Chapter Eight
Art’s last impressions before collapsing were of heat and dryness; his first on slowly awakening were of coolness and moisture. He sucked like a baby on a teat from which flowed sweet, pure water, balm not only to his parched throat but to his cracked lips. The white-hot light of the sun, which had been torturing him with seeming vindictiveness, had given way to a gentler glow that lit the inside of his eyelids. Something cool and wet soothed his forehead and, wonder of wonders, his ribs were bound and his arm splinted and in a sling, and the pain in both had subsided to a dull ache.
For a few moments, all he was really aware of were those pleasant facts, but gradually he remembered the voices he had heard just before passing out, and finally, he opened his eyes. A slender
