Page:The Prisoner of Zenda.djvu/293

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE PRISONER AND THE KING.
271

by him. And Fritz cried: "He's dead!" and Sapt drove all out of the room except Fritz, and knelt down by the king; and, having learned more of wounds and the signs of death than I, he soon knew that the king was not dead, nor, if properly attended, would die. And they covered his face and carried him to Duke Michael's room, and laid him there; and Antoinette rose from praying by the body of the duke and went to bathe the king's head and dress his wounds, till a doctor came. And Sapt, seeing I had been there, and having heard Antoinette's story, sent Fritz to search the moat and then the forest. He dared send no one else. And Fritz found my horse, and feared the worst. Then, as I have told, he found me, guided by the shout with which I had called on Rupert to stop and face me. And I think a man has never been more glad to find his own brother alive than was Fritz to come on me; so that, in love and anxiety for me, he thought nothing of a thing so great as would have been the death of Rupert Hentzau, yet, had Fritz killed him, I should have grudged it.

The enterprise of the king's rescue being thus