Then I felt myself plunging downward with a velocity that
stunned my senses and took away my breath; and then all was
confusion and chaos--and oblivion.
When I awoke I was lying flat on my back, and Harry was kneeling
at my side. I opened my eyes, and felt that it would be
impossible to make a greater exertion.
"Paul!" cried Harry. "Speak to me! Not you, too--I shall go
mad!"
He told me afterward that I had lain unconscious for many hours,
but that appeared to be all that he knew. How far we had fallen,
or how he had found me, or how he himself had escaped being
crushed to pieces by the falling rock, he was unable to say; and
I concluded that he, too, had been rendered unconscious by the
fall, and for some time dazed and bewildered by the shock.
Well! We were alive--that was all.
For we were weak and faint from hunger and fatigue, and one mass
of bruises and blisters from head to foot. And we had had no
water for something like twenty-four hours. Heaven only knows
where we found the energy to rise and go in search of it; it is
incredible that any creatures in such a pitiable and miserable
condition as we were could have been propelled by hope, unless it
is indeed immortal.
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