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Ormarr lay in his dark room, his eyes wide open, letting his fancy paint all manner of visions in the richest colours. His mind was overwhelmed by a turmoil of new sensations.

He tried to recall, one after another, all the pictures he had seen of things in foreign lands; even to portraits of celebrities, of jockeys galloping over turf, and sordid lithographs with impossible figures in ridiculous postures, such as he had seen stuck up in the local stores.

A fever of anticipation burned in his veins. And when at last, towards morning, he dropped off into a broken sleep, he was still surrounded by a crowd of the impressions he had conjured up while awake. They vexed him now; he found himself being thrown from cars that raced away from him at full speed, losing his way in gloomy streets and labyrinthine passages, being snatched up by the steel arms of strange machines and crushed to pieces; standing with one end of a wire between his teeth and vainly trying to speak to a famous man at the other end; he switched on a light and set the house on fire, and was only saved from being burned to death by waking to find the sun shining full in his face.