And then I found peace. My mind, freed of the burden of thinking of
its surroundings, turned to the woman. She called to me, talked to me,
sometimes she walked the reeds at my side. She was all smiles and
lightness, and her tongue had never a barb. I forgot to struggle. The
narrow channel where I had been fighting my way opened now into a
broader passage, and the current flowed under me like an uplifting
hand. The woman's voice called me from down-stream; I turned on my
back, and floated, dreamy and expectant, toward the river's mouth.
CHAPTER XXIII
I ENCOUNTER MIXED MOTIVES
I was called to semi-consciousness by the tinkling clamor of small
bells, and by feeling my feet caught in something clinging yet
yielding. Then my body swung into it. It was a web. I pulled at it,
and tried to brush it away. And all the while the bells kept ringing,
ringing. A shower of arrows fell around me, and one grazed my foot.
A man must be far gone indeed when an arrow point will not sting him to
life. I was no longer a fever-riven log of driftwood. I knew where I
was and what was happening. I had reached the Malhominis village.
Working through the rice swamp, I had come into the main river too far
to the west, but following the woman's voice I had floated back.
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