For ten minutes Gypo lay perfectly still in the cell, after the door was bolted. He lay on his back. His head and neck were buttressed into an upright position by a square block of stone that jutted from the floor, by the wall farthest from the door. His feet were stretched out, wide apart. One hand lay on his right hip, palm upwards, with the fingers bent inwards, as if he had fallen asleep clawing something. The other hand lay across his eyes. He drew very deep breaths at long intervals. His face was perfectly at peace. It was bruised slightly around the mouth and on the cheek-bones. Each feature was impassive, like the features of a carved image. The glossy skin, the humps, the eyebrows that were like snouts, the thick Ethiopian lips, attained a majesty during that ten minutes of abnormal rest, a majesty that was not so apparent while they were in movement, responding to the strange impulses of his mind. Gypo rested, exhausted, while he was being condemned to death. It was a dead rest, like the rest of a child in the womb before birth, sucking strength all round for the savage struggle with life that will soon commence. Every organ and tissue and muscle was straining for a renewal of strength. When blundering reason flees, instinct, that is fundamental and unerring, rushes to the defence of life. At twelve minutes past three, one minute after he had been condemned to death, Gypo moved. He opened his eyes and closed the right hand that lay palm upwards on the ground. He clenched the hand rigidly until the wrist joint snapped with the tension. Then he took the other hand away from his eyes and dropped it to his bosom. He moved his eyes around from side to side, slowly, suspiciously, blinking and listening intently. The cell was pitch black. Only at one point was there a speck of light. There was a dim, oblong patch of light hanging slantwise in the darkness some distance to his left front. That was the aperture near the top of the door. It did not penetrate the darkness of the cell. It merely hung there, obscurely and uselessly, like a foolish suggestion. All round was pitch dark. Gypo shivered. He was not afraid. No. He did not feel at all in the ordinary sense of the word. But he was immediately fully conscious, as soon as he moved, of all that had happened before he had been thrown into the cell. Still more peculiar, he was quite calm and collected about everything. The darkness consoled him. He felt at home in it. It concealed him. He felt immensely big and strong in the darkness. There was nothing in his immediate neighbourhood but a darksome void that his personality overpowered. He could bellow and his voice would resound through that darkness indefinitely. There would be no resistance. There was no limit to the darkness, no wall, no horizon, no end. He was encompassed by it, sheathed in it. It wound round and round him. It was an impenetrable coat of mail, without weight, without thickness, intangible.