I would wait, I said to myself, I would be artful as snakes, though so
woefully sick and invalid: I would make no sound....
After some minutes I became conscious that my eyes were leering--leering
in one fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a sense
of direction proved to me that I must, _in truth_, have heard something!
I strove--I managed--to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feebly
swaying there, not the terrors of death alone were in my breast, but the
authority of the monarch was on my brow.
I moved: I found the strength.
Slow step by slow step, with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to a
thread of moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and along
its winding way I stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my ears
caught the purling noise of a brooklet, and following the moss-path, I
was led into a mass of bush only two or three feet higher than my head.
Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, I wheedled my painful way,
emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now was faced, three yards
before me, by a wall of acacia-trees, prickly-pear and pichulas, between
which and a forest beyond I spied a gleam of running water.
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