My feet had no sooner felt firm ground than I found myself
weak as a year-old child. The strength of will that had held me up
through that awful voyage--and it was awful, Roddy--went draining out
of me, and the last of my bodily strength with it, like grain through
a hole in a sack. As the dog bristled up, I fell forward on hands
and knees, laughing hysterically, and the dog winced back as if
before a whip, and cringed. . . . You know, I dare say, that no dog
will ever attack a man who falls forward like that, or crouches as if
to sit, _and laughs_? . . . So I dropped from this posture right
prone by the edge of the basin hollowed by the little waterfall, and
drank my fill.
"What next do you guess we did? . . . We rolled over on the sand
under the shade of the cliff, and slept. . . .
"We slept for three mortal hours. I've no doubt we should have slept
oblivious for another three, had not the making tide aroused me with
its cool wash around my ankles. The sun, too, was stealing our
resting-place from us, or the comfort of it, cutting away the cliff's
shadow as it neared the meridian.
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