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Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 2 by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
page 58 of 228 (25%)
strife, and then a strange silence. Hepburn sickened at the heart;
was then his rival dead? had he left this bright world? lost his
life--his love? For an instant Hepburn felt guilty of his death; he
said to himself he had never wished him dead, and yet in the
struggle he had kept aloof, and now it might be too late for ever.
Philip could not bear the suspense; he looked stealthily round the
corner of the rock behind which he had been hidden, and saw that
they had overpowered Kinraid, and, too exhausted to speak, were
binding him hand and foot to carry him to their boat.

Kinraid lay as still as any hedgehog: he rolled when they pushed
him; he suffered himself to be dragged without any resistance, any
motion; the strong colour brought into his face while fighting was
gone now, his countenance was livid pale; his lips were tightly held
together, as if it cost him more effort to be passive, wooden, and
stiff in their hands than it had done to fight and struggle with all
his might. His eyes seemed the only part about him that showed
cognizance of what was going on. They were watchful, vivid, fierce
as those of a wild cat brought to bay, seeking in its desperate
quickened brain for some mode of escape not yet visible, and in all
probability never to become visible to the hopeless creature in its
supreme agony.

Without a motion of his head, he was perceiving and taking in
everything while he lay bound at the bottom of the boat. A sailor
sat by his side, who had been hurt by a blow from him. The man held
his head in his hand, moaning; but every now and then he revenged
himself by a kick at the prostrate specksioneer, till even his
comrades stopped their cursing and swearing at their prisoner for
the trouble he had given them, to cry shame on their comrade. But
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