Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/291

280 was, and strong to ferocity as they had found him, he went with them thus mutely and unresistingly; they did not note the keen, hard, ravenous, longing look, as of one starving at sight of food, that his eyes ever and again cast upon the steel tubes of the slanted carbines which carried death and oblivion so near, and yet denied them, to him.

Beyond this he knew nothing; he was dragged over the low-lying country at a pace as swift as the heat of the day and the unevenness of the uncertain paths would allow; whether he had force to bear it, in the sultry noontide of summer, they never heeded. If he had fallen, they would have pulled him on still, as best they might, with his head striking the stones. He knew nothing; the sunlight was like a blaze of fire ever about him; the hard, hot skies seemed to glitter as brass; water, mountain, the darkness of myrtle, the rush of wild birds, the blue gleam of the sea, the brown baked earth beneath his feet, these were all blurred, shapeless shadows to him, while his eyes looked out, straight onward, with the red, dusky, mastiff flame in them that made his guards mutter among themselves that this man was mad, and should be shot like a mad dog.

And they judged right: he was mad, with the