CHAPTER XLVI

AMONG GIPSY WOMEN

I cannot say how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to
grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the
slight hold I had on them with the effort. Then came a series of
climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms
below. Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into darkness. Gifted
with a pair of enormous eyes, which threw surrounding objects to a
distance of a mile away, I could not induce the diminutive things to
approach; and shutting eyes led to such a rolling of mountains in my
brain, that, terrified by the gigantic revolution, I lay determinedly
staring; clothed, it seemed positive, in a tight-fitting suit of sheet-
lead; but why? I wondered why, and immediately received an extinguishing
blow. My pillow was heavenly; I was constantly being cooled on it, and
grew used to hear a croon no more musical than the unstopped reed above
my head; a sound as of a breeze about a cavern's mouth, more soothing
than a melody. Conjecture of my state, after hovering timidly in dread
of relapses, settled and assured me I was lying baked, half-buried in an
old river-bed; moss at my cheek, my body inextricable; water now and then
feebly striving to float me out, with horrid pain, with infinite
refreshingness. A shady light, like the light through leafage, I could
see; the water I felt. Why did it keep trying to move me? I questioned
and sank to the depths again.

The excruciated patient was having his wet bandages folded across his