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MOTION PICTURE
THE SHADOWS CLOSE IN UPON DREW, BEAT HIM INTO UNCONSCIOUSNESS, AND LASH HIM TO A TREE
his deep thinking, passed out into the clear light, the shadows closed in upon him with sickening blows and beat him down. The struggle was too uneven to be a long one. Presently, as they had come, the sinister shadows slipped away, and the moon shone white in the clearing as before. But against the oak-tree dangled a grotesque something that had not been there before.
The moon had set when Drew opened heavy eyes and looked about him. Gradually, thru the sick surge of the world, memory came back, and with it realization of his predicament. Arms lashed by a rope to the trunk of a great oak-tree, toes barely touching the ground, he was hanging with nearly his entire weight on his wrists. The first involuntary movement sent a thrill of pain thru arms and shoulders to his brain, warning him poignantly that he could not hope to free himself by his own efforts.
There was nothing to do but wait
as patiently as possible for morning, and even then he realized with a sinking heart that the odds against any one coming thru the grove in time to rescue him before exhaustion overcame him were ten to one. Feverishly he set himself to counting, to keep his thoughts from unmanly panic — one hundred— two hundred — nine hundred — a thousand
His head swam. The trees and path grew far away, indistinct. With a great effort he forced them back into focus, clearing his brain.
“This wont do,” he said aloud. “I mustn’t play the baby. I mustn’t — run — away. She — isn’t the running kind ”
Eons passed. Hands numb, Drew hung from his branch, sometimes speaking aloud, sometimes biting his lips to keep back delirium. Then came fits of blankness, and other fits of horrible superconsciousness, in which he seemed to see a red world, with
strange, crawling creatures sitting about his tree, waiting for him to die. Sometimes he heard a faraway, hoarse voice singing a gay love-song; sometimes the same voice prayed ; more often than all, it cried aloud, over and over, a girl’s name. He wondered stupidly whom it was calling — who the girl might be.
Later he knew. It was early dawnlight when he opened sane eyes, at last, on the sane world of his own room, and cried her name once more, faintly, with her dew-drenched, violet eyes looking down into his drawn, painridden face.
“Miss Warren — ” Drew murmured, “Bettina — was it — was it you — you who found me and ”
He tried to lift one heavy hand and touch her, to make sure that she was real, but they lay like dead things at his side. Perhaps she guessed his wish, for her own small hand crept timidly to his forehead and rested there.
( Forty-eight )