CHAPTER 21Matt felt consciousness coming back to him; but it seeped in slowly as if it were afraid to stay. He lay flat on his back. He felt a sloping floor of corrugated rock under him. Behind his eyes a dull ache turned like a slow wheel.
He felt a swollen bruise above his left ear, then shifted his body a little and stretched his muscles. Other body bruises ached, but he didn’t seem to have broken any bones. Slowly he opened his eyes.
Blackness. Pressing in all around, solid as though he were suspended in black liquid. Blackness.
He shut his eyes. He heard no sound, but his heavy breathing and the chuckle and rush of the river. He dimly remembered being spewed up and out somewhere by the river, shooting up suddenly like a released balloon. He remembered struggling weakly in a backwas
