Its occupant, however, was oblivious to his surroundings.

He sat very still in his chair, with pouches under his fixed eyes and his lips set tight.

He looked malignant and dangerous.

Perhaps his mental attitude was not quite normal; for close study and severe physical toil, coupled with free indulgence, had weakened him; there were drugs to which he was addicted; and he had long been possessed by one fixed idea.

By degrees it had become a mania; and he would stick at nothing that might help him to carry out his purpose.
When at last he got up, with a shiver, to throw wood into the stove, he thought he saw how his object could be secured.
A month before Clarke spent the evening thinking about them, Blake and his comrades camped at sunset in a belt of small spruces near the edge of the open waste that runs back to the Polar Sea.