"Hang him!" he muttered. "If I'd only finished him when I had the drop!"
After that neither spoke. If Jack's thoughts were blacker than mine he
must have wished for his pistol to blow out his own brains. At no time
since our arrival on the planet had I felt so depressed. I had no courage
left; could see no lightening of the gloom anywhere. In the horror of the
darkness which enveloped us, the _horror of space_ came over my spirit.
One feels a little of that sometimes when the breadth of an ocean
separates him from home, and from all who really care for him--but what
is the Atlantic or the Pacific to millions upon millions of leagues of
interplanetary space! To be cast away among the inhabitants of another
world than one's own! To have lost, as we had done (for in that moment of
despair I was _sure_ Edmund could never repair the car), the only
possible means of return! To have offended, just _because_ we were
strangers, and _could_ not know better, some incomprehensible social law
of this strange people, who owned not a drop of the blood of our race, or
of any race whatsoever dwelling on the earth! To lie under the
condemnation of that goblin face, without the possibility of pleading
even the mercy that our hearts instinctively grant to the smallest mite
of fellow life on our own planet! To be alone! friendless! forsaken!
condemned!--in a far-off, kinless world! I could have fallen down in
idolatry before a grain of sand from the shore of the Atlantic!
In the murkiest depth of my despair a sound roused me with a shock that
made my heart ache.
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