I could plod along, but to save my life I could not have hurried.
Any healthy savage could have caught me in a hundred yards.
The track, I remember, was overhung with creepers, and often I had to squeeze through thickets of tree-ferns.

Countless little brooks ran down from the hillside, threads of silver among the green pastures.
Soon I left the stream and climbed up on the shoulder, where the road was not much better than a precipice.

Every step was a weariness.

I could hardly drag one foot after the other, and my heart was beating like the fanners of a mill, I had spasms of acute sickness, and it took all my resolution to keep me from lying down by the roadside.
At last I was at the top of the shoulder and could look back.

There was no sign of anybody on the road so far as I could see.