Then suddenly I was
turned completely over, my limbs seemed to be torn from my body,
there was a deafening roar in my ears, and a crushing weight
pressed against me from every side.
Any effort of any kind was worse than useless, as well as
impossible; indeed, I could hardly have been said to be
conscious, except for the fact that I retained sufficient
volition to avoid breathing or swallowing the water.
The pressure against my body was terrific; I wondered vaguely why
life had not departed, since--as I supposed--there was not a
whole bone left in my body. My head was bursting with dizziness
and pain; my breast was a furnace of torture.
Suddenly the pressure lessened and the whirling movement
gradually ceased, but still the current carried me on. I struck
out wildly with both arms--in an effort, I suppose, to grasp the
proverbial straw.
I found no straw, but something better--space. Instinct led the
fight to reach it with my head to get air, but the swiftness of
the current carried me again beneath the surface. My arms seemed
powerless; I was unable to direct them.
I hardly know what happened after that. A feeling of most
intense suffocation in my chest; a relaxation of all my muscles;
a sensation of light in my smarting eyes; a gentle pressure from
the water beneath, like the rising gait of a saddle-horse; and
suddenly, without knowing why or when or how, I found myself
lying on hard ground, gasping, choking, sputtering, not far from
death, but nearer to life than I had thought ever to be again.
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