"Give it me."
Their fingers met, George feeling for the flask. As he moved his arm a groan of anguish broke from him.
"Drink it—if you possibly can."
George put all the power of his being into the effort to swallow a few drops. Still the anguish! "O God, my back! and the legs—paralysed!"
The words were only spoken in the brain, but it seemed to him that he cried them aloud. For a moment or two the mind swam again; then the brandy began to sting.
He slid down a hand slowly, defying the pain it caused him, to feel his right leg. The trouser round the thigh hung in ribbons, but the fragments lying on the flesh were caked and hard; and beneath him was a pool. His reason worked with difficulty, but clearly. "Some bad injury to the thigh," he thought. "Much bleeding—probably the bleeding has dulled the worst pain. The back and shoulders burnt—"
Then, in the same hesitating, difficult way he managed to lift his hand to his head, which ached intolerably. The right temple and the hair upon it were also caked and wet.
He let his hand drop. "How long have I—?" he thought. For already his revived consciousness could hardly maintain itself; something from the black tunnels of the mine seemed to be perpetually pressing out upon it, threatening to drown it like a flood.
"Burrows!"—he felt again with his hand—"where's Macgregor?"
A sob broke from the darkness beside him.