Only ten men of the seventeen who were left responded to the call. The others, roused from the stupor of deep sleep, merely stared up vacantly and muttered, so Roberts let them lie. "Boys," said Burrell, when they had formed a little circle round him, "'most of us need a lay-off. H'm. So we're goin' to rest up here for a couple of days and then push on slow. Mr. Roberts and a couple of you can plug ahead now, though, so's to have some grub cooked up to meet us. I reckon we'll raise a famine in Nalang. H'm. Roberts, who'll you take with you?"
Despite the lightness of the officer's tone, every man knew what he asked for, and as the subaltern's eyes swept round the circle, shrewdly weighing each man's serviceability, shoulders squared and faces took on looks of quite ferocious good cheer.
"I seen you first, sir," Terry Clancy cried all at once, and stumbled to his feet.
"I've got a fine healthy appetite, myself," Sullivan remarked plaintively. "I'm with you for a sprint, Lieutenant."
"You're too old, Clancy," said Roberts kindly. "I want yearlings for this. And you, Sullivan,"--his voice held good-natured condescension, as he glanced down at his own bulging chest and sturdy limbs,--"you're too spindly. You're liable to double up, any time."
At last he chose Red Hannigan and Peter Kelley, two men of his own kind, bull-necked, thick-limbed and heavy-shouldered. The Captain handed him one of the two tins of bacon. "We'll look for you back," he said, "long about--H'm--day after to-morrow. Or day after that. H'm."
The eyes of the officers glinted into each other. "Sure," said Roberts, gravely shaking his commander's hand. "Come along, you fellows."
Twelve days later a party from Nalang found Lieutenant Roberts, the first white man to win across Samar, sitting contentedly on the beach in the sunshine, forty miles above the town, eating snails and aimlessly tossing the shells at what had been his feet. Red Hannigan and Peter Kelley were never found, for Roberts never could remember where they left him.
After the departure of the rescue party, apathy settled over the camp in the valley. The Captain straightened his bad leg and lay back with closed eyes. The others lay about him, dozing. Even the worst of the fever-victims only cried out occasionally. Beside the relief of not having to march, cold and wet and hunger and sickness were little things.