A moment later the racing engine pulsated with a confusion of echoes, and a group of men stood at the water's edge searching for the direction in which the speeding craft was moving. It was hopeless.
Then came a voice—the authoritative voice of a leader.
"Don't fire. Not a shot. You can't be certain who you'll hit. They won't get far."
CHAPTER XXIX
THE CLOSE OF THE WEEK-END
A sensation of dreadful pain swept through an eternity of obscurity, impenetrable to all but a subconscious emotion. Horror floated through a world unseen, unknown. Terror thrilled senses dead to all reality. An abyss yawned on every hand, a black abyss in which stirred, all unseen, a threat so overwhelming that the victim remained passive, defenceless; waiting, waiting for the final crushing torture.
The blackness changed. It gave place to a deep, ruddy light. It was a light which inspired a sensation of fierce burning. The scorch of it was devastating, yet the torture went on as if the limit could never be reached.
The ruddy light faded to a grey twilight, through which shot tongues of forked flame, and, with each rift in the grey, pain shot a hundredfold more intense for its broken continuity. A terrified shrinking resulted. The moments of respite became a period of mental torture greater than the reality of the stabs of blinding light.
It seemed that no suffering could ever equal such agony again. It was living death.