He arose and thrust his head out the port-hole, looking down into the milky wash.  The Mariposa was deeply loaded, and, hanging by his hands, his feet would be in the water.  He could slip in noiselessly.  No one would hear.  A smother of spray dashed up, wetting his face.  It tasted salt on his lips, and the taste was good.  He wondered if he ought to write a swan-song, but laughed the thought away.  There was no time.  He was too impatient to be gone.

Turning off the light in his room so that it might not betray him, he went out the port-hole feet first.  His shoulders stuck, and he forced himself back so as to try it with one arm down by his side.  A roll of the steamer aided him, and he was through, hanging by his hands.  When his feet touched the sea, he let go.  He was in a milky froth of water.  The side of the Mariposa rushed past him like a dark wall, broken here and there by lighted ports.  She was certainly making time.  Almost before he knew it, he was astern, swimming gently on the foam-crackling surface.

A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud.  It had taken a piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was there.  In the work to do he had forgotten the purpose of it.  The lights of the Mariposa were growing dim in the distance, and there he was, swimming confidently, as though it were his intention to make for the nearest land a thousand miles or so away.

It was the automatic instinct to live.  He ceased swimming, but the moment he felt the water rising above his mouth the hands struck out sharply with a lifting movement.  The will to live, was his thought, and the thought was accompanied by a sneer.  Well, he had will,—­ay, will strong enough that with one last exertion it could destroy itself and cease to be.

He changed his position to a vertical one.  He glanced up at the quiet stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air.  With swift, vigorous propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest out of water.  This was to gain impetus for the descent.  Then he let himself go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea.  He breathed in the water deeply, deliberately, after the manner of a man taking an anaesthetic.  When he strangled, quite involuntarily his arms and legs clawed the water and drove him up to the surface and into the clear sight of the stars.

The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not to breathe the air into his bursting lungs.  Well, he would have to try a new way.  He filled his lungs with air, filled them full.  This supply would take him far down.  He turned over and went down head first, swimming with all his strength and all his will.  Deeper and deeper he went.  His eyes were open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent trails of the darting bonita.  As he swam, he hoped that they would not strike at him, for it might snap the tension of his will.  But they did not strike, and he found time to be grateful for this last kindness of life.