midnight
The words of a wild madman , that preaching man in England who prophesied what happened , were with me , where he says : ` the defeat of Man is _ His _ defeat ' ; and I said to myself : ` Well , the last man shall not be quite a fiend , just to spite That Other . ' And I worked and groaned , saying : ` I will be a good man , and burn nothing , nor utter aught unseemly , nor debauch myself , but choke back the blasphemies that Those Others shriek through my throat , and build and build , with moils and groans . ' And it was Vanity : though I do love the house , too , I love it well , for it is my home on the waste earth . I had calculated to finish it in twelve years , and I should undoubtedly have finished it in fourteen , instead of in sixteen and seven months , but one day , when the south , north , and east platform-steps were already finished -- it was in the July of the third year , and near sunset -- as I left off work , instead of going to the tent where my dinner lay ready , I walked down to the ship -- most strangely -- in a daft , mechanical sort of way , without saying a word to myself , an evil-meaning smile of malice on my lips ; and at midnight I was lying off Mitylene , thirty miles to the south , having bid , as I thought , a last farewell to all those toils . I was going to burn Athens . I did not , however : but kept on my way westward round Cape Matapan , intending to destroy the forests and towns of Sicily , if I found there a suitable motor for travelling , for I had not been at the pains to take the motor on board at Imbros ; otherwise I would ravage parts of southern Italy . But when I came thereabouts , I was confronted with an awful horror : for no southern Italy was there , and no Sicily was there , unless a small new island , probably not five miles long , was Sicily ; and nothing else I saw , save the still-smoking crater of Stromboli .