The intense blackness all about dazed him; he retained no sense of direction, scarcely any memory of where he was.  His body, bruised and strained, pained him severely; his head throbbed as from fever.  Little by little the exhausted breath came back, and with it a slow realization of his situation.  Had he killed Burke?  He stared down toward the spot where he knew the body lay, but could perceive nothing.  The mystery of the dark suddenly unnerved him; he could feel his hands tremble violently as he groped cautiously along the smooth surface of the rock.  He experienced a shrinking, nervous dread of coming into contact with that man lying there beneath the black mantle, that hideous, silent form, perhaps done to death by his hands.  It was a revolt of the soul.  A moment he actually thought he was losing his mind, feverish fancies playing grim tricks before his strained, agonized vision, imagination peopling the black void with a riot of grotesque figures.

He gripped himself slowly and sternly, his jaws set, his tingling nerves mastered by the resolute dominance of an aroused will.  Compelling himself to the act, he bent down, feeling along the ground for the foreman’s hat having the extinguished lamp fixed on it.  He was a long time discovering his object, yet the continued effort brought back a large measure of self-control, and gave birth to a certain clearness of perception.  He held the recovered lamp in his hands, leaning against the side of the tunnel, listening.  The very intensity of silence seemed to press against him from every direction as though it had weight.  He was still breathing heavily, but his strained ears could not distinguish the slightest sound where he knew Burke lay shrouded In the darkness.  Nothing reached him to break the dread, horrible silence, excepting that far-off, lonely trickle of dripping water.  He hesitated, match in hand, shrinking childishly from the coming revealment of his victim.  Yet why should he?  Fierce as the struggle had proved, on his part the fight had been entirely one of defence.  He had been attacked, and had fought back only in self-preservation.  Winston harbored no animosity; the fierceness of actual combat past, he dreaded now beyond expression the thought that through his savagery a human life might have been sacrificed.  The tiny flame of the ignited match played across his white face, caught the wick of the lamp, and flared up in faint radiance through the gloom.  Burke, huddled into the rock shadow, never stirred, and the anxious engineer bent over his motionless form in a horrid agony of fear.  The man rested partially upon one side, his hands still gripped as in struggle, an ugly wound, made by a jagged edge of rock, showing plainly in the side of his head.  Blood had flowed freely, crimsoning the stone beneath, but was already congealing amid the thick mass of hair, serving somewhat to conceal the nature of the injury.