“No.”
“Lie there,” said Adams.
He opened the door and went out into the night. A moment later he returned; after him came the two porters bearing Berselius between them.
Berselius was quiet now; the brain fever that had stricken him had passed into a muttering stage, and he let himself be carried, passive as a bag of meal, whilst Adams went before with the lamp leading the way into the bedroom. Here, on one of the beds, the porters laid their burden down. Then they came back, and under the directions of Adams lifted Meeus and carried him into the bedroom and placed him on the second bed.
Adams, with the lamp in his hand, stood for a moment looking at Meeus. His rage had spent itself; he had avenged the people at the Silent Pools. With his naked hands he had inflicted on the criminal before him an injury worse than the injury of fire or sword.
Meeus, frightened now by the pity in the face of the other, horribly frightened by the unknown thing that had happened to him, making him dead from the waist down, moved his lips, but made no sound.
“Your back is broken,” replied Adams to the question in the other’s eyes.
Then he turned to Berselius.
At midnight the rains broke with a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the universe.