CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE END OF THE CAVERN.
After that Guy himself fell asleep--a deep, heavy slumber that causedhis friends some uneasiness as they listened to his labored breathingand saw the red flush that mounted over his pallid face.
Later on he struggled back to a wretched consciousness of his misery. Hemade an effort to rise, but such keen pains darted through his body thathis head dropped back on the rug. The least movement was an agony, andhis head was aching with a fierce intensity that he had never knownbefore.
"I _will_ rise," he muttered between his clinched teeth, and summoningall the power of his iron will he sat up.
The remaining half of the canoe was just behind him, and dragging hisbody a foot or more over the raft he fell back against it with a groanof agony.
The glowing embers of the fire shed a dim light over the scene. On hisright lay Sir Arthur, white and motionless. On the left was Bildad, hisarms and legs drawn up about his body in the throes of suffering. Nearthe front of the raft lay the colonel, face downward on the logs, andclose by was the Greek, his white features turned toward the firelight.
One alone showed any signs of life. Melton was leaning over the edgeapparently drinking, and presently he raised his head and crawled feeblytoward the fire.
"How long have I slept?" asked Guy in a hoarse whisper.
Melton turned in astonishment as though frightened by the sound of ahuman 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 fellowthere on the head. I hoped you would never wake. This is like dying athousand times over. It won't last long now. A few hours at themost--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. Theycan't move. They can't even reach the edge of the raft to drink. Waterhas kept me up a little."
Crawling inch by inch, he drew himself beside Guy and propped his backagainst 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 ofstarvation had blunted their sensibilities, thrown a veil over theirreasoning faculties.
Presently Guy observed that the raft had entered upon a most turbulentstretch of water. At frequent intervals he heard dimly the hoarse roarof rapids and felt the logs quiver and tremble as they struck the rocks.The shores appeared almost close enough to touch as they whirled pastwith a speed that made him close his eyes with dizziness, and the jaggedroof seemed about to fall and crush him.
He saw these things as a man sees in a dream. He could no longer reasonover them or draw conclusions from the facts. The increasing roar of thewater, the cumulative force of the current, told him dimly that a crisiswas approaching.
So they drifted on, lost to all passage of time. Presently the lastembers of the fire expired with a hiss as a dash of spray was flung onthem, 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 slippeddown from the canoe and was lying prostrate on the rugs. He aloneretained consciousness, such as it was.
Bildad was jabbering in delirium, and Guy could catch broken sentencesmuttered at intervals by Carrington or the Greek.
He felt that his own reason was fast going, and he conceived a suddenhorror 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 hesucceeded and the torch flared up brightly over the raft and itsoccupants.
The sudden transition from darkness to light had a startling effect onthe very man whom Guy supposed to be past all feeling. Sir Arthursuddenly 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--amere 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 nearcut."
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 unfinishedsentence, and without another word he dropped back on the logsand lay there perfectly motionless.
This was the last thing that Guy remembered.
The torch still burned beside him, and the raft plunged on its dizzycourse, but his mind was wandering far away, and the past was beinglived over again.
He was riding through London streets, dining with his old friends at theclub, pulling a skiff over the placid current of the Thames, shootingquail 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--thusthe merciful past stole his mind away from the horrors of the present,and he alternately smiled or shuddered as he recalled some pleasantassociation or stern reminiscence of peril.
So the hours passed on. The torch faded and dimmed, burned to a charredember, and then went out.
The water hissed and boiled, crashing on rocks and shoals, beating itsfury against the barren shores, and rushing down the narrow channel atan angle that was frightful and appalling.
Guided by an unseen power, the frail raft rose and fell with thecurrent, whirling round and round like an eggshell, creaking, groaning,and straining at its bonds, like a fettered giant; but the wretchedcastaways, sprawled in careless attitude across the logs, heard nothing,knew nothing--simply lay with their pallid faces turned toward theblackness 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 havegone mad with joy.
The roar of the water had now become softened and less violent. Therocks had disappeared, the river slipped like an avalanche through thefast narrowing channel, and at such a prodigious speed that a cold blastof air whistled about the raft.
Chutney, still propped against the canoe, caught its full effect on hisface. It stirred up the flickering spark of life within him and heopened his eyes; he thought he saw a faint gleam of daylight.
Like the fabled giant that sprang from an uncorked phial, the graystreak expanded with marvelous celerity, growing longer and wider andbrighter until it shone like burnished silver on the hurrying tide ofthe 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 silverysheet, and then, swift as the lightning flash, a flood of brightnesssprang up and around it.
He closed his eyes, but the fierce glare seemed to be burning into hisvery brain. He could not shut it out, though he thrust a trembling armacross his closed eyes.
The next instant something rough and pliable struck his face withstinging force, and he felt the warm blood trickle down his cheeks.Instantly there came a second shock. The canoe was whirled forcibly fromunder him, and a heavy blow from some unseen object struck him withstunning violence to the hard logs.
An icy wave dashed over the raft, and then another and another. Smartingwith pain, the blood dripping from his lacerated face and hands, hestaggered to his knees.
He opened his eyes. At first he could see nothing for the dazzling lightthat was all around him. Then the blindness passed suddenly away, and hesaw clearly.
The glorious, entrancing light of day was shining on the raft, on thesparkling water, on his motionless companions--everywhere.
The raft was dancing on the bosom of a vast and mighty stream thatro
lled in the blessed sunlight between shores of sparkling green. He sawsloping hillsides and mangrove jungles, wind-tossed patches of reeds andwaving palm trees, mountains shooting their rugged peaks heavenward, andbillows of forest land rolling off into the distant horizon, whileoverhead was the deep blue vault of the sky, that perfect sky that hadhaunted his memory in many a dream--the sky that he had never hoped tosee again. The air was redolent with perfume and melodious with thesweet notes of countless birds.
Flushed and trembling, Guy staggered, with new-found strength, to hisfeet.
"Saved! Saved! Saved!" he cried aloud. "Thank God! Melton! Canaris! Doyou hear? The blessed sunlight is shining around us. Why don't youanswer? Why don't you shout for joy?"
But no response came, and the five ghastly figures on the raft remainedas 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 thendropped like a log.
* * * * *
The warm sunlight still played on the raft, and the yellow tide of theriver lapped the roughened logs with a soft and musical murmur.