"The caves further on are inhabited by them. And I have
seen them with my own eyes."
The colonel grew thoughtful, and stood glancing at the ceiling in
a perplexed and undecided way. We all kept silent, breathing heavily.
"Let us go back!" suddenly shouted the Akali. "My nose is bleeding."
At this very moment I felt a strange and unexpected sensation, and
I sank heavily on the ground. In a second I felt an indescribably
delicious, heavenly sense of rest, in spite of a dull pain beating
in my temples. I vaguely realized that I had really fainted, and
that I should die if not taken out into the open air. I could not
lift my finger; I could not utter a sound; and, in spite of it,
there was no fear in my soul--nothing but an apathetic, but
indescribably sweet feeling of rest, and a complete inactivity of
all the senses except hearing. A moment came when even this sense
forsook me, because I remember that I listened with imbecile
intentness to the dead silence around me. Is this death? was my
indistinct wondering thought. Then I felt as if mighty wings were
fanning me. "Kind wings, caressing, kind wings!" were the
recurring words in my brain, like the regular movements of a
pendulum, and interiorily under an unreasoning impulse, I laughed
at these words. Then I experienced a new sensation: I rather
knew than felt that I was lifted from the floor, and fell down and
down some unknown precipice, amongst the hollow rollings of a
distant thunder-storm.
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