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- 66 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Egypt, in some sort of oasis. The caravan was resting, the camels
were peacefully lying down; the palms stood all round in a
complete circle; all the party were at dinner. But he was
drinking water from a spring which flowed gurgling close by.
And it was so cool, it was wonderful, wonderful, blue, cold
water running among the parti-coloured stones and over the
clean sand which glistened here and there like gold. . . . Sud-
denly heheard a clock strike. He started, roused himself, raised
his head, looked out of the window, and seeing how late it was,
suddenly jumped up wide awake as though some one had pulled
him off the sofa. He crept on tiptoe to the door, stealthily
opened it and began listening on the staircase. His heart beat
terribly. But all was quiet on the stairs as if every one was
asleep. ... It seemed to him strange and monstrous that he
could have slept in such forgetfulness from the previous day
and had done nothing, had prepared nothing yet. . . . And mean-
while perhaps it had struck six. And his drowsiness and stupe-
faction were followed by an extraordinary, feverish, as it were,
distracted, haste. But the preparations to be made were few.
He concentrated all his energies on thinking of everything
and forgetting nothing; and his heart kept beating and thump-
ing so that he could hardly breathe. First he had to make a noose
and sew it into his overcoat — a work of a moment. He rum-
maged under his pillow and picked out amongst the linen
stuffed away under it, a worn out, old unwashed shirt. From
its rags he tore a long strip, a couple of inches wide and about
sixteen inches long. He folded this strip in two, took off his wide,
strong summer overcoat of some stout cotton material (his only
outer garment) and began sewing the two ends of the rag on the
inside, under the left armhole. His hands shook as he sewed,
but he did it successfully so that nothing showed outside when
he put the coat on again. The needle and thread he had got ready
long before and they lay on his table in a piece of paper. As for
the noose, it was a very ingenious device of his own; the noose
was intended for the axe. It was impossible for him to carry the
axe through the street in his hands. And if hidden under his
coat he would still have had to support it with his hand, which
woul<j have been noticeable. Now he had only to put the head
of the axe in the noose, and it would hang quietly under
his arm on the inside. Putting his hand in his coat pocket, he
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