Of My Shameful Sufferings and How I Was Delivered Therefrom

I awoke with a sound in my ears like the never-ceasing surge and hiss of waters, a sound that waxed ever louder. Hearkening to this, I presently sought to move and wondered, vaguely uneasy, to find this impossible: I strove now to lift my right hand, found it fast held, tried my left and found it in like case, and so became conscious of something that gripped me about the throat, and ever my wonder and unease grew. And now, opening my eyes, the first thing they lighted on was a small pool of blood and beyond this a battered turnip, and beyond this, the carcass of a dead cat, and beyond this again, a pair of trim, buckled shoes, cotton stockings, wide breeches and a broad belt where swung a tuck or rapier prodigiously long of blade; in a while (my eyes ranging higher yet) I beheld a thin face scarred from mouth to eyebrow, a brown face with bright, very quick eyes and strange ears, they being cut to points like a dog's ears. Now looking at this face, it seemed to me in hazy fashion that somewhere and at some time I had seen such a face before. All this while, the noise I have likened to the sea had been growing louder, so that I began to recognise voices and even words, and, lifting my head as well as I might (by reason of the thing that gripped my throat), I saw faces all about me--they hemmed me in on every side and stretched away to the churchyard wall.