though afraid that the whole
restaurant would begin rocking and vibrating.

"And there were other things, ridiculous and humiliating," he resumed,
"that robbed me even of the small consolation of tragedy. How can I tell
you? I shall lose all dignity in your eyes--if indeed I ever had any to
lose--as I lost it in my own. The terrible sickness, you understand....
That, and the din of the bell, and being flung up and down, backwards
and forwards. No rest, not for a moment. I prayed, I tried to fight my
way out of the buoy, between the bars, to throw myself into the sea.
The sea was rising visibly, and the spray of the waves broke over me,
drenching me; the salt dried upon my face, stiffening my skin. There
were moments when I thought I could endure the rest, if I might have a
respite from the movement; other moments, if I might have a respite from
the sickness; and yet others, if I might have a respite from the clang
of the bell. In the intervals of the sickness, with such strength as
remained to me, I tore strips from my soaking shirt and tried to bind up
the clappers; it muffled the noise a little, but not much. I wept from
weariness and despair.

"It pursues me," he said, again putting his head between his hands and
shaking it with the same tired mournfulness; "at nights I think that my
bed is flung up and down, and when I spring out the room reels round
me as though I were drunk. There was no escape. It was no use trying to
bend the bars of the cage, or to pull up the planks of the bottom. And
the sickness, the sickness! It tore me, it shattered me, but never for a
moment did I lose consciousness of the supreme humiliation it brought
on me, and I supposed that he had foreseen this; surely he had foreseen
every detail. Secure in London, by now, he was surely rubbing his hands
together as he thought of the derelict ceaselessly tossing up and down
at sea." He gave a kind of snarl. "I pictured him, as no doubt he was
picturing me.

"The real storm came next day, and I had to cling to the bars of the
cage with both hands to save myself from being flung from side to side
and broken against the iron. There were periods, I think, when I fainted
from exhaustion, emerging incredibly bruised, and instantly in the grip
of the sickness again. The buoy was hurled about, down into the grey
valleys between the waves, drenched over and over with masses of water,
as though some giant were flinging down enormous pailfuls; indeed, it