I was indeed willing humbly to submit if I must - but there
was something that incited and disturbed me, as though submission was
the very greatest sin.
Wanton suicide before I was brought to the last extremity filled me
with aversion and disgust. But the perils of my sailing expeditions had
again acquired for me their former attraction, as in the days when I
sailed the North Sea with my father. To die the death of Shelley, my
greatest-bard, is an honor I had desired from boyhood, and I thought:
If after all it must be, then why not now, before I sink still deeper?
The day before our expedition I was deeply depressed. The wind was
blowing strongly, but it was a summer day and my companion thought as
little as I did of postponing our undertaking.
When I fell asleep that night, I knew that I was falling asleep and I
retained perfect consciousness. In wondrous transition I suddenly rose
from the deepest dejection to the light, free, joyous, soaring life of
the dream. "Thank heaven!" I thought; "let the body sleep now, I rest,
and really I am not at all tired now.
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