Even at that moment
of terror I felt a pang, when, without a word, he sprang overboard.
I thought of it many times that long night, in spite of my grief
for my uncle and the others, and my horror of being a prisoner in
the hands of the Sepoys. I did not blame him, because I knew how
he must have felt, and that it was done in a moment of panic. I was
not so sorry for myself as for him, for I knew that if he escaped,
the thought of that moment would be terrible for him. I need not
say that in my mind the feeling that he should not have left me so
has been wiped out a thousand times by what he did afterwards, by
the risk he ran for me, and the infinite service he rendered me by
saving me from a fate worse than death. But I can enter into his
feelings. Most men would have jumped over just as he did, and would
never have blamed themselves even if they had at once started away
down the country to save their own lives, much less if they had
stopped to save mine as he has done.
"But who can wonder that he is more sensitive than others? Did he
not hear from you that I said that a coward was contemptible? Did
not all the men except you and my uncle turn their backs upon him
and treat him with contempt, in spite of his effort to meet his
death by standing up on the roof? Think how awfully he must have
suffered, and then, when it seemed that his intervention, which
saved our lives, had to some extent won him back the esteem of the
men around him, that he should so fail again, as he considers, and
that with me beside him.
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