The
discontented bats departed in quest of darker places, and a lizard came
out in short, nervous rushes, and, pleased with the white table-cloth,
stopped on it in breathless immobility that would have suggested sudden
death had it not been for the melodious call he exchanged with a less
adventurous friend hiding amongst the lumber in the courtyard. Then the
boards in the passage creaked, the lizard vanished, and Almayer stirred
uneasily with a sigh: slowly, out of the senseless annihilation of
drunken sleep, he was returning, through the land of dreams, to waking
consciousness. Almayer's head rolled from shoulder to shoulder in the
oppression of his dream; the heavens had descended upon him like a heavy
mantle, and trailed in starred folds far under him. Stars above, stars
all round him; and from the stars under his feet rose a whisper full of
entreaties and tears, and sorrowful faces flitted amongst the clusters of
light filling the infinite space below. How escape from the importunity
of lamentable cries and from the look of staring, sad eyes in the faces
which pressed round him till he gasped for breath under the crushing
weight of worlds that hung over his aching shoulders? Get away! But
how? If he attempted to move he would step off into nothing, and perish
in the crashing fall of that universe of which he was the only support.
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