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When he found I was going first he was rather hurt, but I did not wait for his protests. I swung my feet over the sill and dropped. I made a clutch at the window-frame with my good hand when I found no floor under my feet, but I was too late. I dropped probably ten feet and landed with a crash that seemed to split my ear-drums.

Walther's unprecedented leaping to his feet in the heat of inspiration has given offence to this one; the other terms his singing "empty battering at the ear-drums." They are about to subscribe unanimously to Beckmesser's verdict that he has lost his case, when Sachs's voice breaks in upon the confusion. He has listened to Walther in complete self-forgetful absorption.

Mrs M'Swat returned carrying the tea, which was spilling by the way. She gave those boys each a clout on the head which dispersed them roaring like the proverbial town bull, and alarmed me for the safety of their ear-drums. I wondered if their mother was aware of their having ear-drums.

I reckon I went to sleep in mid-air, 'cause I was too tired to remember whether I was a husky maid or a tender man. When I came to, I thought it must sure be the last day, an' that I had waited for the very last call. The dinner-bell was a-knockin' all the echoes in the house loose an' they was fallin' on my ear-drums in bunches.

Her fingers were trembling so that she scarcely could fit the key in the lock again and turn it, and every click of the metal, every creak of the door, sounded like a gong in her ears. Her heart was fluttering wildly and the blood seemed to be pouring in torrents behind her ear-drums. She could not be sure whether there were noises in the room she had just left or not.

While she talked, he seemed to hear, rippling softly, the song of the Lorelei. It was as though, somewhere, a piano were playing and the actual notes were impinging on his ear-drums. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, thrust her from him as her arms attempted to clasp him, and retreated backward to the door. He was in a panic. "I'll do something desperate!" he cried.

The crowd cheered like mad, the boats whistled, and sent up rockets galore. On went the programme. Bombs tested the strength of our wearied ear-drums, fiery snakes sizzled through the air, big wheels spurted brilliant marvels, and along the very edge of the lake, to the great discomfort of the front rows of the stalls, a line of combustibles behaved like gigantic footlights on a spree.

When the time came for it to strike five o'clock, it went at it with such resounding vim that Admiral Sir William Brown, who had served his apprenticeship in the turrets, seemed to think that he had better open his mouth to save his ear-drums. "War is war! All is fair! War is war! All is fair!" it seemed to say.

The dazzling sunshine vanished, a wave of misty green closed above the helmet glass, hot compressed air blew about his head, and his ear-drums began to throb. Then lead and copper lost their weight; he felt buoyant and clung to the steps. At the bottom he was for a few moments afraid to let go, but an indistinct, monstrous object came out of the strange green gloom and beckoned him on.

With the deluge, the elemental battle began in desperate earnest. Peal after peal of thunder crashed directly overhead, and with it came such a display of heavenly pyrotechnics that in their wildest moments these men had never dreamed of. Their eyes were blinded, and their ear-drums were bursting with the incessant hammering of the thunder.