So he dozed--and so he waked, with a start. The start was possibly due to a consciousness even in his sleep that there were people in the road. He was frightened before he could put his eye again to the peephole. Luckily the pistol was at hand, and _the other thing_ might now have to be done.
As a matter of fact it seemed likely. Two burly figures had already left the highway, Flynn tramping along the flicker of path, and Jackman picking his steps through the oozy mud a little to Flynn's right and a little behind him. There was no secrecy about their approach, and apparently no fear.
"They don't suspect that I've got a gun," Teddy commented to himself. "Lobley can't have told them."
They were talking to each other, and, though Teddy could not make out their words, he heard Flynn's gurgle of a laugh. To his fevered imagination, it was a diabolic laugh, suggestive of handcuffs and torture.
The thought of handcuffs frenzied him. Of the sacrilegious touch on his person, the links set the final mark. Rather than submit to them he would shoot anyone, preferably himself. For shooting himself the minute had come, and he decided to do it through the temple. The aim through the heart might miscarry; there was no chance of miscarriage through the brain. All that remained for him now was to know the moment when.
"Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes."
Some trick of memory brought the tag back to him. He knew that it applied to the shooting of an enemy, but in this case it suited himself. He couldn't see the whites of their eyes as yet, for through the grasses and over the slimy ground they advanced but slowly. That gave him the longer to live. He might live for three minutes, possibly for five. Even a minute was something.
But he was ready. He couldn't say that he had no fear, because he was all fear; but for the very reason that he was all fear, he was frozen, numb. Only, the hand that held the pistol shook. He couldn't control it. All the more, then, must he do it through the brain, since he found by experiment that he could steady the muzzle against his temple. He didn't dare so to hold it long, lest that impulse of acting before he thought might deprive him of these last precious seconds of life. So he let the thing rest on the peephole, pointing outward, like a gun on board ship. He found, too, that this steadied his eye. He could squint along the barrel right at the two big figures lumbering through the morass.
