At twenty-three, living in New York City, Neville made a decisive vow: whether he starved or not, he would not go back to the comfort of his father's well-provided-for home in Barbados until he had found the cause behind the phenomena of life. That same night he had a vivid dream of being a young ship's captain caught in an unsurvivable storm, who strapped himself to the wheel and went down with his cargo ship rather than abandon it — a vision he reads as scripture's "some went down to the sea in ships" playing out in his own soul at the moment he chose causation over comfort.