.

And that had been the end of it all, the ignominious end.

And still again the despairing Durkin was being confronted and challenged and mocked by this call to him from half way round the world.

It maddened and sickened him, the very thought of his helplessness, so Aeschylean in its torturing complications, so ironic in its refinement of cruelty.

It stung him into a spirit of blind revolt.