In the circumstances, I know, it would have been the classical thing if all my past life had unwound itself in a flash before the mind’s eye. Whiz—an uninteresting drama in thirty-two reels ought duly to have run its course and I should have remembered everything, from the taste of the baby food in my bottle to the taste of yesterday’s marsala at the Grand Hotel, from my first caning to my last kiss. In point of fact, however, none of the correct things happened. The last thoughts I remember thinking as I went down were about the Rabbit Fancier’s Gazette and my mother. In a final access of that conscientiousness which has haunted and handicapped me all my life long, I reflected that I ought to have another leading article ready by next Friday. And it struck me very forcibly that my mother would be most seriously inconvenienced when she arrived in a few days’ time to find that I was no longer in a position to accompany her on her journey to Rome. When I next came to my senses I was lying face downwards on the beach with somebody sitting astride of my back, as though we were playing horses, using Professor Schaefer’s method of producing artificial respiration. “Uno, due, tre, quattro”—and at every “quattro” the man on my back threw his weight forward on to his hands, which were resting, one on either side of the spine, on my lower ribs. The contents of my lungs were violently expelled. Then my rescuer straightened himself up again, the pressure was relaxed and my lungs replenished themselves with air. “Uno, due, tre, quattro”—the process began again. “He’s breathing! He’s all right. He’s opening his eyes!”