ande was progressing well. That
sufficed for him.

Every now and then, for the necessities of his work, he jumped into the
water, swam to some point, and gained a footing again. He simply plunged
into the sea and left it, as a man passes from one room in his dwelling
to another.

His clothing was never dry. It was saturated with rain water, which had
no time to evaporate, and with sea water, which never dries. He lived
perpetually wet.

Living in wet clothing is a habit which may be acquired. The poor
groups of Irish people--old men, mothers, girls almost naked, and
infants--who pass the winter in the open air, under the snow and rain,
huddled together, sometimes at the corners of houses in the streets of
London, live and die in this condition.

To be soaked with wet, and yet to be thirsty: Gilliatt grew familiar
with this strange torture. There were times when he was glad to suck the
sleeve of his loose coat.

The fire which he made scarcely warmed him. A fire in open air yields
little comfort. It burns on one side, and freezes on the other.

Gilliatt often shivered even while sweating over his forge.

Everywhere about him rose resistance amidst a terrible silence. He felt
himself the enemy of an unseen combination. There is a dismal _non
possumus_ in nature. The inertia of matter is like a sullen threat. A
mysterious persecution environed him. He suffered from heats and
shiverings. The fire ate into his flesh; the water froze him; feverish
thirst tormented him; the wind tore his clothing; hunger undermined the
organs of the body. The oppression of all these things was constantly
exhausting him. Obstacles silent, immense, seemed to converge from all
points, with the blind irresponsibility of fate, yet full of a savage
unanimity. He felt them pressing inexorably upon him. No means were
there of escaping from them. His sufferings produced the impression of
some living persecutor. He had a constant sense of something working
against him, of a hostile form ever present, ever labouring to
circumvent and to subdue him. He could have fled from the struggle; but
since he remained, he had no choice but to war with this impenetrable
hostility. He asked himself what it was. It took hold of him, grasped
him tightly, overpowered him, deprived him of breath. The invisible
persecutor was destroying him by slow degrees. Every day the oppression
became greater, as if a mysterious screw had received another turn.

His situatio