I had conquered. I don't think that in that moment I had any feeling but one of wild, fierce joy. He was going, I was going with him, but I never thought of that, until my right ankle was clutched in a vice-like grip. I felt the warm, heaving body below me rush away, tearing my grip from its throat by its own dreadful impetus, and then, as I was snatched back with a jar of every bone in my body, there was a shrill whistling of air for a second as Zorilla went headlong to his doom, and I knew nothing else. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Falling! Falling through deep waters, with a horrible sickening sense of utter helplessness and desolation; nerves, heart, mind--very being itself--awaited the crash of extinction. A slight jolt, a roaring of great waters in the air, and a voice, dim, thin and far away! ... In some mysterious way, the sense of sight was joined to that of sound and hearing. I was surrounded by blackness shot with gleams of baleful fire, shifting and changing until the black grew gray in furious eddies, the gray changed into the light of day, and a far-off voice became loud and insistent. It was thus that I came to myself after the horror on the edge of the dizzy void. The first thing I saw was the face of Juanita. There were tears in her eyes and her cheeks were brilliant. Then I heard, and even then with a start, a voice that I had never thought to hear again--the gentle, tripping accents of Pu-Yi. "He will do now, Senorita. The doctor said that he would awake from his sleep with very little the matter except the shock--" "Juanita!" I cried, and her cool hand came down upon my forehead. "You are not to excite yourself, dearest," she said. For a moment or two I lay there in a waking swoon of puzzled but entire bliss. Then I tried to move my position slightly upon the bed, for I was lying upon a bed in a large and airy room, and groaned aloud. Every muscle in my body seemed stretched as if upon the rack, and there was a pain like a red-hot iron in one ankle. "It will hurt for a few hours," said Pu-Yi, "but you will shortly be massaged, Sir Thomas, and then--" "You!" I cried, "but you are dead! Zorilla got you on the tower before--before--" My mind leapt up into full activity. I was once more swaying upon the edge of infinity with my fingers locked in the bull neck of the assassin, and my voice died away into a whisper of horror. "He stunned me, that was all, Sir Thomas. His bullet glanced away from my head. I came to myself just in time to see you struggling with him and gripped you just as you were falling off into space. The spirits of my ancestors were with me." "And he--Zorilla?" "Will never trouble us more. But you are not well enough yet to talk. You are in my hands for the present." "Do exactly as Pu-Yi says, dear, and remember that all is well." "Your father?" I gasped--why hadn't I thought of Morse before?