Page:Son of the wind.djvu/201

RV 185 threw it. It fell too far out to be grasped. It was whirled again, fell, and he reached it. It took some sharp tugging on the half-breed's part, using himself and the tree as a windlass, and some hard workon Carron's before he was dragged by degrees, and with a sucking sound, out of the mouth of the quicksand.

Wet to the arm-pits, trembling with the exertion he had made, perspiration upon his forehead, he reached the little projecting ledge of rock. He had had worse moments of danger. There was no danger worth thinking about, with the half-breed there to throw a rope. The fear of a man, newly escaped death, was not his, but the disgust and the anger of a man who has not succeeded. To have failed by so narrow a margin! To have been kept back by so puny a stream—thumped on the head by a rock and then half swallowed by a wretched patch of sand! He put up his handkerchief, mopped the blood that was running down his neck, and looked up at his enemy, the Sphinx. From where he was the mass of the head gazed over him, and past him. No shadow upon it pointed an eyelash toward him; no quiver on the large front, nothing that recognized him, lying on the ledge, limp as a hooked fish. He waited a little longer, recovering strength; then with throbbing head, throbbing