MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[1468] skiff, but I paddled with an old bit of driftwood. [1469] And I sometimes
wonder if I ever came back, from this voyage. [1470] For [⁁]^if I see myself putting
to sea, and the long hours without landfall, I do not see the return,
the tossing on the breakers, and I do not hear the frail keel grating
on the shore. [1471] I took advantage of being at the seaside to lay in a store
of sucking stones.

[1472] They were pebbles but I call them stones. [1473] Yes, on
this occasion I laid in a considerable store. [1474] I distributed them equally
among my four pockets and sucked them turn and turn about. [1475] This raised
a problem which I first solved in the following way. [1476] I had say sixteen
stones, four in each of my four pockets these being the two pockets of
my trousers and the two pockets of my greatcoat.

[1477] Taking a stone from
the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced
it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket
of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my
trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my great-
-coat, which I replaced by the stone which was in my mouth, as soon as
I had finished sucking it.

[1478] In this way there were always four stones
in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same stones. [1479] And when the
desire to suck took holdof me again, I drew again on the right pocket
of my greatcoat, certain of not taking the same stone as the last time.
[1480] And while I sucked it I rearranged the other eight stones in the way I
have just described. [1481] And so on. [1482] But this solution did not satisfy me
fully.

[1483] F^or it did not escape me that, by an extraordinary hazard, the
four stones circulating thus might always be the same four. [1484] In which
case, far from sucking the sixteen stones turn and turn about, I was
really only sucking four, always the same, turn and turn about. [1485] But
I shook them well in my pockets, before I began to suck, and again,
while I sucked, before transferring them, in the hope of obtaining a
more general circulation of the stones from pocket to pocket. [1486] But this