'I don't remember,' said Kit wearily. 'A long time, I think. The big birds came and frightened us. Grace had some candles and she lighted them. I tried to keep awake; but I couldn't. She kept awake always.'
'She is making up for it now,' said Tom from the other side of the litter.
'Yes, she is sleeping beautifully,' said Kit. 'She'll be all right when she awakes, won't she?'
'All right? What do you mean, Kit?'
'She used to look so funny—just as if she were somewhere else. She didn't look so at first, when that dreadful man was with us—but'—pulling himself up, 'I mustn't say anything about that. I promised.'
'No,' said Tom. 'Grace will tell us everything herself when she awakes.'
What the sleep was to her—how delicious it had been to close her eyes, and to let herself drift away on the sea of unconsciousness that, for these many days, had been wooing her; to half open her eyelids just to be sure that she had not dreamed this strange and sudden bliss, and then to close them again; to hear, without understanding, Kit's bird-like voice throbbing through the air, and Tom's grave, kind answers; to know that there was no need for her to rouse herself, that she might sleep—sleep till the death-like languor had gone from her limbs and the pain about her heart was stilled—of the rapture of all this what tongue can tell? Only those who have passed suddenly, as I did once, from peril and anguish, and the mad terror of the hunted, to perfect rest and security, can have the faintest idea of what it means.
It was impossible, meanwhile, that their progress could be swift, for they could not tear straight through the jungle as they had done the night before; and Bâl Narîn had to make many a detour to avoid the wild beasts' haunts.
When the sun rose, he rigged up a leafy umbrella, which he fixed at the head of the litter, and under it Grace lay like a sylvan queen being borne in a trance to her woodland home. At last, after three hours' steady tramp, they came out into the robbers' road, and sighted their waggons and horses in the distance.
There had been much excitement in the camp. When they arose in the morning, and Abiman, one of the Ghoorka soldiers, reported that the rajah had left them shortly after moon-rise in search of Bâl Narîn, and that neither of them had returned, it was felt that some calamity must have happened.