After witnessing the stoical heroism of my slave I could not but insist on his branding me and was exalted to the point of nerve-tension at which I bit in my half-uttered scream as the heat seared my flesh. Agathemer dressed each brand with an oil-soaked rag and we composed ourselves to hide until dark.
CHAPTER XII
SUCCOUR
As on the days before, no one passed us and, indeed, as far as I could judge, no living thing came near us, except a hare or two. We kept close under our heap of leaves, inside our niche of rock. But this time I did not snuggle inside my cloak and quilt; I cast off, first the quilt, then the cloak, and lay in my tunic only, panting and gasping. For it was a very hot, still day, and my fever increased, increased so much, in fact, that I could stomach but little food at dusk and took but little interest in anything; in my condition, in Agathemer's brand, in his departure.
His return, late at night, was to me only one incident of a sort of continuous nightmare: I was half asleep, wholly delirious and every impression was as the half-delusion of a half-waking dream. I was barely half-conscious, yet I had sense enough to lie still, except for writhing and turning over, and to restrain myself from singing or screaming.
At dawn I ate even less than at dusk, but I did eat something. Eating roused me enough for me to insist on Agathemer's stripping me and scourging me. He felt my forehead, my wrists and my feet, and shook his head.
"You have a terrific fever," he said, "and four festering wounds, for the brand-mark is festering already; you are in danger of death anyhow as it is; you will never recover from a scourging."
I, with all a delirious man's unreasoning, insisted and again threatened to give myself up.
The sun was about two hours high, gilding the treetops and sending shafts of golden light through the still wet foliage. One such shaft of sunshine shot between the two halves of the great rock that sheltered us and fell on the table-topped fragment of stone, like a nearly buried altar, which lay midway of them.
Writhing and groaning I slipped out of my quilt, cloak and tunic, and, groaning, I crawled to the flat-topped stone. Face down on it I lay, my chest against it, my knees on the ground, my arms outstretched, my fingers gripping the far edge of the altar-stone.