Beset and roughly buffeted by the gale; the snow settling in rippling
drifts in the folds of his clothing and upon his shoulders clinging
like a cloth; his face cut by clouds of sand flung horizontally with
well-nigh the force of birdshot from a gun: he bowed to the blast and
plodded steadily on.

Imperceptibly fatigue benumbed his senses, blunted the keen edge of his
emotions; even the care for Quain became a mere dull ache in the back
of his perceptions; of physical suffering he was unconscious. He fell a
prey to freakish fancies--could stand aside and watch himself, an atom
whirling in the mad dance of the tempest, as the snow-flakes whirled,
as little potent. He saw himself pitting his puny strength of mind and
body against the infinite force of the elements: saw himself fall and
rise and battle on, gaining nothing: an atom, sport of high gods! To
the flight of time he grew quite oblivious, his thoughts wandering in
the past, oddly afar to half-remembered scenes, to experiences more
than half-forgotten, both wholly irrelevant; picturesque and painful
memories cast up from the deeps of the subconsciousness by some
inexplicable convulsion of the imagination. For a long time he moved on
in stupid, wondering contemplation of a shining crescent of sand backed
by a green, steaming wall of jungle; there was a dense blue sky above,
and below, on the beach, dense blue waters curled lazily up the feet of
a little, naked, brown child that played contentedly with a shell of
rainbow hues. Again he saw a throng upon a pier-head, and in its
forefront an unknown woman, plainly dressed, with deep brown eyes
wherein Despair dwelt, tearless but white to the lips as she watched a
steamer draw away. And yet again, he seemed to stand with others upon
the threshold of the cardroom of a Hong-Kong club: in a glare of garish
light a man in evening dress lay prone across a table on whose
absorbent, green cloth a dark and ugly stain was widening slowly....