...and I began to a**ociate the pounding with an external rather than internal force.
The falling had ceased also, giving place to a sensation of uneasy, temporary rest;
and when I listened closely, I fancied the pounding was that of the vast, inscrutable sea as its sinister,
colossal breakers lacerated some desolate shore after a storm of t**anic magnitude. Then I opened my eyes.
For a moment my surroundings seemed confused...
...like a projected image hopelessly out of focus, but gradually I realised my solitary presence in a strange and beautiful room lighted by many windows.
Of the exact nature of the apartment I could form no idea, for my thoughts were still far from settled;
but I noticed vari-coloured rugs and draperies, elaborately fashioned tables, chairs, ottomans, and divans, and delicate vases and ornaments which conveyed a suggestion of the exotic
without being actually alien. These things I noticed, yet they were not long uppermost in my mind.
Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness, and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown...
a fear all the greater because I could not a***yse it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace-not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.
Presently I realised that the direct symbol and excitant of my fear was the hideous pounding whose incessant reverberations throbbed maddeningly against my exhausted brain...
The falling had ceased also, giving place to a sensation of uneasy, temporary rest;
and when I listened closely, I fancied the pounding was that of the vast, inscrutable sea as its sinister,
colossal breakers lacerated some desolate shore after a storm of t**anic magnitude. Then I opened my eyes.
For a moment my surroundings seemed confused...
...like a projected image hopelessly out of focus, but gradually I realised my solitary presence in a strange and beautiful room lighted by many windows.
Of the exact nature of the apartment I could form no idea, for my thoughts were still far from settled;
but I noticed vari-coloured rugs and draperies, elaborately fashioned tables, chairs, ottomans, and divans, and delicate vases and ornaments which conveyed a suggestion of the exotic
without being actually alien. These things I noticed, yet they were not long uppermost in my mind.
Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness, and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown...
a fear all the greater because I could not a***yse it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace-not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.
Presently I realised that the direct symbol and excitant of my fear was the hideous pounding whose incessant reverberations throbbed maddeningly against my exhausted brain...