The boat hung suspended a moment.
Stern saw what seemed a long, clear, greenish slant of water. Deafened and dazed by the infernal pandemonium of noise, he bowed his head on hers, and his arms tightened.
Suddenly everything dropped away. The universe crashed and bellowed.
Stern felt a heavy dash of brine--cold, strangling, irresistible.
All grew black.
“Death!” thought he, and knew no more.
CHAPTER XII
TRAPPED ON THE LEDGE
Consciousness won back to Allan Stern--how long afterward he could not tell--under the guise of a vast roaring tumult, a deafening thunder that rose, fell, leaped aloft again in huge, titanic cadences of sound.
And coupled with this glimmering sense-impression, he felt the drive of water over him; he saw, vaguely as in the memory of a dream, a dim gray light that weakly filtered through the gloom.
Weak, sick, dazed, the man realized that he still lived; and to his mind the thought “Beatrice!” flashed back again.