These words, coming from the once iron-hearted Berselius, struck Adams strangely; there was a trace of pity in their tone.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE FADING MIST
They camped two hours before sundown. One of the few mercies of this country is the number of dead trees and the bushes from which one can always scrape the materials for a fire.
Adams, with his hunting knife and a small hatchet which was all steel and so had been uninjured in the catastrophe, cut wood enough for the fire. They had nothing to cook with, but fortunately the food they had with them did not require cooking.
The tent was practicable, for the pole, so well had it been spliced, was as good as new. They set it up, and having eaten their supper, crept under it, leaving the porters to keep watch or not as they chose.
Berselius, who had marched so well all day, had broken down at the finish. He seemed half dead with weariness, and scarcely spoke a word, eating mechanically and falling to sleep immediately on lying down.
But he was happy. Happy as the man who suddenly finds that he can outwalk the paralysis threatening him, or the man who finds the fog of blindness lifting before him, showing him again bit by bit the world he had deemed forever lost. Whilst this man sleeps in the tent beside his companion and the waning moon breaks up over the horizon and mixes her light with the red flicker of the fire, a word about that past of which he was in search may not be out of place.