"Take care! For God's sake, take care!" shouted Bangeling.
"Help! Wistik! Marjon! Markus! help!" cried Johannes, crashing through the door.
Before him he saw a black and bottomless night; but it was more spacious, and he felt his distress diminishing.
And now he saw the imps all racing after him, and they were playing with something. It glittered as they threw it, one to another, and they tugged and pulled and spit on it, and did things still worse—such as only very vile and impudent beings could do.
It was a book, and Johannes saw his name upon it—his own and his family name. Johannes was called the "Traveler" of his family.
At last one of the imps caught hold of it by a leaf, and flung it high up in air to tear it to pieces. The leaves fluttered and glittered, but held together. And the book, ceasing to fall, went higher and higher up into the dark night until it seemed in the far distance to be a little star.
Johannes kept looking at it with all his might, and it seemed to him as if he were a light bit of wood, or a bubble, rising swifter and swifter to the surface—from out the awful depths of the sea. Then, slowly, the heavens grew blue and bright.
At last he was drifting in the full light of day. His eyes were still closed, but he felt that he had returned to his day body, and he rested—still a little longer—in the light, motionless, blissful slumber of a convalescent, or of one come home again after a long and weary journey.
[1] Waan = Error.
[2] Bangeling = Little coward.