I am a strong, instinctive swimmer. I did not breathe, and when I rose to the surface, the single swift breath I took was purer than any I had had for half an hour past. My head cleared a little; swimming instinctively, and with cautious breaths, I found that I was able to go on. I know now that by some vagary of chance--of fate if you will--I had struck a surface area where breathable air still remained. I swam, striving to plan, to think where I might be swimming. Yet it was all a phantasmagoria, with only the strength of my muscles and the instinct to preserve my life remaining to direct me. Swimming endlessly ... swimming ... taking a half-gasp of breath ... swimming ... trying to think ... or dreaming ... was it all a dream?... When I came to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts of the city. It was still night; the black cloud of death had passed on; the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank in the air, pure at last, as the Almighty distils it for us. Bodies were lying around me on the bank. A dark, silent house stood nearby; and a deserted boat. All darkness and silence--the brooding silence of death. I was still dazed. Maida--Georg; they seemed like people in a dream long faded. Industriana! They were going to the _Rhaal_ City of Industriana. _I_ had been trying to get there. I must get there now--join them. I climbed to my feet; the edge of a forest was nearby and with wavering steps I started toward it. Looking back on it now I realize that I was even then half crazed. In a daze I must have stumbled through the forest for hours. Unreasoning, with only that one idea--to get to Industriana; and in the background of my consciousness the vague belief that Elza would be there to greet me. Into the depths of the untrammeled forest with unguided steps I wandered. At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night hour was long since passed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky. Insects--and sometimes larger beings--leaped and slithered unseen before my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, I did not notice them. And then at last I was brought abruptly to full rationality and consciousness. Stumbling through a tangle of low growth--a black thicket which tore at my garments and scratched my flesh--I was transfixed by a woman's scream. It came through the darkness from near at hand. A crashing of the underbrush, and a woman's scream of terror. It stopped my breath, turned me cold. Elza! CHAPTER XXX _The Monster_