BRAVE NEW WORLD
by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
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Chapter Eighteen
THE DOOR was ajar; they entered.
"John!"
From the bathroom came an unpleasant and characteristic sound.
"Is there anything the matter?" Helmholtz called.
There was no answer. The unpleasant sound was repeated, twice; there
was silence. Then, with a click the bathroom door opened and, very pale,
the Savage emerged.
"I say," Helmholtz exclaimed solicitously, "you do look ill, John!"
"Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard.
The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization."
"What?"
"It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added, in a lower
tone, "I ate my own wickedness."
"Yes, but what exactly? ? I mean, just now you were ?"
"Now I am purified," said the Savage. "I drank some mustard and warm
water."
The others stared at him in astonishment. "Do you mean to say that
you were doing it on purpose?" asked Bernard.
"That's how the Indians always purify themselves." He sat down and,
sighing, passed his hand across his forehead. "I shall rest for a few
minutes," he said. "I'm rather tired."
"Well, I'm not surprised," said Helmholtz. After a silence, "We've
come to say good-bye," he went on in another tone. "We're off to-morrow
morning."
"Yes, we're off to-morrow," said Bernard on whose face the Savage
remarked a new expression of determined resignation. "And by the way,
John," he continued, leaning forward in his chair and laying a hand on
the Savage's knee, "I want to say how sorry I am about everything that
happened yesterday." He blushed. "How ashamed," he went on, in spite of
the unsteadiness of his voice, "how really ?"
The Savage cut him short and, taking his hand, affectionately
pressed it.
"Helmholtz was wonderful to me," Bernard resumed, after a little
pause. "If it hadn't been for him, I should ?"
"Now, now," Helmholtz protested.
There was a silence. In spite of their sadness?because of it, even;
for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another?the
three young men were happy.
"I went to see the Controller this morning," said the Savage at
last.
"What for?"
"To ask if I mightn't go to the islands with you."
"And what did he say?" asked Helmholtz eagerly.
The Savage shook his head. "He wouldn't let me."
"Why not?"
"He said he wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'm damned,"
the Savage added, with sudden fury, "I'm damned if I'll go on being
experimented with. Not for all the Controllers in the world. l shall go
away to-morrow too."
"But where?" the others asked in unison.
The Savage shrugged his shoulders. "Anywhere. I don't care. So long
as I can be alone."
From Guildford the down-line followed the Wey valley to Godalming,
then, over Milford and Witley, proceeded to Haslemere and on through
Petersfield towards Portsmouth. Roughly parallel to it, the upline
passed over Worplesden, Tongham, Puttenham, Elstead and Grayshott.
Between the Hog's Back and Hindhead there were points where the two
lines were not more than six or seven kilometres apart. The distance was
too small for careless flyers?particularly at night and when they had
taken half a gramme too much. There had been accidents. Serious ones. It
had been decided to deflect the upline a few kilometres to the west.
Between Grayshott and Tongham four abandoned air-lighthouses marked the
course of the old Portsmouth-to-London road. The skies above them were
silent and deserted. It was over Selborne, Bordon and Farnham that the
helicopters now ceaselessly hummed and roared.
The Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old light-house which
stood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead. The
building was of ferro-concrete and in excellent condition?almost too
comfortable the Savage had thought when he first explored the place,
almost too civilizedly luxurious. He pacified his conscience by
promising himself a compensatingly harder self-discipline, purifications
the more complete and thorough. His first night in the hermitage was,
deliberately, a sleepless one. He spent the hours on his knees praying,
now to that Heaven from which the guilty Claudius had begged
forgiveness, now in Zuo Awonawilona, now to Jesus and Pookong, now to
his own guardian animal, the eagle. From time to time he stretched out
his arms as though he were on the Cross, and held them thus through long
minutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became a tremulous
and excruciating agony; held them, in voluntary crucifixion, while he
repeated, through clenched teeth (the sweat, meanwhile, pouring down his
face), "Oh, forgive me! Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!" again
and again, till he was on the point of fainting from the pain.
When morning came, he felt he had earned the right to inhabit the
lighthouse; yet, even though there still was glass in most of the
windows, even though the view from the platform was so fine. For the
very reason why he had chosen the lighthouse had become almost instantly
a reason for going somewhere else. He had decided to live there because
the view was so beautiful, because, from his vantage point, he seemed to
be looking out on to the incarnation of a divine being. But who was he
to be pampered with the daily and hourly sight of loveliness? Who was he
to be living in the visible presence of God? All he deserved to live in
was some filthy sty, some blind hole in the ground. Stiff and still
aching after his long night of pain, but for that very reason inwardly
reassured, he climbed up to the platform of his tower, he looked out
over the bright sunrise world which he had regained the right to
inhabit. On the north the view was bounded by the long chalk ridge of
the Hog's Back, from behind whose eastern extremity rose the towers of
the seven skyscrapers which constituted Guildford. Seeing them, the
Savage made a grimace; but he was to become reconciled to them in course
of time; for at night they twinkled gaily with geometrical
constellations, or else, flood-lighted, pointed their luminous fingers
(with a gesture whose significance nobody in England but the Savage now
understood) solemnly towards the plumbless mysteries of heaven.
In the valley which separated the Hog's Back from the sandy hill on
which the lighthouse stood, Puttenham was a modest little village nine
stories high, with silos, a poultry farm, and a small vitamin-D factory.
On the other side of the lighthouse, towards the South, the ground fell
away in long slopes of heather to a chain of ponds.
Beyond them, above the intervening woods, rose the fourteen-story
tower of Elstead. Dim in the hazy English air, Hindhead and Selborne
invited the eye into a blue romantic distance. But it was not alone the
distance that had attracted the Savage to his lighthouse; the near was
as seductive as the far. The woods, the open stretches of heather and
yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotch firs, the shining ponds with their
overhanging birch trees, their water lilies, their beds of rushes?these
were beautiful and, to an eye accustomed to the aridities of the
American desert, astonishing. And then the solitude! Whole days passed
during which he never saw a human being. The lighthouse was only a
quarter of an hour's flight from the Charing-T Tower; but the hills of
Malpais were hardly more deserted than this Surrey heath. The crowds
that daily left London, left it only to play Electro-magnetic Golf or
Tennis. Puttenham possessed no links; the nearest Riemann-surfaces were
at Guildford. Flowers and a landscape were the only attractions here.
And so, as there was no good reason for coming, nobody came. During the
first days the Savage lived alone and undisturbed.
Of the money which, on his first arrival, John had received for his
personal expenses, most had been spent on his equipment. Before leaving
London he had bought four viscose-woollen blankets, rope and string,
nails, glue, a few tools, matches (though he intended in due course to
make a fire drill), some pots and pans, two dozen packets of seeds, and
ten kilogrammes of wheat flour. "No, not synthetic starch and
cotton-waste flour-substitute," he had insisted. "Even though it is more
nourishing." But when it came to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminized
beef-surrogate, he had not been able to resist the shopman's persuasion.
Looking at the tins now, he bitterly reproached himself for his
weakness. Loathesome civilized stuff! He had made up his mind that he
would never eat it, even if he were starving. "That'll teach them," he
thought vindictively. It would also teach him.
He counted his money. The little that remained would be enough, he
hoped, to tide him over the winter. By next spring, his garden would be
producing enough to make him independent of the outside world.
Meanwhile, there would always be game. He had seen plenty of rabbits,
and there were waterfowl on the ponds. He set to work at once to make a
bow and arrows.
There were ash trees near the lighthouse and, for arrow shafts, a
whole copse full of beautifully straight hazel saplings. He began by
felling a young ash, cut out six feet of unbranched stem, stripped off
the bark and, paring by paring, shaved away the white wood, as old
Mitsima had taught him, until he had a stave of his own height, stiff at
the thickened centre, lively and quick at the slender tips. The work
gave him an intense pleasure. After those weeks of idleness in London,
with nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch
or turn a handle, it was pure delight to be doing something that
demanded skill and patience.
He had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, when he
realized with a start that he was singing-singing! It was as
though, stumbling upon himself from the outside, he had suddenly caught
himself out, taken himself flagrantly at fault. Guiltily he blushed.
After all, it was not to sing and enjoy himself that he had come here.
It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life;
it was to be purified and made good; it was actively to make amends. He
realized to his dismay that, absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he
had forgotten what he had sworn to himself he would constantly
remember?poor Linda, and his own murderous unkindness to her, and those
loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the mystery of her death,
insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief and repentance,
but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had sworn
unceasingly to make amends. And there was he, sitting happily over his
bow-stave, singing, actually singing. ?
He went indoors, opened the box of mustard, and put some water to
boil on the fire.
Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus landworkers from one of the
Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving to Elstead and, at
the top of the hill, were astonished to see a young man standing 0utside
the abandoned lighthouse stripped to the waist and hitting himself with
a whip of knotted cords. His back was horizontally streaked with
crimson, and from weal to weal ran thin trickles of blood. The driver of
the lorry pulled up at the side of the road and, with his two
companions, stared open-mouthed at the extraordinary spectacle. One, two
three?they counted the strokes. After the eighth, the young man
interrupted his self-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there be
violently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whip and began
hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve ?
"Ford!" whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same
opinion.
"Fordey!" they said.
Three days later, like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse, the
reporters came.
Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was
ready. The Savage was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks had been
whittled and dried, tipped with sharp nails, carefully nocked. He had
made a raid one night on the Puttenham poultry farm, and now had
feathers enough to equip a whole armoury. It was at work upon the
feathering of his shafts that the first of the reporters found him.
Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, the man came up behind him.
"Good-morning, Mr. Savage," he said. "I am the representative of
The Hourly Radio."
Startled as though by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprang to his
feet, scattering arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brush in all directions.
"I beg your pardon," said the reporter, with genuine compunction. "I
had no intention ?" He touched his hat?the aluminum stove-pipe hat in
which he carried his wireless receiver and transmitter. "Excuse my not
taking it off," he said. "It's a bit heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am
the representative of The Hourly ?"
"What do you want?" asked the Savage, scowling. The reporter
returned his most ingratiating smile.
"Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested ?" He
put his head on one side, his smile became almost coquettish. "Just a
few words from you, Mr. Savage." And rapidly, with a series of ritual
gestures, he uncoiled two wires connected to the portable battery
buckled round his waist; plugged them simultaneously into the sides of
his aluminum hat; touched a spring on the crown?and antenn栳hot up into
the air; touched another spring on the peak of the brim?and, like a
jack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphone and hung there, quivering, six
inches in front of his nose; pulled down a pair of receivers over his
ears; pressed a switch on the left side of the hat-and from within came
a faint waspy buzzing; turned a knob on the right?and the buzzing was
interrupted by a stethoscopic wheeze and cackle, by hiccoughs and sudden
squeaks. "Hullo," he said to the microphone, "hullo, hullo ?" A bell
suddenly rang inside his hat. "Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon
speaking. Yes, I've got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the
microphone and say a few words. Won't you, Mr. Savage?" He looked up at
the Savage with another of those winning smiles of his. "Just tell our
readers why you came here. What made you leave London (hold on, Edzel!)
so very suddenly. And, of course, that whip." (The Savage started. How
did they know about the whip?) "We're all crazy to know about the whip.
And then something about Civilization. You know the sort of stuff. 'What
I think of the Civilized Girl.' Just a few words, a very few ?"
The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he
uttered and no more-five words, the same as those he had said to Bernard
about the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. "Hᮩ! Sons 鳯
tse-nᡢ And seizing the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round
(the young man revealed himself invitingly well-covered), aimed and,
with all the force and accuracy of a champion foot-and-mouth-baller,
delivered a most prodigious kick.
Eight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio was on
sale in the streets of London. "HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HAS COCCYX KICKED
BY MYSTERY SAVAGE," ran the headlines on the front page. "SENSATION IN
SURREY."
"Sensation even in London," thought the reporter when, on his
return, he read the words. And a very painful sensation, what was more.
He sat down gingerly to his luncheon.
Undeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleague's coccyx,
four other reporters, representing the New York Times, the
Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum, The Fordian Science
Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, called that afternoon at the
lighthouse and met with receptions of progressively increasing violence.
From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, "Benighted
fool!" shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor, "why
don't you take soma?"
"Get away!" The Savage shook his fist.
The other retreated a few steps then turned round again. "Evil's an
unreality if you take a couple of grammes."
"Kohakwa iyathtokyai!" The tone was menacingly derisive.
"Pain's a delusion."
"Oh, is it?" said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch,
strode forward.
The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his
helicopter.
After that the Savage was left for a time in peace. A few
helicopters came and hovered inquisitively round the tower. He shot an
arrow into the importunately nearest of them. It pierced the aluminum
floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell, and the machine went
rocketing up into the air with all the acceleration that its
super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kept their distance
respectfully. Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in his
imagination to one of the suitors of the Maiden of Mᴳaki, unmoved and
persistent among the winged vermin), the Savage dug at what was to be
his garden. After a time the vermin evidently became bored and flew
away; for hours at a stretch the sky above his head was empty and, but
for the larks, silent.
The weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in the air. He
had dug all the morning and was resting, stretched out along the floor.
And suddenly the thought of Lenina was a real presence, naked and
tangible, saying "Sweet!" and "Put your arms round me!"?in shoes and
socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck,
the lifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our lips and
eyes. Lenina ? No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as
he was, ran out of the house. At the edge of the heath stood a clump of
hoary juniper bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, not
the smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp,
with a thousand points, they pricked him. He tried to think of poor
Linda, breathless and dumb, with her clutching hands and the unutterable
terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom he had sworn to remember. But it was
still the presence of Lenina that haunted him. Lenina whom he had
promised to forget. Even through the stab and sting of the juniper
needles, his wincing flesh was aware of her, unescapably real. "Sweet,
sweet ? And if you wanted me too, why didn't you ?"
The whip was hanging on a nail by the door, ready to hand against
the arrival of reporters. In a frenzy the Savage ran back to the house,
seized it, whirled it. The knotted cords bit into his flesh.
"Strumpet! Strumpet!" he shouted at every blow as though it were
Lenina (and how frantically, without knowing it, he wished it were),
white, warm, scented, infamous Lenina that he was dogging thus.
"Strumpet!" And then, in a voice of despair, "Oh, Linda, forgive me.
Forgive me, God. I'm bad. I'm wicked. I'm ? No, no, you strumpet, you
strumpet!"
From his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres
away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's most expert big game
photographer had watched the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had
been rewarded. He had spent three days sitting inside the bole of an
artificial oak tree, three nights crawling on his belly through the
heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes, burying wires in the soft
grey sand. Seventy-two hours of profound discomfort. But now me great
moment had come?the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as
he moved among his instruments, the greatest since his taking of the
famous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas' wedding.
"Splendid," he said to himself, as the Savage started his astonishing
performance. "Splendid!" He kept his telescopic cameras carefully
aimed?glued to their moving objective; clapped on a higher power to get
a close-up of the frantic and distorted face (admirable!); switched
over, for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comical effect,
he promised himself); listened in, meanwhile, to the blows, the groans,
the wild and raving words that were being recorded on the sound-track at
the edge of his film, tried the effect of a little amplification (yes,
that was decidedly better); was delighted to hear, in a momentary lull,
the shrill singing of a lark; wished the Savage would turn round so that
he could get a good close-up of the blood on his back?and almost
instantly (what astonishing luck!) the accommodating fellow did turn
round, and he was able to take a perfect close-up.
"Well, that was grand!" he said to himself when it was all over.
"Really grand!" He mopped his face. When they had put in the feely
effects at the studio, it would be a wonderful film. Almost as good,
thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale's Love-Life?and
that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!
Twelve days later The Savage of Surrey had been released and could
be seen, heard and felt in every first-class feely-palace in Western
Europe.
The effect of Darwin Bonaparte's film was immediate and enormous. On
the afternoon which followed the evening of its release John's rustic
solitude was suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of
helicopters.
He was digging in his garden?digging, too, in his own mind,
laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death?and he drove
in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have
lighted fools the way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled
through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda
died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and
at last ? He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on
his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to
wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder
again; words that proclaimed themselves true?truer somehow than truth
itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods.
Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft provok'st; yet
grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep.
Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick
it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams? ?
A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow,
there was something between the sun and him. He looked up, startled,
from his digging, from his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled
bewilderment, his mind still wandering in that other world of
truer-than-truth, still focused on the immensities of death and deity;
looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines. Like
locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him on the heather.
And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in
white viscose-flannels, women (for the weather was hot) in
acetate-shantung pyjamas or velveteen shorts and sleeveless,
half-unzippered singlets?one couple from each. In a few minutes there
were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse,
staring, laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape)
peanuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum, pan-glandular petite
beurres. And every moment?for across the Hog's Back the stream of
traffic now flowed unceasingly?their numbers increased. As in a
nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds.
The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in the posture of
an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse,
staring from face to face in speechless horror, like a man out of his
senses.
From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality
by the impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A
shock of startling pain?and he was broad awake, awake and fiercely
angry.
"Go away!" he shouted.
The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping.
"Good old Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!" And through the babel he heard cries
of: "Whip, whip, the whip!"
Acting on the word's suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted
cords from its nail behind the door and shook it at his tormentors.
There was a yell of ironical applause.
Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The
line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened
again, stood firm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had
given these sightseers a courage which the Savage had not expected of
them. Taken aback, he halted and looked round.
"Why don't you leave me alone?" There was an almost plaintive note
in his anger.
"Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!" said the man who, if the
Savage were to advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a
packet. "They're really very good, you know," he added, with a rather
nervous smile of propitiation. "And the magnesium salts will help to
keep you young."
The Savage ignored his offer. "What do you want with me?" he asked,
turning from one grinning face to another. "What do you want with me?"
"The whip," answered a hundred voices confusedly. "Do the whipping
stunt. Let's see the whipping stunt."
Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, "We-want-the whip,"
shouted a group at the end of the line. "We?want?the whip."
Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated,
parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound,
until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being
spoken. "We?want?the whip."
They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the
unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed,
have gone on for hours-almost indefinitely. But at about the
twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings were startlingly interrupted.
Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hog's Back, hung
poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of where the
Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sightseers
and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the
shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were
turned off: "We?want?the whip; we?want?the whip," broke out again in the
same loud, insistent monotone.
The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fair and
ruddy-faced young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and
jockey cap, a young woman.
At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled,
turned pale.
The young woman stood, smiling at him?an uncertain, imploring,
almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying
something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated
refrain of the sightseers.
"We?want?the whip! We?want?the whip!"
The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on that
peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely
incongruous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to
grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks.
Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture
stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped forward.
"We?want?the whip! We?want ?"
And all of a sudden they had what they wanted.
"Strumpet!" The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. "Fitchew!"
Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords.
Terrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in the
heather. "Henry, Henry!" she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had
bolted out of harm's way behind the helicopter.
With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was a
convergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was
a fascinating horror.
"Fry, lechery, fry!" Frenzied, the Savage slashed again.
Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine
about the trough.
"Oh, the flesh!" The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on
his shoulders that the whip descended. "Kill it, kill it!"
Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within,
impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and
atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in
them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one
another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that
plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet.
"Kill it, kill it, kill it ?" The Savage went on shouting.
Then suddenly somebody started singing "Orgy-porgy" and, in a
moment, they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to
dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in
six-eight time. Orgy-porgy ?
It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its
flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of
sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already
high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish
incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered?everything.
"Oh, my God, my God!" He covered his eyes with his hand.
That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the
Hog's Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description of last
night's orgy of atonement had been in all the papers.
"Savage!" called the first arrivals, as they alighted from their
machine. "Mr. Savage!"
There was no answer.
The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked
into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the
room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the
higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.
"Mr. Savage!"
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards
the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then
paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left.
South-south-west, south, south-east, east. ?
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