Late knocking came importunate to the House Monitory. One went to the
wicket and looked out. Her light, convulsed, for an instant abetted a
delusion that he who stood knocking outside was Christ Himself with the
signs of His Passion: unclothed was the man she saw, bloodstained, both
head and hands. Then she noted fair hair, and had to believe that this
haggard man was one with the brave-faced boy of earliest summer. He clung
to the ledge for support; so spent was he that a word was hard to
compass.
'For the love of God,' he said, 'you who are watchers to-night pray for a
human soul in sore need.'
She would vouch for that; she would summon one with authority to vouch
for more.
When she carried word within: ''Tis the same,' said one, 'who twice has
left fish at the gate, who slept once at the feet of St. Margaret.'
To the wicket went the head monitress, and, moved to compassion by the
sight of his great distress, she gave him good assurance that not the
five watchers only, but one and all, should watch and pray for him that
night, and she asked his name for the ordering of prayer.
'Not mine!' he said. 'I ask your prayers for another whose need is mine.
Pray for her by the name Diadyomene.'
He unfastened the cross from his neck and gave it.
'This is a pledge,' he said, 'I would lay out of my weak keeping for St.
Mary, St. Margaret, and St. Faith to hold for me, lest to-night I should
desire I had it, to be rid of it finally according to promise.'
He had not made himself intelligible; clearer utterance was beyond him.
'No matter!' he said. 'Take it--keep it--till I come again.'
He knotted the empty string again to his neck, and, commended to God,
went his way.
Now when these two, little later, asked of each other, 'What was the
strange name he gave?' neither could remember it. But they said 'God
knows,' and prayed for that nameless soul.
Somehow Christian got down the cliffs to the shore, as somehow he had
come all the way. Little wonder head and hands showed bloody: every
member was bruised and torn, for he had stumbled and gone headlong a
score of times in his desperate speed over craggy tracks, where daylight
goings needed to be wary. Scarcely could hoofed creatures have come
whole-foot, and he, though of hardy unshod practice, brought from that
way not an inch sound under tread. An uncertain moon had favoured him at
worst passes, else had he fallen to certain destruction.
He stood at the sea's edge and paused to get breath and courage. To his
shame, he was deficient in fortitude: the salt of the wet shingle bit his
feet so cruelly, that he shrank at the prospect of intensified pain
through all the innumerable wounds he bore. He saw exposed a pitiful,
unstable wretch, with a body drained of strength and nerve, and a spirit
servile to base instances. In desperate spite he plunged and swam.
He had ever waited for an outgoing tide; he had ever taken a daylight
tide; now for his sins he had night and the flood against him. But still
the moon blessed him. Delusions beset him that pains of his body came
from the very teeth of sea-creatures, too fierce and many for him to
cope with, crowding, dragging, gnawing hard at his life. For ease a
passive moment and a little painful, airless sobbing would suffice:
soonest, best. And had the pale moon darkened, he had gone under as at a
supreme command, to such depravity and destitution were come his vital
instincts. But, her light holding him alive, by hard degrees he won his
way, till, for the last time, he stood upon the Isle Sinister.
But when he had made his way through the narrow gorge, and trod sand, the
moon was dark, and night fell upon his heart. He dared not call, and
neither sight nor sound granted him assurance of Diadyomene's presence.
Wanting her footprints to tell she had passed in, he feared lest he
should be barring her very entrance. He fell down and prayed, being
without resource.
And Lois was praying, and Rhoda with bitter tears, and the House Monitory
with the ring of its bells. Very faint was the moan of the sea in their
ears.
Slowly, slowly, the blessed moon stepped out, and lifted him up and
delivered to his sight the track of light feet set from seaward--one
track only. In haste, by the wavering light of the moon, he laid out the
threaded rowan and weighted one end against the rock. The whole length
extended came short of the further wall by about two feet.
He rallied from the momentary shock, resolving that he himself could
stand in the gap to bar passage.
No form nor motion could he discern within his range as in slow scrutiny
his eyes sought her from side to side. He lighted on despair; the
entrance to the cavern had escaped his providence.
In the dark he went to the low arch, and felt about the sand inch by inch
for the dint of her feet. Naught could he find. Yet what did it profit
him that she had not yet passed? To drop prone on the sand was his poor
conclusion, abandoned to despair.
He was but cast back on the morning's portion, then of fair sufficiency,
but now oh! meagre, meagre, compared to the ripe hope that had come of
nourishment strange and opportune as manna from heaven. Then had he
incurred to no purpose expense of blood and sweat and anguish of body and
mind, nay, brought to the crucial hour such an appalling deficiency.
To contest a human soul with powers of darkness required perfect
steadfastness of will and faith; lost, lost, with mere self-control lost
in a useless barter that left him now a clod of effete manhood, with just
life enough for groaning pain. Before conflict was he vanquished.
Diadyomene need but come with a word of anger or derision to break him
into childish sobbings.
Yet driven to last extremity, such man's strength as remained to him
might prevail in sanctified violence for the winning of a soul. He would
hold her by the feet; his hands were bloody, but he would hold her by the
feet; should he have to cling round her, he would not hurt; meek and
gentle could he be, though fury should set her to such savage handling as
a woman's strength may compass.
To win a human soul? O wretched piece of clay, not that! The mere thought
of contact with Diadyomene, close contact with her, cool, soft, naked
there in the cold dark, swept the bright delirium of sea-magic over him
again, stung his blood to a burning fever, set him writhing as pain had
never. At the fiery blast, in this nadir hour the place of pure love was
assaulted and taken by base lust; his desire was most strong, not for
the winning of a human soul, but for the wicked winning of a human body,
ay, maugre her will--any way.
Yet, oh for the fair way of her favour! Had she not allowed him very
gracious hints?--'lay your hand upon my breast, set your lips to mine.'
Thrice she had said it--once when a touch on her hand had brought magical
vision, once at her kindest, once at her cruelest. Though her command was
against him, though her anger might not be overpast, a hope kindled that
dread of the dark hour of her fate might urge her to his arms, there to
find such gladness and consolation as might leave no place for horror to
come into possession.
'And give up your soul.' Thrice too had that been said. He was loath to
give it remembrance, but it entered, whenever faint bells tolled on his
ear it entered.
Very strangely, while good and evil fought equal-handed for his will, he
perceived that his body had risen to hands and knees, and was going
forward very fitly like a beast. All round the cold dark began to burn. A
boulder lay athwart his course, and then very strangely he was aware that
his arms had fastened round it with convulsive strength, and brow and
breast were wounded against it. He could not take possession to end this
disgraceful treason; all that was left to him was to rescue integrity at
least by undoing the knot at his neck.
Then prevailed the blessed guile of Lois. The trivial exaction brought
her son face to face with her, with her sorrows, with her prayers, and
the mere communion of love set him praying frantically, and so brought
him to himself again.
We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord God for my unbaptized! Dear
Christ for Christian's Diadyomene! Blessed Trinity and all Saints for a
nameless soul in sore need!
Vile, vile indeed, were he to desert a holy alliance.
There where the token had lain on his breast cross-edges of the boulder
were wounding, and strange human nature turning ravenous to any gross
substitution of fires, seized with wild energy on the ecstasy of pain,
till the rock cut to the bone, while the whole boulder seemed to stir. In
nowise might the cross be cast aside: it was kept against his will in
holy ward; it was printed indelibly in his flesh.
The very boulder had stirred. Then hope rose up as a tyrant, for he had
fallen spent again. Spirit was weak and flesh was weak, and it were task
hard out of measure to heave that boulder from its bed and set it up to
block the low entrance; and useless, when at a sight or a sound
Diadyomene were away fleet foot to the sea.
And yet he felt about, set feet and shoulder for an arch of strength, and
strained with great hefts; and again the mass seemed to stir. He dropped
down, trenched painfully round, and tried again till his sinews cracked.
Nor in vain: with a reluctant sob its bed of sand gave up the stubborn
rock, and as it rolled endlong a devil that had urged excuse went from
Christian. Foot after foot he fought that dreadful weight along the sand,
right up to the cleft, right across the cleft he forced it. Not yet had
he done enough; for he could feel that as the boulder lay, there was
space for a slim body to press across and win the cavern. To better the
barrier by a few poor inches, this way and that he wrung his wearied body
and broke flesh; and to no purpose. 'Except my bones break, I will.' He
grappled strenuously; a little give responded. He set his feet closer in,
and lifted again mightily, and the boulder shifted, poised onward to
settle.
Who struck? Death.
Nerveless, he swayed with the rock, on a motion its own weight
consummated, agape, transfixed by the wonder of living still.
Fresh, horrible pain seized him by foot and ankle, casting him down to
tear up the sand, to bite the sand, lest in agony he should go shrieking
like a woman.
He writhed round to strike in the dark at the senseless mass, in the
madness of terror and pain deeming the boulder itself had moved with
malignant intelligence, not merely according to the preponderate laws
that lift the world. To him the presence of infernal powers was manifest
in this agent. In foul warfare they held him fast by the heel, and mocked
the impotent spirit within the bonds of flesh. The dark grew pregnant
with evil beings as he struggled to swooning.
Pray for us, faithful hearts, pray! In the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, for her service! Then he prevailed, and out of the
teeth of hell he wrenched his heel.
Broken, crippled, strengthless, Christian crawled over the sand to the
spot where he would die. Indistinguishable in the dark was the furrow he
left stained till the tide should come: long before daylight broke the
tide would come up to smooth and whiten it. He knew he was dying, and,
touching the ended rowan, rendered thanks that it was to be there. All
was nearly over, pain and a foolish, arrogant hope on which he had staked
his life: presently, when he was dead, Diadyomene would come, to overstep
his body, eluding there the toils. He misliked the thought that her feet
might go red from treading him, and he stretched about weakly for briny
hollows along the rock to cleanse the hot, slow oozing that chilled and
stiffened into long stripes.
Why should he be gasping still, as breathless as after his hardest race,
as after his mightiest heft? He required breath to help endurance of
thirst and exorbitant pain; air could he gasp in, deep and free, and yet
he wanted for more.
Why he should be dying, and how, Christian did not know. Life's centre
had been stricken mortally quicker than a lightning-flash, too subtly for
the brain to register any pain, so unmistakably he wondered only he was
yet alive. From breath to breath he awaited another touch and a final,
yet nothing lacked for vital order save air, air, more air. At short,
merciful intervals he drifted out of the range of any pain.
On this his third death he did not so very greatly shrink from passing
out of the body to stand before the face of his Maker. He could not take
up any meaning for prayer. He was discarded from service; perfect justice
had tried him, judged him, and condemned him as unfit. It was bitter for
him; but review of his finishing span of life, its sin, failure,
impotence, brought him to acquiescence. 'Thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory' was all he had of prayer.
The apprehension of each human principle was straitened, by darkness
about him, by pain in strong possession, by recognition of death closing
in. As visitants to his heart from some far-distant sphere came Rhoda,
Lois, Diadyomene; they vanished away; he could not keep them close--not
even Diadyomene. 'Dear love, my love!'
Through the dark she came.
He rose to his knees, aware of a moving glimmer of grey, nearing, near.
At her swift, beautiful pace she made for the sea. Suddenly she stood. He
heard the catch of her breath; swiftly the dim oval of her face was
turned to him; then away. She swayed back a step; she swayed forward;
hung a moment at poise upright; reeled aside, and fled back into the
dark.
Then Christian found he had yet strong faculty for life. He had retained
small certainty that she had not long passed him by; speculation had
fallen faint. Lo! she was here, controlled, and he not dead. He could
pray, for her and for a little life, passionately.
A low, bitter cry quivered through the dark to his heart. Diadyomene had
fled for a way of escape, and found it barred. Soft rapids were her feet;
she came speeding full to leap past. In vain; with a cry she flung up her
arms, revulsed irresistibly, swerved, and stood stone-still. She moaned
out long, agonised sighs; she seemed to turn away in pride, ignoring him;
she seemed to face him again, not defiant. He saw her hands outstretched
in appeal. 'What have you done?' she said; 'what have you done?' and then
the woful complaint was changed to wilder: 'What have I done? what have
I done?'
He did not dare to speak, nor had he the breath. He was weeping for her.
But she, not seeing, was stirred to wrath and fear by a silence so cruel.
To her height she rose above the gasping, crouched shape, and her voice
rang hard and clear.
'Stand away. Once you trespassed, and I forgave you fully; twice, and I
spared you; this third time--get you gone quickly, and find yourself some
easy death before it be out of reach.'
Still he did not answer. Her fear outdid her anger, and she stooped her
pride.
'Only be kind and true, and let me go,' she implored, and knelt low as
he. 'I let you take my secret, and you turn it against me treacherously.
You plan a shameful snare, you, you, whom I counted true as the sun. To
you, a bold, graceless stranger, I granted life at the first; to you I
gave the liberty of my dearest haunt. Be just, and leave me free in my
own. Have pity, and let me go. Woe and horror are coming upon me to take
me, awake and astray from the comfort of the sea.' She moaned and sighed
piteously.
His tears fell like rain for grief of his doings, for bitter grief that
he might not comfort her.
Because of a base alloy that had altered sacred love he had to fear. He
turned away his head, panting and shaking, for pain and thirst made
almost unendurable a temptation to stretch out his hand to hers, by the
magic of her touch to lose himself till death in a blissful swoon.
Her wail had in it the note of a deserted child and of a desolate woman.
'I am crying to you for pity and help, and you turn away; I, who in the
sea am regnant. But late you cried to me when no mercy and pardon were
due, and I let you live. And if then I judged you unheard and wrongly,
and if I condemned a breach of faith over harshly, here kneeling I pray
you to forgive--I, who never bid vainly, never ask vainly, of any living
creature but of you.'
Christian only was weeping; Diadyomene shed no tear, though her voice
quivered piteously.
'Ah, my sea, my sea! Hark how it moans to me, and cannot reach me! My
birds fail me, nestling afar--that you considered when you came by
night. Undo, undo your cruel work, and I will reproach you never.'
His silence appalled her. 'Why should you do this?' she cried. 'What
would you have of me? A ransom? Name it. The wealth of the sea is mine to
give; the magic of the sea is mine. To all seas, to all sea-creatures,
you shall bear a charmed life henceforward, only let me go.'
He sobbed, 'But I die, I die!' but so brokenly that the words failed at
her ears.
'Hear me,' she said; 'I make no reservation. Ask what you will, and
nothing, nothing I can grant will I refuse--only quickly let me go.'
She was crouched before him, with her face downward and hidden, as she
moaned, and moaned surrender. Presently she half lifted, and her voice
was at a lovely break between grief and gladness.
'Fool, dear ignorant fool, Diadyomenos, are you blind? You have come to
me often; have I ever looked unglad? Have I wearied of you soon? Have I
failed you? Could you read into that no favour from me, Diadyomene, who
have the sea to range? Can you wrong so my grace to you in the past as to
plan an extortion? Ah, foolish, needless, empty wrong! Your eyes have
been fair to me when they said what your tongue would not. Speak now fair
words, since I cannot read your eyes. Dear hands, reach out for mine,
take them and draw me out of the snare, and with gladness and shame own
it needless, as with gladness and pride will I.'
So vile a wretch she took him to be! and the bitterness was that he might
not disclaim. For a moment he had fallen to that baseness; it might be
that only because life was going out of him so fast was he past such
purpose now. A stupid 'No, no,' was all he could bring out.
She sprang up at a bound, driven to fury. She longed to strike with mere
woman strength, yet she dared not a contact, lest hers be the
disadvantage. With a shriek she fled back into the dark, and he heard the
dreadful wailing cries wheeling away. Desperately he prayed for himself
and for her; for his pain and an agony of pity were almost more than he
could bear.
Suddenly she came upon him and stood close. Her tone was changed.
'At last,' she said, 'miserable creature, you shall know the truth. You
love me. I know it well; I have known it long. And with all my
strength--I--hate you. Not for this night's treachery and insolence
only; from the first I hated you; and hatred has grown since more
bitter-strong, till your one life and body seemed all too little to stay
it. Ah! the love I read in your eyes has been sweet sustenance. So I
waited and waited only for this: for love of me to take deep hold of your
heart, to be dearer than life, before I plucked it up by the roots; and
to laugh in your face as I did it, knowing it worse than any death. Oh!
it should have been by daylight. I would like to see your face and your
eyes now, and watch your great body writhe--I think it does! Why, laugh I
must.
'Can you fathom my hate by its doings? You stood here first, glad, proud,
strong in your youth; but a few short weeks, and I had turned all to
ruin. Yes, I--I--only was your bane, though I but watched, and laughed,
and whispered beneath my waters, and let you be for the handling of your
fellows. Truly my hate has worked subtly and well, and even beyond
device; it has reached beyond you: an old man treads the quay no more,
and a girl comes down to it grown pale and heavy-eyed, and a woman ageing
and greyer every time. Think and know! You never shall see them again;
for a brief moment you check and defy me, but the entrance of the tide
shall bring you your death.
'Now, I the while will plan the worst death I may. You think you have
faced that once already? Fool! from to-morrow's dawn till sunset I will
teach you better. The foulest creature of the deep shall take you again
and hold you helpless--but that is nothing: for swarms shall come up from
the sea, and from twilight to twilight they shall eat you alive. They
shall gnaw the flesh from your limbs; they shall pierce to the bone; they
shall drill you through and rummage your entrails. And with them shall
enter the brine to drench you with anguish. And I, beside you, with my
fingers in your hair, will watch all day, and have a care to lift your
head above the tide; and I will flick off the sea-lice and the crays from
your face and your eyes, to leave them whole and clear and legible to my
hate at the last. And at the very last I will lay my face down against
yours, and out of very pure hate will kiss you once--will kiss you more
than once, and will not tire because you will so quicken with loathing.
Even in the death agony I mean you to know my fingers in your hair. Ha!
Agonistes.
'And now you wish you had died on that moonlit, warm night long ago: and
me it gladdens to think I did not then cut you off from the life to
follow after, more bitter than many quick deaths. And you wish I had
finished you outright in the late storm, that so you might have died
blissfully ignorant of the whole truth: and I spared you only that you
should not escape a better torture that I had contrived.
'Ah! it has been a long delight to fool you, to play my game with
flawless skill. As I choose a wear of pearls, so chose I graces of love
for adornment. Am I not perfect now? What have I said of hatred and love?
No, no, all that is false. Because you scorn the sea-life so dear to me,
I try to keep hatred; but it may not abide when you stand before me and I
look in your eyes--oh! slay it, slay it quite with the touch of your
lips. My love!' her voice fell softly: 'My love, my love, my love, my
love!' She was chasing the word along all the ranges of derision.
She stood no more than a pace from him, a flexile figure that poised and
swung, to provoke the wild beast in him to spring. Christian never
stirred nor spoke.
'Would the moon but shine! I mean to watch you when you die, but I think
a better sight your face would be now than then. How well it pleases me
your eyes are grey! Can grey eyes serve as well to show hate as love? Ay,
I shall laugh at that: to see in them hate, hate like my own; but
impotent hate, not like mine. It hardly has dawned yet, I guess, but it
will; and presently be so strong that the dearest joy left would be to
have your hand on my throat to finish my life. Do you think I fear? I
dare you, defy you! Ha! Agonistes.'
He did not come hurling upon her; he did not by word or sign acknowledge
her taunts.
'Why, the night of my dread goes blithely as never before. There is no
bane left in it. I have found an antidote.'
She forced a laugh, but it went wild, strangled, and fell broken. Again
she fled back into the dark, and, like a prisoned bird, circled frantic
for the sea that she could not reach. Far from Christian, she halted and
panted low: 'Not yet have I failed, dear sea. Though love may not
prevail, nor hate, yet shall my song.'
Though the incoming tide sounded near, echo still carried the tolling of
the bells. For the knell of that passing soul fittest names they bore out
of all the Communion of Saints. St. Mary! bitter dregs had his life to
drain; St. Margaret! his pearl of the sea was lost in deep waters; St.
Faith! utter darkness was about, and desperate striving could find no
light of Heaven; his life, his love, his God forsook, rejected, disowned
him.
Loss or fear could not touch him any more, for not one hope, one joy
remained. From the cruel havoc, calm, passionless wonder distilled, and
new proportions rose as his past came before him to be measured anew: so
tolerable looked the worst of inflictions, a passing wrong, forgivable,
forgettable; so sorry looked the best endurance, a wretched contortion,
defacing, deforming. Against Diadyomene not one throb of passion stirred:
she had broken his heart outright, so that it had not true faculty of
life for any new growth. Strangely, to his wonder, under this her doing,
the old derangement passed away, and the way of loving-kindness to all
men showed clear. Too late! Never in this life could he meet his fellows
with good, quiet blood, and frank eyes, and wholesome laughter, unafraid,
simply acknowledging all records, free, candid, scrutable.
He began even before death to resolve to impersonality; he surveyed the
perverse obstinacy of vitality that would not quit its old habitation,
though fierce pain was in possession; and he could wonder at the
wretched body heaving, tortured by a double thirst for air, for water,
when so short a time would render it mere quiet earth, soon to unshape.
Out of the darkness rang her voice, noting beauty wordless, and sunlit
seas glanced through the nights: the magic of the sea was upon him.
Brief sweetness! the bright sound faltered, broke. O blackness and pain!
The far, slow knell struck in.
Again, up welled the buoyant voice, poised and floated exquisitely,
mounted and shrilled frantically sweet, caught up the failing senses from
the death sweats, and launched them on a magic flood of emotion, through
racing sprays, and winds vivid and strong of the brine.
Gone, ah! gone; for a wailing cry came, and then thwart silence suddenly,
and flung him back to the dominion of black anguish.
And again and again, high-noted, above the tramp of the nearing tide,
that perfect voice flew to delicious melody; and promise of words
strengthened the enchantment; and yet, and yet, a cry and a silence
stabbed and bled the spell she would fashion.
Perfect achievement came. Up rose a measure transcending in rapture all
forgone, and flawless, unfaltering, consummate, leaped on and on, rhythm
by rhythm, clear-syllabled for conquest.
'Where silver shallows hold back the sea, Under the bend of the great
land's knee, And the gleaming gulls go nestled and free.
Where the tide runs down in the round of the bay, There in the rings
where the mermen play, On ribs and shallows their footprints lay.
In liquid speech they laughed and sung, Under the rocks, till the rout
outswung, Called from the echoing cave its tongue.
They were away with the glimmering seas: Off with the twilight, off with
the breeze, Wave-weeds fell from their glancing knees;
Robes laid by, which the hollowed spars Held and hid, while the wet
sand-bars Failed of the sunlight and filled with stars.
Sea-mists rose for a dream, but when Mists wore faint in the sunlight,
then Lo, the sea with its dancing men.
Spume and swirl spun under their feet; Sparkle and flash, for the runners
were fleet; Over them climbed the day to its heat.
And the day drew a draught of the tide-winds strong, As a singer the
breath to be rendered song, As a child the life that will last so long.'
Christian had fallen prone.
While she sang, so potent was the magic, he lusted to live. Sentient
only to the desires she kindled, out of account lay the dead heart, and
the broken strength, and the body so shattered within and without, that
wonder was it yet could hold a man's life. Pain was excluded by a great
sensual joy of living.
Her song manned the mirage of her delight, and straightway he was
passionate for life. Never before had she acknowledged the sea-fellowship
to occasion the ravenous ache of jealousy. She sang of the mermen, and
they rose before him visionary at the spell, with vigorous hair and
frolic eyes, very men, lithe and sinewy for the chase and capture of
their feminine fairest in amorous play. Life was one fire burning for the
hot war of nature's males, as through the riot, whirling with the song,
he eyed challenge and promise of a splendid wrestle with strong, hard
limbs; and the liquid, exquisite voice was a call to him to speed in and
win, nor suffer the wanton sea-brood to prevail.
It was then that his body fell, face forward, never to rise again.
On sang Diadyomene, not knowing that a power stronger than her magic,
stronger than his will, kept him from her feet. On she sang, herself
possessed, uttering not with her own will more than magic. What alien
element underlay the spell she would deliver? what lurking revelation to
be dreaded, to be desired, hid beneath? Her voice was caught back again,
and yet again, to repeat the finish:
'As a singer the breath to be rendered song, As a child the life that
will last so long-- As a child----'
Then bell notes fell in a chime. She lifted her head; they rang, she
hearkened, motionless, wordless.
It was midnight, and joy for the birth of Christ thrilled the world. No
spell could hold. Christian must resume the throes of death.
The cold and the tide were merciful to shorten. His limbs were stone-cold
and dead already, past motion, past pain. Against his side the foremost
lap of the tide told. It licked and bit along his body, flanks, breast,
throat, touched his cheek. Astray against his face he felt the thread of
rowan. It kissed along cheek, along brow, and swung wide and away.
'Christ, Christ, ah! Christ.'
He turned his head and drank of the brine, and drank and drank to slake
the rage of thirst. The drawing of breath made hindrance: not for long.
The last draughts he took were somewhat sharp and painful, but they
quenched his thirst. He was entirely satisfied.
'We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord God for my unbaptized! Dear
Christ for Christian's Diadyomene! Blessed Trinity and all Saints for a
nameless soul in sore need!'