ed in slitting the lid of my bier open the mold would drift in
like fine sand and fill my mouth and eyes. That would be death again, a
ghastly death, like drowning in mud.

However, I began to feel the planks carefully. The coffin was roomy,
and I found that I was able to move my arms with tolerable ease. On both
sides the roughly planed boards were stout and resistive. I slipped my
arm onto my chest to raise it over my head. There I discovered in the
top plank a knot in the wood which yielded slightly at my pressure.
Working laboriously, I finally succeeded in driving out this knot, and
on passing my finger through the hole I found that the earth was wet and
clayey. But that availed me little. I even regretted having removed the
knot, vaguely dreading the irruption of the mold. A second experiment
occupied me for a while. I tapped all over the coffin to ascertain if
perhaps there were any vacuum outside. But the sound was everywhere
the same. At last, as I was slightly kicking the foot of the coffin, I
fancied that it gave out a clearer echoing noise, but that might merely
be produced by the sonority of the wood.

At any rate, I began to press against the boards with my arms and my
closed fists. In the same way, too, I used my knees, my back and my feet
without eliciting even a creak from the wood. I strained with all my
strength, indeed, with so desperate an effort of my whole frame, that my
bruised bones seemed breaking. But nothing moved, and I became insane.

Until that moment I had held delirium at bay. I had mastered the
intoxicating rage which was mounting to my head like the fumes of
alcohol; I had silenced my screams, for I feared that if I again cried
out aloud I should be undone. But now I yelled; I shouted; unearthly
howls which I could not repress came from my relaxed throat. I called
for help in a voice that I did not recognize, growing wilder with each
fresh appeal and crying out that I would not die. I also tore at the
wood with my nails; I writhed with the contortions of a caged wolf. I do
not know how long this fit of madness lasted, but I can still feel the
relentless hardness of the box that imprisoned me; I can still hear the
storm of shrieks and sobs with which I filled it; a remaining glimmer of
reason made me try to stop, but I could not do so.

Great exhaustion followed. I lay waiting for death in a state of
somnolent pain. The coffin was like stone, which no effort could break,
and the conv