The Country of the Blind, and Other StoriesWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science fiction, English
the end Chang-hi had grinned, a most incomprehensible and startling grin.
Abruptly things became very unpleasant, as they will do at times in
dreams. Chang-hi gibbered and threatened him. He saw in his dream heaps
and heaps of gold, and Chang-hi intervening and struggling to hold him
back from it. He took Chang-hi by the pig-tail--how big the yellow brute
was, and how he struggled and grinned! He kept growing bigger, too. Then
the bright heaps of gold turned to a roaring furnace, and a vast devil,
surprisingly like Chang-hi, but with a huge black tail, began to feed him
with coals. They burnt his mouth horribly. Another devil was shouting his
name: "Evans, Evans, you sleepy fool!"--or was it Hooker?
He woke up. They were in the mouth of the lagoon.
"There are the three palm-trees. It must be in a line with that clump of
bushes," said his companion. "Mark that. If we, go to those bushes and
then strike into the bush in a straight line from here, we shall come to
it when we come to the stream."
They could see now where the mouth of the stream opened out. At the sight
of it Evans revived. "Hurry up, man," he said, "or by heaven I shall have
to drink sea water!" He gnawed his hand and stared at the gleam of silver
among the rocks and green tangle.
Presently he turned almost fiercely upon Hooker. "Give _me_ the
paddle," he said.
So they reached the river mouth. A little way up Hooker took some water in
the hollow of his hand, tasted it, and spat it out. A little further he
tried again. "This will do," he said, and they began drinking eagerly.
"Curse this!" said Evans suddenly. "It's too slow." And, leaning
dangerously over the fore part of the canoe, he began to suck up the water
with his lips.
Presently they made an end of drinking, and, running the canoe into a
little creek, were about to land among the thick growth that overhung the
water.
"We shall have to scramble through this to the beach to find our bushes
and get the line to the place," said Evans.
"We had better paddle round," said Hooker.
So they pushed out again into the river and paddled back down it to the
sea, and along the shore to the place where the clump of bushes grew. Here
they landed, pulled the light canoe far up the beach, and then went up
towards the edge of the jungle until they could see the opening of the
reef and the bushes in a straight line. Evans had taken a native implement
out of the canoe. It was L-shaped, and the transverse piece was armed with
polished stone. Hooker carried the paddle. "It is straight now in this
direction," said he; "we must push through this till we strike the stream.
Then we must prospect."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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