I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The
same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which
my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most
despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this
darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named
it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and
the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, and
clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea, through dark realms
that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board, drawn through waters,
hovering in clouds, sinking--sinking.

I give a hoarse cry of terror, clutch the bed tightly--I had made such a
perilous journey, whizzing down through space like a bolt. Oh, did I not
feel that I was saved as I struck my hands against the wooden frame! "This
is the way one dies!" said I to myself. "Now you will die!" and I lay for
a while and thought over that I was to die.

Then I start up in bed and ask severely, "If I found the word, am I not
absolutely within my right to decide myself what it is to signify?"... I
could hear myself that I was raving. I could hear it now whilst I was
talking. My madness was a delirium of weakness and prostration, but I was
not out of my senses. All at once the thought darted through my brain that
I was insane. Seized with terror, I spring out of bed again, I stagger to
the door, which I try to open, fling myself against it a couple of times
to burst it, strike my head against the wall, bewail loudly, bite my
fingers, cry and curse....

All was quiet; only my own voice echoed from the walls. I had fallen to
the floor, incapable of stumbling about the cell any longer.