228 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
- It.is like vitriol being thrownin one’s face. We have
no expression of our own. We cannot ‘think. The
need is filled by these words... .
The impact of light itself is a bodily pain.
“When the sun is a living devil
Vomiting vats of evil,
And the moon and the night but mock
The wretch on his barren rock,
And the dome of heaven high-arched
Like his mouth is arid and parched,
And the caves of his heart high-spanned
Are choked with alkali sand!”
We are living on water. It seems for the moment
to quench the thirst, at least part of it. Peter’s nervous
state is very alarming. I feel sure he has delusions.
He got up and staggered to the mantelpiece and
leant against it with his arms stretched out. He cried
in a hoarse, dry voice :—
“Thirst!
Not the thirst of the throat,
Though that be the wildest and worst
Of physical pangs that smote
Alone to the heart of Christ,
_Wringing the one wild cry
‘I thirst’ from His agony,
While the soldiers drank and diced.”
He thought he was Jesus on the Cross instead of the
Dragon, as he really is. It makes me very nervous.
about him. :
When he had finished reciting, his strength suddenly
failed him, and.he collapsed. The clatter of the fire-
irons was the most hideous noise that I had ever
heard.
When 1 can summon up enough strength to write
in my diary, the pain leaves me. I see that there are