"Lionel," he said gently. "Can you sleep?"
"No. We shall get warm presently."
"It's jolly wretched."
"It'll be all right when we get warm. Don't let's talk."
"Is the boat all right, do you think? The water is roaring in the river."
"The boat? I can't think about the boat. She was moored or something." Their teeth chattered again for some little time. Presently, as they lay there shivering, they felt the uneasy aching warmth which sometimes comes to those who sleep in wet clothes. It is much such an unpleasant heat as wet grass generates in a rick. There is cramp and pain in it. The muscles rise up into little knots and bunch themselves. Still, it is heat of a kind. They lay awake, rubbing their contorted muscles, until, a little before the dawn, they were warm enough to doze. They dozed off, then, waking up, from time to time, generally once in ten minutes, to turn uneasily, so that the aching muscles might cease to twist into little knots and bunches.
IX
Where be these cannibals, these varlets?
The Shoemaker's Holiday.
The rain ceased before dawn. When the two friends felt strong enough to turn out, the sun was already burning. It was after half-past seven o'clock. The brooks which had washed past them and over them, only three or four hours before, were no longer running. Their tracks were marked on the hillside, in broad, shallow, muddy ruts, and in paths of plastered grass. The river had been over its banks not long before. It was swirling along now, brimful, as red as water from an ironworks. Roger remembered the water running by a road near Portobe, from some ironworks up the hill. It was just that savage colour. He felt a qualm of home-sickness. He turned to blink at the sun for the pleasure of the warmth upon his face.