Nor was his waking a matter of a moment. Many and varied were the impressions which came to him in times of semiconsciousness, and which of them were realities and which dreams, he could not tell.
He was being tortured with knives, lances tipped with pain that dragged him up from the black depths in which he lay. Dimly he realized that his clothes were being stripped from him and that the piercing knives were none the less real for being only the touch of hands and rough cloth upon his blistered body. Then from head to foot he was coated with a substance cool and moist. The pain died to a mere throbbing and again he felt himself sinking back into unconsciousness.
There were other visions, many others, some of them plain and distinct, some blurred and terrifying to his fevered brain trying vainly to bring order and reason into what was utterly chaotic.
Once a bedlam of shrieking voices roused him. He tried to open his eyes, whose lids were too heavy for his strength. And by that he knew he was dreaming. Yet from under those lowered lids he seemed to see a wild medley of red warriors, their faces blotched and ghastly in the green light of their weapons. They were carrying a charred body which they threw heavily upon the floor beside him as if to compare the two. He saw the face which the flames had not touched, the face of Jack Downer—Downer, the sheriff of Cocos County. His sandy hair had been scorched to the scalp.
Dreams ... and the steady beat of metal-shod feet of marching men. He saw them passing some distance away. The repeated thud-thud of metal on stone echoed maddeningly through his brain for hours.... Dreams, all of them.
And once there came to him a vision which beyond all doubt was unreal.
ilence had surrounded him. For what seemed hours not one of the red mole-men had come near. And then, in the silence, he heard whisperings and the sound of stealthy feet; and, for a moment, the same white figure that had met him in his flight stood where he could see.
Only the merest trace of dim light relieved the utter darkness of the room. The girl's figure was ghostly, unreal. Yet he saw the dull sparkle of jeweled breast-plates against her creamy white skin. Loose folds of cloth were gathered about her waist; her golden hair was drawn back except for vagrant curls that only accentuated the perfect oval of her face.