I say, "Is M'Clare—"
At which moment Mr. Yardo turns from the controls with a wide smile of triumph and says "Eighteen twenty-seven, girls!" and the world goes weightless and swings upside down.
Then still with no sense of any time-lapse I am lying in the big lighted hold, with the sound of trampling all round: it is somehow filtered and far off and despite the lights there seems to be a globe of darkness around my head. I hear my own voice repeating, "M'Clare? How's M'Clare?"
A voice says distantly, without emphasis, "M'Clare? He's dead."
The next time I come round it is dark. I am vaguely aware of having been unconscious for quite a while.
There is a single thread of knowledge connecting this moment with the last: M'Clare's dead.
This is the central factor: I seem to have been debating it with myself for a very long time.
I suppose the truth is simply that the Universe never guarantees anything; life, or permanence, or that your best will be good enough.
The rule is that you have to pick yourself up and go on; and lying here in the dark is not doing it.
I turn on my side and see a cluster of self-luminous objects including a light switch. I reach for it.