rown, humid
earth, the hundred iron teeth bit deep into the Titan's flesh. Perched
on his seat, the moist living reins slipping and tugging in his hands,
Vanamee, in the midst of this steady confusion of constantly varying
sensation, sight interrupted by sound, sound mingling with sight, on
this swaying, vibrating seat, quivering with the prolonged thrill of the
earth, lapsed to a sort of pleasing numbness, in a sense, hypnotised by
the weaving maze of things in which he found himself involved. To keep
his team at an even, regular gait, maintaining the precise interval,
to run his furrows as closely as possible to those already made by the
plough in front--this for the moment was the entire sum of his duties.
But while one part of his brain, alert and watchful, took cognisance of
these matters, all the greater part was lulled and stupefied with the
long monotony of the affair.

The ploughing, now in full swing, enveloped him in a vague, slow-moving
whirl of things. Underneath him was the jarring, jolting, trembling
machine; not a clod was turned, not an obstacle encountered, that he did
not receive the swift impression of it through all his body, the very
friction of the damp soil, sliding incessantly from the shiny surface of
the shears, seemed to reproduce itself in his finger-tips and along the
back of his head. He heard the horse-hoofs by the myriads crushing down
easily, deeply, into the loam, the prolonged clinking of trace-chains,
the working of the smooth brown flanks in the harness, the clatter of
wooden hames, the champing of bits, the click of iron shoes against
pebbles, the brittle stubble of the surface ground crackling and
snapping as the furrows turned, the sonorous, steady breaths wrenched
from the deep, labouring chests, strap-bound, shining with sweat,
and all along the line the voices of the men talking to the horses.
Everywhere there were visions of glossy brown backs, straining, heaving,
swollen with muscle; harness streaked with specks of froth, broad,
cup-shaped hoofs, heavy with brown loam, men's faces red with tan, blue
overalls spotted with axle-grease; muscled hands, the knuckles whitened
in their grip on the reins, and through it all the ammoniacal smell of
the horses, the bitter reek of perspiration of beasts and men, the
aroma of warm leather, the scent of dead stubble--and stronger and more
penetrating than everything else, the heavy, enervating odour of the
upturned, living earth.

At i