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. Suddenly a loud voice resounded near me.
And this time I think I did not hear, but felt it. There was
something palpable in this voice, something that instantly stopped
my helpless descent, and kept me from falling any further. This
was a voice I knew well, but whose voice it was I could not in my
weakness remember.
In what way I was dragged through all these narrow holes will
remain an eternal mystery for me. I came to myself on the verandah
below, fanned by fresh breezes, and as suddenly as I had fainted
above in the impure air of the cell. When I recovered completely
the first thing I saw was a powerful figure clad in white, with a
raven black Rajput beard, anxiously leaning over me. As soon as
I recognized the owner of this beard, I could not abstain from
expressing my feelings by a joyful exclamation: "Where do you
come from?" It was our friend Takur Gulab-Lal-Sing, who, having
promised to join us in the North-West Provinces, now appeared to
us in Bagh, as if falling from the sky or coming out of the ground.
But my unfortunate accident, and the pitiable state of the rest
of the daring explorers, were enough to stop any further questions
and expressions of astonishment. On one side of me the frightened
Miss X - -, using my nose as a cork for her sal-volatile bottle;
on the other the "God's warrior" covered with blood as if returning
from a battle with the Afghans; further on, poor Mulji with a
dreadful headache. Narayan and the colonel, happily for our party,
did not experience anything worse than a slight vertigo.
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