He saw at once that his thatch mat had been blown away, exposing the shells, some of which had been tipped, while into others sand had drifted, sopping up the water. However, at least a dozen remained, and he drank the contents of two of these very slowly, carefully.
He rose, and began to go around the island again, seeking more grass and more seaweed.
". . . the night cometh, when no man can work more." What was that: John? Luke? It was one of the Gospels anyway. With Adam Long it was the other way 'round: when the day came, when the sun rose again, ferocious and triumphant, Adam, stunned by its heat, moved sluggishly when he moved at all. Only in the night could he work. Even then he doddered, unsure of himself, barely crawling from place to place, so that he must have looked like an old, old man, if there had been anybody to see him.
This was the time of dreams, whether day or night. There were hours on end when he was not sure whether he slept or was awake, indeed when he wasn't even sure he was not dead—and didn't care. Never morbid, yet sometimes he had thought about death, as every man should. He had pondered chiefly the physical aspects of it, wondering what the sensation would be. When you died would you instantly have a different feeling, no limbs, no skin, but be a soaring soul that could not collide wdth anything, couldn't bump? Would you shoot upward, making for Heaven with a speed that would have killed a living person? As you neared the Judgment Seat—horizontally? rising?—would there be a great roaring in your ears and would your face be flayed by a terrible light? Maybe it wouldn't be anything like that at all? Maybe you'd simply, quietly, without any movement, realize that you were there? Adam did not know. All he knew was that if death was anything like what he was now, it was a most uncomfortable state to be in; and in fact he wished fervently that if he was alive he'd die, whereas if he was dead it would change. In all solemnity he would rather take his changes in the everlasting Place of Punishment than go on this way.
Again and again he crept to the sea and submerged himself, permitting the brine to dry on his body afterward. It never gave him any relief, but still he did it.
A couple of times, when he could not contain himself, he tried to swallow sea water. Each time he brought it up, violently, and retched for a long while afterward, which weakened him even further.
He worked as much as he could, mostly at night. He made the center of the island his headquarters, and with his bare hands scooped out a sort of crater there, the walls some three feet high. This would keep his fire—if he ever got a fire—from being wuffed out in the first breeze. It gave him a little later shade in the morning, a little earlier shade in the afternoon. He also continued his efforts to weave some sort of blanket or hat or cover, but these were flimsy objects at best and not to be relied upon.
It dismayed him to learn that he could seldom read from the Book. He had counted upon the Book to be a substantial support in his last hours; and a feeling of warm delight, almost of bliss, had flooded him when the pirates conceded him this possession. But now he found that at night, even when the moon was out, he could not read without a great watering of the eyes, something that had never happened to him before, and which blurred his vision, smearing the words; whereas in the daytime the glare of the sun was so fierce that it caused his head to feel as though something was bounding and thumping around inside of it, and when he looked at the Book it seemed far, far away, held by hands that could not possibly be his, as though he was looking at it and at the hands through the wrong end of a spyglass. He had this same eerie feeling when he tried to weave grass and strands of seaweed in the daytime: he could see his hands 'way down there, and watch the fingers move clumsily, but they didn't seem to bear any relation to Adam Long himself. At another time this would have given him the creeps, this unnatural sensation. Now it only saddened him. He shook his head. He did read from the Book anyway, but it wasn't really reading, rather holding the thing there and looking down toward it with his eyes half closed, while he murmured and mumbled verse after verse that he knew by heart.
The dreams were not horrible. They didn't soothe; and indeed many seemed downright silly; but at least they didn't scare him. They were about Newport.
Before there was a tavern in that town some of the men had used to sit around out at Gibson's mill, and talk about things—talk gravely and slowly, their voices increased in volume in order to be heard over the sound of the turning stones, but not high-pitched—while, whenever he found a chance, the Duchess' brat, unnoticed in a corner, listened. Adam could hear the swish of water, the rumble-bumble of the stones, the grain's slow crunch, and through it all the voices of the serious men of Newport, seriously stating their views: he could hear these more clearly than he heard the slap of waves on the shore—even when he opened his eyes to peer once more at a wobbly horizon, he could hear the sounds and he could smell the dry clean smells and feel the coolness of Gibson's mill.
There was a place where some of the men had built a plank bridge over Pittasquawk Creek, and sometimes when he was on an errand out that way, carrying or fetching something for Mr. Sedgewick, the Long boy had used to nip under this bridge for a little while. There wasn't much room, and he'd sit with his knees scrounched up underneath his chin, not doing anything, not fishing, or even thinking, just sitting there. No matter how warm the day, it had always been cool under the Pittasquawk bridge. Sunlight slipping between the planks used to lie in strips across the satin surface of the water, which otherwhere was dark—though not so dark that you couldn't see into its depths. Adam used to stare at the smooth small shiny stones down there, and at a frog which, submerged, would stare soberly back at him. The frog had such sticky-out eyes that they looked as if they might break off and go rolling away. It never moved, unless an oxcart went over the bridge, setting up a great banging of the planks and causing dust to sift down through the slits and onto the water. This always frightened the frog, which disappeared. It used to frighten the Long boy, too, but he'd stay where he was all the same; and after a while the echoes would die, the dust would be carried languidly away, the strips of sunlight on the surface of the water would straighten themselves, and the frog, reassured, would come back and would sit down again and would stare long and seriously at Adam Long, who'd stare back. It was better than fishing, any day.
This was the sort of dream he'd dream, if dreaming it was.
There was always coolness in it, often snow. For instance, when he'd seem to see again the men filing into the meeting house for town meeting, it was always in wintertime and there was snow on the ground. He could hear them scrape it from their boots over the wooden scrapers or kick it off against the end of the steps. He'd remember, too, how he used to scratch his initials and pictures into the rime of a windowpane—not so much the appearance of these scratchings as the sound his nail made and the feel of the writing clear up his forearm. He'd used to try to tramp out his initials, "A.L.," on the grass of a frosty morning, too. That never worked well, but it did make a delightful clinky crinkly sound under his feet. And what in this world gives more glee and satisfaction than the writing of your initials into snow with your own steaming urine at night? He didn't have any "i" to dot, as some of the kids did. Or else Adam would remember, and vividly, how on the way home from school afternoons when there was snow they would dare one another to "make an angel" by falling backward into a drift with arms outspread.
Sometimes he was asleep while things like this sauntered smokelike through his mind, and sometimes he might have been awake. When you were dying anyway it didn't make much difference.