"What's he been saying?" I murmured sleepily. "He's been thinking what he'd do," laughed Jack, "if the stout female personage in yonder small canoe overbalanced and fell in. There'll be no fatal second then, Jerry, my boy. It'll be a minute even if I have to hold you. You'd never be able to look your friends in the face again if you didn't let her drown." "Ass!" grunted Jerry. "No, Winkle, I was just thinking, amongst other things, of what might very easily happen to any of us three here, and what did happen to old Grantley in South Africa." Grantley was one of our majors. "He told me all about it one day in one of his expansive moods. It was during a bit of a scrap just before Paardeburg, and he had some crowd of irregular Johnnies. He was told off to take a position, and apparently it was a fairly warm proposition. However, it was perfectly feasible if only the men stuck it. Well, they didn't, but they would have except for his momentary indecision. He told me that there came a moment in the advance when one man wavered. He knew it and felt it all through him. He saw the man--he almost saw the deadly contagion spreading from that one man to the others--and he hesitated and was lost. When he sprang forward and tried to hold 'em, he failed. The fear was on them, and they broke. He told me he regarded himself as every bit as much to blame as the man who first gave out." "But what could he have done, Jerry?" asked Pat. "Shot him, dear--shot him on the spot without a second's thought--killed the origin of the fear before it had time to spread. I venture to say that there are not many fellows in the Service who would do it--without thinking: and you can't think--you dare not, even if there was time. It goes against the grain, especially if you know the man well, and it's only by continually rehearsing the scene in your mind that you'd be able to do it." We were all listening to him now, for this was a new development I'd never heard before. "Just imagine the far-reaching results one coward--no, not coward, possibly--but one man who has reached the breaking-point, may have. Think of it, Winkle. A long line stretched out, attacking. One man in the centre wavers, stops. Spreading outwards, the thing rushes like lightning, because, after all, fear is only an emotion, like joy and sorrow, and one knows how quickly they will communicate themselves to other people. Also, in such a moment as an attack, men are particularly susceptible to emotions. All that is primitive is uppermost, and their reasoning powers are more or less in abeyance." "But the awful thing, Jerry," said Pat quietly, "is that you would never know whether it had been necessary or not. It might not have spread; he might have answered to your voice--oh! a thousand things might have happened."