enacious grasp.

And yet the world was full of life. All the things, all the men he knew,
existed, moved, breathed; and he saw them in a long perspective, far
off, diminished, distinct, desirable, unattainable, precious . . . lost
for ever. Round him, ceaselessly, there went on without a sound the mad
turmoil of tropical life. After he had died all this would remain! He
wanted to clasp, to embrace solid things; he had an immense craving for
sensations; for touching, pressing, seeing, handling, holding on, to
all these things. All this would remain--remain for years, for ages, for
ever. After he had miserably died there, all this would remain, would
live, would exist in joyous sunlight, would breathe in the coolness of
serene nights. What for, then? He would be dead. He would be stretched
upon the warm moisture of the ground, feeling nothing, seeing nothing,
knowing nothing; he would lie stiff, passive, rotting slowly; while over
him, under him, through him--unopposed, busy, hurried--the endless and
minute throngs of insects, little shining monsters of repulsive shapes,
with horns, with claws, with pincers, would swarm in streams, in rushes,
in eager struggle for his body; would swarm countless, persistent,
ferocious and greedy--till there would remain nothing but the white
gleam of bleaching bones in the long grass; in the long grass that would
shoot its feathery heads between the bare and polished ribs. There would
be that only left of him; nobody would miss him; no one would remember
him.

Nonsense! It could not be. There were ways out of this. Somebody would
turn up. Some human beings would come. He would speak, entreat--use
force to extort help from them. He felt strong; he was very strong. He
would . . . The discouragement, the conviction of the futility of his
hopes would return in an acute sensation of pain in his heart. He would
begin again his aimless wanderings. He tramped till he was ready to
drop, without being able to calm by bodily fatigue the trouble of his
soul. There was no rest, no peace within the cleared grounds of his
prison. There was no relief but in the black release of sleep, of sleep
without memory and without dreams; in the sleep coming brutal and heavy,
like the lead that kills. To forget in annihilating sleep; to tumble
headlong, as if stunned, out of daylight into the night of oblivion, was
for him the only, the rare respite from this existence which he lacked
the courage to endure--or to