Yet the sensation served to revive my scattered senses, and just as I
was awakening to a lively sense of amazement, an incredible doubt of my
own emotions, and an eager desire to know what had happened, my strange
conveyance oscillated once or twice, undulated lightly up and down, like
a woodpecker flying from tree to tree, and then grounded, bows first,
rolled over several times, then steadied again, and, coming at last to
rest, the next minute the infernal rug opened, quivering along all its
borders in its peculiar way, and humping up in the middle shot me five
feet into the air like a cat tossed from a schoolboy's blanket.

As I turned over I had a dim vision of a clear light like the shine
of dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me. Upon that slope was
ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid-looking individual with
his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing
all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties
of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was directly in my line
as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light
and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus,
and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him
sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went
into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until
at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving
legs and arms. When we had done the mass disentangled itself and I was
able to raise my head from the shoulder of someone on whom I had fallen,
lifting him, or her--which was it?--into a sitting posture alongside of
me at the same time, while the others rose about us like wheat-stalks
after a storm, and edged shyly off, as well as they might.

Such a sleek, slim youth it was who sat up facing me, with a flush of
gentle surprise on his face, and dapper hands that felt cautiously about