And try to keep together."
All they saw of the universe was, in front of them,
a place faintly luminous near their feet, but fading in
six yards to the darkness of a dungeon. This repre-
sented the bright white road of the day time. It had
no end. Coleman had thought that he could tell
from the very feel of the air some of the landmarks of
his daytime journey, but he had now no sense of
location at all. He would not have denied that he
was squirming on his belly like a worm through black
mud.
They went on and on. Visions of his past were sweeping
through Coleman's mind precisely as they are said to sweep
through the mind of a drowning person. But he had no regret
for any bad deeds; he regretted merely distant hours of peace
and protection. He was no longer a hero going to rescue his
love. He was a slave making a gasping attempt to escape
from the most incredible tyranny of circumstances. He half
vowed to himself that if the God whom he had in no wise
heeded, would permit him to crawl out of this slavery he would
never again venture a yard toward a danger any greater than
may be incurred from the police of a most proper metropolis. If
his juvenile and uplifting thoughts of other days had
reproached him he would simply have repeated and repeated:
"Adventure be damned."
It became known to them that the horse had to be led. The
debased creature was asserting its right to do as it had been
trained, to follow its customs; it was asserting this right during
a situation which required conduct superior to all training and
custom.
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