Insomnia
: When The Sleeper WakesOne afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging at
Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen,
desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous
path to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an
attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. The
hands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and
st
He glanced round at Isbister's footfall. Both men were disconcerted,
Isbister the more so, and, to override the awkwardness of his
involuntary pause, he remarked, with an air of mature conviction, that
the weather was hot for the time of year.
"Very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in
a colourless tone, "I can't sleep."
Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said, but his bearing
conveyed his helpful impulse.
"It may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning weary eyes to
Isbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but I
have had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights."
"Had advice?"
"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... They
are all very well for the run of people. It's hard to explain. I dare
not take... sufficiently powerful drugs."
"That makes it difficult," said Isbister.
He stood helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed what to do. Clearly
the man wanted to talk. An idea natural enough under the circumstances,
prompted him to keep the conversation going. "I've never suffered from
sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but in
those cases I have known, people have usually found something--"
"I dare make no experiments."
He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both
men were silent.
"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.
"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to
the mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
something--"
He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.
"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which
I have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the
childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, I
childless--I could find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One
thing at last I set myself to do.
"I said, I will do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs!
I don't know if you feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only
live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
complacencies--or irritations. We have to take the air or else our
thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A
thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes
drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man's
day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
rest--black coffee, cocaine--"
"I see," said Isbister.
"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.
"And this is the price?"
"Yes."
For a little while the two remained without speaking.
"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a hunger and
thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a
whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts
leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady--"
He paused. "Towards the gulf."
"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."
"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
drawing towards the vortex. Presently--"
"Yes?"
"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out
of this sweet world of sanity--down--"
"But," expostulated Isbister.
The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
voice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at the
foot of yonder dark precipice there, where the waves are green, and the
white surge lifts and falls, and that little thread of water trembles
down. There at any rate is ... sleep."
"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the man's hysterical
gust of emotion. "Drugs are better than that."
"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him.
Isbister looked at him and wondered transitorily if some complex
Providence had indeed brought them together that afternoon. "It's not
a cert, you know," he remarked. "There's a cliff like that at Lulworth
Cove--as high, anyhow--and a little girl fell from top to bottom. And
lives to-day--sound and well."
"But those rocks there?"
"One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken
bones grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?"
Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said Isbister with a sense
of devil-may-careish brilliance.
"But a suicide over that cliff (or any cliff for the matter of that),
really, as an artist--" He laughed. "It's so damned amateurish."
"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, "the other
thing. No man can keep sane if night after night--"
"Have you been walking along this coast alone?"
"Yes."
"Silly sort of thing to do. If you'll excuse my saying so. Alone! As
you say; body fag is no cure for brain fag. Who told you to? No wonder;
walking! And the sun on your head, heat, fag, solitude, all the day
long, and then, I suppose, you go to bed and try very hard--eh?"
Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.
"Look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with a sudden force of
gesture. "Look at that sea that has shone and quivered there for ever!
See the white spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. And this
blue vault, with the blinding sun pouring from the dome of it. It is
your world. You accept it, you rejoice in it. It warms and supports and
delights you. And for me--"
He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of my
misery. The whole world... is the garment of my misery."
Isbister looked at all the wild beauty of the sunlit cliffs about them
and back to that face of despair For a moment he was silent.
He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "You get a
night's sleep," he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. Take
my word for it."
He was quite sure now that this was a providential encounter. Only half
an hour ago he had been feeling horribly bored. Here was employment the
bare thought of which was righteous self-applause. He took possession
forthwith. It seemed to him that the first need of this exhausted being
was companionship He flung himself down on the steeply sloping turf
beside the motionless seated figure, and deployed forthwith into a
skirmishing line of gossip.
His hearer seemed to have lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally
seaward, and spoke only in answer to Isbister's direct questions--and
not to all of those But he made no sign of objection to this benevolent
intrusion upon his despair.
In a helpless way he seemed even grateful, and when presently Isbister,
feeling that his unsupported talk was losing vigour, suggested that they
should reascend the steep and return towards Boscastle, alleging the
view into Blackapit, he submitted quietly. Halfway up he began talking
to himself, and abruptly turned a ghastly face on his helper. "What can
be happening?" he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can be
happening? Spin, spin, spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and
round for evermore."
He stood with his hand circling
"It's all right, old chap," said Isbister with the air of an old friend.
"Don't worry yourself. Trust to me."
The man dropped his hand and turned again. They went over the brow in
single file and to the headland beyond Penally, with the sleepless man
gesticulating ever and again, and speaking fragmentary things concerning
his whirling brain. At the headland they stood for a space by the seat
that looks into the dark mysteries of Blackapit, and then he sat down.
Isbister had resumed his talk whenever the path had widened sufficiently
for them to walk abreast. He was enlarging upon the complex difficulty
of making Boscastle Harbour in bad weather, when suddenly and quite
irrelevantly his companion interrupted him again.
"My head is not like what it was," he said, gesticulating for want
of expressive phrases. "It's not like what it was. There is a sort of
oppression, a weight. No--not drowsiness, would God it were! It is like
a shadow, a deep shadow falling suddenly and swiftly across something
busy. Spin, spin into the darkness The tumult of thought, the confusion,
the eddy and eddy. I can't express it. I can hardly keep my mind on
it--steadily enough to tell you."
He stopped feebly.
"Don't trouble, old chap," said Isbister. "I think I can understand. At
any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me,
you know."
The sleepless man thrust his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed them.
Isbister talked for awhile while this rubbing continued, and then he had
a fresh idea. "Come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. I can
show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you'd care?"
The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.
Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said Isbister,
"and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. If you take
alcohol?"
The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer clearly
aware of his actions. "I don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the
garden path, and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No--I
don't drink. It goes round. Spin, it goes--spin--"
He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
who sees nothing.
Then he sat down abruptly and heavily in the easy chair, seemed almost
to fall into it. He leant forward with his brows on his hands and became
motionless.
Presently he made a faint sound in his throat. Isbister moved about
the room with the nervousness of an inexperienced host, making little
remarks that scarcely required answering. He crossed the room to his
portfolio, placed it on the table and noticed the mantel clock.
"I don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an
unlighted cigarette in his hand--his mind troubled with a design of
the furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but
passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated this after
momentary silence.
The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand,
regarding him.
The stillness lengthened. The match went out, the cigarette was put down
unlit. The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the portfolio,
opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. "Perhaps," he
whispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door and back to
the figure. Then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing at his
companion after each elaborate pace.
He closed the door noiselessly. The house door was standing open, and
he went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose at
the corner of the garden bed. From this point he could see the stranger
through the open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. He had not
moved.
A number of children going along the road stopped and regarded the
artist curiously. A boatman exchanged civilities with him. He felt
that possibly his circumspect attitude and position seemed peculiar and
unaccountable. Smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. He drew pipe
and pouch from his pocket, filled the pipe slowly.
"I wonder,"... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency.
"At any rate we must give him a chance." He struck a match in the virile
way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
Presently he heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp lit
from the kitchen. He turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stopped
her at the door of his sitting-room. He had some difficulty in
explaining the situation in whispers, for she did not know he had a
visitor. She retreated again with the lamp, still a little mystified to
judge from her manner, and he resumed his hovering at the corner of the
porch, flushed and less at his ease.
Long after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad,
his curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into
his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger
was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the
singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships
in the harbour, the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of
monkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow
of the hillside. Something flashed into Isbister's mind; he started, and
leaning over the table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger;
became conviction. Astonishment seized him and became--dread!
No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!
He crept slowly and noiselessly round the table, pausing twice to
listen. At last he could lay his hand on the back of the armchair. He
bent down until the two heads were ear to ear.
Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor's face. He started
violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of
white.
He looked again and saw that they were open and with the pupils rolled
under the lids. He was suddenly afraid. Overcome by the strangeness of
the man's condition, he took him by the shoulder and shook him. "Are you
asleep?" he said, with his voice jumping into alto, and again, "Are you
asleep?"
A conviction took possession of his mind that this man was dead. He
suddenly became active and noisy, strode across the room, blundering
against the table as he did so, and rang the bell.
"Please bring a light at once," he said in the passage. "There is
something wrong with my friend."
Then he returned to the motionless seated figure, grasped the shoulder,
shook it, and shouted. The room was flooded with yellow glare as his
astonished landlady entered with the light. His face was white as he
turned blinking towards her. "I must fetch a doctor at once," he said.
"It is either death or a fit. Is there a doctor in the village? Where is
a doctor to be found?"
More
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IT WAS DENSE NIGHT when Maskull awoke from his profound sleep. A wind was blowing against him, gentle but wall-like, such as he had never experienced on earth. He remained sprawling on the ground, as he was unable to lift his body because of its int... Junior Achievement
"What would you think," I asked Marjorie over supper, "if I should undertake to lead a junior achievement group this summer?" She pondered it while she went to the kitchen to bring in the dessert. It was dried apricot pie, and very tasty, I migh... Jupiter And Trouble!
The huge ship circled the planet twice, with the instruments adjusted to detect the metal of the domes. They spread over many miles of the surface, yet were like grains of sand on the enormous globe. When the gauges quivered over a section, hidd... Jupiter Equilateral
For a moment, Major Briarton just stared at him. Then he was on his feet, shaking his head as he came around the desk. "Tom, use your head," he said. "It's as much of a shock to me as it is to you, but you can't afford to jump to false conclusions... Jupiter Somewhat Close
Except as to the time the comet would take to revolve round the sun, it must be confessed that all the professor's calculations had comparatively little interest for anyone but himself, and he was consequently left very much to pursue his studies ... Kar Komak The Bowman
As Carthoris moved through the forest toward the distant cliffs with Thuvia's hand still tight pressed in his, he wondered a little at the girl's continued silence, yet the contact of her cool palm against his was so pleasant that he feared to bre... Kidnaped!
I searched about the spot carefully. At last I was rewarded by the discovery of her javelin, a few yards from the bush that had concealed us from the charging thag--her javelin and the indications of a struggle revealed by the trampled vegetation a... Kulan Tith's Sacrifice
The morning of the second day of her incarceration in the east tower of the palace of Astok, Prince of Dusar, found Thuvia of Ptarth waiting in dull apathy the coming of the assassin. She had exhausted every possibility of escape, going over and... L5000 To Detain The Ship
Brande was asleep when I entered his cabin. His writing-table was covered with scraps of paper on which he had been scribbling. My name was on every scrap, preceded or followed by an unfinished sentence, thus: "Marcel is thinking-- When I was ill,...