CHAPTER XVIII
Augustus Carline was a long time recovering even his consciousness. A thousand dreams, a thousand nightmares tormented his thoughts while the mangling grip of unnumbered vises and ropes sank deep into his flesh; ploughs and harrows dragged through his twisted muscles.
Yet he did rise at last out of his pit and, leaning against the cabin of his boat, look about him to see what hell he had escaped into. The sun was shining somewhere, blinding his eyes, which were already seared. A river coiled by, every ripple a blistering white flame. He heard birds and other music which sounded like an anvil chorus performing in the narrow confines of a head as large as a cabin.
He remembered something. It was even worse than what he was undergoing, but he could not quite call the horror to the surface of the weltering sea of his feelings; he did not even know his name, nor his place, nor any detail except the present pain—and he didn’t want to know. He fought against knowing, till the thing pressed exuberantly forward, and then he knew that the beautiful girl, the woman he loved and to whom he was married, had left him. That was the exquisite calamity of his soul, and he flinched from the fact as from a blow. He was always flinching, he remembered. He was always turning from the uncomfortable and the bothering to seek what was easy and unengaging. Now, for the moment, he could not undertake any relief from his present misery.
Acres and lakes of water were flowing by, but his thirst was worse than oceans could quench. He wanted to drink, but the thought of drinking disgusted him 111 beyond measure. It seemed to him that a drop of water would flame up in his throat like gasolene on a bed of coals, and at that moment his eyes fell upon the jug which stood by the misty engine against the intangible locker. The jug was a monument of comfort and substantiality.
At the odour which filled the air when he had taken out the cork his very soul was filled with horror.
“But I got to drink it!” he whimpered. “It’s the only thing that’ll cure me, the only thing I can stand. If I don’t I’ll die!”
Not to drink was suicide, and to drink was living death! He could not choose between the suggestions; he never had been trained to face fate manfully. His years’ long dissipation had unfitted him for every squarely made decision, and now with horror on one side and terror on the other, he could not procrastinate and wonder what folly had brought him to this state.
“Why couldn’t it smell good!” he choked. “The taste’ll kill me!”