Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/134

 darkness. It was a shelter, and as sure a one as earth could offer him, but it was a prison too. Often he thought of the sea, but the sea was guarded yet more closely than the mountains. He had passed the whole of one ghastly day floating on it, with the sun beating on his face and head, and an agony of thirst and an agony of exhaustion making the blue water terrible as Procrustes' bed. He dared not trust himself to it again.

Sunstroke, the jaws of a shark, the paralysis of cramp, death by thirst—any one of these might be his fate if he sought the sea. He would not dare to land anywhere; he would have to swim on and on and on; escape that way was hopeless.

These two passions—the passion of dread, and the passion of desire to escape—were too strong in him to let any other emotion move him. He dwelt on in this Etruscan solitude with this beautiful hand maiden beside him, and he only thought of her with vague doubt.

'Is it true that she will not betray me?' he wondered. 'If they give her gold, will she not lead them hither?'

As he recovered he grew more and more