Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/276

 vast waters of human nudity that were slipping down the incline. He tried to stay himself, he flung out his hands and touched nothing but cold slimy flesh.

Faster and faster and faster. Colder and colder and colder. Darker and darker and darker. Despair seized him. He called on his friends. Others were calling on every side of him. Thousands and thousands of names mingled in the air. The smoke came up to meet them—vast billowing clouds of it. He knew with a horrible consciousness that below him a sea of upturned swords, were waiting to receive them. Soon they would be impaled.... With a shriek of agony he awoke.

He had not been asleep for more, perhaps, than ten minutes, but the dream had unnerved him. When he rose from the ground he tottered and stood trembling. He knew now why it was that his enemy had designed that he should sleep; he knew now that he could no longer ward off the animal that on padded feet had been approaching him—the pain! The pain! The pain!

The sweat beaded his forehead, his knees gave way and he sank yet again upon the floor. He was murmuring: "Anything but that. Anything but that. I can't stand pain. I can't stand pain, I tell you. Don't you know that I have always funked it all my life long? That I've always prayed that whatever else I got it wouldn't be that. That