He saw queer lights in circles, and the beams of the ceiling came down very near, and then suddenly went very far away, so that the room seemed a hundred feet high.

The pain filled all his right side, and he even thought he could feel it in his arm.
All at once he started, and as he lay on his back his hands tried to grip the flat wood of the bench, and his eyes were wide open and fixed in a sort of frightened stare.
What if he should go mad with pain?
Who would remember the fire in the master's furnace?
Worse than that, what safety was there that in his delirium he should not speak of the book that was hidden under the stone, the third from the oven and the fourth from the corner?
His brain whirled but he would not go mad, nor lose consciousness, so long as he had the shadow of free will left.

Rather than lie there on his back, he would get off his bench, cost what it might, and drag himself to the mouth of the furnace.

There was a supply of wood there, piled up by the night boys for use during the day.

He could get to it, even if he had to roll himself over and over on the floor.