Bemusement crept stealthily across Memphis' face. "You weren't here until now?" she asked slowly. "I'd be the last one to call you a liar, but I saw you with my own eyes. So did Miss Hicks and Miss Graham. Oh, Lord, and don't they wish they hadn't!"
Under a wave of dizziness, Marc made his way unsteadily back to the lounge. "You did not," he said fretfully, sitting down. "I wasn't here."
Exasperation finally flashed in Memphis' eyes. "All right," she said unhappily. "So you weren't here. I didn't see you. You're absolutely right, Mr. Pillsworth. And ... and that isn't all you are!"
She may have said more, but if she did, Marc didn't hear her. As he sank back onto the lounge, the room suddenly started to spin. Then it stopped, and began to fill with writhing, surging waves of blackness. Ink-like liquid was seeping in everywhere, its whispering tide rising swiftly toward him. It was coming so fast! In a moment it covered Memphis, hiding her from view, and he wondered fleetingly why she allowed herself to be submerged without a struggle.
Then, quickly, the blackness washed over the edge of the lounge, and Marc felt himself, light and buoyant, being lifted upward. Up, up and up he moved and then, just as he was nearing the ceiling, there was a terrible sucking sound and he was drawn swiftly downward into unbroken, unending, fluid blackness.
He moved in a drifting delirium that seemed endless and brief all at the same time. Time, hours ... or were they really minutes? ... dissolved and were lost beyond remembrance. He drifted lazily through ages, shot fleetingly through racing seconds. Then, just as he had resigned himself to this curious state of timelessness, he was lifted upward once more, and shot out of the darkness, into brilliant, nearly blinding light. Borne on the crest of an ebony wave, he was hurtled forward and heavily deposited on what appeared to be a grassy beach.
He lay flat on his stomach for a time, listening to the dying rumble of the wave. And when it was gone, there was a deep stillness, broken only by the lingering lap-lap of the receding blackness. Rolling over, he saw that he was resting on the topmost point of a grassy knoll. The black waters had entirely disappeared now, and the greenness of the little hill stretched out endlessly in all directions. Here and there, clusters of strange feathery trees swayed gently at the command of a blue vaporous mist. It was so blissfully quiet.
Then something shot past his ear and struck the earth behind him with a soft thud. He turned just in time to see a glistening apple ... golden and perfectly round ... rolling down the far side of the mound. He sat up and watched it quizzically.
"Darn!" a voice said shrewishly. "I should have hit him right between his fishy eyes."