Vague images of earthly things began to float upward out of the dark, as it were, symbols of physical life whose meaning remained obscure. I pictured a spring-board, on which a swimmer stood poised, waiting to dive into the sea and set the plank behind him quivering, and a large roll of some material, like a carpet, blocking a cellar door. Gradually, through an alternation of dreams and blankness, I began to be aware of the parched and withered body that cloaked me. The point of consciousness had shrunk within its earthly envelope. Soon it diffused itself throughout my members. Now I could translate my symbols into ideas. That coiled-up substance that blocked the door was my tongue, fallen back into the throat. And the spring-board on which the swimmer stood—that was my heart, waiting to beat. And unless and until the swimmer—I—made that plunge into life’s ocean, it could not. Slowly the need of physical resurrection urged me onward. A thousand darts were stabbing in my flesh, like purgatorial fire. No motor nerve had yet awakened, but the capillaries, opening, pricked me like red-hot needles. Faint memories of the past flashed through my mind, and, though I recalled no intervening period, I was sensible that those events had happened infinitely long before. Suddenly I plunged. I felt as if a sword had pierced my body. I felt the waters of that living ocean close over my face, and gasped. I breathed. Simultaneously, with a loud click, the cap of the cylinder flew off, air rushed in, a stabbing light broke through my closed eyelids; I fainted. It was, of course, the gradual unscrewing of the cylinder cap as the mechanism ran down, and the consequent admission of minute quantities of oxygen, that had begun to restore me. I must have passed several days in semi-consciousness before the cylinder opened. When the last thread of the screw was traversed, the inrush of air caused the respiration to begin. I was breathing when I became conscious once more, and my heart was straining in my breast. I got my eyes open. There followed hours of light-tortured delirium, during which I struggled to regain the motor powers. With infinite endeavor I placed one hand upon the other and passed it up the wrist and forearm. The muscles were all gone. The ulna and radius were perfectly distinguishable, and I could encircle either with my fingers, after I had managed to flex them. I noticed that my joints creaked like rusty hinges.