In his strange mental condition even the change from Harkutt's feeble candle to the outer darkness for a moment blinded Elijah Curtis,yet it was part of that mental condition that he kept moving steadily forward as in a trance or dream,though at first purposelessly.Then it occurred to him that he was really looking for his horse,and that the animal was not there.This for a moment confused and frightened him,first with the supposition that he had not brought him at all,but that it was part of his delusion;secondly,with the conviction that without his horse he could neither proceed on the course suggested by Harkutt,nor take another more vague one that was dimly in his mind.Yet in his hopeless vacillation it seemed a relief that now neither was practicable,and that he need do nothing.Perhaps it was a mysterious providence!
The explanation,however,was much simpler.The horse had been taken by the luxurious and indolent Billings unknown to his companions.Overcome at the dreadful prospect of walking home in that weather,this perfect product of lethargic Sidon had artfully allowed Peters and Wingate to precede him,and,cautiously unloosing the tethered animal,had safely passed them in the darkness.When he gained his own inclosure he had lazily dismounted,and,with a sharp cut on the mustang's haunches,sent him galloping back to rejoin his master,with what result has been already told by the unsuspecting Peters in the preceding chapter.
Yet no conception of this possibility entered 'Lige Curtis's alcoholized consciousness,part of whose morbid phantasy it was to distort or exaggerate all natural phenomena.He had a vague idea that he could not go back to Harkutt's;already his visit seemed to have happened long,long ago,and could not be repeated.He would walk on,enwrapped in this uncompromising darkness which concealed everything,suggested everything,and was responsible for everything.
It was very dark,for the wind,having lulled,no longer thinned the veil of clouds above,nor dissipated a steaming mist that appeared to rise from the sodden plain.Yet he moved easily through the darkness,seeming to be upheld by it as something tangible,upon which he might lean.At times he thought he heard voices,--not a particular voice he was thinking of,but strange voices--of course unreal to his present fancy.And then he heard one of these voices,unlike any voice in Sidon,and very faint and far off,asking if it "was anywhere near Sidon?"--evidently some one lost like himself.He answered in a voice that seemed quite as unreal and as faint,and turned in the direction from which it came.There was a light moving like a will-o'-the-wisp far before him,yet below him as if coming out of the depths of the earth.It must be fancy,but he would see--ah!
He had fallen violently forward,and at the same moment felt his revolver leap from his breast pocket like a living thing,and an instant after explode upon the rock where it struck,blindingly illuminating the declivity down which he was plunging.The sulphurous sting of burning powder was in his eyes and nose,yet in that swift revealing flash he had time to clutch the stems of a trailing vine beside him,but not to save his head from sharp contact with the same rocky ledge that had caught his pistol.The pain and shock gave way to a sickening sense of warmth at the roots of his hair.Giddy and faint,his fingers relaxed,he felt himself sinking,with a languor that was half acquiescence,down,down,--until,with another shock,a wild gasping for air,and a swift reaction,he awoke in the cold,rushing water!
Clear and perfectly conscious now,though frantically fighting for existence with the current,he could dimly see a floating black object shooting by the shore,at times striking the projections of the bank,until in its recoil it swung half round and drifted broadside on towards him.He was near enough to catch the frayed ends of a trailing rope that fastened the structure,which seemed to be a few logs,together.With a convulsive effort he at last gained a footing upon it,and then fell fainting along its length.
It was the raft which the surveyors from the embarcadero had just abandoned.
He did not know this,nor would he have thought it otherwise strange that a raft might be a part of the drift of the overflow,even had he been entirely conscious;but his senses were failing,though he was still able to keep a secure position on the raft,and to vaguely believe that it would carry him to some relief and succor.How long he lay unconscious he never knew;in his after-recollections of that night,it seemed to have been haunted by dreams of passing dim banks and strange places;of a face and voice that had been pleasant to him;of a terror coming upon him as he appeared to be nearing a place like that home that he had abandoned in the lonely tules.He was roused at last by a violent headache,as if his soft felt hat had been changed into a tightening crown of iron.Lifting his hand to his head to tear off its covering,he was surprised to find that he was wearing no hat,but that his matted hair,stiffened and dried with blood and ooze,was clinging like a cap to his skull in the hot morning sunlight.His eyelids and lashes were glued together and weighted down by the same sanguinary plaster.He crawled to the edge of his frail raft,not without difficulty,for it oscillated and rocked strangely,and dipped his hand in the current.When he had cleared his eyes he lifted them with a shock of amazement.Creeks,banks,and plain had disappeared;he was alone on a bend of the tossing bay of San Francisco!