"You will not"--he had dropped the Sir completely after his opening sentence--
"make any escape that way. But you can try. I have tried. Once only."
The sensation of nameless terror and abject fear which I had in vain attempted
to strive against overmastered me completely. My long fast--it was now close
upon ten o'clock, and I had eaten nothing since tiffin on the previous day--
combined with the violent and unnatural agitation of the ride had exhausted
me, and I verily believe that, for a few minutes, I acted as one mad. I hurled
myself against the pitiless sand-slope. I ran round the base of the crater,
blaspheming and praying by turns. I crawled out among the sedges of the river-
front, only to be driven back each time in an agony of nervous dread by the
rifle-bullets which cut up the sand round me--for I dared not face the death
of a mad dog among that hideous crowd--and finally fell, spent and raving, at
the curb of the well. No one had taken the slightest notion of an exhibition
which makes me blush hotly even when I think of it now.
Two or three men trod on my panting body as they drew water, but they were
evidently used to this sort of thing, and had no time to waste upon me. The
situation was humiliating.
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