This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune; but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other object than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just Providence had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man who would have all and risk nothing.
Should Jem Agar succeed in the dangerous secret mission on which he had been sent by a subtle underhand pressure of discipline, the glory would never be his. This, under the grasping fingers of General Michael, would never appear to the world as the wonderful individual feat of an intrepid man, but as a masterly stroke of strategy dealt by a great general.
Seymour Michael had long ago found out that Jem Agar was the step-son of the woman whom he had wronged in bygone years. But the name failed to touch his conscience, partly because that conscience was not of much account, and partly because time heals all things, even a sore sense of wrong. Truth to tell, he had not thought much of Anna Agar during the last twenty years, and the mere coincidence that this simple tool should be her step-son was insufficient to deter him from making use of Agar. But with that careful attention to detail which in such a man betrayed innate weakness, he took care to make sure that Jem Agar had learnt nothing of the past from the lips of his father's second wife.
General Michael did not disguise from himself the fact that the mission on which he had despatched Jem Agar was what the life insurance companies call hazardous. But he had lived by the sword, and that mode of gaining a livelihood makes men wondrously indifferent to the lives of others. Moreover, this was in a sense a speciality of his. He was getting hardened to the game, and played it with coolness and precision.
All through that day the little band retreated through an enemy's country, watchful, alert, almost nervous. There were absurdly few of them--a characteristic of that frontier warfare which the sallow, silent leader had waged nearly all his life. And in the evening there was not peace.
Fortune is a playful soul. She keeps men waiting a lifetime, and then, when it is too late, she suddenly opens both her hands. Seymour Michael had waited twenty years for one of those chances of easy distinction which seemed to fall to the lot of all his comrades in arms. This chance was vouchsafed to him on the last evening he ever passed in an enemy's country--when it was too late--when that which he did was no more than was to be expected from a man of his experience and fame.