Fiction > Book editions > London, 1889 - Master of Ballantrae

308 THE MASTKR OF BALLANTUAE.
heart; and it appears this gang of murderers, so
far from resenting his outcries, although both dis-
tressful and (in such a country) perilous to their
own safety, roughly but kindly endeavoured to console
him.
But if human nature is even in the worst of men
occasionally kind, it is still, and before all things,
greedy ; and they soon turned from the mourner to
their own concerns. The cache of the treasure being
hard by, although yet unidentified, it was concluded
not to break camp; and the day passed, on the part of
the voyagers, in unavailing exploration of the woods,
Secundra the while lying on his master^s grave. That
night they placed no sentinel, but lay altogether about
the fire, in the customary woodman fashion, the heads
outward, like the spokes of a wheel. Morning found
them in the same disposition ; only Pinkerton, who lay
on Mountain's right, between him and Hastie, had (in
the hours of darkness) been secretly butchered, and
there lay, still wrapped as to his body in his mantle, but
offering above that ungodly and horrific spectacle of the
scalped head. The gang were that morning as pale as a
company of phantoms, for the pertinacity of Indian war
(or to speak more correctly, Indian murder) was well
known to all. But they laid the chief blame on their
unsentinelled posture; and fired with the neighbourhood
of the treasure, determined to continue where they were.
I'inkerton was buried hard by the Master ; the survivors