enry's hand fell with terrific force on his head and he
crumpled down over the basin. He was conscious of a single agonizing
pain, like a hot iron thrust suddenly through him, and then a great and
engulfing pit of darkness closed about him.

CHAPTER XXV

In that chaotic night in which he was drifting, David experienced
neither pain nor very much of the sense of life. And yet, without seeing
or feeling, he seemed to be living. All was dead within him but that
last consciousness, which is almost the spirit; he might have been
dreaming, and minutes, hours, or even years might have passed in that
dream. For a long time he seemed to be sinking through the blackness;
and then something stopped him, without jar or shock, and he was rising.
He could hear nothing at first. There was a vast silence about him, a
silence as deep and unbroken as the abysmal pit in which he seemed to be
floating. After that he felt himself swaying and rocking, as though
tossed gently on the billows of a sea. This was the first thought that
took shape in his struggling brain--he was at sea; he was on a ship in
the heart of a black night, and he was alone. He tried to call out, but
his tongue seemed gone. It seemed a long time before day broke, and then
it was strange day. Little needles of light pricked his eyes; silver
strings shot like flashes of wave-like lightning through the darkness,
and he began to feel, and to hear. A dozen hands seemed holding him down
until he could move neither arms nor feet. He heard voices. There
appeared to be many of them at first, an unintelligible rumble of
voices, and then very swiftly they became two.

He opened his eyes. The first thing that he observed was a bar of
sunlight against the eastern wall of his room. That bit of sunlight was
like a magnet thrown there to reassemble the faculties that had drifted
away from him in the dark night of his unconsciousness. It tried to tell
him, first of all, that it was afternoon--quite late in the afternoon.
He would have sensed that fact in another moment or two, but something
came between him and the radiance flung by the westward slant of the
sun. It was a face, two faces--first Hauck's and then Brokaw's! Yes,
Brokaw was there! Staring down at him. A fiend still. And almost
unrecognizable. He was no longer stripped, and he was no longer bloody.
His countenance was swollen; his lips were raw, one eye was closed--but
the other gleamed like a devil's. David tried t