A blow upon my temple was succeeded by an utter oblivion of thought and of feeling.

I sunk upon the floor prostrate and senseless.
My insensibility might be mistaken by observers for death, yet some part of this interval was haunted by a fearful dream.

I conceived myself lying on the brink of a pit, whose bottom the eye could not reach.

My hands and legs were fettered, so as to disable me from resisting two grim and gigantic figures who stooped to lift me from the earth.

Their purpose, methought, was to cast me into this abyss.