I sprang to my feet with a desperate cry to Harry and swung toward him.
There was no answering sound, no rush of feet, nothing; but I felt my throat gripped in monstrous, hairy fingers.
I tried to struggle, and immediately was crushed to the ground by the overpowering weight of a score of soft, ill-smelling bodies.
The grasp on my throat tightened; my arms relaxed, my brain reeled, and I knew no more.
Chapter VII.
THE FIGHT IN THE DARK.
I returned to consciousness with a sickening sensation of nausea and unreality. Only my brain was alive; my entire body was numb and as though paralyzed. Still darkness and silence, for all my senses told me I might have been still in the spot where I had fallen.
Then I tried to move my arms, and found that my hands and feet were firmly bound. I strained at the thongs, making some slight sound; and immediately I heard a whisper but a few feet away:
"Are you awake, Paul?"