Sterne’s discovery was made.  It was repugnant to his imagination, shocking to his ideas of honesty, shocking to his conception of mankind.  This enormity affected one’s outlook on what was possible in this world:  it was as if for instance the sun had turned blue, throwing a new and sinister light on men and nature.  Really in the first moment he had felt sickish, as though he had got a blow below the belt:  for a second the very color of the sea seemed changed—­appeared queer to his wandering eye; and he had a passing, unsteady sensation in all his limbs as though the earth had started turning the other way.

A very natural incredulity succeeding this sense of upheaval brought a measure of relief.  He had gasped; it was over.  But afterwards during all that day sudden paroxysms of wonder would come over him in the midst of his occupations.  He would stop and shake his head.  The revolt of his incredulity had passed away almost as quick as the first emotion of discovery, and for the next twenty-four hours he had no sleep.  That would never do.  At meal-times (he took the foot of the table set up for the white men on the bridge) he could not help losing himself in a fascinated contemplation of Captain Whalley opposite.  He watched the deliberate upward movements of the arm; the old man put his food to his lips as though he never expected to find any taste in his daily bread, as though he did not know anything about it.  He fed himself like a somnambulist.  “It’s an awful sight,” thought Sterne; and he watched the long period of mournful, silent immobility, with a big brown hand lying loosely closed by the side of the plate, till he noticed the two engineers to the right and left looking at him in astonishment.  He would close his mouth in a hurry then, and lowering his eyes, wink rapidly at his plate.  It was awful to see the old chap sitting there; it was even awful to think that with three words he could blow him up sky-high.  All he had to do was to raise his voice and pronounce a single short sentence, and yet that simple act seemed as impossible to attempt as moving the sun out of its place in the sky.  The old chap could eat in his terrific mechanical way; but Sterne, from mental excitement, could not—­not that evening, at any rate.

He had had ample time since to get accustomed to the strain of the meal-hours.  He would never have believed it.  But then use is everything; only the very potency of his success prevented anything resembling elation.  He felt like a man who, in his legitimate search for a loaded gun to help him on his way through the world, chances to come upon a torpedo—­upon a live torpedo with a shattering charge in its head and a pressure of many atmospheres in its tail.  It is the sort of weapon to make its possessor careworn and nervous.  He had no mind to be blown up himself; and he could not get rid of the notion that the explosion was bound to damage him too in some way.