Vainly grasping at the banisters as he went, he fell and slithered head over heels in a tangle of arms and legs until he landed at the bottom with a blunt, dull crack, and suddenly all was silent.

His fingers brushed the rails, and he grasped vainly for the button.

The key, he surmised, was that for which the cyclopean sculptured hand vainly grasps.

It rose two hundred feet into the air, a structure of concrete, bronze and black metal, and it bore the heroic figure of a man grasping vainly for a star.

"Go aloft," Laurence shouted, and Temeraire gave a shattering roar and leapt away with a great thrust of his hindquarters, men dangling from his harness; some slipped away grasping vainly at the air, and fell down to the stones of the courtyard below, crying out.

He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss.

Breath and strength failed her together; she lifted her hand, vainly grasping at the broad pedestal behind her; she would have fallen if he had not caught her in his arms.

In another moment, whirled and hurled out into a cold and cruel reality, he cried out his agony and vainly grasped at that which was already beyond his reach.

"I am not as strong as I thought," he said, as he grasped vainly at his horse's bridle.

All that was left was a hand vainly grasping at the air, but it, too, soon disappeared from view, swallowed by the enveloping mud.