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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest
out of water. This was to gain impetus for the descent. Then he let
himself go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea. He
breathed in the water deeply, deliberately, after the manner of a man
taking an anaesthetic. When he strangled, quite involuntarily his arms
and legs clawed the water and drove him up to the surface and into the
clear sight of the stars.
The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not to
breathe the air into his bursting lungs. Well, he would have to try a
new way. He filled his lungs with air, filled them full. This supply
would take him far down. He turned over and went down head first,
swimming with all his strength and all his will. Deeper and deeper he
went. His eyes were open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent
trails of the darting bonita. As he swam, he hoped that they would not
strike at him, for it might snap the tension of his will. But they did
not strike, and he found time to be grateful for this last kindness of
life.
Down, down, he swam till his arms and leg grew tired and hardly moved. He
knew that he was deep. The pressure on his ear-drums was a pain, and
there was a buzzing in his head. His endurance was faltering, but he
compelled his arms and legs to drive him deeper until his will snapped
and the air drove from his lungs in a great explosive rush. The bubbles
rubbed and bounded like tiny balloons against his cheeks and eyes as they
took their upward flight. Then came pain and strangulation. This hurt
was not death, was the thought that oscillated through his reeling
consciousness. Death did not hurt. It was life, the pangs of life, this
awful, suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.
His wilful hands and feet began to beat and churn about, spasmodically
and feebly. But he had fooled them and the will to live that made them
beat and churn. He was too deep down. They could never bring him to the
surface. He seemed floating languidly in a sea of dreamy vision. Colors
and radiances surrounded him and bathed him and pervaded him. What was
that? It seemed a lighthouse; but it was inside his brain--a flashing,
bright white light. It flashed swifter and swifter. There was a long
rumble of sound, and it seemed to him that he was falling down a vast and
interminable stairway. And somewhere at the bottom he fell into
darkness. That much he knew. He had fallen into darkness. And at the
instant he knew, he ceased to know. Martin Eden page 190 |