And all at once, with a great spasm, his eyes rolled round into their right position—it seemed he had been gazing out of the backs of them this while—and the blindness fell away from him like the stone of a sepulchre; and his ears burst open; and the calling voice came clearly through into his understanding.
Oh, surely that was Pam's dear voice! None other in the world would have had sweet power to penetrate such a darkness as his. And his lips dissolved, that had seemed glued inseparably together, and let him move them over the girl's name.
"... Pam ..." he said.
CHAPTER XLI
Yes, it was Pam's own self that knelt beside him and sustained him, her arms wound supportingly about his helpless body, his head on her knee, and shed tears of warm thankfulness over his lifted face, and caressed him eagerly with her voice.
"I thought you were dead..." she said tremulously.
His response flickered elusively to and fro at the bottom of the Spawer's being, like sunlight deep down a well; but he merely watched it with curious philosophic content, as though quite sufficiently satisfied to know that it was there.
"Where am I?" he inquired listlessly, after a moment, and then, out of sheer gratitude to the girl, without waiting to be told, subsided into peaceful slumber upon her knee.
So long as she was there to hold him and nurse his head, what more could a man want? To sleep with Pam for pillow ... ye gods! But his period of blissful oblivion was short. The beating and the calling recommenced, and he was forced into opening his reluctant eyes.
"You must not..." he heard the girl beseech him. "Oh, indeed, you must not! Try to come to yourself. Are you hurt? Do you think you can stand?"