It was a long finger, thin, covered with a film of reddish hair. His face was so near to it that when he breathed one could see the slight wavering of the hairs on it. The nail was thick, long, and had two white spots on it. The finger traced a line down the paper and then stopped. The philosophy of high explosives was a negative, an absolutely mad philosophy. He thought it came to fruition in the face of the grinning monkey sitting under the swinging yellow light. Something in him seemed to cry 'Stop'. His finger was moving again. Suddenly he said 'Probable'. It was as though his finger was a sort of fish caught between two tides, the tides of memory and actuality. When he remembered his finger ceased to move. His mind was lifted up, carried far away, beyond the unrest, the ceaseless movement, the incessant hammering, the monotonous 'one, two, three' . . . 'Steady there', the whisperings, the creakings of wood, the sudden vision of a great area of wood, upon which something huge performed phantom-like movements.
