I heard him splash into the water that poured from the wheel—dance in it—laugh and scream out:
“Tit for tat, and the devil pipes! Caught in his own net! You, there, in the dark! Do you hear? Where are you? Where?—my arms hunger for you!”
The paralysis of my senses left me.
“Man or fiend?” I shrieked above the thunder of the water. “Down on your knees! It is the end for both of us! Down, and weep and pray—for I believe, before God, you have just murdered your son!”
There was a brief fearful pause; he seemed to be listening—then, without preface or warning, there came a sudden surging crash, deafening and appalling and I thought “Is it upon us?”
Still I stood unscathed, though a cracking volley of sounds, rending and shattering, succeeded the crash, and one wild, dreadful cry that pierced through all. Then silence fell, broken only by the smooth, washing sweep of a great body of water through the channel below.
Silence fell and lapped me in a merciful unconsciousness; for, with the relaxing of the mental pressure I went plump down upon the floor where I stood and lay in a long faint.
* * * * * *
When I came to myself a dim wash of daylight soaking through the blurred window had found my face as I lay prone upon the boards, and was crawling up to my eyes like a child to open them. An ineffable soft sense of peace kept still my exhausted limbs in the first waking moments, and only by degrees occurred to me the horror and tragedy of the previous night.
Still I made no attempt to rise, hoping only in forlorn self-pity that death would come to me gently as I lay and take me by the hand, saying: “With the vexing problems of life you need nevermore trouble yourself.”