Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/368

 "Of course I must," she cried brightly.

"Don't you move," thundered Jack, and she relapsed into silence. She knew, when he had one of his hell-moods on him, it was best to leave him absolutely alone.

The men drank a little whiskey, then sat silent for some time. At last Jaz had the energy to say they must go to bed.

"Trot off, Jazzy," said Jack. "Go to bee-by, boys."

"That's what I'm doing," said Jaz, as he retired. He was sleeping the night at Wyewurk, his own home being across the harbour.

Somers still sat inert, with his unfinished glass of whiskey, though Jaz said to him pertinently:

"Aren't you retiring, Mr Somers?"

"Yes," he answered, but didn't move.

The two were left in silence: only the little clock ticking away. Everything quite still.

Suddenly Jack rose and looked at his face in the mirror.

"Nicked a bit out of my chin, seemingly. It was that little bomb that did that. Dirty little swine, to throw a bomb. But it hadn't much kick in it."

He turned round to Somers, and the strangest grin in the world was on his face, all the lines curved upwards.

"Tell you what, boy," he said in a hoarse whisper, "I settled three of 'em—three!" There was an indescribable gloating joy in his tones, like a man telling of the good time he has had with a strange mistress—"Gawr, but I was lucky. I got one of them iron bars from the windows, and I stirred the brains of a couple of them with it, and I broke the neck of a third. Why it was as good as a sword to defend yourself with, see—"

He reached his face towards Somers with weird, gruesome exultation, and continued in a hoarse, secret voice:

"Cripes, there's nothing bucks you up sometimes like killing a man—nothing. You feel a perfect angel after it."

Richard felt the same torn feeling in his abdomen, and his eyes watched the other man.

"When it comes over you, you know, there's nothing else like it. I never knew, till the war. And I wouldn't believe it then, not for many a while. But it's there. Cripes, it's there right enough. Having a woman's something, isn't it? But it's a flea-bite, nothing, compared to killing your man when your blood comes up."