by M. P. Shiel
theirmurders have been accomplished--was now produced. A cloth, saturatedwith the fluid, was placed on my mouth and nostrils. I was stifled.Sense failed. The incubus of the universe blackened down upon my brain.How I tugged at the mandrakes of speech! was a locked pugilist withlanguage! In the depth of my extremity the half-thought, I remember,floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that nowperhaps--now--there was silence around me; that _now,_ could my palsiedlips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soulrose focussed to the effort--my body jerked itself upwards. At thatmoment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I _did_utter something--my dead and shuddering tongue _did_ babble forth somecoherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. Onthe next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat,placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing wasclear--I _had_ uttered something--I was saved. With what of strengthremained to me I reached the place where I had left your _caleche_, andstarted on my homeward way. The necessity to sleep was strong upon me,for the fumes of the anaesthetic still clung about my brain; hence,after my long journey, I fainted on my passage through the house, andin this condition you found me.
'Such then is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection withthis ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known toothers--to how many others _they_ cannot guess--I think it is notunlikely that we shall hear little more of the Society of Sparta.'
THE END
