But in the dark everything was unnatural; the silence and the darkness were in themselves something like death.
And the longer the night dragged the more dreadful it became.

With the ignorant innocence of a child or a savage, who believe everything possible, Yanson felt like crying to the sun: "Shine!" He begged, he implored that the sun should shine, but the night drew its long, dark hours remorselessly over the earth, and there was no power that could hasten its course.

And this impossibility, arising for the first time before the weak consciousness of Yanson, filled him with terror.

Still not daring to realize it clearly, he already felt the inevitability of approaching death, and felt himself making the first step upon the gallows, with benumbed feet.
Day quieted him, but night again filled him with fear, and so it was until one night when he realized fully that death was inevitable, that it would come in three days at dawn with the sunrise.
He had never thought of what death was, and it had no image to him--but now he realized clearly, he saw, he felt that it had entered his cell and was looking for him, groping about with its hands.

And to save himself, he began to run wildly about the room.
But the cell was so small that it seemed that its corners were not sharp but dull, and that all of them were pushing him into the center of the room.