Page 555 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

place. It takes possession of the mind, and drives forth the
thought into the exile of utter unbelief. After three days of
waiting for the sight of some human face, Decoud caught
himself entertaining a doubt of his own individuality. It had
merged into the world of cloud and water, of natural forces
and forms of nature. In our activity alone do we find the
sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against
the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part.
Decoud lost all belief in the reality of his action past and to
come. On the fifth day an immense melancholy descended
upon him palpably. He resolved not to give himself up to
these people in Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and ter-
rible, like jibbering and obscene spectres. He saw himself
struggling feebly in their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and
lovely like an allegorical statue, looking on with scornful
eyes at his weakness.
Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared
within the range of his vision; and, as if to escape from this
solitude, he absorbed himself in his melancholy. The vague
consciousness of a misdirected life given up to impulses
whose memory left a bitter taste in his mouth was the first
moral sentiment of his manhood. But at the same time he
felt no remorse. What should he regret? He had recognized
no other virtue than intelligence, and had erected passions
into duties. Both his intelligence and his passion were swal-
lowed up easily in this great unbroken solitude of waiting
without faith. Sleeplessness had robbed his will of all en-
ergy, for he had not slept seven hours in the seven days. His
sadness was the sadness of a sceptical mind. He beheld the

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard