But this silence was particularly terrifying to both McCarthy and Jack
Warford, though neither would have been able to analyze the reason for its
weirdness. For silence is in reality a composite of many lesser noises. In
a woodland almost inaudible insects hum, breezes blow, leaves and grasses
rustle; at sea the tiny waves lap the sides and equally tiny breaths of
air stir the cordage; within the confines of the human shell the mere
physical acts of breathing, swallowing, winking, the mere physical facts
of the circulation of the blood, the beating of the heart, produce each
its sound.
Even a man totally deaf feels the subtle influence of these latter
physical phenomena. And underneath all sound, perceptible alike to those
who can hear and those who can not, are the vibrations that accompany
every activity of nature as the manifestations of motion or of life. An
ordinary deep silence is not so much an absence of sound as an absence of
accustomed or loud sound. And in that unusual hush often for the first
time a man becomes acutely aware of the singing of the blood in his ears.
But this silence was absolute. All these minor sounds had been eliminated.
For a moment Boss McCarthy stared; then shoved back his chair with a
violent motion, and rose. He was like a shadow on a screen. The filching
from the world of one element of its every-day life had unexpectedly
rendered it all phantasmagoric.
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