nd prevent myself from sinking deeper? No.
The water was two feet in depth. I should drown at once.

This last last hope left me as soon as formed. I could think of no plan
to save myself. I could make no further effort. A strange stupor
seized upon me. My very thoughts became paralysed. I knew that I was
going mad. For a moment I was mad!

After an interval my senses returned. I made an effort to rouse my mind
from its paralysis, in order that I might meet death, which I now
believed to be certain, as a man should.

I stood erect. My eyes had sunk to the prairie level, and rested upon
the still bleeding victims of my cruelty. My heart smote me at the
sight. Was I suffering a retribution of God?

With humble and penitent thoughts I turned my face to heaven, almost
dreading that some sign of omnipotent anger would scowl upon me from
above. But no! The sun was shining as brightly as ever, and the blue
canopy of the world was without a cloud.

I gazed upward, and prayed with an earnestness known only to the hearts
of men in positions of peril like mine.

As I continued to look up, an object attracted my attention. Against
the sky I distinguished the outlines of a large bird. I knew it to be
the obscene bird of the plains, the buzzard vulture. Whence had it
come? Who knows? Far beyond the reach of human eye it had seen or
scented the slaughtered antelopes, and on broad, silent wing was now
descending to the feast of death.

Presently another, and another, and many others, mottled the blue field
of the heavens, curving and wheeling silently earthward. Then the
foremost swooped down upon the bank, and after gazing around for a
moment, flapped off towards its prey.

In a few seconds the prairie was black with filthy birds, which
clambered over the dead antelopes, and beat their wings against each
other, while they tore out the eyes of the quarry with their fetid
beaks.

And now came gaunt wolves, sneaking and hungry, stealing out of the
cactus thicket, and loping, coward-like, over the green swells of the
prairie. These, after a battle, drove away the vultures, and tore up
the prey, all the while growling and snapping vengefully at each other.

"Thank Heaven! I shall at least be saved from this!"

I was soon relieved from the sight. My eyes had sunk below the level of
the bank. I had looked my last on the fair green earth. I could now
see only the clayey walls that contained the river, and