I awoke to a sort of disturbed dreaming long before I awoke to reality. There was a heavy confusion in my mind as though I were being swung at the end of a long chain. There was a rushing and buzzing in my ears, and sometimes a sudden cessation as though the whole world were frozen into a momentary immobility. Then with a wrench I was dizzily spinning again in a sickening circle. But by degrees the spinning seemed to slacken, and then I was tossing uneasily with short lurchings and swayings as though I were suspended from a high roof with a company of giants swinging me from one to another. For sometimes I was tearing through the air; and then I would stop with a thud and a jerk to be sent racing away once more. And always there was a sort of burdensome cloud weighing at my heart, strangely oppressing me with stifling fold upon fold of black vapour. And the cloud seemed to grow, till it enveloped my whole body; and the noise of the air rushing past me became muffled and far away, as though I were swathed in huge blankets of palpable clinging gloom. I struggled against it, and longed even for the sickening hiss of the air about my face, for something seemed to be sucking at my lungs so that I couldn't draw a mouthful of breath. So tossed with such evil fancies I was gradually shaken back to consciousness, and at length knew that I was stiflingly gagged and bound, with something over my face shutting out the cool night air, if night it were, and making the world for me a wall of solid blackness. I knew also that I was being carried on somebody's back; and over very uneven country, I thought, for my body, not by any means recovered from its stiffness and soreness, was being jolted cruelly as my captor pushed on with thumping strides. It was useless trying to struggle or to utter the least sound. I did make one frenzied effort; but though the blood seemed to be bursting at my veins I couldn't so much as twitch a muscle. I believe if I hadn't lapsed again into unconsciousness I should have gone mad, for there seemed to well up from the very depths of my being as it were a scream of frenzy heaving to be uttered but unable to burst free, and with a sense of convulsed suffocation I felt the darkness close about me again and my senses were mercifully sealed. So with a wavering mist about me, which sometimes opened to let through a dim and filmy light, to darken again into an impenetrable gloom, I was borne on and on, interminably it seemed to my dazed mind. Then the jolting jog gave place to a smooth tranquillity, and a vague rhythmic grinding told me I was in a boat on the river. And later I felt a heaving and sinking, and knew I was on the sea. The sea!