Perhaps even the seared, stoical heart of the cynical Appadocca, under these happy forebodings, throbbed a little more highly than usual.
But the grounds on which pleasure and hope are built, are too often sandy: our highest subjects of joy and congratulation are, alas! too liable to be converted, in the imperceptible space of a second, into those of misery and woe. So it proved with Emmanuel Appadocca.
When, as we have remarked, these prospects dawned in reality upon him, his strokes were made with more vigour; he became, consequently, the sooner tired, and was obliged to pause for rest more frequently.
After one of these intervals, after having “screwed up his courage to the sticking point,” he gave his pitcher a push before him. The vessel floated to a considerable distance in front, then suddenly melted to pieces and sank for ever.
The soft clay of which it was made was dissolved by the water, and could no longer hold together.
If Appadocca had, a moment before, permitted his cynicism to incline beyond its medium point towards joy, so now he could not prevent it from verging to an equal distance on the opposite side. He had, but a few minutes ago, been induced to hope that he should be able to reach the land. Prospects of once more heading his faithful followers warmed his heart; and the prospect, too, of still being able to execute his design upon the man whose heart was too bad to open to repentance and justice from the lessons of his victim-judge, and from the perils out of which only the sheerest hazard had delivered him: but now, with the assisting pitcher his hopes also sank. It was now next to impossible that he could reach the shore; for although like the pedestrian who, with certain intervals of rest, may walk the whole globe, he could swim a considerably greater distance than seven miles—the distance which now intervened between him and the land—by now and then holding to something which could assist him in floating until he had rested, still it was impossible now for him to accomplish, much fatigued as he already was, at the utmost more than a mile; and the shore was still three miles away. Despair, utter despair would have seized a mind that was more susceptible of ungovernable influences, but Appadocca made up his mind not to be drowned, and continued to swim. He had not swum to any great distance, when he began to experience the want of his pitcher; his limbs began to feel exhaustion, he muttered something to himself, and went on still; his limbs became more tired; sensibility began to diminish; his arms grew stiffer and stiffer; on, on, still he went; his features manifested exhaustion, his respiration grew shorter and shorter; already nature could bear no more; his eyeballs glared like those of one in the last agony of drowning; his strokes became weaker and still weaker; already he swam more heavily; his chest sank deeper and deeper into the water; the mountains before him began to wheel, and pass, and vanish like clouds floating over a mist; his vision was indistinct, and nature drooped, exhausted with one long breathing; he was sinking, sinking, sinking ... when ... something met his feet, and Appadocca stood on a sunken rock with the water to his chin.
Surprised to a certain extent by such an unexpected occurrence, he at once remained where he was, fearful less the first step he would take should lead him again into the danger which he had, at least temporarily, escaped.
He stood there for a considerable time; but although the position was one, which, on the point of drowning, might be very advantageous, still it ceased to be so when the immediate danger had passed; and now, on the contrary, presented another peril; for Appadocca was now exposed, in his motionless state, to become the prey of the very first hungry shark that might happen to swim in that direction, and what was still worse, he felt that the sea was every moment rising higher and higher. It was therefore clear that he could not stay much longer where he was. He began to resolve, but before he could determine on any definite resolution, a large wave broke over him; for mere safety, he was again obliged to swim. He had not gone far, when in spite of his strong will, his limbs would not move. Thus with his resolution still strong, and his volition still active, Appadocca, nevertheless, found himself rapidly sinking.
“Oh! destiny,” he bubbled out, as the water now almost choked him, “is there such a thing as destiny?” He was sinking, sinking, sinking, when something, something again met his feet.
Appadocca quickly planted his nerveless feet as firmly as he could, upon the support which it would appear that destiny, which he had well nigh invoked for the last time, had again placed under them. He concluded at once, that he had fortunately alighted on a layer of rocks, which ran far out to sea, and of which the one that first received him, was about the beginning. To ascertain the correctness of his judgment he ventured, after he had rested a little, to put one foot forward, it rested also on the rock; the other, it rested too.