"Ah, I cannot get you to understand, cannot drive it into your
head, what a thing this life is. Of course life is valueless,
except to itself. And I can tell you that my life is pretty
valuable just now--to myself. It is beyond price, which you will
acknowledge is a terrific overrating, but which I cannot help, for
it is the life that is in me that makes the rating."

He appeared waiting for the words with which to express the thought
that was in him, and finally went on.

"Do you know, I am filled with a strange uplift; I feel as if all
time were echoing through me, as though all powers were mine. I
know truth, divine good from evil, right from wrong. My vision is
clear and far. I could almost believe in God. But," and his voice
changed and the light went out of his face,--"what is this
condition in which I find myself? this joy of living? this
exultation of life? this inspiration, I may well call it? It is
what comes when there is nothing wrong with one's digestion, when
his stomach is in trim and his appetite has an edge, and all goes
well. It is the bribe for living, the champagne of the blood, the
effervescence of the ferment--that makes some men think holy
thoughts, and other men to see God or to create him when they
cannot see him. That is all, the drunkenness of life, the stirring
and crawling of the yeast, the babbling of the life that is insane
with consciousness that it is alive. And--bah! To-morrow I shall
pay for it as the drunkard pays. And I shall know that I must die,
at sea most likely, cease crawling of myself to be all a-crawl with
the corruption of the sea; to be fed upon, to be carrion, to yield
up all the strength and movement of my muscles that it may become
strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of fishes.