After having lain an uncertain time and felt the great rest of absolute solitude, freedom from influences, from pressure, he arose and went down to seek his room.
When he entered his empty chamber it reëchoed his footsteps and he felt himself entrapped. The white quadrant and rectangles that enclosed the room where he must dwell, reminded him of human hands, but of a low order, mastering only the simple forms of inorganic nature. He was enclosed in a crystal, a hexaëdron or the like, and the straight lines and the congruent surfaces, shaped his thoughts into squares, and ruled his soul in lines, simplifying it from the organic life's liberty of forms, and reduced his brain's rich tropical vegetation of changing perceptions to nature's first childish attempt at classifying.
After he had called to the girl and let her bring in his chests, he began at once the transformation of the room.
His first care was to regulate the entrance of light by a pair of heavy garnet Persian curtains, that instantly gave the room a softer tone. He opened the two leaves of the big dining table and the emptiness of the big white floor was filled at once, but the white surface of the table was still disturbing, so he concealed it under an oilcloth of a solid warm moss-green color which harmonized with the curtains and was restful. Then he placed his book shelves against the poorest wall. This certainly was not an improvement as they only striped it in columns like a time-table, and the white plastering contrasted more against the black walnut colored wood, but he would first outline the whole before he went into details.
From a nail in the ceiling he hung his bed curtains, this made as it were, a room within the room, and the dormitory was separated from the sitting room, as though under a tent.
The long white floor planks with their black: parallel cracks, where dirt from shoes, dust from furniture and clothes, tobacco ashes, scrubbing water and broom splinters, formed hot beds for fungi and hiding places for wood worms, he covered here and there with rugs of different colors and patterns, which lay like verdant blooming islets on the big white flat.
Now that there was color and warmth added to the space he began to give the finishing touches. He had first to create a forge, an altar to labor which would be the center round which everything would be grouped and radiating from it. Therefore he placed his big lamp on the writing table, it was two feet high and rose like a lighthouse upon the green cloth, its painted china stand with arabesques, flowers and animals, which bore no resemblance to ordinary ones, but gave a cheerful coloring and reminded with their ornaments, of the human spirit's power to outrage nature's unchangeable shapes. Here had the painter transformed a stiff spear thistle to a clinging vine, and forced a rabbit to stretch himself out like a crocodile, and with a gun between his fore paws with their tiger claw nails, to aim at a hunter with a fox's head.
Round the lamp he placed a microscope, diopter, scales, plumb bobs, and a sounding rod, whose varnished brasses diffused a warm sunlight yellow.
The inkstand, a big cube of glass cut in facets, which gave it the faint blue light of water or ice, the penholders of porcupine quills which suggested animal life with their indefinite oily coloring, sticks of sealing wax in loud cinnabar, pen boxes with variegated labels, scissors with cold steel glance, cigar dishes in lac and gold, paper knife of bronze, all that mass of small trifles of use and beauty soon filled the big table abundantly with points on which the eye could rest a moment getting an impression, a memory, an impulse, keeping it always active and never fatiguing.
Now for filling the spaces in the book shelves, and blow the breath of life into the vacuum between the dark boards. There soon stood row upon row a variegated collection of reference and handbooks, from which the owner could get enlightenment on all that had happened in the past and present time. Encyclopedias, which like an air telegraph answered with a pressure on the right letter. Text-books in history, philosophy, archeology, and natural sciences, journeys in all lands with maps, all of Baedeker's handbooks so that the owner could sit at home and plan the shortest and cheapest route to this or that place, and decide which hotel, and know how much to give in drink money. But as all of these works have an inevitable seed of decay, he had manned a special shelf with an observation corps of scientific journals from which he could immediately obtain reports concerning even the smallest advancements of knowledge, even the slightest discoveries. And at last a whole collection of skeleton keys to all present knowledge, in bibliographical notices, publishers' catalogues, book-sellers' newspapers, so that he, shut up in his room, could see precisely how high or low the barometer stood with all the science that concerned him.
When he regarded the wall with the book shelf, it seemed to him as though the room was now for the first time inhabited by living beings. These books gave the impression of individuals for there were not two works of the same exterior. One was a Baedeker in scarlet and gold, like one who on a Monday morning leaves all behind him and travels away from sorrow.
Others solemn, dressed in black, a whole procession, like the Encyclopedia Britannica, and all the many paper covered ones in light, gay, easy, spring coats, the salmon red Revue des deux Mondes, the lemon yellow Comtemporaine, the rush green Fortnightly, the grass green Morgenländische. From the backs big names saluted him as acquaintances whom he had in his chamber, and here he had the best part of them, more than they could give a traveler who came on a visit to trouble their dinner naps or breakfast.
With the writing table and the book shelves placed in order, he felt himself recovered after the voyage's disturbing influences; his soul regained its strength since his implements were accessible, these instruments and books which had grown fast to his being as new senses, as other organs stronger and finer than those nature had given him as an inheritance.
The occasional attack of fear which was caused from isolation, solitude and from being pent-up with enemies—for thus he considered the fishermen, with reason—gave way before the quiet which the installment must induce, and now, the headquarters being raised, he sat down as a well-armed general to plan for the campaign.
CHAPTER THIRD
The wind had shifted north-east during the night and the drifting ice had floated down from Aland, when the commissioner took his boat to make a preparatory investigation of the quality of the sea's bottom depth of water, sea flora and sea fauna.
A pilot who was with him as oarsman, soon became tired of giving explanations, when he saw that the commissioner by means of chart, sounding lead and other different instruments, found out facts that he had never thought of. Where the shoals lay was known to the pilot, and he also knew on which shoal the stromling nets should be set, but the commissioner was not satisfied with this and began to dredge at different depths, taking up small creatures and vegetable slime on which he believed the stromling fed. He lowered the lead to the bottom and drew up samples of clay, sand, mud, mold and gravel, which he assorted, numbered and placed in small glasses with labels.
Finally he took out a big spyglass which resembled a speaking trumpet, and looked down into the sea. The pilot had never dreamed that one could gaze into the water with an instrument and in his astonishment asked permission to place his eye to the glass and look down into the mysteries.
The commissioner on the one hand would not play wizard, and on the other did not desire hastily to solve the problem which time would clear up, or to inspire too high hopes about the results, he therefore granted the pilot's entreaty and gave some popular explanation of the living pictures which were unfolding down in the depths.
"Do you see that seaweed upon the shoal?" began the commissioner, "and do you see that it is first olive yellow, lower down liver colored and at the bottom red? That comes from the diminution of light!"
He took a few pulls at the oars, off the shallow, and kept constantly to lee of the rock so as to keep free from the drifting ice.
"What do you see now?" he asked the man who lay on his stomach.
"Oh Jesus! I think