"Lights, Beatrice! Lights, lights, real lights!" he sought to scream. But even as he fought to shake her from the swoon that wrapped her senses, his own last fragment of strength deserted him. He had one final sense impression of a swift upshooting of the lights, a sudden brightening of those three radiant points. Then came a sudden gleam as though of waters, black and still. A gleam, blue and uncanny, across the inky surface of some vast, mysterious, hidden sea. Up rushed the lights at him; up rushed the sea of jetty black! Stern shouted some wild, incoherent thing. Crash! A shock! A frightful impact, swift, sudden, annihilating! Then in a mad and lashing struggle, all knowledge and all feeling vanished utterly. And the blackness of oblivion received him into its insensate bosom. CHAPTER XXIII THE WHITE BARBARIANS Warmth, wetness, and a knowledge of great weakness--these, joined with a singular lassitude, oppression of the lungs and stifling of the breath, were Allan Stern's sensations when conscious life returned. Pain there was as well. His body felt sorely bruised and shaken. His first thought, his intense yearning wonder for the girl's welfare and his sickening fear lest she be dead, mingled with some attempt to analyze his own suffering; to learn, if possible, what damage he had taken in flesh and bone. He tried to move, but found he could not. Even lying inert, as he now found himself, so great was the exertion to breathe that only by a fight could he keep the breath of life in his shaken frame. He opened his eyes. Light! Could it be? Light in that place? Yes, the light was real, and it was shining directly in his face. At first all that his disturbed, half-delirious vision could make out was a confused bluish glare. But in a moment this resolved itself into a smoking, blazing cresset. Stern could now distinctly see the metal bands of the fire-basket in which it lay, as well as a supporting staff, about five feet long, that seemed to vanish downward in the gloom. And, understanding nothing, filled with vague, half-insane hallucinations and wild wonders, he tried to struggle upward with a babbling cry: "Beatrice! Oh, Beatrice--_where are you?_" To his intense astonishment, a human hand, bluish in the strange glare, laid itself upon his breast and pushed him down again. Above him he saw a face, wrinkled, bearded and ghastly blue. And as he struggled still he perceived by the unearthly light that a figure was bending over him. "A man!" he gulped. "Man! _Man!_ Oh, my God! At last--a man!" He tried to raise himself upon his elbow, for his whole soul was flooded with a sudden gratitude and love and joy in presence of that long-sought goal. But instantly, as soon as his dazed senses could convey the terrible impression to his brain, his joy was curdled into blank astonishment and fear and grief. For to his intense chagrin, strive as he might, he could move neither hand nor foot!