His failure to summon up feelings that could do justice to what he saw and felt, his sense of emptiness in the face of this stark tragedy, culminated in an all-powerful passion of guilt; his own weakness when confronted with this supreme challenge condemned and consumed him with a boundless sense of contrition. Yes, the only being who could possibly gaze down upon such a hopeless spectacle and encompass its meaninglessness would have to be a god. That was it! Maybe men had invented gods to feel what they could not feel, and they found comfort in the pity of their gods for them . . . ! For men were overwhelmed with shame and guilt when they looked down upon the irremediable frailty of their lives.

He felt that soon he would be catapulted from the underground, or he would rush headlong and crash his head in frenzied despair against the green-papered walls. He buried his face in his grimy hands.

VIII

He shut off the radio, groped his way back to the chest, and sat, fighting against an irrational compulsion to act. He rose and walked about aimlessly, touching the walls with his fingertips. The crazy walls filled him with an urge to climb out into the streets and he doused the light to escape it. He lit another cigarette and the flickering glare of his match illuminated the glittering room. Quickly he blew out the flame and climbed through by the pipe and stood again in the dashing, grey water of the sewer with the rod in his hands and the cigarette jutting from his lips. He walked for a while, then decided to enter one of the smaller conduits. He passed several and finally selected one through which ran a bunch of small pipes. He sighed and flicked his cigarette away, hearing a fleeting hiss as it struck the grey current. He jammed himself into the opening and went forward on his knees through the muck. There came to his nostrils a scent of something that resembled gas. He felt a vacant space before him and wondered how far down was the drop. He swung himself outward onto the rusty pipes by his hands and lowered himself down slowly into a pool of cold sludge. He sneezed; he struck a match; the place was surrounded by walls of mud. He took his crowbar and hacked away at the damp clay enclosing the pipes. He soon made a hole big enough to admit his body and then he tunneled forward through soft earth for about three feet. A brick wall confronted him and he pried enough bricks loose—lying flat on his stomach in wet mud—to crawl forward again; he pushed into what seemed an abandoned basement. All about him was the reeking odor of rot. He was startled to detect faint sounds of voices above him, nearing and receding. Was he in danger? He looked up and saw a ceiling made of planks criss-crossed by two-by-four beams of wood. To his right a pale column of daylight fell from a source he could not see.