That wide field of stars, drooping low and lifting away with rhythmic
motion, would sometime dip swiftly down to the very sea itself and,
swinging back, take with it his soul to some remote bourne....
The deeps were yielding up their mysteries. Past him a huge pale monster
swept at furious pace, hissing grimly as it passed, like some spectral
Nemesis pursuing the _Assyrian_.
Indifferently he speculated concerning the reality of this phenomenon.
The heave of a swell enabled him to glance incuriously after the steamship.
She seemed smaller, less genuine than ever, a shadow shape that boasted
visibility solely through that unearthly light on her after deck. Even
that now had waned to a mere glimmer, the flicker of a candle lost in the
immensities of that night-bound world of empty sky and empty ocean. Even as
he that had been named Michael Lanyard was a lost light, a tiny flame that
guttered toward its swift extinction....
Why live, when one might die and, dying, find endless rest?
Like a blazing thunderbolt one word rent the slumbrous web of sentience:
_Ekstrom_!
Galvanised by the flood of hatred unpent by the syllables of that name,
Lanyard began again to swim, flailing the water with frantic arms as if to
win somewhither by the very violence of his efforts.
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