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He had hardly swallowed his drink when the clock began to strike. He listened till it finished, his face growing pale and paler; then he said: "Boys, I'm sick with fear. Help me I want to lie down!" They helped him to the sofa. He began to nestle and drowse, but presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said: "Did I hear horses' feet? Have they come?"
"What was that you said about horseshoe nails and bees?" asked Dunk, drowsily, from his corner of the much be-cushioned sofa. "Forget it," advised Andy, sleepily. "I'm going to turn in. I'm in just the mood to drowse off now, and I don't want to get roused up." "Same here, Andy. Say, but I wish it were to-morrow!" "So do I, old man!" The room grew more quiet.
Sparrows hopped and chirped in the branches, absurdly surprised; without doubt having concluded in the Sunday stillness that the world would drowse forever; and the mongrel lifted his head, blinked at them, hopelessly wishing they would alight near him, scratched his ear with the manner of one who has neglected such matters overlong; reversed his position; slept again.
And as I did lie there, in those moments that do drowse the Soul, as it were that they do proceed as breath out of the mouth of Sleep, I had a half-knowing that the aether did surge about me; and I doubt not but that there had watched my every doing, many of the Millions, and had been humanly stirred, at my commending of my spirit unto sleep; and thus did shake the aether of the world about me, with their unity of sympathy.
And alway as we journeyed, there did seem a great stillness in all the Country near about; and afar off the low mutter of the Great Fire-Hills, in this place and that, and a drowse as of life and warmth about us, and everywhere the air very rich and plentiful.
"No, no, I won't," said Ewbert; and he kept his word, with the effect of remaining awake all night. Toward morning he did not know but he had drowsed; he was not aware of losing consciousness, and he started from his drowse with the word "consciousness" in his mind, as he had heard Hilbrook speaking it.
In the corridor-car the few passengers disposed themselves to drowse away the coming hour the short hour's ride that, in these piping days of frantic traveling, separates Antwerp from the capital city of Belgium. A guard, slamming gustily in through the front door, reeled unsteadily down the aisle.
That night we slept in beds for the first time. That is to say, we slept until about three o'clock. Then we became vaguely conscious, through a haze of drowse as one becomes conscious in the pause of a sleeping-car of voices outside our doors. Some one said something about its being hardly much use to go to bed. Another hoped the sheets were not damp.
After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight or nine times without the wide-awake, hard-working other half suspecting it, the periodical unconsciousnesses began to extend their spell gradually over more of my brain-territory, and at last I sank into a drowse which grew deeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very point of being a solid, blessed dreamless stupor, when what was that?
After, perhaps, an hour and a half's driving, Brunow woke me by calling impatiently to the cabman, and I came to the full possession of myself in time to see the vehicle swerve suddenly to the right. My prolonged drowse half refreshed me, and the cold, wet air which blew up from the river through the window Brunow had opened fell freshly on my cheek.
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