Then he suddenly felt the rough rope around his fingers and pulled it slowly over his chest and up towards his chin. He held his right arm stiffly in the air, watching the rope in horror; some gruesome quality he had only just seen in it put him in a frenzy, he rolled over on to his stomach and pounded the deck like a man possessed. The rope coiled itself before his very eyes, no, he couldn’t avoid the rope’s red colour, a red which stabbed him from pulse to pulse with a thousand concealed spikes, and howling inwardly, he was flung backwards like a bullet through space, and with a merciless sucking noise the green wave enveloped him once more. He ran from bows to stern, no one was allowed near him; the English girl sometimes stood in his way, gazing at him pleadingly. The artillery captain with the big boxer dog, which later drowned, was running around the after deck in his clattering boots, playfully setting the dog on him while pretending not to notice they existed.
When the storm broke, they could see it rising suddenly from the western horizon like a giant bird, then setting course for their ship, faster and faster, spreading its pearl-grey wings wider and wider; a leaden cloud hung down from its claws like a stolen lamb as it swooped down over them, howling, apparently intent on hacking them to pieces; just before they were smothered, they could see how one of its wings dropped stone-like towards the water, and as if it had been hit by a shot, blood in the form of a blood-red glow was running down its white feathers and all over them. Then everything was compressed into a pitiful mass under the bird, fears and fantasies, happiness, pain, malice and all the other special things; they huddled together in the shuddering lounge as the panelling bulged, and yelled at each other confidential things they would normally only be able to whisper while the captain’s boxer and Madame’s senile little boy lay terrified in a crumpled heap at the top of a staircase, trembling together. Only Jimmie, filled with a disgust which drowned everything else, was on his own, rolling about on the floor of his cabin.
The catastrophe saved him, indeed, here was no place for hypocrisy, and the shipwreck actually saved him from the worst — and now, as he races through the island’s blond morning only a few rocks away from the longed-for hollow which will swallow him up, everything is childishly simple, like a croquet lawn where every hoop has learnt to obey the swishing of the balls. The sun released its cluster of balloons as it detached itself from the sea and lay there shivering half an inch over the horizon, metallically yellow but still chilled by the night frost; as he approached rapidly, the bushes stirred slightly in the gentle, still-cool breeze the sea was blowing nonchalantly at them, and even before he could see it, the grass was rustling sleepily in front of them. His feet now launched him upwards in a series of little bounces, and ignoring the iguanas slithering over the rocks, he breasted the tape triumphantly as he entered the thicket, thrusting the branches effortlessly aside as if he were diving into water, and suddenly he found himself in the long grass.
He felt dizzy and stood absolutely still, everything was so fantastically different and his sense of liberation enveloped him like a breeze, laden with his own warmth and filled with mysterious scents. Seen through the latticed tips of the grass which was much taller than a man, the light flowed past like cool, silent streams, the warm shadow of the cathedral pressed gently down upon him and he sank slowly to the ground, overcome by events. It was windier now, but he felt nothing of it, merely saw it in the grass high above him as the expanse of panicles straining towards the sun swayed violently, and white butterflies with thin red markings on their left wings bobbed up and down like distressed boats on the elevated ocean. He felt he was lying on the sea bottom, no pain touched him any more, no chill cut through him, no heat attempted to embrace him, no hatred flowed over him, no love seemed to scratch him, no longing to carve him up.
He was dragging his fingers over the ground, flat, hard, still slightly damp after the night, then suddenly cried out in alarm as he came up against an obstacle, and when he looked down and round about him he realized to his indifferent surprise he was already lying in a hollow in the ground. The sides were like polished crystal, but the bottom was soft and fluffy, a clump of low grass was waving like a cloud at his feet, weak puffs of invisible warmth were blowing down regularly between the blades of grass and the peaceful church-light was reflected in the oystered edges; yes, this was a hollow for all eternity. He lay there on his back for a long time without attempting to move any part of his body, not even in his mind, as butterflies fluttered lazily like listless sailing boats in the grassy swell above and small, green insects and small, spherical blobs of sticky fluid sprayed down, urged on by the wind to sink beneath the surface like drifting mines.
Then something ominous glinted high above in the slowly swaying tips of eternity; he saw it straight away of course, but tried to forget it, clenched his fists to form a cushion under his neck, and kept his eyes firmly shut. But he knew nevertheless, indeed, he could see behind his eyelids that the spider was getting closer and closer, the yellow thread swung gently between the downy stalks of the grass; in a vain attempt to embrace the whole world with its graceful claws, the big, red body expanded and throbbed menacingly, filled with animal desire, animal agony, and a kind of human despair. Jimmie suddenly cried out, but when he attempted to leap out of the deep hollow, a shudder passed through his body like a swollen vein and he lay paralysed as the spider’s body hovered large and lazy, indeed, it was the laziness that scared him most, just a hand’s breadth above his face. Powerless and at the mercy of the insect, his face distorted by his terrified muscles, more helplessly naked than ever before, deprived of any vestige of hard-won dignity, he waited for the spider to fall. The wait seemed endless, and the very delay was the high point of his torture; only a moment more and the disgusting contact would be his liberation.