Behind the bandage on his eyes was scarlet blindness, and he was visited by a sense of the desperate impotence of the blind. The words of those shouting above him conveyed no clear meaning to him now. They were giving him guidance, he thought. There was a medley of cries: “Port! Starboard!... He doesn’t know his port from his starboard hand.” A stick fell again.
“Give him a chance, Howdray. Still a moment; I’ll put him on the trail.” This was Tintern’s voice.
But help was unavailing. Perhaps some foot had extinguished the trail; at any rate, even with Tintern’s guidance, John could not detect the scent. He groped forward to no purpose. Banford-Smith, sliding from the table, stood unintentionally on his fingers, causing him so much pain that, though he was now too bitter to cry out, he reeled from his track. A moment later his hand touched something wet—perhaps the blood from beneath his crushed finger-nail, perhaps no more than Driss’s ink. He neither knew nor cared. In his head, which he dared not raise from the ground, it seemed that fire was burning. His temples and his eyes were throbbing as if they would burst. He paused bewildered, and instantly sticks fell on him again.... It would never, never end. Perhaps he was going to faint. He wished he might. That might end it for the evening at least. That might end it all.
Shouts, forcing themselves upon his consciousness, suggested that he was near the bread he was seeking. He groped in the dust with his teeth and tongue, hoping he might end his quest. The grit was about his lips and in his nostrils.
Then the bandage shifted, and he saw the bread. He did not dare to seize it immediately lest they should guess that he could see, but he worked slowly towards it and picked it up between his teeth. A great burst of cheering followed, vague cheering, such as he remembered having heard when, down and out in a boxing competition, he had been dragged by his seconds to his corner. Presently he found himself leaning against the table, the bandage having been pulled away. The sweat was dripping from his forehead and stinging in his eyes. His whole body ached. He stooped, brushed the dust mechanically from the knees of his trousers, and tried to smile to show that he was “taking it well.” And there was Fane-Herbert’s face, indistinct as though seen through a heat wave, wearing that proud, resentful, unforgiving look.
“Have a drink,” said Howdray, his stick still in his hand. “Dry work on the deck, eh?” He rang the bell. “You did it in pretty good time, too.”
“Pretty—good—time?” said John slowly, as if he did not understand. “Pretty good time? I thought it was ages.”
Soon he was taking a glass off the tray that the steward held out to him.
“Cheer-oh!” said Howdray.
“Cheer-oh!” John answered, and drank thirstily. He sat on the extreme edge of the table, watching, with set eyes, how the others repeated his performance. The shouts and the crashes of the canes came up to him as from a dream. Soon Cunwell was beside him, drinking too. Fane-Herbert refused to drink. Sentley came last of all.