At times, not far from him, he could hear the snort of a wild boar or the cry of a wolf, scared by the recent din of battle perhaps; and now he became conscious of the rush of a mountain runnel that ran near him, but which, sorely athirst though he was, loss of blood had rendered him too feeble to reach.
Close by him, with holsters, housing and gilded martingale, lay the dead body of his caparisoned horse, the blood of which was freely mingled with his own.
The hours of the night passed slowly on. The moon waned; but the stars grew brighter. Tender thoughts of Mary and all their mutual past, and of the future which now too probably would never be, came to him at times; and in imagination he more than once thought that her voice—but curiously mingled with that of Margarita—came to his almost death-drowsy ear.
Cold and clammy fell the dew of night on his white and upturned face; his breathing was long, deep, and laboured, for the ball that so nearly finished him had deeply pierced his breast. He lay well-nigh lifeless. Would he ever be found—on the farthest skirts of the field as he was—till too late; till death had come first and claimed his own, ere the birds of the air, the wolves and wild dogs made a banquet of him?
The moaning of the night-wind in the giant pines was heard at times; but it brought no sound, save the snarling voices of the beasts of prey, busy perhaps elsewhere. The flow from his wound had stopped; he must have perished otherwise; a species of bloody paste had sealed up the wound for a time; but Cecil's mind had become a chaos now, and he could remember nothing but the agony in his chest and the intensity of his thirst—an intensity to which the murmur of the cool runnel close by added tantalisation.
Would a cooling draught ever moisten his lips again? Even the heavily falling dew had failed to do so.
At last he became alive to all the dire realities of the situation—that he was lying in a lonely and untrodden spot, done nigh unto death; far from aid or succour, unable even to drive away the insects that, when morning came, would be battening in his blood, and when his sole watcher would be the greedy and expectant carrion crow. It would be so. He would die in solitude, and never find a grave until even that might be found when too late!
Around him, at times, the solitude was awful.
He must have slept or been senseless, for after a certain space he found the sun shining above the tree-tops, and some of the ravenous kites, that were croaking and wheeling above him in circles, had already begun to settle on the body of his horse, and dig their sharp beaks into it—something of life and volition in his face alone preventing them from assailing him, though they eyed him greedily, viciously, and askance from time to time.
A cry of great horror escaped him. Then his wound burst forth afresh, and he became completely senseless and oblivious of all around him.