Donald has ESPed them filtering through the swamp in a wide semicircle and a few thoughts are leaking through the jumble of shouted orders and mixed impulses. Trainor and the judge are right with them. He seems to be talking earnestly to Trainor but his hatred and anger blot everything out—we can get nothing from him. Donald is getting weaker, but we must stir to get water and try to leave before they see this barn.
Here the narrative broke once more for more than an hour, leaving me in an agonized, hopeless suspense, knowing there was no way to help them. Occasionally I sensed a faint stirring in my mind as though they were trying to get through to me and once a deep stab of sorrow amounting almost to pain. It was getting quite late in the evening before they came through once more, weakly but still clearly and coherently.
It's hard to concentrate. The ambulance is jerking and bounding along and the pain is frightful. Looking back, there was no other way for it to end. They were too many and too dedicated, while we were only us and on the run, not even on the defensive.
Our physical weakness became painfully apparent when we cautiously ventured out back to find the water trough, drank, and stumbled away from our pursuers for a quarter of a mile right into the hands of six waiting state policemen. We'd been so intent on the men in the swamp, so blanketed by Thurlow's hate, and so tired that we didn't sense the danger from another direction in the form of a flanking movement. The operation was the end for us. They all had drawn weapons, but when they saw our sad state they rather sheepishly put them away and took us almost gently in hand.
We're getting weaker. Unconsciousness is near again. Would that we could have stayed with them!
Instead, one picked up a walkie-talkie and called in our capture. Even in the turmoil of the moment we could pick up flashes of amazed, frightened and curious thoughts as many of them saw us for the first time. Funny how the mind will act at times of stress, making one an observer of one's own actions, so to speak. Another phase opened for study!
Thurlow thanked the state men brusquely and said he and his deputies would take over, airily ignoring extradition procedure. The police chief and our sheriff were dubious about the course events were taking, but didn't want trouble so they offered no active resistance.
We were too tired to care any more. That was our third mistake, to lose our alertness completely. Had we been quick enough—but no, we couldn't have avoided it. The old story of trained men reacting without conscious thought.