“It was the passage of the eternal night—­frozen, self-contained; awful as any fancied darkness that is without one tradition of a star.  Yet, struggling hereafter to, in some shadowy sense, renew my feelings of the moment, it seemed to me that I had not fallen through darkness at all; but rather that the friction of descent had kindled an inner radiance in me that was independent of the vision of the eyes, and full of promise of a sudden illumination of the soul.

“Now, after falling what depths God knows, I become numbly aware of a little griding sensation at my back, that communicated a whistling small vibration to my whole frame.  This intensified, became more pronounced.  Perceptibly, in that magnificent refinement of speed, our enormous pace I felt to decrease ever so little.  Still we had so far outstripped intelligence as that I was incapable of considering the cause of the change.

“Suddenly, for the first time, pain made itself known; and immediately reason, plunging from above, overtook me, and I could think.

“Then it was I became conscious that, instead of falling, we were rising, rising with immense swiftness, but at a pace that momently slackened—­rising, slipping over ice and in contact with it,

“The muscles of my arms, clasped still about Fidele, involuntarily swelled to her.  My God! there was a tiny answering pressure.  I could have screamed with joy; but physical anguish overmastered me.  My back seemed bursting into flame.

“The suffering was intolerable.  When, at last, I thought I should go mad, in a moment we took a surging swoop, shot down an easy incline, and stopped.

“There had been noise in our descent, as only now I knew by its cessation—­a hissing sound as of wire whirring from a draw-plate.  In the profound enormous silence that, at last, enwrapped us, the bliss of freedom from that metallic accompaniment fell on me like a balm.  My eyelids closed.  Possibly I fainted.

“All in a moment I came to myself, to an undefinable sense of the tremendous pressure of nothingness.  Darkness! it was not that; yet it was as little light.  It was as if we lay in a dim, luminous chaos, ourselves an integral part of its self-containment.  I did not stir; but I spoke:  and my strange voice broke the enchantment.  Surely never before or since was speech exchanged under such conditions.

“‘Fidele!’

“’I can speak, but I cannot look.  If I hide so for ever I can die bravely.’

“‘Ma petite! oh, my little one!  Are you hurt?’

“‘I don’t know.  I think not.’

“Her voice, her dear voice was so odd; but, Mon Dieu! how wonderful in its courage!  That, Heaven be praised! is no monopoly of intellect.  Indeed, it is imagination that makes men cowards; and to the lack of this possibly we owed our salvation.

“Now, calm and freed of that haunting jar of descent, I became conscious that a sound, that I had at first taken for the rush of my own arteries, had an origin apart from us.  It was like the wash and thunder of waters in a deep sewer.