The moon was long since down. Hi could make out that he was in a kind of pan or crater in the forest, with wavy indistinctness everywhere, smelling of balm. He dismounted, tried to examine his horse, who would not let himself be examined, but had certainly been cut on the crupper. He tried to comfort the poor beast. Coming to a patch of grass near a brook, he offered him grazing and a drink, both of which he refused. “Poor old Bingo,” Hi said, “you’re dead beat, you shall rest.”
He tethered, unsaddled and spread his coat upon him. The beast stood where he was left without attempting to roll; he drooped his head as though he had come to the end.
“Now I am pretty nearly done,” Hi thought. “I don’t know where I am. I’ve been gone four days. I’ve killed one horse and cooked a second. Now I’m lost in the forest again.”
He listened for some noise of men or the creatures of men, but heard nothing save the noises of the forest. Terrors began to take hold of him, the dread of such a terror as had come the night before, the terror of the man at the window. Yet at last sleep took him from the terror of being awake: he fell into a pit of sleep and slept for hours.
During this, the fourth day of Hi’s journey, young Chacon the notary, reached Don Manuel with all the terrible news still to be told. By this time, men and horses had begun to arrive at the rendezvous. Some copies of the blasphemous proclamation, which had arrived in the west from Port Matoche, had roused intense feeling throughout the west: men answered Don Manuel’s call from all over San Jacinto. While Hi was lying down to sleep, Don Manuel, with an advanced guard of about a hundred men, pushed eastward from the river to begin his march.
XIV
Hi woke up suddenly into terror, for the forest was filled with a crying as of creatures gone mad. A pack of things was giving tongue with voices madder than a fox’s bark.
“Wild dogs gone mad,” he thought. The noise of the yap seemed to strike between the skull and the coats of the brain, as the idea of the weasel strikes into the brain of the rabbit. Hi jumped to the horse, who was already trembling. He cast loose the tethering rope and swung himself on to the beast’s bare back, gripping the headstall, and in an instant the horse was away with him, in a panic which Rosas himself could not have controlled. Horse and man fled like the bird knocked from roost in the night. What did the bags and the saddle matter while that crying filled the darkness?
“Oh, golly, what are those things?” he thought. “Oh, golly, if they are after us.” All the night seemed full of flaming eyes, but these were only fireflies, not a pack: the crying seemed to die away. The horse floundered through mud in a cane-brake, which crashed under his trampling. Hi dug his head into the horse’s neck and shut his eyes: it was like running the gauntlet for what seemed a long time. After it, he went through tall grass, which drenched him with dew. Hi felt him weakening beneath him as he came out of the grass: then suddenly water appeared before him as a lake or broad river, where the wind roused reflections of stars. Hi saw a fish leap and splash, shaking up a glittering; in an instant the horse was swimming, with the gleams all round him.
Hi knew that a very little thing would drown the horse in his present condition; he slipped off his back, slid sideways, caught his tail and swam with him. After about fifty yards, the horse put his feet down, stumbled on to his knees, but recovered and came to the bank. Hi with some trouble scrambled up in front of him, got a purchase on the reins, and helped him on to dry land. They stood there gasping together for a while, being both out of breath as well as very cold.