"Too muchee, swing, swing!" cried Wah Shin, as the raft hung again on the edge of the vortex, only to be hurled a second time to the outer edge.
This swinging was at first a decidedly pleasant sensation, but soon it made the passengers on the raft giddy and then quite sick.
It was only by keeping their eyes shut that they could command their senses.
A half an hour of this whirling to the center and being thrown back to the edge continued, though it seemed much longer to the tortured occupants of the raft, and Sam spoke his thoughts rather than addressed any of his companions when he said:
"Will this go on forever?"
"It do look to me powahful-like's if we was a-gwine to sikle round dis yar place foheber an' eber, amen," said Ike.
Sam looked up again at the sky, and the crimson hue of the clouds told him that the sun would soon sink in the upper world and that darkness would soon come to add to their trials.
He felt that whether the raft was swallowed up or continued to swing in that giddy dance till morning would make but little difference to himself or his companions, for in either case death would come before morning.
His brave heart grew heavy, as if the darkness of descending night were falling on it.
He thought of his dead mother, thought of the imprisoned father, whom he had set out so heroically to save, and the death that threatened was only awful to him because he was to see his father nevermore.