“We must not shake him more than we can help, and he must be in an easy position. Have you your knife? I left mine.”
“Yes, sir, here,” cried Esau; and then in a low voice, “Oh, poor chap! poor chap!—what have I done!”
I lay very still then, listening to a hacking noise as if some one were chopping with a knife, and I listened again for what seemed a long time to a good deal of rustling and panting, and what sounded like the tearing up of handkerchiefs.
“There,” said Mr Raydon, “if we are careful that will bear him. Now then—no, wait a moment. I must tie the rifle to this pole. I want something else.”
“Here’s my other boot-string, sir,” I heard Esau say.
“Yes, capital. That will do. Now, are you ready? Get hold of his legs quietly; don’t hesitate, and when I say now, both lift together.”
I had some faint, wondering thought as to whom they were talking about, when a terrible pang shot through me, and I felt myself lifted up and laid down again on what felt like a bed of fir-branches. The sickness did not increase, and I lay there listening to some one moaning as if in pain, while I became conscious of a curious, swinging motion as I was being gently borne up and down and carried through the air.
Then I seemed to fall into an uneasy sleep, and to lie and dream about Mr Raydon burning my chest with red-hot irons, and these changed to little nuggets of gold which burnt me every time they touched my chest or back. At times the pain ceased, and then it began again, always with the swaying motion, while now and then, when the movement ceased, I began to dream of cool fresh water moistening my brow, and being trickled between my burning lips.
That was a long, wearisome, painful dream, which lasted for what felt like an indefinite time, to be succeeded by other dreams in which the terrible bear’s head from Mr Raydon’s office was always pursuing me, and the great moose’s head looking on in a melancholy, pitiful way.
And it did not appear strange to me that as I tried to escape and started on up and up a ravine where the sun scorched my brains, that the heads should be following without, any bodies. There they always were, the bear’s head with the huge teeth waiting to seize me if I only halted for a minute, and the moose’s head hurrying on to be there and pity me when I was caught.