"I'm blind an' I won't see any more," he said, "an' mebbe you won't ever
walk any more. But if we ever git to that gold I kin do the work and you
kin show me how. Now--p'int out the way, Jan Larose!"
With his arms clasped about O'Grady's naked shoulders, Jan's smarting
eyes searched through the thickening smother of fire and smoke for a road
that the other's feet might tread. He shouted
"Left"--"right"--"right"--"right"--"left" into this blind companion's
ears until they touched the wall. As the heat smote them more fiercely,
O'Grady bowed his great head upon his chest and obeyed mutely the signals
that rang in his ears. The bottoms of his moccasins were burned from his
feet, live embers ate at his flesh, his broad chest was a fiery blister,
and yet he strode on straight into the face of still greater heat and
greater torture, uttering no sound that could be heard above the steady
roar of the flames. And Jan, limp and helpless on his back, felt then the
throb and pulse of a giant life under him, the straining of thick neck,
of massive shoulders and the grip of powerful arms whose strength told
him that at last he had found the comrade and the man in Clarry O'Grady.
"Right"--"left"--"left"--"right" he shouted, and then he called for
O'Grady to stop in a voice that was shrill with warning.
"There's fire ahead," he yelled. "We can't follow the wall any longer.
There's an open space close to the chasm.
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