waste. Even were an alarm to be given, were she to stop now and put out a boat, it would find him, if it found him at all, too late.
The cold was killing.
He felt very sleepy. Drowsily he apprehended the beginning of the end. His senses, growing numb with cold, presently must cease to function altogether. Then he would forget, and nothing would matter any more.
Yet the will to live persisted amazingly. Had Lanyard wished it he could not have ceased to swim, at least to keep afloat. Vaguely he wondered how people ever managed to commit suicide by drowning; it seemed to pass human power to resist that buoyancy which sustained one, to let go, let one's self go down. Impossible to conceive how that was ever done. …
Why should he care to go on living?
No reading that riddle! …
On obscure impulse he gave up swimming, turned upon his back, floated face to the sky, derelict, resigning himself to the cradling arms of the sea. The gradual, slow rocking of the swells soothed his passion like a kindly opiate. The cold no more irked him, but seemed somehow strangely anodynous. Imperturbably he envisaged death, without fear, without welcome. What must be, must. …
For all that, life clutched at him with jealous hands. More than ever sleepy, before he slept that last, long sleep he must somehow solve this enigma, learn the reason why life continued so to allure his failing senses.
