But his limbs were queerly rebellious, and he was sick;
he had never experienced anything quite like this and he thought
he must be wounded. It greatly surprised him to find that he could
struggle upward through the brambles, even though it was hard
work. Men were fighting all around and below him, meanwhile, and
he wondered vaguely what made them kill one another when he and
his negroes were all dead or dying. It seemed very strange--of a
piece with the general unreality of things--and it troubled him
not a little.
At last he gained the top of the bank and managed to assume an
upright position, clinging to the bole of a palm-tree. One of his
arms was useless, he discovered, and he realized with a curious
shock that it was broken. He was bleeding, too, from more than one
wound, but he could walk, after a fashion.
He was inclined to stay and finish the fight, but he recollected
that Rosa would be waiting for him and that he must go to her, and
so he set out across the fields, staggering through the charred
cane stubble. The night was not so black as it had been, and this
puzzled him until he saw that the plantation house was ablaze.
Flames were belching from its windows, casting abroad a lurid
radiance; and remembering Pancho Cueto, Esteban laughed.
By and by, after he was well away, his numbness passed and he
began to suffer excruciating pain.
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