One dream haunted Colin throughout the days of his recovery. He was
tormented with a furious thirst, poorly assuaged at long intervals by
watered milk. So when he crossed the borders of dreamland his first
search was always for a well. He tried the brushwood inland from the
beach, but it was dry as stone. Then he climbed with difficulty the
boundary ridge, and found little pools of salt water, while far on the
other side gleamed the dark black bog-holes. Here was not what he
sought, and he was in deep despair, till suddenly over the sea he caught
a glimpse of his old path running beyond Cuna to a bank of mist. He
rushed down to the tide's edge, and to his amazement found solid ground.
Now was the chance for which he had long looked, and he ran happily
westwards, till of a sudden the solid earth seemed to sink with him,
and he was in the waters struggling. But two curious things he noted.
One was that the far bank of mist seemed to open for a pin-point of
time, and he had a gleam of land. He saw nothing distinctly, only a line
which was not mist and was not water. The second was that the water was
fresh, and as he was drinking from this curious new fresh sea he awoke.
The dream was repeated three times before he left the sick-room. Always
he wakened at the same place, always he quenched his thirst in the fresh
sea, but never again did the mist open for him and show him the strange
country.
* * * * * * *
From Cecil's he went to the famous school which was the tradition in his
family. The Head spoke to his house-master of his coming. "We are to
have another Raden here," he said, "and I am glad of it, if the young
one turns out to be anything like the others. There's a good deal of
dry-rot among the boys just now. They are all too old for their years
and too wise in the wrong way. They haven't anything like the enthusiasm
in games they had twenty years ago when I first came here. I hope this
young Raden will stir them up." The house-master agreed, and when he
first caught sight of Colin's slim, well-knit figure, looked into the
handsome kindly eyes, and heard his curiously diffident speech, his
doubts vanished. "We have got the right stuff now," he told himself, and
the senior for whom the new boy fagged made the same comment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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