Five miles, through the dark, under the breathless, expectant stars. The car was on the broad curve now, where the road bent to the bluff above the river to pass the skeleton railroad bridge. But Harry knew neither place nor time. He was conscious only of motion--swift, swallow-like, irresistible--this, and the racing pictures in his brain, stencilled on the blur of night that closed around him. These pictures came and went; the last revel of The Saints when he was Satan Sanderson--Hugh sneering at his calling--Jessica facing him with unbandaged eyes--Hallelujah Jones, preaching on the street corner. The figure of the street evangelist recurred again and again with a singular persistency. It grew more tangible! It threatened him!
Something in Harry's brain seemed to snap. A tiny shutter, like that of a camera, fell down. His hands dropped from the steering-wheel, and, swaying in his seat, he began to sing, in a voice made high and uneven by the speed of the car:
"Palms of Victory, Crowns of Glory! Palms of Victory, I shall wear!"
He sang but the three lines. For suddenly the car left the road--the inflated tires rebounded from the steel ridge of the railroad track--the forward axle caught an iron signal post--and the great motor-car, its shattered lamp jingling like a gong, its pistons thrusting in midair, reared on two wheels, hurling its occupant out like a pebble thrown from a sling, half-turned, and, leaving a trail of sparks like the tail of a rocket behind it, plunged heavily over the rim of the bluff into the river.
A moment later the deep black waters of "the hole" had closed above the mass of sentient steel. The swift current had smoothed away every trace of the strange monster it had engulfed, and there, by the side of the track, huddled against the broken signal post, his clothing plastered with mud and grime, motionless, and with a nasty cut on the temple, lay Harry Sanderson.
A long saturating peace, a deep and drenching darkness, had folded Harry Sanderson. Dully at first, at length more insistently and sharply, a rhythmic pulsing sound began to annoy the quietude. K-track, k-track, k-track--it grew louder; it grew more momentous and material; it irritated the calm that had wrapped the animate universe. Shreds of confusing impression had begun to arrange themselves on a void of nothingness, blurred inchoate images to struggle through a delicious sensation of indifference and repose. Outlines were filling, contours growing distinct; the brain was beginning to resume its interrupted function. As though from an immeasurable distance he heard a low continuous roar, and now and again, through the roar, nearer voices.