Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
page 121 of 558 (21%)
scarcely sacred like a European's. The cunning little face of Chang-hi,
first keen and furious like a startled snake, and then fearful,
treacherous, and pitiful, became overwhelmingly prominent in the dream. At
the end Chang-hi had grinned, a most incomprehensible and startling grin.
Abruptly things became very unpleasant, as they will do at times in
dreams. Chang-hi gibbered and threatened him. He saw in his dream heaps
and heaps of gold, and Chang-hi intervening and struggling to hold him
back from it. He took Chang-hi by the pig-tail--how big the yellow brute
was, and how he struggled and grinned! He kept growing bigger, too. Then
the bright heaps of gold turned to a roaring furnace, and a vast devil,
surprisingly like Chang-hi, but with a huge black tail, began to feed him
with coals. They burnt his mouth horribly. Another devil was shouting his
name: "Evans, Evans, you sleepy fool!"--or was it Hooker?

He woke up. They were in the mouth of the lagoon.

"There are the three palm-trees. It must be in a line with that clump of
bushes," said his companion. "Mark that. If we, go to those bushes and
then strike into the bush in a straight line from here, we shall come to
it when we come to the stream."

They could see now where the mouth of the stream opened out. At the sight
of it Evans revived. "Hurry up, man," he said, "or by heaven I shall have
to drink sea water!" He gnawed his hand and stared at the gleam of silver
among the rocks and green tangle.

Presently he turned almost fiercely upon Hooker. "Give _me_ the
paddle," he said.

So they reached the river mouth. A little way up Hooker took some water in
DigitalOcean Referral Badge