Injured, and sore all over, but warm
and dry--surely dry; nor was it lightning that dazzled, but
firelight. I began to notice things little by little. The fire
was burning on a clay floor a few feet from where I was lying.
Before it, on a log of wood, sat or crouched a human figure. An
old man, with chin on breast and hands clasped before his
drawn-up knees; only a small portion of his forehead and nose
visible to me. An Indian I took him to be, from his coarse,
lank, grey hair and dark brown skin. I was in a large hut,
falling at the sides to within two feet of the floor; but there
were no hammocks in it, nor bows and spears, and no skins, not
even under me, for I was lying on straw mats. I could hear the
storm still raging outside; the rush and splash of rain, and, at
intervals, the distant growl of thunder. There was wind, too; I
listened to it sobbing in the trees, and occasionally a puff
found its way in, and blew up the white ashes at the old man's
feet, and shook the yellow flames like a flag. I remembered now
how the storm began, the wild girl, the snake-bite, my violent
efforts to find a way out of the woods, and, finally, that leap
from the bank where recollection ended.
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