Explore "The Tocsin" by Leonid Andreyev on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was night and I was dosing restlessly, when there reached my ear a dull staccato sound, rising as it seemed from below the ground; it penetrated my brain, and settled there like a round stone. After it another forced its way in, equally short and dolorous, and my head became heavy and sick, as though molten lead were falling upon it in thick drops. The drops kept boring and burning into my brain; they became ever more and more, and soon they were filling my head with a dripping rain of impetuous staccato sounds.
"Boom! boom! boom! " Someone tall, strong and impatient kept jerking out from afar.