day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the
mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.
"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I
have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the childless
as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless--I could
find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set
"I said, I _will_ do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs! I
don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only live
in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
complacencies--or irritations. We have to take the air or else our
thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A
thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes
drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man's
day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.
For a little while the two remained without speaking.
"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a hunger and
thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a
whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts
leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady--" He paused. "Towards
"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out
The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
voice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at the
foot of yonder dark precipice there, where the waves are green, and the
white surge lifts and falls, and that little thread of water trembles
"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the man's hysterical
"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him.
Isbister looked at him. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked.
"There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove--as high, anyhow--and a
little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."
