Small wit had Jamie left to ferret guile, But fumblingly obeyed Le Bon; the while Jules knelt beside the man who could not flee: For big hearts lack not time for charity However thick the blows of fate may fall. Yet, in that Jules Le Bon was practical, He could not quite ignore a hunting knife, A flint, a gun, a blanket—gear of life Scarce suited to the customs of the dead!
And Hugh slept soundly in his ample bed, Star-canopied and blanketed with night, Unwitting how Venality and Fright Made hot the westward trail of Henry’s men.
No one may say what time elapsed, or when The slumberous shadow lifted over Hugh: But some globose immensity of blue Enfolded him at last, within whose light He seemed to float, as some faint swimmer might, A deep beneath and overhead a deep. So one late plunged into the lethal sleep, A spirit diver fighting for his breath, Swoops through the many-fathomed glooms of death, Emerging in a daylight strange and new.
Rousing a languid wonder, came on Hugh The quiet, steep-arched splendor of the day. Agrope for some dim memory, he lay Upon his back, and watched a lucent fleece Fade in the blue profundity of peace As did the memory he sought in vain. Then with a stirring of mysterious pain, Old habit of the body bade him rise; But when he would obey, the hollow skies Broke as a bubble punctured, and went out.
Again he woke, and with a drowsy doubt, Remote unto his horizontal gaze He saw the world’s end kindle to a blaze And up the smoky steep pale heralds run. And when at length he knew it for the sun, Dawn found the darkling reaches of his mind, Where in the twilight he began to find Strewn shards and torsos of familiar things. As from the rubble in a place of kings Men school the dream to build the past anew, So out of dream and fragment builded Hugh, And came upon the reason of his plight: The bear’s attack—the shot—and then the night Wherein men talked as ghosts above a grave.
Some consciousness of will the memory gave: He would get up. The painful effort spent Made the wide heavens billow as a tent Wind-struck, the shaken prairie sag and roll. Some moments with an effort at control He swayed, half raised upon his arms, until The dizzy cosmos righted, and was still. Then would he stand erect and be again The man he was: an overwhelming pain Smote him to earth, and one unruly limb Refused the weight and crumpled under him.