ind her on the
water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of
a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the
progress of the pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly
at the same distance astern of the ship, caught up with her at noon,
pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious purposes of the
men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea
evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her
advancing bows. The five whites on board lived amidships, isolated from
the human cargo. The awnings covered the deck with a white roof from
stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low murmur of sad voices, alone
revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great blaze of the
ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one
into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake
of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her
steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if
scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.

The nights descended on her like a benediction.

CHAPTER 3

A marvellous stillness pervaded the world, and the stars, together with
the serenity of their rays, seemed to shed upon the earth the assurance
of everlasting security. The young moon recurved, and shining low in the
west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the
Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended
its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller
turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme
of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of
water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within
their straight and diverging ridges a few white swirls of foam bursting
in a low hiss, a few wavelets, a few ripples, a few undulations that,
left behind, agitated the surface of the sea for an instant after the
passage of the ship, subsided splashing gently, calmed down at last
into the circular stillness of water and sky with the black speck of the
moving hull remaining everlastingly in its centre.

Jim on the bridge was penetrated by the great certitude of unbounded
safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature like
the certitude of fost