“The wrong bottle. You’re always thinking I give you the wrong medicine, and saying it tastes different. Hah!”
He ended with a long deep sigh of content, and lay perfectly silent.
“I can’t wake him,” muttered Gwyn; and with a weary groan he seated himself once more, supporting his back against the side of the gallery, for he was too weak and tired to stand, and in an instant he was out in the bright sunshine, with the water making the boat he was in dance and the sail flap, as he glided along out of the cave into the open sea. Then with a violent start he was awake again, drawing himself up and fighting hard against terrible odds, for Nature said that he was completely exhausted, and must rest.
And as he set his teeth and stared hard at the faintly glittering wall opposite, where the great vein of milk-white quartz was spangled with grains of tin, his head bowed down and dropped forward till his chin touched his chest.
Again he sprang up, to prop his head back against the rock, but it had been hacked away so that it curved over and seemed to join Nature in her efforts to master him and force him to sleep, bending down his head and sending it in the old direction, so that his brow seemed heavier than lead, and he bent it lower and lower, while once more he was out on the glittering waters of the sea, the boat bounding rapidly along and all trouble at an end. For the darkness of the cavernous mine was gone, with all its weary horrors—there was nothing to mind, nothing to do, but sink lower and lower in the boat, and rest.
Hard—angular—stony? The granite chipped by hammer and pick felt like the softest down, as Gwyn swayed slowly over to his left, his shoulders rubbing against the wall and his half-braced muscles involuntarily acting in obedience to his will to keep him upright, so that he did not fall, but gently subsided till he was lying prone close to the lanthorn, which shed its faint yellowish light and cast dim shadows which, there in that gloomy spot, looked like a couple of graves newly banked up to mark the spots where the two lads had lain down to die or to be found and live, whichever fate ordained.
Joe must have slept for what was guessed to be a couple of hours; but they had passed, and he still slept on, with his rest growing more and more sweet and restful, while for Gwyn there was nothing but profound silence and vacancy. He did not dream—only plunged deeper and deeper into the stupor till six hours had passed away, and then the dream came.
A terrible wild dream of being somewhere in great danger—a place from which there was no escape from a dangerous wolf-like beast, which had followed him for hours, and was slowly hunting him down.
And every moment the vision grew more real, and the fierce beast came closer and closer in spite of his efforts to escape—mad, frantic efforts—while every limb was like lead, and held him back so that he might be the monster’s prey.
He felt that it was a delusion, and that he must soon wake and find relief; but when he did, the relief did not come for the horrors of the dream were continued in the reality, and his lips parted to utter a wild cry; but lips, tongue, and throat were all parched and dry, and he lay there in an agony which seemed maddening.