He put out a weak arm and thrust
it aside. But he gazed about him. He was lying in the shadow of the
prison house, and the hard blue sky above him, the brown bare trampled
soil on which he lay, and the figures of his fellow-prisoners dragging
their chains or lying prone upon the ground in some extremity of
sickness gradually conveyed their meaning to him. He turned to Trench,
caught at him as if he feared the next moment would snatch him out of
reach, and then he smiled.
"I am in the prison at Omdurman," he said, "actually in the prison! This
is Umm Hagar, the House of Stone. It seems too good to be true."
He leaned back against the wall with an air of extreme relief. To
Trench the words, the tone of satisfaction in which they were uttered,
sounded like some sardonic piece of irony. A man who plumed himself upon
indifference to pain and pleasure--who posed as a being of so much
experience that joy and trouble could no longer stir a pulse or cause a
frown, and who carried his pose to perfection--such a man, thought
Trench, might have uttered Feversham's words in Feversham's voice. But
Feversham was not that man; his delirium had proved it. The
satisfaction, then, was genuine, the words sincere.
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