"AND BOUND I WAS, THEN AND THERE, TO A STOUT PALM TREE, A LITTLE DISTANCE FROM THE MARGIN OF THE FOREST."
In such a manner was I doomed. For an hour or so I watched those three dread men, all so different, alike in nothing but their devilry, sitting together around the fire, talking in low voices, even pleasantly, as if to do murder were an every-day affair.
Then they lay down to sleep, and both Trust and Amos were soon snoring; whereas I was left, already athirst and hungry, to await the approach of a terrible and lingering death.
That night and those which followed will live always in my memory. I watched the moon rise, wondrous round and white and large, behind the rounded hill upon which stood Cahazaxa's Temple. The stars, which had been shining in their millions, faded in the moonshine, all save one bright planet in the sky above me. And there arose a mist, in which I thought there was something ghostly, upon the plain where the long grass stood like corn ready for the cutting. And behind me, as if striving to enfold me in an overpowering, stifling embrace, was the dark, deadly forest that cut me off from all and everything I loved.
Long before dawn, Amos Baverstock was stirring. I watched him kindle the embers of the camp-fire into a blaze, and, sitting with his crooked back, he looked just like a monkey. I noticed that even at that hour he was chewing one of his foul, black cigars, his stock of which was running low. Presently, he awakened Trust and Forsyth. They ate their breakfast in silence; never a word was said. And then they packed their knapsacks and set forward upon the march, in the gloaming, with never a word or a glance at me.
They marched in a bee-line upon the ruins of the ancient temple, and were soon lost both to sound and sight, for the plain lay even yet in the shadow of the night.
The dawn--the great heat at midday--the majesty and grandeur of the wilderness in the heart of which I was doomed and lost for ever--and, above all else, the grave-like silence of that place--it were better I made no attempt to describe these things than fail in the endeavour. I know no more than that my loneliness was overpowering. It was as if I was the only living atom, save the insects and the butterflies that fluttered round about me, in all that world of gorgeous vegetation.
I could not move a fraction of an inch. I would gaze by the hour at the great stones of the ruins before me, small in the distance and yet plain to see in that clear atmosphere, and wonder what manner of men had lived there in bygone days--what had been their hopes, their interests, their mode of life. And then my thirst would consume me; my tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth, and I would suck my lips to find them dry as bones.
One day of it had been more than I could bear; and that second night, I prayed that death might come speedily, for I saw that in death only would I find release from all my sufferings. But I lived on, like the Ancient Mariner himself; and on the third day, as on that tragic ship, there came a rain--a blessed rain from Heaven itself for me. Clouds appeared as if by magic, a dark canopy cast across the forest like a curtain; and the skies on a sudden opened and the rain came down in torrents.