Chutney, still propped against the canoe, caught its full effect on his face. It stirred up the flickering spark of life within him and he opened his eyes; he thought he saw a faint gleam of daylight.
Like the fabled giant that sprang from an uncorked phial, the gray streak expanded with marvelous celerity, growing longer and wider and brighter until it shone like burnished silver on the hurrying tide of the river.
Guy saw it and that was all. It dazzled his eyes and he closed them. When he looked again the raft was trembling on the edge of the silvery sheet, and then, swift as the lightning flash, a flood of brightness sprang up and around it.
He closed his eyes, but the fierce glare seemed to be burning into his very brain. He could not shut it out, though he thrust a trembling arm across his closed eyes.
The next instant something rough and pliable struck his face with stinging force, and he felt the warm blood trickle down his cheeks. Instantly there came a second shock. The canoe was whirled forcibly from under him, and a heavy blow from some unseen object struck him with stunning violence to the hard logs.
An icy wave dashed over the raft, and then another and another. Smarting with pain, the blood dripping from his lacerated face and hands, he staggered to his knees.
He opened his eyes. At first he could see nothing for the dazzling light that was all around him. Then the blindness passed suddenly away, and he saw clearly.
The glorious, entrancing light of day was shining on the raft, on the sparkling water, on his motionless companions—everywhere.
The raft was dancing on the bosom of a vast and mighty stream that rolled in the blessed sunlight between shores of sparkling green. He saw sloping hillsides and mangrove jungles, wind-tossed patches of reeds and waving palm trees, mountains shooting their rugged peaks heavenward, and billows of forest land rolling off into the distant horizon, while overhead was the deep blue vault of the sky, that perfect sky that had haunted his memory in many a dream—the sky that he had never hoped to see again. The air was redolent with perfume and melodious with the sweet notes of countless birds.
Flushed and trembling, Guy staggered, with new-found strength, to his feet.