Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/68

 fell from his full height upon the turf, and I recoiled from the report and felt all at once the wet grass tickling my face; whereon a sudden darkness filled my eyes, and I lost the sense of where I was. For some little time I must have been insensible. But soon the blackness that pressed upon my eyelids lifted somewhat, and the buzzing in my ears abated. 'Twas then that I found myself sitting in a most quaint fashion on the grass, though the manner of my falling on that wet sward was a point more than my knowledge. A comic figure I must have cut, and I believe my earliest feeling was one of deep relief that there was but one spectator of my plight—he the Captain, who to tell the truth was in no prettier case. I was at first disposed to attribute my preposterous state to the wrought condition of my nerves, and had half arrived at the conclusion that even this pretext was insufficient for so extreme a situation, when I grew dimly conscious that a sort of fiery pain was throbbing in one shoulder. It was then I knew that I was hit. Meantime poor Captain Grantley was striving hard to rise. Twice he tried and twice he failed and fell back on the grass. The second time he groaned an oath, for his eyes had fallen on the swift figure of the prisoner fading in the dew.

"Dammy, Jimmy!" says he to himself, struggling for the third time to regain his feet and failing. "It's no go, my lad. You are taken somewhere."

Thereupon he sat up in the grass and began to