Not So Wild a Dream by Eric Sevareid

Author:Eric Sevareid [Sevareid, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781635763492
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2019-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

2

When my eyes opened again I was staring through a screen of leaves at a blue sky. I felt no pain and knew I was quite unhurt. For a moment there was a warm, relaxing sensation of sheer comfort, and I closed my eyes again, feeling an impulse to rest in my quiet bower.

But an instant later I was on my feet jerking savagely at the clasps of the harness. Panic took full possession of me. The harness was a strait jacket and the thick brush a dark, suffocating prison. My nerves behaved as if this were the mortal struggle. With my bare hands I beat at the thorny brush and the cutting sword grasses and plunged uphill where, my instincts told me, the wreckage lay. The fire alone lived and made a connection with the world I had just left. I was hysterical, and this earth was no refuge, but a maddeningly impassive barrier between me and the other world I frantically sought. I slipped and fell heavily, tried again and fell once more. Each time I rose and plunged forward the brush closed in again and beat me to my knees. I tried to shout, but there was vomit in my throat and I could make no sounds. A few coherent thoughts began to take racing form: “I have no food. There are berries here. Where are the Japs? Who lives in that grass village? I have no weapons. I have a penknife. A razor. No, the little bag is not on my belt. This is one of those things you read about. That boy from Minnesota. He lived forty days in the New Guinea jungles. Maybe I can, too. No, this is too bad—no, I cannot do it.” I floundered on through the brush and realized that blood covered my hands and was seeping through my trouser legs. I tried to shout again, and a small wail resulted.

I lay for a minute, exhausted, listening intently, but there was no sound of any other living presence. It was at about this moment that I accepted the idea of death. My body struggled on, but my mind seemed for a time to be existing quite independently. It examined the idea quickly and was almost at once reconciled. There was no particularization of the act of dying, whether by hunger or exposure or an enemy bullet. That was of no consequence. I remembered my wife and my baby boys. No picture of them took form; there was only the warm, intimate feeling of them deep within, followed then by a profound wave of regret. At such a moment conscious concern with oneself vanishes completely, and I found myself, as I fell and got up again, calculating the total of my savings and insurance and estimating the prospects of comfort or poverty facing my family.

I heard a shout near at hand, and a wonderful feeling of relief came welling up with the knowledge that I would not die alone, anonymously in the jungle prison.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.