Nahnya, not looking at him, asked quietly: "You promise never to come this way again?"
"No!" said Ralph instantly. He could not have told why the word sprang from his lips. Perhaps it was that hope cannot be killed dead in a lover's heart while it beats.
The bandage was put on. Upon Ralph's promise not to disturb it, they refrained from binding his arms. And so after all he was carried down, chafing all the way. An instinct of caution kept him from telling them he knew he could find his way back anyway if he chose.
Carrying him downhill was comparatively easy. When they halted at last and the bandage was removed, Ralph found they were still immured in the forest, but from a murmur of the rapids that reached his ears, he knew they had come almost to the river.
"We will travel all night," Nahnya said, "so you not have your eyes blinded. Better sleep now."
He did sleep. He had had none the night before.
They awoke him to eat. Once more the bandage was put on, and he was carried, but only for a little way. They came out beside the river, and he was laid on the flat rock. He heard them launch the boat, and stow their baggage. Then he was laid on the blankets and they pushed off.
Ralph had supposed they would go back at least part of the way they had come. His surprise was therefore great when he heard the roar of the rapids growing closer, and realized they were going on down. His hand instinctively shot to the bandage over his eyes. Remembering in time that he had given his word, he clenched it instead, and ground his teeth.
Nahnya, understanding something of what was passing through his mind, said: "This is an easy rapid. I know all the rocks in it."
There was the same breathless pause while the whole firmament was filled with the roaring of the waters; the startling plunge and mad leaping below; the same sudden subsidence into an unnatural calm. It was like dreaming of falling over a precipice. From the quickness with which the roar dulled to a murmur behind them Ralph realized they were carried down at an astonishing speed. He wondered grimly if ever before a blind man had been taken down great rapids in a crazy dugout.