Part 38 (1/2)

After that Guy himself fell asleep--a deep, heavy slumber that caused his friends some uneasiness as they listened to his labored breathing and saw the red flush that mounted over his pallid face.

Later on he struggled back to a wretched consciousness of his misery. He made an effort to rise, but such keen pains darted through his body that his head dropped back on the rug. The least movement was an agony, and his head was aching with a fierce intensity that he had never known before.

”I _will_ rise,” he muttered between his clinched teeth, and summoning all the power of his iron will he sat up.

The remaining half of the canoe was just behind him, and dragging his body a foot or more over the raft he fell back against it with a groan of agony.

The glowing embers of the fire shed a dim light over the scene. On his right lay Sir Arthur, white and motionless. On the left was Bildad, his arms and legs drawn up about his body in the throes of suffering. Near the front of the raft lay the colonel, face downward on the logs, and close by was the Greek, his white features turned toward the firelight.

One alone showed any signs of life. Melton was leaning over the edge apparently drinking, and presently he raised his head and crawled feebly toward the fire.

”How long have I slept?” asked Guy in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

Melton turned in astonishment as though frightened by the sound of a human voice.

”I don't know,” he said, speaking with a great effort. ”Hours, Chutney, hours. A day and a night must have pa.s.sed since I cracked that fellow there on the head. I hoped you would never wake. This is like dying a thousand times over. It won't last long now. A few hours at the most--and then--”

”But tell me,” interrupted Guy, ”the rest, are they--are they----”

”Dead?” said Melton. ”No, I think not. Very near the end, though. They can't move. They can't even reach the edge of the raft to drink. Water has kept me up a little.”

Crawling inch by inch, he drew himself beside Guy and propped his back against the canoe. They sat side by side, too exhausted to speak, mercifully indifferent to their fate.

It is doubtful if they realized their position. The last stages of starvation had blunted their sensibilities, thrown a veil over their reasoning faculties.

Presently Guy observed that the raft had entered upon a most turbulent stretch of water. At frequent intervals he heard dimly the hoa.r.s.e roar of rapids and felt the logs quiver and tremble as they struck the rocks.

The sh.o.r.es appeared almost close enough to touch as they whirled past with a speed that made him close his eyes with dizziness, and the jagged roof seemed about to fall and crush him.

He saw these things as a man sees in a dream. He could no longer reason over them or draw conclusions from the facts. The increasing roar of the water, the c.u.mulative force of the current, told him dimly that a crisis was approaching.

So they drifted on, lost to all pa.s.sage of time. Presently the last embers of the fire expired with a hiss as a dash of spray was flung on them, and all was dark.

Guy whispered Melton's name, but a feeble groan was the only response.

He reached out a trembling arm and found that his friend had slipped down from the canoe and was lying prostrate on the rugs. He alone retained consciousness, such as it was.

Bildad was jabbering in delirium, and Guy could catch broken sentences muttered at intervals by Carrington or the Greek.

He felt that his own reason was fast going, and he conceived a sudden horror of dying in darkness.

A torch was lying under his hand and he had matches.

The effort of striking the light was a prodigious one, but at last he succeeded and the torch flared up brightly over the raft and its occupants.

The sudden transition from darkness to light had a startling effect on the very man whom Guy supposed to be past all feeling. Sir Arthur suddenly sat straight up, his white face lit with a ghastly light.

”Ha, ha!” he shouted, waving his shrunken hands. ”The light, the light!

We are saved! Do you see it, Carrington; do you see it?”

Then the wild gleam faded from his eyes, and in a quavering voice--a mere ghost of his old pompous manner--he exclaimed: