I felt my brain grow curiously numb and every muscle in
my body contracted with a pain almost unbearable. Still the thing
came closer and closer, and it seemed to me, half dazed as I was,
that it advanced much faster than before.
Then suddenly I felt a sensation of cold and moisture on my arms
and legs and a pressure against my body, and I realized, as in a
dream, that I had entered the stream of water!
I was crawling toward the thing on my hands and knees, without
having even been conscious that I had moved.
That brought despair and a last supreme struggle to resist
whatever mysterious power it was that dragged me forward.
Cold beads of sweat rolled from my forehead. Beneath the surface
of the water my hands gripped the rocks as in a vise. My teeth
had sunk deep into my lower lip and covered my chin with blood,
though I did not know that till afterward.
But I was pulled loose from my hold, and forward. I bent the
whole force of my will to the effort not to move, but my hand
left the rock and crept forward. I was fully conscious of what I
was doing. I knew that if I could once draw my eyes away from
that compelling gaze the spell would be broken, but the power to
do so was not in me.
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