And then all was dark.
Chapter Forty One.
“A Bit off his Head.”
But it was not all over. When sense and feeling began to resume their seats, Mark was lying in the forest shade, dimly conscious that the sun’s rays were striking horizontally through the dark, misty shadows of some place that he had never seen before.
A dull, heavy pain seemed to be pressing his head into the earth, and a sickening feeling of confusion troubled him which seemed to take the shape of one of the glorious golden rays of the sun darting and piercing him through the shoulder with the agonising pangs that accompanied fire.
Then in his throbbing head there was a question that kept on repeating itself—that cry he had last heard as of someone calling piteously, something about his father, and who could it be?
This went on and on for what seemed to be an endless time, and he could make out nothing else, till someone spoke in a deep, gruff voice, and said, “Yes, my lad, it is a very bad job, and I say, thank my stars I hadn’t the watch.”
“Ay, messmate, and I say the same. The cooking was more in my way.”