The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: rising slowly, the while it drifted from me. Then I stumbled on
the icy way, striking my head upon a rock as I fell sprawling but
an arm's length from the rope, the end of which was now just
leaving the ground.
With the blow upon my head came unconsciousness.
It could not have been more than a few seconds that I lay
senseless there upon the northern ice, while all that was
dearest to me drifted farther from my reach in the clutches of
that black fiend, for when I opened my eyes Thurid and Matai Shang
 The Warlord of Mars |