midnight
In thought he was living over again the incredible events of the past hours , as they had been presented to his own experience . He was remembering the frightful , dizzying plunge down the black pit into the steaming waters of the River of Night -- waters which , had they been but a few degrees hotter , would incontinently have ended everything on the instant . He was recalling , as in a nightmare , his frenzied battle for life , clinging to the inflated goat-skin -- the whirl and thunder of unseen cataracts in the blind dark -- the confusion of deafening , incomprehensible violences . He was bringing back to mind the long , swift , smooth rushing of mighty waters through midnight caverns where echoes had told of a rock-roof close above ; then , after an indeterminate time of horror that might have been minutes or hours , a weltering maelstrom of leaping waters -- a graying of light on swift-fleeing walls ; a sudden up-boiling gush of the strangling flood that whelmed him -- and all at once a glare of sun , a river broadening out through palm-groves far beyond the Iron Mountains . All these things , blurred , unreal , heartshaking as evil visions of fever , the Master was remembering . Then came other happenings : a long drift with resistless currents , the strange phenomenon of the lessening stream that dwindled as thirsty sands absorbed it , and the ceasing of the palms . Last of all , the river had diminished to a shallow , tortuous delta , where the Master 's numbed feet had touched bottom .