Jadams: Brave New World, Ch. 9-18

LENINA felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness and horror, to a complete and absolute holiday.

LENINA felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness and horror, to a complete and absolute holiday.

LENINA felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness and horror, to a complete and absolute holiday.

As soon as they got back to the rest-house, she swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity.

Bernard meanwhile lay pensive and wide-eyed in the dark.

At ten thirty-four they landed on the roof of the Santa Fé Post Office; at ten thirty-seven Bernard had got through to the World Controller's Office in Whitehall; at ten thirty-seven he was speaking to his fordship's fourth personal secretary; at ten forty-four he was repeating his story to the first secretary, and at ten forty-seven and a half it was the deep, resonant voice of Mustapha Mond himself that sounded in his ears.

"I ventured to think," stammered Bernard, "that your fordship might find the matter of sufficient scientific interest …"

"I ventured to think," stammered Bernard, "that your fordship might find the matter of sufficient scientific interest …"

His boom was deferential.

Noiseless on his deerksin moccasins, he ran up the steps and tried the door.

He gazed, he clasped his hands, his lips moved.

"Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;

Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand,

Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure

Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure

Dare to profane with his unworthiest hand that … No, he didn't.

Under the microscopes, their long tails furiously lashing, spermatozoa were burrowing head first into eggs; and, fertilized, the eggs were expanding, dividing, or if bokanovskified, budding and breaking up into whole populations of separate embryos.

From the Social Predestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewingly warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languished into a stunted Epsilonhood.

From the Social Predestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewingly warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languished into a stunted Epsilonhood.

With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement.

With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement.

With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement.

From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.

From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.

Blithe was the singing of the young girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles!

"He does his work very well," put in Henry, with hypocritical generosity.

His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities.

His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities.

The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray.

Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour.

A veneer of jaunty self-confidence thinly concealed his nervousness.

A veneer of jaunty self-confidence thinly concealed his nervousness.

"Yes-s," repeated the Director, lingering, a serpent, on the "s."

There was a profound silence; every one looked round.

By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours, 'even as a little infant,'" (here the Director made the sign of the T), "he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization itself.

For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre; I propose forthwith to apply for his transference to a Subcentre of the lowest order and, that his punishment may serve the best interest of Society, as far as possible removed from any important Centre of population.

For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre; I propose forthwith to apply for his transference to a Subcentre of the lowest order and, that his punishment may serve the best interest of Society, as far as possible removed from any important Centre of population.

Linda asked indignantly; then, turning to the Director, "Of course I knew you; Tomakin, I should have known you anywhere, among a thousand.

She stood looking at him, her head on one side, still smiling, but with a smile that became progressively, in face of the Director's expression of petrified disgust, less and less self-confident, that wavered and finally went out.

The blotched and sagging face twisted grotesquely into the grimace of extreme grief.

The blotched and sagging face twisted grotesquely into the grimace of extreme grief.

Some one began to titter.

A howl of laughter went up irrepressibly. "… this monstrous practical joke," the Director shouted.

A howl of laughter went up irrepressibly. "… this monstrous practical joke," the Director shouted.

Red in the face, he tried to disengage himself from her embrace.

The word (for "father" was not so much obscene as–with its connotation of something at one remove from the loathsomeness and moral obliquity of child-bearing–merely gross, a scatological rather than a pornographic impropriety); the comically smutty word relieved what had become a quite intolerable tension.

The word (for "father" was not so much obscene as–with its connotation of something at one remove from the loathsomeness and moral obliquity of child-bearing–merely gross, a scatological rather than a pornographic impropriety); the comically smutty word relieved what had become a quite intolerable tension.

The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday.

Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted.

Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard's apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand–there she remained; and yet wasn't there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautiful

Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard's apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand–there she remained; and yet wasn't there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautiful

But I'm very glad," Dr. Shaw had concluded, "to have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being.

And as it was only through Bernard, his accredited guardian, that John could be seen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstanding importance.

The Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, three Deputy Assistant Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering, the Dean of the Westminster Community Singery, the Supervisor of Bokanovskification–the list of Bernard's notabilities was interminable.

And if I'd had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were only too anxious …"

Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory.

Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory.

But, reconciled by his success, he yet refused to forego the privilege of criticizing this order.

Before those who now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court to him, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy.

Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out of the eight portholes of the cabin–the stewards.

"Does the fool think I'm too squeamish to see the word written out at full length?")

Mustapha Mond's anger gave place almost at once to mirth.

The idea of this creature solemnly lecturing him–him-about the social order was really too grotesque.

The idea of this creature solemnly lecturing him–him-about the social order was really too grotesque.

The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas.

The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas.

On the opposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton's Tower gleamed white in the sunshine.

College on their left and, on their right, the School Community Singery reared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass.

In the centre of the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.

Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them as they stepped out of the plane.

Five minutes in that Alpha Double Plus classroom left John a trifle bewildered.

From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography room, a ringing soprano voice called, "One, two, three, four," and then, with a weary impatience, "As you were."

A click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master's head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the Cross, before the eagle image of Pookong.

In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture which, in the past, even total darkness would hardly have emboldened him to make.

We don't encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements."

Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.

"Just returned," explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard, whispering, made an appointment with the Head Mistress for that very evening, "from the Slough Crematorium.

"Like any other physiological process," put in the Head Mistress professionally.

Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail station-seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them.

Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail station-seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them.

"The day's soma ration," Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover's chewing-gum.

"The day's soma ration," Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover's chewing-gum.

The President of the Internal and External Secretions Corporation was perpetually on the phone, and she had been to Deauville with the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Europe.

The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio–rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord–a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began.

The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio–rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord–a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began.

The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio–rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord–a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began.

It was a trio for hyper-violin, super-cello and oboe-surrogate that now filled the air with its agreeable languor.

Thirty or forty bars–and then, against this instrumental background, a much more than human voice began to warble; now throaty, now from the head, now hollow as a flute, now charged with yearning harmonics, it effortlessly passed from Gaspard's Forster's low record on the very frontiers of musical tone to a trilled bat-note high above the highest C to which (in 1770, at the Ducal opera of Parma, and to the astonishment of Mozart) Lucrezia Ajugari, alone of all the singers in history, once pierci

Sunk in their pneumatic stalls, Lenina and the Savage sniffed and listened.

Ooh-ah!" the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure.

He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacal passion.

The Beta blond was ravished away into the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-social tête-à-tête with the black madman.

A queen's ransom of temperament.

"I don't think you ought to see things like that," he said, making haste to transfer from Lenina herself to the surrounding circumstances the blame for any past or possible future lapse from perfection.

"It was base," he said indignantly, "it was ignoble."

"It was base," he said indignantly, "it was ignoble."

Sometimes, as though a finger had plucked at some taut, almost breaking string, his whole body would shake with a sudden nervous start.

"Just to please me," Bernard bellowingly wheedled.

It was only in Zuñi that the Savage could adequately express what he felt about the Arch-Community-Songster.

"Háni!" he added as an after-thought; and then (with what derisive ferocity!):

"Háni!" he added as an after-thought; and then (with what derisive ferocity!):

The Head Mistress of Eton was particularly scathing.

Pale, her blue eyes clouded with an unwonted melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off from those who surrounded her by an emotion which they did not share.

She had come to the party filled with a strange feeling of anxious exultation.

Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be there, begging them to sit down and take a carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pâté, a glass of champagne-surrogate.

Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be there, begging them to sit down and take a carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pâté, a glass of champagne-surrogate.

And she had shown Bernard the little golden zipper-fastening in the form of a T which the Arch-Songster had given her as a memento of the week-end she had spent at Lambeth.

"I'd so much hoped …" he stammeringly repeated, looking up at the great dignitary with pleading and distracted eyes.

Obediently, but unsmiling and (wholly insensible of the honour done to her) without elation, Lenina walked after him, out of the room.

He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: "The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive.

He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: "The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive.

But in spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite of the fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of small revenges to be wreaked upon him.

But in spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite of the fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of small revenges to be wreaked upon him.

But in spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite of the fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of small revenges to be wreaked upon him.

When, discomfited, he came and asked once more for the friendship which, in his prosperity, he had not thought it worth his while to preserve.

Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same time humiliated by this magnanimity–a magnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the more humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everything to Helmholtz's character.

At their first meeting after the estrangement, Bernard poured out the tale of his miseries and accepted consolation.

Flutes in a vacuum,

Lips and, ah, posteriors,

So absurd an essence,

At "sole Arabian tree" he started; at "thou shrieking harbinger" he smiled with sudden pleasure; at "every fowl of tyrant wing" the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at "defunctive music" he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion.

In that dim monument where Tybalt lies …" when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.

He had managed, with a heroic effort, to hold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity; but "sweet mother" (in the Savage's tremulous tone of anguish) and the reference to Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him.

"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, "I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else.

Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about.

Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallor beneath that glaze of lupus, the sadness at the corners of the unsmiling crimson mouth.

"A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away," he added heartily, driving home his hypnopædic adage with a clap on the shoulder.

"But how many?" asked Fanny, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously.

"Nothing can be achieved without perseverance."

'If thou cost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite …'"

"The murkiest den, the most opportune place" (the voice of conscience thundered poetically), "the strongest suggestion our worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust.

"For those milk paps that through the window bars bore at men's eyes...."

The singing, thundering, magical words made her seem doubly dangerous, doubly alluring.

Be more abstemious, or else …"

Opening her eyes, she had seen his face–no, not his face, a ferocious stranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury.

Impudent strumpet!"

The noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure was accelerated was like a pistol shot.

"The wren goes to't and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight."

There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pain, pain!

Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination."

"John!" ventured a small ingratiating voice from the bathroom.

The inexorable rhythm beat itself out.

She heard the voice of the Savage parleying with silence.

"If I do not usurp myself, I am."

At the foot of every bed, confronting its moribund occupant, was a television box.

Her pale, bloated face wore an expression of imbecile happiness.

Then with a little start she would wake up again–wake up to the aquarium antics of the Tennis Champions, to the Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana rendering of "Hug me till you drug me, honey," to the warm draught of verbena that came blowing through the ventilator above her head–would wake to these things, or rather to a dream of which these things, transformed and embellished by the soma in her blood, were the marvellous constituents, and smile once more her broken and discoloured smile of infantile cont

Then with a little start she would wake up again–wake up to the aquarium antics of the Tennis Champions, to the Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana rendering of "Hug me till you drug me, honey," to the warm draught of verbena that came blowing through the ventilator above her head–would wake to these things, or rather to a dream of which these things, transformed and embellished by the soma in her blood, were the marvellous constituents, and smile once more her broken and discoloured smile of infantile cont

At forty-four, Linda seemed, by contrast, a monster of flaccid and distorted senility.

The Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana had risen to a sobbing crescendo; and suddenly the verbena gave place, in the scent-circulating system, to an intense patchouli.

He squeezed her limp hand almost with violence, as though he would force her to come back from this dream of ignoble pleasures, from these base and hateful memories–back into the present, back into reality: the appalling present, the awful reality–but sublime, but significant, but desperately important precisely because of the imminence of that which made them so fearful.

He squeezed her limp hand almost with violence, as though he would force her to come back from this dream of ignoble pleasures, from these base and hateful memories–back into the present, back into reality: the appalling present, the awful reality–but sublime, but significant, but desperately important precisely because of the imminence of that which made them so fearful.

The nurse stood irresolute, looking now at the kneeling figure by the bed (the scandalous exhibition!) and now (poor children!) at the twins who had stopped their hunting of the zipper and were staring from the other end of the ward, staring with all their eyes and nostrils at the shocking scene that was being enacted round Bed 20.

In the chaos of grief and remorse that filled his mind it was the one articulate word.

A reparation, a duty.

Mewling and puking," he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save.

The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes.

For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror.

The angelic Voice fell silent.

"Will you come quietly?" asked the Sergeant, "or must we anæsthetize?"

But Bernard would not be cheered; without answering, without even looking at Helmholtz, he went and sat down on the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in the obscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath of the higher powers.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.

They're the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course."

The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine.

The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were.

That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions.

It's a hypnopædic platitude."

Oh please, your fordship, please …" And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself on his knees before the Controller.

As dangerous as it's been beneficent.

China's was hopelessly insecure by comparison; even the primitive matriarchies weren't steadier than we are.

Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate.

The Controller nodded his approbation.

He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death.

But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards th

But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards th

But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men."

But you've got to stick to one set of postulates.

And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering.

That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory."

The Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old light-house which stood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead.

His first night in the hermitage was, deliberately, a sleepless one.

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.

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.

"Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested …" He put his head on one side, his smile became almost coquettish.

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.

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.

At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes.

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

"They're really very good, you know," he added, with a rather nervous smile of propitiation.

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.

Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather.

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.