Page 294 - erewhon

together; anything to mark the time—to prove that it was
there, and to assure myself that we were within the blessed
range of its influence, and not gone adrift into the timeless-
ness of eternity.
I had been doing this for the twentieth or thirtieth time,
and had fallen into a light sleep: I dreamed wildly of a jour-
ney in an express train, and of arriving at a railway station
where the air was full of the sound of locomotive engines
blowing off steam with a horrible and tremendous hissing;
I woke frightened and uneasy, but the hissing and crash-
ing noises pursued me now that I was awake, and forced
me to own that they were real. What they were I knew not,
but they grew gradually fainter and fainter, and after a time
were lost. In a few hours the clouds broke, and I saw be-
neath me that which made the chilled blood run colder in
my veins. I saw the sea, and nothing but the sea; in the main
black, but flecked with white heads of storm-tossed, angry
waves.
Arowhena was sleeping quietly at the bottom of the car,
and as I looked at her sweet and saintly beauty, I groaned,
and cursed myself for the misery into which I had brought
her; but there was nothing for it now.
I sat and waited for the worst, and presently I saw signs
as though that worst were soon to be at hand, for the bal-
loon had begun to sink. On first seeing the sea I had been
impressed with the idea that we must have been falling, but
now there could be no mistake, we were sinking, and that
fast. I threw out a bag of ballast, and for a time we rose again,
but in the course of a few hours the sinking recommenced,