As we
emerged, "with one stride came the dark," a great darkness, a cloudy
night, with neither moon nor stars, and the track was further
obscured by a belt of ohias. There were five miles of this, and I
was so dead from fatigue and want of food, that I would willingly
have lain down in the bush in the rain. I most heartlessly wished
that Miss K. were tired too, for her voice, which seemed tireless as
she rode ahead in the dark, rasped upon my ears. I could only keep
on my saddle by leaning on the horn, and my clothes were soaked with
the heavy rain. "A dreadful ride," one and another had said, and I
then believed them. It seemed an awful solitude full of mystery.
Often, I only knew that my companions were ahead by the sparks
struck from their horse's shoes.
It became a darkness which could be felt.
"Is that possibly a pool of blood?" I thought in horror, as a rain
puddle glowed crimson on the track. Not that indeed! A glare
brighter and redder than that from any furnace suddenly lightened
the whole sky, and from that moment brightened our path. There sat
Miss K. under her dripping umbrella as provokingly erect as when she
left Hilo. There Upa jogged along, huddled up in his poncho, and
his canteen shone red.
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