenanted by two persons. No feminine voice, however, was raised to bid him welcome in the soft tongue of the Ba-gcatya, but a loud, full-flavoured, masculine English one: "Stanninghame by the great Lord Harry!
At any rate, it was a marked contrast to the rather lined and prematurely careworn countenance of Laurence Stanninghame, even as his frank, jolly laugh was to the half-stifled grin which would lurk around the satirical corners of the latter's mouth when anything amused him.
Now, what moved him to an act of heroic self-sacrifice, Laurence Stanninghame hardly knew himself. It may have been that he did not appreciate its magnitude. It may have been that he held more than a lingering belief that the king would find some secret means for his deliverance, whereas to his younger comrade no such way of escape lay open.
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