indestructible--and, perhaps, immortal!

Again he stooped, but this time it was only to kiss the fringe of her
head scarf. Then he turned away to meet the three men, who, coming round
the corner of the hut containing the prisoners, were approaching him
with measured steps. They desired his presence in the Council room.
Belarab was awake.

They also expressed their satisfaction at finding the white man awake,
because Belarab wanted to impart to him information of the greatest
importance. It seemed to Lingard that he had been awake ever since he
could remember. It was as to being alive that he felt not so sure.
He had no doubt of his existence; but was this life--this profound
indifference, this strange contempt for what his eyes could see, this
distaste for words, this unbelief in the importance of things and men?
He tried to regain possession of himself, his old self which had things
to do, words to speak as well as to hear. But it was too difficult. He
was seduced away by the tense feeling of existence far superior to
the mere consciousness of life, and which in its immensity of
contradictions, delight, dread, exultation and despair could not be
faced and yet was not to be evaded. There was no peace in it. But who
wanted peace? Surrender was better, the dreadful ease of slack limbs in
the sweep of an enormous tide and in a divine emptiness of mind. If this
was existence then he knew that he existed. And he knew that the
woman existed, too, in the sweep of the tide, without speech, without
movement, without heat! Indestructible--and, perhaps, immortal!

VII

With the sublime indifference of a man who has had a glimpse through the
open doors of Paradise and is no longer careful of mere life, Lingard
had followed Belarab's anxious messengers. The stockade was waking up
in a subdued resonance of voices. Men were getting up from the ground,
fires were being rekindled. Draped figures flitted in the mist amongst
the buildings; and through the mat wall of a bamboo house Lingard heard
the feeble wailing of a child. A day of mere life was beginning; but in
the Chief's great Council room several wax candles and a couple of cheap
European lamps kept the dawn at bay, while the morning mist which could
not be kept out made a faint reddish halo round every flame.

Belarab was not only awake, but he even looked like a man who had not
slept for a long time. The creator of the Shore of Refuge, the weary
Ruler of the Settlement