"Garland's burning," he added.
Over the desert, some two or three miles away, the burning town could be seen plainly.
"What are we going to do?" Mercer asked after a moment.
I was pretty weak and badly bruised all over. Mercer seemed to have fared better than I. We talked over our situation at length. Finally we decided to rest where we were until daybreak. I would feel better then, and we could start back on foot for Mantua and Frannie.
I lay down again—my head was going round like a top—and Mercer sat beside me. It was pretty cold, but we were warmly dressed and not uncomfortable. The fact that we were so close to the Mercutians—not much over seven or eight miles—worried us a little. But we reasoned that we were in no great danger. We could still see their light‑ray standing vertically in the air.
Occasionally it would swing slowly to one side or the other. Once it swung toward us, but as its base was in a hollow, it was cut off by the higher ground between as it swung down, and we knew it could not reach us from that position.
After a while I fell asleep. When Mercer woke me up it was dawn.
"Let's get started," he said. "I'm hungry as the devil."
I felt much better now. I was hungry myself, and stiff, and chilled.
"You'll feel better walking," he added. "Come on. It'll take us a deuce of a while over this sand."