Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single,
followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And
of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his
littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the
ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with
unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining
constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he
perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility of all
things mortal, the hopelessness of effort, the certain black defeat
that waits upon even what men term success.
He felt crushed, spiritually invertebrate, destitute of object in
existence, bereft of all hope. What mattered it whether he won or lost
in this stupid contest whose prize was possession of a few trinkets set
with bits of glittering stone? If he won, of what avail? What could it
profit his soul to make good a vain boast to Eve de Montalais? Would it
matter to her what success or failure meant to him? Lanyard doubted it,
he doubted her, himself, all things within the compass of his
understanding, and knew appalling glimpses of that everlasting truth,
too passionless to be cynical, that the hopes of man and his fears, his
loves and hates, his strivings and passivity, are all one in the
measured and immutable processes of Time.
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