.. I then noticed the water around us DROP quickly,
and, turning in the direction of Maria I saw her body being caught
up by the current and sucked painfully forward into the opening her
delicate hands had made.... It was too horrible to endure!... Now,
while there is no blood of martyrs in my veins, and while I had
PROMISED the sombre figure in Berlin TO DO A CERTAIN THING which a
martyr impulse might prevent if I tried to be a hero in this instance,
I simply could not look at that girl's struggles without going to her
rescue _no matter what it cost_...."
32. The following then appears:
"I have no recollection of what happened after I grasped Maria by
the feet.... All I remember is that I felt myself being dragged along
after her through a blinding sheet of muddy, gritty substance, head
foremost like a drowning man.... I imagined myself in mid-ocean
clinging to some broken shaft after my vessel had been torpedoed, and
I clung to those slender ankles as the only hope of life!... When I
did recover there was Maria bending over me and vigorously see-sawing
my arms back and forth in an effort to resuscitate me.... If ever
there were an excuse for the chivalry of the Middle Ages it must have
crept out of those dark moments when some puissant knight opened his
tired eyelids upon a vision such as I then beheld!... But there was
no time for Don Quixoting in that damp and muddy tunnel.
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