THE END OF THE CAVERN.
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 hoarse 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 passed 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 hoarse roar
of rapids and felt the logs quiver and tremble as they struck the rocks.
The shores 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 cumulative force of the current, told him dimly that a crisis
was approaching.
So they drifted on, lost to all passage 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 passed 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
association or stern reminiscence of peril.
So the hours passed 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 shores, 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 eggshell, creaking, groaning,
and straining at its bonds, like a fettered giant; but the wretched
castaways, sprawled in careless attitude 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 passed 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 shores 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 God! Melton! Canaris! Do
you hear? The blessed sunlight is shining around us. Why don't you
answer? Why don't you shout for joy?"
But no response came, and the five ghastly figures on the raft remained
as stiff and motionless as before.
A swift change passed over Guy's face.
"Merciful heavens!" he cried. "Can it be? All dead!"
He gasped for breath, beating the air with stiffened fingers, and then
dropped like a log.
* * * * *
The warm sunlight still played on the raft, and the yellow tide of the
river lapped the roughened logs with a soft and musical murmur.