Philip Lombard grinned. “Story’s quite true! I left ’em! Matter of self-preservation. We were lost in the bush. I and a couple of other fellows took what food there was and cleared out.” General Macarthur said sternly: “You abandoned your men—left them to starve?” Lombard said: “Not quite the act of a pukka sahib, I’m afraid. But self-preservation’s a man’s first duty. And natives don’t mind dying, you know. They don’t feel about it as Europeans do.” Vera lifted her face from her hands. She said, staring at him: “You left them—to die?” Lombard answered: “I left them to die.”
Lombard- admited much more guilt than anyone else so far
