But Corliss gazed at it unheeding.

Just to lie there, on the marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great gulps, and do nothing!--he asked no more.

A dervish, whirling on heel till all things blur, may grasp the essence of the universe and prove the Godhead indivisible; and so a man, plying a paddle, and plying and plying, may shake off his limitations and rise above time and space.
And so Corliss.
But gradually his blood ceased its mad pounding, and the air was no longer nectar-sweet, and a sense of things real and pressing came back to him.
"We've got to get out of this," he said.

His voice sounded like a man's whose throat has been scorched by many and long potations.

It frightened him, but he limply lifted a shaking paddle and shoved off.
"Yes; let us start, by all means," Frona said in a dim voice, which seemed to come to him from a far distance.
Tommy lifted his head and gazed about.