The topmost tower, delicately massive, a score of feet above them,
swayed to and fro, gently, like the ripple of wheat in light summer
airs. But Corliss gazed at it unheeding. Just to lie there, on the
marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great
gulps, and do nothing!--he asked no more. A dervish, whirling on heel
till all things blur, may grasp the essence of the universe and prove
the Godhead indivisible; and so a man, plying a paddle, and plying and
plying, may shake off his limitations and rise above time and space.
And so Corliss.
But gradually his blood ceased its mad pounding, and the air was no
longer nectar-sweet, and a sense of things real and pressing came back
to him.
"We've got to get out of this," he said. His voice sounded like a
man's whose throat has been scorched by many and long potations. It
frightened him, but he limply lifted a shaking paddle and shoved off.
"Yes; let us start, by all means," Frona said in a dim voice, which
seemed to come to him from a far distance.
Tommy lifted his head and gazed about. "A doot we'll juist hae to gie
it oop."
"Bend to it!"
"Ye'll no try it anither?"
"Bend to it!" Corliss repeated.
"Till your heart bursts, Tommy," Frona added.
Once again they fought up the thin line, and all the world vanished,
save the streak of foam, and the snarling water, and the grinning
fissure.
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