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At each of the adjacent holes stood a little group with a lantern on the ground shining up the hole, and with one man kneeling and aiming at the round void before him, waiting for anything that might emerge. There was an interminable suspense. Then they heard Cossar's first shot, like an explosion in a mine....
It flowed in on him, irresistibly, overwhelmingly, that outside there, outside this accursed silence and mystery, his son and Cossar's sons, and all these glorious first-fruits of a greater age were even now fighting. Fighting for life! Even now his son might be in some dismal quandary, cornered, wounded, overcome.... He swung away from the pictures and went up and down the room gesticulating.
All these things he had sent on in a coal trolley and a hay waggon in the most business-like way, except the guns and ammunition, which were stuck under the seat of the Red Lion waggonette appointed to bring on Redwood and the five picked men who had come up from Ealing at Cossar's summons.
The tide of this thing has caught us unawares, and whether we're frightened or whether we're not we've got to swim!" "I suppose we have," said Bensington, staring at his toes. "Yes. We've got to swim. And your boy will have to swim, and Cossar's boys he's given it to all three of them. Nothing partial about Cossar all or nothing! And Her Serene Highness. And everything.
After him, and ploughing deep furrows, Cossar's boots thrust out, and then came his lantern-illuminated back.... Only one rat was left alive now, and this poor, doomed wretch cowered in the inmost recesses until Cossar and the lantern went in again and slew it, and finally Cossar, that human ferret, went through all the runs to make sure.
Bang and a diminuendo of echoes. Stillness. Then, thank goodness! Redwood and Cossar were coming out of the inaudible darknesses, and Redwood was calling "Bensington!" "Bensington! We've bagged another of the rats!" "Cossar's bagged another of the rats!" When the Expedition had finished refreshment, the night had fully come.
We've got to get out of this. They're setting the place on fire. The porters are all clearing out. The servants are gone. It's lucky I caught the man who knew. "Look here!" Bensington, peering from under the bed, became aware of some unaccountable garments on Cossar's arm, and, of all things, a black bonnet in his hand!
Apparently he had no time to aim, or to think of aiming; he ducked a leaping rat, Bensington saw, and then smashed at the back of its head with the butt of his gun. The monster gave one leap and fell over itself. Cossar's form went right down out of sight among the reedy grass, and then he rose again, running towards another of the rats and whirling his gun overhead.
A great rug indeed it was a Turkey carpet four hundred square feet of it, upon which young Redwood was soon to crawl stretched to the grill-guarded electric radiator that was to warm the whole place. A man from Cossar's hung amidst scaffolding overhead, fixing the great frame that was to hold the transitory pictures.
As the assistant stooped to enter, Bensington saw that the end of a ball of twine had been tied to the tail of his coat. By this he was to draw in the rope if it should be needed to drag out the bodies of the rats. Bensington perceived that the object he held in his hand was Cossar's silk hat. How had it got there? It would be something to remember him by, anyhow.
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