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[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 greatcoat, 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] For 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
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[1486] was only a makeshift that could not long content a man like me. [1487] So I began to look for something else. [1488] And the first thing I hit upon was that I might do better to transfer the stones four by four, instead of one by one, that is to say, during the sucking, to take the three stones remaining in the right pocket of my greatcoat and replace them by the four in the right pocket of my trousers, and these by the four in the left pocket of my trousers, and these by the four in the left pocket of my greatcoat, and finally these by the three in the right pocket of my greatcoat, plus the one, as soon as I had finished sucking it, which was in my mouth. [1489] Yes, it seemed to me at first that by so doing I would arrive at a better result. [1490] But on further reflection I had to change my mind, and confess that the circulation of the stones four by four came to exactly the same thing as their circulation one by one. [1491] For if I was certain of finding each time, in the right pocket of my greatcoat, four stones totally different from their immediate predecessors, the possibility nevertheless remained of my always chancing on the same stone, within each group of four, and consequently of my sucking, not the sixteen turn and turn about as I wished, but in fact four only, always the same, turn and turn about. [1492] So I had to seek elsewhere than in the mode of circulation. [1493] For no matter how I caused the stones to circulate, I always ran the same risk. [1494] It was obvious that by increasing the number of my pockets I was bound to increase my chances of enjoying my stones in the way I planned, that is to say one after the other until their number was exhausted. [1495] Had I had eight pockets, for example, instead of the four I did have, then the most diabolical hazard could not have prevented me from sucking at least eight of my sixteen stones, turn and turn about. [1496] The fact of the matter is, I should have needed sixteen pockets for all my anxiety to be dispelled. [1497] And for a long time I could see no other conclusion but this, that short of having sixteen
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[1497] pockets, each with its stone, I would never reach the goal I had set myself, short of an extraordinary hazard. [1498] And if at a pinch I could double the number of my pockets, were it only by dividing each pocket in two, with the help of a few safety-pins let us say, to quadruple them seemed to be more than I could manage. [1499] And I didn't feel inclined to take all that trouble for a half-measure. [1500] For I was beginning to lose all sense of measure, after all this wrestling and wrangling, and to say, Either it's all or nothing. [1501] And if I was tempted for an instant to establish a more equitable proportion between my stones and my pockets, by reducing the former to the number of the latter, it was only for an instant. [1502] For it would have been an admission of defeat. [1503] And sitting on the shore, before the sea, the sixteen stones spread out before my eyes, I gazed at them in anger and perplexity. [1504] For just as I had difficulty in sitting on a chair, or in an arm-chair, because of my stiff leg you understand, so I had none in sitting on the ground, because of my stiff leg and my stiffening leg, for it was about this time that my good leg, good in the sense that it was not stiff, began to stiffen. [1505] I needed a prop under the ham you understand, and even under the whole length of the leg, the prop of the earth. [1506] And while I gazed thus at my stones, brooding on endless martingales all equally defective, and crushing handfuls of sand, so that the sand ran through my fingers, fell back on the strand, yes, while I held thus in suspense my mind and a part of my body, one day suddenly it dawned on the former, dimly, that I might perhaps achieve my purpose without increasing the number of my pockets, or reducing the number of my stones, but simply by sacrificing the principle of trim. [1507] The meaning of this illumination, which suddenly began to sing within me, like a verse of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, I did not penetrate at once, and notably the word trim, which I had never met with, long remained obscure. [1508] Finally I seemed to grasp that this word
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[1508] trim could not mean anything else, anything better, than the distribution of the sixteen stones in four groups of four, one group in each pocket, and that it was my refusal to consider any distribution other than this that had vitiated my calculations until then and rendered the problem literally insoluble. [1509] And it was on the basis of this interpretation, whether right or wrong, that I finally reached a solution, inelegant assuredly, but sound, sound. [1510] Now I am willing to believe, indeed I firmly believe, that other solutions to this problem might have been found,and indeed may still be found, no less sound, but much more elegant, than the one I shall now describe, if I can. [1511] And I believe too, that had I been a little more insistent, a little more resistant, I could have found them myself. [1512] But I was tired, but I was tired, and I contented myself ingloriously with the first solution that was a solution, to this problem. [1513] But not to go over the heartbreaking stages through which I passed before I came to it, here it is, in all its hideousness. [1514] It was merely (merely!) a matter of putting for example, to begin with, six stones in the right pocket of my greatcoat, or supply-pocket, five in the right pocket of my trousers, and five in the left pocket of my trousers, that makes the lot, twice five ten plus six sixteen, and none, for none remained, in the left pocket of my greatcoat, which for the time being remained empty, empty of stones that is, for its usual contents remained, as well as occasional objects. [1515] For where do you think I hid my vegetable knife, my silver, my horn and the other things, that I have not yet named, perhaps shall never name. [1516] Good. [1517] Now I can begin sucking. [1518] Watch me closely. [1519] I take a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, suck it, stop sucking it, put it in the left pocket of my greatcoat, the one empty (of stones). [1520] I take a second stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, suck it, put it in the left pocket of my greatcoat. [1521] And so on until the right pocket of my
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[1521] greatcoat is empty (apart from its usual and occasional contents) and the six stones I have just sucked, one after the other, are all in the left pocket of my greatcoat. [1522] Pausing then, and concentrating, so as not to make a balls of it, I transfer to the right pocket of my greatcoat, in which there are no stones left, the five stones in the right pocket of my trousers, which I replace by the five stones in the left pocket of my trousers, which I replace by the six stones in the left pocket of my greatcoat. [1523] At this stage then the left pocket of my greatcoat is again empty of stones, while the right pocket of my greatcoat is again replenished, and in the right way, that is to say with other stones than those I have just sucked. These other stones I then begin to suck, one after the other, and to transfer as I go along to the left pocket of my greatcoat, being absolutely certain, as far as one can be in an affair of this kind, that I do not suck the same stones of a moment before, but others. [1524] And when the right pocket of my greatcoat is again empty (of stones), and the five I have just sucked are all without exception in the left pocket of my greatcoat, then I proceed to the same redistribution [ /]as a moment before, or a similar redistribution, that is to say I transfer to the right pocket of my greatcoat, now again available, the five stones in the right pocket of my trousers, which I replace by the six stones in the left pocket of my trousers, which I replace by the five stones in the left pocket of my greatcoat. [1525] And there I am ready to begin again. [1526] Do I have to go on? [1527] No, for it is clear that after the next series, of sucks and transfers, I shall be back where I started, that is to say with the first six stones back in the supply pocket, the next five in the right pocket of my stinking old trousers and finally the last five in left pocket of same, and my sixteen stones will have been sucked once at least in impeccable succession, not one sucked twice, not one left unsucked. [1528] It is true that the next time I could scarcely hope to suck my stones in