It righted, swerved, shot far ahead, then once again somersaulted.
Stern had disjointed, crazy thoughts of air-pressure, condensation and compression, resistance, abstruse formulae. To him it seemed that some gigantic problem in stress-calculation were being hurled at him, to solve--it seemed that, blind, deaf, dumb, some sinister and ghoul-like demon were flailing him until he answered--and that he could not answer!
He had a dim realization of straining madly at his straps till the veins started big and swollen in his hammering brows. Then consciousness lapsed.
Lapsed, yet came again--and with it pain. An awful pain in the ear-drums, that roared and crackled without cease.
Breath! He was fighting for breath!
It was a nightmare--a horrible dream of darkness and a mighty booming wind--a dream of stifling vapors and an endless void that sucked them down, down, down, eternally!
Delusions came, and mocking visions of safety. Both hands flung out as though to clutch the roaring gale, he fought the intangible.
Again he lost all knowledge.
And once again--how long after, how could he know?--he came to some partial realization of tortured existence.
In one of the mad downward rushes--rushes which ended in a long spiral slant--his staring, bloodshot eyes that sought to pierce the murk, seemed to behold a glimmer, a dull gleam of light.