All I knew was that it had to be done. I
trembled like a thief. I had to stoop twice before I could take up the
axe, and I was so cold my teeth chattered. When I lifted the first blow I
didn't know where it was going to fall. But it struck as true as a die,
and then I flew at it. I never chopped so fast or clean in my life. I
wasn't fierce; I was as full of self-delight as an overpraised child. And
yet when something delayed me an instant I found I was still shaking.
Courage," said he, "O no; I know what it was, and I knew then. But I had
no choice; it was my last chance."
I told him that anyone might have thought him a madman chopping up his
last chance.
"Maybe so," he replied, "but I wasn't; it was the one sane thing I could
do;" and he went on to tell me that when night fell the tallest fire that
ever leapt from those sands blazed from Sweetheart's piled ribs and keel.
It was proof to him of his having been shrewd, he said, that for many days
he felt no repentance of the act nor was in the least lonely. There was an
infinite relief merely in getting clean away from the huge world of men,
with all its exactions and temptations and the myriad rebukes and rebuffs
of its crass propriety and thrift.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30