I do not know how long I stood there under the surface with Nona before I attained semblance of normality. But gradually the burning in my chest and the smothering of my heart subsided. My brain cleared.
I looked about me curiously. The water was clear and transparent to a remarkable degree. There seemed inherent light diffused through it, like a phosphorescence.
We had taken several steps forward and were well below the surface now. Underneath my feet was a sandy soil. To the right and left were rocky walls—the sides of the submerged tunnel. And ahead lay open water, dim in the distance, with the narrow sandy floor sloping downward like a path down a hillside.
Everything was slightly blurred in outline. Nona’s hair floated out and above her. The freedom of movement we had had in the air above was gone. We were hampered in moving by the friction of the water.
But it was nothing like the friction of walking in your water. Indeed, it was far more like your Earthly existence on land.
I am very specific in detailing these sensations. You will see why in a moment; you will see that this experience was the means of saving both our lives—Nona’s and mine—and projecting us into a new era of my existence.
For after the very next time of sleep, the catastrophe to our tiny world overtook us.
CHAPTER VI
We found our molluscs and struggled back up the sloping path to shallow water. On the bank I lay and coughed, gasping and struggling to remove the residual water from my lungs and replace it with air. The transition back was far worse than entering the water. Nona, who quite evidently had done it several times before, recovered more quickly than I. As I lay panting and choking upon our couch, she made up a fire. The two stones which she rubbed together ignited in a moment—a slow, sulphurous-looking flame with a little smoke which the slight current of air through the cave carried away. Then, when the first stones were burning, she added other stones which glowed like coal.
We ate our meal, and I lay again upon our couch with Nona sitting beside me.