"Channah," said the boy, "Channah, look at the clock!" His voice was hard, mechanical. "It's a quarter to nine. At nine o'clock she'll be dead!"
"Feivele!" his father whispered. "She's said thy name! Go!"
"Mother, lovely, I'm here! What wilt thou? Ah, see, I'm here!"
"Thou wilt be, Feivele, say it—thou wilt be always a good boy? And think ... of thy mother? Thou sayest yes?"
"Yes, mutter meine, yes!"
"And love Channah? And all, all? So, I am happy! Remember, thou, Feivele!"
The clock stealing, stealing forward! Not the banded powers of Heaven shall hold the clock-finger from moving forward over that space black with doom! Tick-tock! wild eyes of Channah, Dorah wringing her hands! Tick-tock! bearded face of Reb Monash, wrapped like a forest in its griefs! Tick-tock! a wailing in the air like trees when the wind goes about mournfully! Tick-tock! the rattling in her throat! Oh, the falling chin, the glazing eye, Oh, dead, dead...! Tick-tock...! tock....!
Waters flowing over his head where he lay prostrate on the beach! Dark green engulfing waters drowning him beyond grief or tears! Tricklings through his nostrils and oozings along the channels of his brain, runlets boring through the drums of his ears, surge after surge gurgling over his lips and into the bursting throat! And how bitter the taste of the foam, encrusting his palate with a scurf of salt, bitter as ashes, as sand! A low desolate bell swinging ceaselessly in this world of sunken waters, as if the doom of oceans and lands had been pronounced, and all souls must bestir themselves, howsoever long ago they were clad in flesh!
And always a whispering, and a secret sound of feet even so low under the water's rim, whither no sun attained, where the bell swung to and fro in the lapse of glooms. The fantastic denizens of these waters! Things with large phosphorescent eyes shedding tears that flickered down the watery darkness like worms of fire! Things with shuffling feet and lolling heads, bearded things with wise and cavernous skulls, and one, shaped like a small woman, appearing, disappearing, busy on important offices beyond all scrutiny! They would stand over him, staring with meaningless kindness through the weeds which swayed and swung over his body. They would endeavour to lift his hands from their laxity to receive the offerings they brought, would lift their offerings to his lips, but too bitter was the savour of brine on his tongue and his head too weary! He would turn away from them, burying his face in the clammy sands. There had long been a filtered light in the waters which engulfed the world; the light thickened into opaque walls. He could see no more the lolling heads, that busy strange woman who came and went. Only darkness, and for how long! Even the bell was muffled almost to nothingness, the bell was more a sense than a sound, the bell seemed to be tolling from the deeps of his own body where he lay unstarred, tolling from below his bones and making the arm which lay across his breast lift and fall away. Once more the light returning and the sound of feet and the bell louder tolling, louder and ever louder, until the metal against which the tongue beat and clamoured, burst into a thousand fragments, and he knew that he shook with sobs!
Over him stood the busy woman; Mrs. Finberg she was, the shroud maker, officiator at deaths. She waited till the hollow sobbing subsided, then pressed on him hot cup of tea. This time he did not refuse, did not turn his head and bury it in the escaping stuffing of the sofa.