I am not sure that the sea subsided; but I believe it must have done so. It was a providence for me, then. I know that not many of the waves broke over me, and I seemed sliding up and down vast swells which heaved up out of Nowhere, gray and green and foam-streaked, and then disappeared and left me floating in the deep trough.
If anyone was ever literally rocked in the cradle of the deep, I was that person—from the crest of the wave, down, down, in a gradually diminishing rush, and then up and up to the crest of the next roller—and so on, over and over again.
Once I let my mind slip and began to calculate the chances for and against my escape. The conviction that it was impossible rushed over me and I turned over quickly and struck out with a savage, hand-over-hand stroke through the waves, with the momentary insane feeling that I must get somewhere!
The dogged idea of living as long as I could, however, came to me again with fatigue, and I rolled over and rested, cradled in the waves.
My hand touched my knife, which still hung by its lanyard from my neck. An awful thought touched my mind, at the same moment. They say it is an easy death, this drowning; but I can imagine nothing more awful than to drift for hours upon the surface of the sea with the knowledge in one’s mind that, after all, there is but one end possible. I opened my knife and held it tightly gripped in my hand a moment. Then I pulled the lanyard over my head and let the knife and all drop into the depths—and the curse went from me.
Chapter X
In Which the Impossible Becomes the Possible
Four hours had I floated on the tumbling sea, with the clouds above gradually breaking and with the moon finally paleing under the stronger light of the advancing sun. The blackness disappeared. A wind-driven sky arched the sea. And I lay looking up into heaven, waiting for the end.
For I was in a sort of mesmerized state toward the last, and kept myself afloat automatically. It must have been so; by no other means can I explain that I was still floating on the surface when the sun arose.
The rocking motion of the swells soothed me to a strange content that I can neither explain nor talk about sanely. I remember I babbled something or other over and over again; I was talking to the moon riding so high there among the rifted clouds.