ck with Mr. Austin.
He saw the kind and generous face quite plainly and recognized his
voice. He saw Benito and Juana, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl; he was on
the pyramid and in it, and he saw the silver cone of Orizaba. Then he
shifted suddenly back to Texas and the wild border, the Comanche and the
buffalo.

His life now appeared to have no order. Time turned backward. Scenes
occurred out of their sequence. Often they would appear for a second or
third time. It was the most marvelous jumble that ever ran through any
kaleidoscope. His brain by and by grew dizzy with the swift interplay of
action and color. Then everything floated away and blackness and silence
came. Nor could he guess how long this period endured, but when he came
out of it he felt an extraordinary weakness and a lassitude that was of
both mind and body.

His eyes were only half open and he did not care to open them more. He
took no interest in anything. But he became slowly conscious that he had
emerged from somewhere out of a vast darkness, and that he had returned
to his life in the dungeon under the sea.

His eyes opened fully by automatic process rather than by will, and the
heavy dark of the dungeon was grateful then, because they, too, like all
the rest of him, were very weak. Yet a little light came in as usual
with the fresh air from above, and by and by he lifted one hand and
looked at it. It was a strange hand, very white, very thin, with the
blue veins standing out from the back.

It was almost the hand of a skeleton. He did not know it. Certainly it
did not belong to him. He looked at it wondering, and then he did a
strange thing. It was his left hand that he was holding before him. He
put his right hand upon it, drew that hand slowly over the fingers, then
the palm and along the wrist until he reached his shoulder. It was his
hand after all. His languid curiosity satisfied he let the hand drop
back by his body. It fell like a stone. After a while he touched his
head, and found that his hair was cut closely. It seemed thin, too.

He realized that he had been ill, and very ill indeed he must have been
to be so weak. He wondered a little how long it had been since he first
lapsed into unconsciousness, and then the wonder ceased. Whether the
time had been long or short it did not matter. But he shut his eyes and
listened for the last thing that he remembered. He heard it presently,
that low roll of the sea. He was quite sure of one thin