We sat down, the three of us together, and again the battery leapt
upon us. Now the sun was hot above the trees and the effect of the
noise behind us was that we ourselves, every two or three minutes,
were caught up, flung to the ground, recovered, breathless, exhausted,
only to be hurled again!
How miserable we were, how lost, how desolate, Trenchard hearing in
every sound the death of his lady, Andrey Vassilievitch dreaming, I
fancy, that he had been caught in some cage out of which he would
never again escape. I, sick, almost blind with headache, and yet
exasperated, irritated by the emptiness of it all. If only we might
run down that hill! There surely we should find....
At the very moment when the battery had finished as it seemed to me
its work of smashing my head into pulp the wagon arrived.
"Now," I thought to myself as I climbed on to the straw, "I shall
begin to be excited!" We, all three of us, kneeling on the cart,
peered forward into the dim blue afternoon. We were very silent--only
once Trenchard said to me, "Perhaps we shall find her down here:
where we're going.
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