ined
me that it was a fixed and not a moving object. I swam towards it,
carefully regulating my respiration and determined to avoid all flurry,
but I saw that in spite of my utmost efforts I was being hurried past
it. Then I drifted into a space where there was something of a little
broken, choppy sea, and got another fill of that beastly water, which
tasted of tar and sewage and all abominations, and sickened me again to
the very heart. Then, before I had fairly recovered from this, and while
I was only automatically keeping myself afloat, I saw the wet, rotting
piles of a wooden pier quite close to me, and swimming like a madman,
touched the surface, and tried to get a grip of it. I failed, and was
swept along, gripping and slipping in a most desperate endeavor, until
at last the finger-nails of my right hand stuck somewhere in a crack of
the water-soaked and slimy wood, and I held on, feeling that I was safe.
I had not the faintest sensation of pain at the time, but I clung to the
slimy pillar of that pier so urgently with both hands that my nails
were half torn away, and for a fortnight later it was only with great
difficulty that I could handle a pen, or button or unbutton a collar,
or use a knife and fork. I tried to bottom the stream, but found I was
quite out of my depth, and so worked cautiously along with the current
from post to post until I came to the end of the structure, and then
feeling my way round it in grim darkness, found myself at last with my
feet embedded in soft mud. I held on there for a minute or two to take
breath, and then fought on again. In a little while I found myself on
dry land, but so used up by the pull and by the unwonted exertion that I
fell all in a heap at the water's edge, and lay there so prostrated that
I could move neither hand nor foot. At first the air was tenfold
colder than the water had been, but the natural heat reasserted itself
gradually, and my forces so far gathered themselves together that I
could stand upon my feet and walk. I went on blindly just at first, with
such lights as were visible dancing wildly all about me, and it must
only have been by sheer good fortune that I did not wander back into the
river from which I had so narrowly escaped. Sometimes I saw hundreds of
lights, green and red and dazzling white, which had no existence at all,
but in the midst of these I made out one which was stationary and real,
and I went towards it. When I reached it I found that