Yet, the world
wants the details exactly as they happened; hence the
transposition. EDITORS.]
Watson opened his eyes.
The first thing was light and a sense of great pain. There was a
pressure at the back of the eyeballs, a poignant sensation not
unlike a knife-thrust; that, and a sudden fear of madness, of
drivelling helplessness.
The abrupt return of consciousness in such a condition is not easy
to imagine. After all he had gone through, this strange sequel
must have been terribly puzzling to him. He was a man of good
education, well versed in psychology; in the first rush of
consciousness he tried, as best he could, to weigh himself up in
the balance of aberration. And it was this very fact that gave him
his reassurance; for it told him that he could think, could
reason, could count on a mind in full function.
But he could not see. The pain in his eyeballs was blinding. There
was nothing he could distinguish; everything was woven together, a
mere blaze of wonderful, iridescent, blazing coloration.
But if he could not see, he could feel. The pain was excruciating.
He closed his eyes and fell to thinking, curiously enough, that
the experience was similar to what he had gone through when upon
learning to swim, he had first opened his eyes under the water. It
had been under a blazing sun. The pain and the colour--it was much
the same, only intensified.
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