Multiplying Report 2

(continues, 3rd day....) At certain moments my thought flew far away; perhaps I would have liked not to be there, but the wager was by then underway, and to win it I would only have had to pedal. The sweat at certain instants blinded me; I perceived it as almost acid, able to burn my face, yet it was a pleasant and liberating sensation; sometimes I managed to catch its drops with my tongue, as if wanting to quench my thirst with myself. Probably the condition was this: for days and days I would have had to count only on myself; only my intuition would have accompanied me on my journey.

The white cliff looked over the narrow sea passage; its imposingness suggested a certain fear; who knows whether the blond and barbarous Viking ever found himself before such a mighty marvel? A few hours earlier I had been on the top of that cliff, reflecting on how I would continue my journey, but from up there it seemed more important to turn one's gaze to the present rather than the future, even though the future was immediate. All around me was sea; we had by then lost sight of the white cliff, and the new territory could not yet be made out; only some very small islands framed this view.