ths and nostrils, and
still holding to each other. As good luck would have it for me at that
moment I came up on top, and a single blow disengaged me from my late
adversary. The vessel from which we had fallen was already at a distance
which seemed astonishing, and as I trod the water and looked about
me, all the twinkling lights of the river craft and the shore looked
alarmingly distant. I made for the nearest of them all, and swam,
dreadfully embarrassed by my boots and soaked clothing. The light
towards which I directed myself shone green over the black spaces of
the water, and concentrating all my observation upon it, I thought I
approached it at quite a royal pace. In a very little while, however, I
discovered that the light was bearing down on me at a much greater rate
than that at which I was approaching it, and finally I had some ado to
get out of the way of the boat which carried it, and was considerably
tossed and tumbled about in the long furrowing wake it made. I sang
out at my loudest, but I can only suppose that I was not heard, for the
craft, whatever it might have been, swept swiftly down the stream,
and in a few seconds was lost to me. I began to feel horribly cold and
hopeless. I have been in danger a good many times in my life, but almost
always when I could warm the sense of peril by action; but here I felt
for a moment as if my time had come, and as if nothing I could do could
avert it. The fancy fairly sickened me; and what with the chill of
immersion, the sickening taste of the nauseous water, and my own sense
of feebleness as a swimmer, I was on the edge of giving up; but all of
a sudden, as I have felt more than once in my time, a perfectly calm
and bright sensation succeeded to the panic, and I rolled over on to my
back, determined to make the best of things and to husband my strength
as far as possible. I had read scores of times, as everybody has, that
a man floating in the water has only to throw his head back, to keep his
hands down, and to rest quite still to be safe. I tried this promising
experiment, and whether from the weight of my wet clothes or the
irregularity of my breathing, I found that it would not answer, and that
I was compelled to keep in motion. I could feel that the current was
carrying me, and as I paddled along, most carefully husbanding my
strength, I saw that I was bearing gradually nearer to a light on shore,
whose position in reference to the various other lights determ