billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea.
Quicker than I can write it lapped a corner over and rolled me in its
folds like a chrysalis in a cocoon. I gave a wild yell and made one
frantic struggle, but it was too late. With the leathery strength of a
giant and the swiftness of an accomplished cigar-roller covering a "core"
with leaf, it swamped my efforts, straightened my limbs, rolled me over,
lapped me in fold after fold till head and feet and everything were
gone--crushed life and breath back into my innermost being, and then,
with the last particle of consciousness, I felt myself lifted from the
floor, pass once round the room, and finally shoot out, point foremost,
into space through the open window, and go up and up and up with a
sound of rending atmospheres that seemed to tear like riven silk in
one prolonged shriek under my head, and to close up in thunder astern
until my reeling senses could stand it no longer. and time and space
and circumstances all lost their meaning to me.




CHAPTER II

How long that wild rush lasted I have no means of judging. It may
have been an hour, a day, or many days, for I was throughout in a
state of suspended animation, but presently my senses began to return
and with them a sensation of lessening speed, a grateful relief to a
heavy pressure which had held my life crushed in its grasp, without
destroying it completely. It was just that sort of sensation though
more keen which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller feels when he is aware,
without special perception, harbour is reached and a voyage comes to
an end. But in my case the slowing down was for a long time comparative.