I
A roar drowned the boy's senses, sweeping his mind away on a mountainous billow of sound.
Earth and sea were a bubble beneath his feet, swelling and sailing; and he was walking on the bubble, and toppling backwards as he walked.
He felt himself smiling in a foolish way. There was no pain then about dying, he thought with a pleased and remote surprise—only this silly smiling content.
Things hit him outside. He was aware of them; but they did not hurt. His body was wood, dull to sensation. He himself was within somewhere, snug and safe. He had heard the parson at home talk about eternal life. Now he knew what the man meant. To be alive yet above pain, to be dead yet dimly comfortable—that was the heavenly life. It was very curious, and not half bad.
And—he had been there before. When and where, he could not recollect.
But all was friendly, all familiar.
Suddenly there came a change, and for the worse. A great wet cloud swamped him. The light went out. All about him was cold, and dark, and clinging. Was this the grave and gate of Death?
He shuddered, and yet was not greatly afraid.
Everything was so far away, on the circumference of being, as it were; and he at the centre, safe and warm, was mildly interested—little more.
Somehow he knew he was in the sea, walking dream-waters; whether conscious, or unconscious, in the spirit or out of it, he knew not, and didn't greatly care.
Grotesque yet beautiful impressions of things familiar flitted across his mind. He saw his mother in a cocked hat; Cuddie Collingwood, his pet canary, strutting the maindeck and picking his teeth; and Gwen with a tarred pigtail, her brawny bosom tattooed with dancing-girls.
She was making faces at him, the faces that none but Gwen could make; and he was about to shoot his tongue back brotherly, when there came another change, terrible this time.
There was a singing in his ears; a sense of suffocation and appalling impotence. He was rushing back to the world of sense and pain—in time, no doubt, to die, when he thought he was through that trouble. Just his luck!
He was throttled, battling, distraught. About him was the rush and smother of waters. A secret power clutched him about the waist and tugged him back. For the first time in his life he felt the aweful and inexorable grip of Necessity; and his heart screamed.
Then with a bob and a gasp, he was up; the water in his nostrils; and his hands clinging to a spar.