“I must break away!” was his one thought.
He fought with desperate energy, trying to tear that deadly grasp from his throat, for the chilling fingers had stopped his breathing and were choking him to death.
It seemed that the bones in his neck cracked beneath the frightful pressure, and that those terrible fingers must crush through flesh and sinew.
Horrible pains darted through his chest, which seemed on the point of bursting. There was a great roaring in his head, upon which he fancied the blows of a great hammer were falling.
Then a bright glare of light flared before his eyes, as if the whole of London had taken fire in an instant.
The roaring in his head was like some mighty Niagara. The light died to appalling darkness, and flared forth again, changing to a hundred colors.
Everything began to whirl around and around, following which he thought himself on a railroad train.
“This is strange,” he thought. “Never before have I traveled on a train that could make such speed. We must be covering more than a hundred miles an hour. It is decidedly jolly.”
No longer did he struggle. He lay supine and helpless in the grasp of the dreaded being with the death-cold hands.
In a moment it seemed that he had left the train and lay reclining on a barge of flowers that was floating down a sun-kissed river into the blue haze of the distance.