But the power to see and to live died
out of him. He sank back with a queer sound in his throat. He did
not hear the answering cry from the girl as she flung herself,
with a quick little prayer for help, on her knees in the soft,
white sand beside him. He felt no movement when she raised his
head in her arm and with her bare hand brushed back his sand-
littered hair, revealing where the bullet had struck him. He did
not know when she ran back to the river.
His first sensation was of a cool and comforting something
trickling over his burning temples and his face. It was water.
Subconsciously he knew that, and in the same way he began to
think. But it was hard to pull his thoughts together. They
persisted in hopping about, like a lot of sand-fleas in a dance,
and just as he got hold of one and reached for another, the first
would slip away from him. He began to get the best of them after a
time, and he had an uncontrollable desire to say something. But
his eyes and his lips were sealed tight, and to open them, a
little army of gnomes came out of the darkness in the back of his
head, each of them armed with a lever, and began prying with all
their might.
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