As he realised where he was once more, he whispered Jem’s name again and again, but a heavy breathing was the only response, and he lay thinking of home and of his bedroom all those thousand miles away. And as he thought of Bristol, a curious feeling of thankfulness came over him that his mother was in ignorance of the fate that had befallen her son.
“What would she say—what would she think, if she knew that I was lying here on the ground, a prisoner, and wounded—here at the mercy of a set of savages—what would she say?”
A short time before Don had been thinking that fate had done its worst for him, and that his position could not possibly have been more grave. But he thought now that it might have been far worse, for his mother was spared his horror.
And then as he lay helpless there, and in pain, with his companion badly hurt, and the low moan of some wounded savage now and then making him shudder, the scene of the desperate fight seemed to come back, and he felt feverish and wild. But after a time that passed off, and the pain and chill troubled him, but only to pass off as well, and be succeeded by a drowsy sensation.
And then as he lay there, the words of the old, old prayers he had repeated at his mother’s knee rose to his lips, and he was repeating them as sleep fell upon his weary eyes; and the agony and horrors of that terrible time were as nothing to him then.
