good. He wondered if he ought to write a swan-song, but laughed
the thought away. There was no time. He was too impatient to be
gone.
Turning off the light in his room so that it might not betray him,
he went out the port-hole feet first. His shoulders stuck, and he
forced himself back so as to try it with one arm down by his side.
A roll of the steamer aided him, and he was through, hanging by his
hands. When his feet touched the sea, he let go. He was in a
milky froth of water. The side of the Mariposa rushed past him
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like a dark wall, broken here and there by lighted ports. She was
certainly making time. Almost before he knew it, he was astern,
swimming gently on the foam-crackling surface.
A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud. It had
taken a piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was
there. In the work to do he had forgotten the purpose of it. The
lights of the Mariposa were growing dim in the distance, and there
he was, swimming confidently, as though it were his intention to
make for the nearest land a thousand miles or so away.
It was the automatic instinct to live. He ceased swimming, but the
moment he felt the water rising above his mouth the hands struck
out sharply with a lifting movement. The will to live, was his
thought, and the thought was accompanied by a sneer. Well, he had
will, – ay, will strong enough that with one last exertion it could
destroy itself and cease to be.
He changed his position to a vertical one. He glanced up at the
quiet stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air. With
swift, vigorous propulsion 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
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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.