A few strokes showed him the madness
of the attempt; a few more convinced him that he himself could barely
return to the shore. A sudden torpor had taken possession of him--he was
sinking!
With this thought, a struggle for life began; and this man who had just
now sought death so eagerly--with no feeling of inconsistency, with
no physical fear of dissolution, with only a vague, blind, dogged
determination to live for some unknown purpose--a determination as vague
and dogged as his former ideas of self-destruction--summoned all his
energies to reach the shore. He struck out wildly, desperately; once or
twice he thought he felt his feet touch the bottom, only to find himself
powerlessly dragged back towards the sea. With a final superhuman effort
he gained at last a foothold on the muddy strand, and, half scrambling,
half crawling, sank exhaustedly beside the fisherman's net. But the
fisherman was gone! He attempted again to rise to his feet, but a
strange dizziness attacked him. The darkening landscape, with its
contracting wall of fog; the gloomy flat; the still, pale sea, as yet
unruffled by the faint land breeze that was slowly wafting the escaping
boat into the shadowy offing--all swam round him! Through the roaring
in his ears he thought he heard drumbeats, and the fanfare of a trumpet,
and voices.
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