The trees were less than half a mile distant when he halted for the second time. He would have gone to them without a pause though his muscles were quivering with exhaustion, had not Miss Leslie chanced to look around and discover that Winthrope was no longer following them. For the last mile he had been lagging farther and farther behind, and now he had suddenly disappeared. At the girl’s dismayed exclamation, Blake released his hold, and she found herself standing in a foot or more of mud and water. The sweat was streaming down Blake’s face. As he turned around, he wiped it off with his shirtsleeves.
“Do you–can it be, Mr. Blake, that he has had a sunstroke?” asked Miss Leslie.
“Sunstroke? No; he’s just laid down, that’s all. I thought he had more sand–confound him!”
“But the sun is so dreadfully hot, and I have his shade.”
“And he’s been tumbling into every other pool. No; it’s not the sun. I’ve half a mind to let him lie–the paper-legged swell! It would no more than square our aboard-ship accounts.”
“Surely, you would not do that, Mr. Blake! It may be that he has hurt himself in falling.”
“In this mud?–bah! But I guess I’m in for the pack-mule stunt all around. Now, now; don’t yowl, Miss Jenny. I’m going. But you can’t expect me to love the snob.”
As he splashed away on the return trail, Miss Leslie dabbed at her eyes to check the starting tears.
“Oh, dear–Oh, dear!” she moaned; “what have I done, to be so treated? Such a brute, Oh, dear!–and I am so thirsty!”
In her despair she would have sunk down where she stood had not the sliminess of the water repelled her. She gazed longingly at the trees, in the fore of which stood a grove of stately palms. The half-mile seemed an insuperable distance, but the ride on Blake’s back had rested her, and thirst goaded her forward.