The River of Darkness Part 38

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:

"To the Guards' Club, Waterloo Place! Do it in twenty minutes, driver, and the half sovereign is yours. Go by way of Piccadilly; it's the near cut."

A moment later he added: "I'll be late. What beastly luck!"

Then a swift change pa.s.sed over his face.

"Ha! ha! There's the light again," he cried exultantly. "Look, Carrington, look----" His lips trembled over the unfinished sentence, and without another word he dropped back on the logs and lay there perfectly motionless.

This was the last thing that Guy remembered.

The torch still burned beside him, and the raft plunged on its dizzy course, but his mind was wandering far away, and the past was being lived over again.

He was riding through London streets, dining with his old friends at the club, pulling a skiff over the placid current of the Thames, shooting quail on his brother's estate, dancing at a ball at Government House, Calcutta, marching through Indian jungles at the head of his men, plotting the capture of the Rajah, Nana Sahib, in far-away Burma--thus the merciful past stole his mind away from the horrors of the present, and he alternately smiled or shuddered as he recalled some pleasant a.s.sociation or stern reminiscence of peril.

So the hours pa.s.sed on. The torch faded and dimmed, burned to a charred ember, and then went out.

The water hissed and boiled, crashing on rocks and shoals, beating its fury against the barren sh.o.r.es, and rushing down the narrow channel at an angle that was frightful and appalling.

Guided by an unseen power, the frail raft rose and fell with the current, whirling round and round like an eggsh.e.l.l, creaking, groaning, and straining at its bonds, like a fettered giant; but the wretched castaways, sprawled in careless att.i.tude across the logs, heard nothing, knew nothing--simply lay with their pallid faces turned toward the blackness and the gloom overhead.

Ah, how pitiful! If they could only have known what was close at hand, fresh life would have flowed into their wasted veins. They would have gone mad with joy.

The roar of the water had now become softened and less violent. The rocks had disappeared, the river slipped like an avalanche through the fast narrowing channel, and at such a prodigious speed that a cold blast of air whistled about the raft.

Chutney, still propped against the canoe, caught its full effect on his face. It stirred up the flickering spark of life within him and he opened his eyes; he thought he saw a faint gleam of daylight.

Like the fabled giant that sprang from an uncorked phial, the gray streak expanded with marvelous celerity, growing longer and wider and brighter until it shone like burnished silver on the hurrying tide of the river.

Guy saw it and that was all. It dazzled his eyes and he closed them.

When he looked again the raft was trembling on the edge of the silvery sheet, and then, swift as the lightning flash, a flood of brightness sprang up and around it.

He closed his eyes, but the fierce glare seemed to be burning into his very brain. He could not shut it out, though he thrust a trembling arm across his closed eyes.

The next instant something rough and pliable struck his face with stinging force, and he felt the warm blood trickle down his cheeks.

Instantly there came a second shock. The canoe was whirled forcibly from under him, and a heavy blow from some unseen object struck him with stunning violence to the hard logs.

An icy wave dashed over the raft, and then another and another. Smarting with pain, the blood dripping from his lacerated face and hands, he staggered to his knees.

He opened his eyes. At first he could see nothing for the dazzling light that was all around him. Then the blindness pa.s.sed suddenly away, and he saw clearly.

The glorious, entrancing light of day was shining on the raft, on the sparkling water, on his motionless companions--everywhere.

The raft was dancing on the bosom of a vast and mighty stream that rolled in the blessed sunlight between sh.o.r.es of sparkling green. He saw sloping hillsides and mangrove jungles, wind-tossed patches of reeds and waving palm trees, mountains shooting their rugged peaks heavenward, and billows of forest land rolling off into the distant horizon, while overhead was the deep blue vault of the sky, that perfect sky that had haunted his memory in many a dream--the sky that he had never hoped to see again. The air was redolent with perfume and melodious with the sweet notes of countless birds.

Flushed and trembling, Guy staggered, with new-found strength, to his feet.

"Saved! Saved! Saved!" he cried aloud. "Thank G.o.d! Melton! Canaris! Do you hear? The blessed sunlight is shining around us. Why don't you answer? Why don't you shout for joy?"