Nineteen white-enamelled bolts, round-headed and symmetrical, all neatly in a row; he had counted and recounted them as a man half crazed by lack of sleep might vainly number sheep. Sometimes, amid the creaking and sighing of the ship, he heard the clink of hammers on these bolts, and sometimes that hammer-beat was in his brain. His hands clenched, his face pale and haggard, he had a look strangely persecuted. Clearly he suffered; but he endured that suffering with a stoic bitterness. At times the thought flashed into his mind: a few steps to the ship’s side and then cold darkness – the end of everything. But that was too easy; he always recoiled from the impulse. At other times, with a self-analysis almost grim, he made attempt to trace the morbid pattern of his sensation. He had always had this impulse: a curious instinctive searching, the burning desire to strike into the heart of reason. It was the motive which had actuated his life. His upbringing had been austere.
