I had conquered. I don't think that in that moment I had any feeling but one of wild, fierce joy. He was going, I was going with him, but I never thought of that, until my right ankle was clutched in a vice-like grip. I felt the warm, heaving body below me rush away, tearing my grip from its throat by its own dreadful impetus, and then, as I was snatched back with a jar of every bone in my body, there was a shrill whistling of air for a second as Zorilla went headlong to his doom, and I knew nothing else.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Falling! Falling through deep waters, with a horrible sickening sense of utter helplessness and desolation; nerves, heart, mind—very being itself—awaited the crash of extinction. A slight jolt, a roaring of great waters in the air, and a voice, dim, thin and far away!
... In some mysterious way, the sense of sight was joined to that of sound and hearing. I was surrounded by blackness shot with gleams of baleful fire, shifting and changing until the black grew gray in furious eddies, the gray changed into the light of day, and a far-off voice became loud and insistent.
It was thus that I came to myself after the horror on the edge of the dizzy void.
The first thing I saw was the face of Juanita. There were tears in her eyes and her cheeks were brilliant. Then I heard, and even then with a start, a voice that I had never thought to hear again—the gentle, tripping accents of Pu-Yi.
"He will do now, Señorita. The doctor said that he would awake from his sleep with very little the matter except the shock—"
"Juanita!" I cried, and her cool hand came down upon my forehead.
"You are not to excite yourself, dearest," she said.