And Fritz cried: "He's dead!" and
Sapt drove all out of the room except Fritz, and knelt down by the King;
and, having learnt more of wounds and the sign 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 prosperously concluded,
it lay on Colonel Sapt to secure secrecy as to the King ever having
been in need of rescue. Antoinette de Mauban and Johann the keeper (who,
indeed, was too much hurt to be wagging his tongue just now) were sworn
to reveal nothing; and Fritz went forth to find--not the King, but the
unnamed friend of the King, who had lain in Zenda and flashed for
a moment before the dazed eyes of Duke Michael's servants on the
drawbridge.
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