His ear drums were buzzing with a roaring _glu-glu_, while his body was turning somersaults through the darkness.
His confused brain imagined that an infinitely deep hole had opened in the depths of the sea, that all the waters of the ocean were passing through it, forming a gigantic vortex, and that he was swirling in the center of this revolving tempest.
"I am going to die!...

I am already dead!" said his thoughts.
And in spite of the fact that he was resigned to death, he moved his legs desperately, wishing to bring himself up to the yielding, treacherous surface.

Instead of continuing to descend, he noticed that he was going up, and in a little while he was able to open his eyes and to breathe, judging from the atmospheric contact that he had reached the top.
He was not sure of the length of time he had passed in the abyss,--surely not more than a few minutes, since his breathing capacity as a swimmer could not exceed that limit....

He, therefore, experienced great astonishment upon discovering the tremendous changes which had taken place in so short a parenthesis.
He thought it was already night.

Perhaps in the upper strata of the atmosphere were still shining the last rays of the sun, but at the water's level, there was no more than a twilight gray, like the dim glimmer of a cellar.
The almost even surface seen a few minutes before from the height of the bridge was now moved by broad swells that plunged him in momentary darkness.