ut of the trunk of a tree: the forms of the bottom
undulated slightly to the dip of a paddle; and the men seemed to hang
in the air, they seemed to hang inclosed within the fibers of a dark,
sodden log, fishing patiently in a strange, unsteady, pellucid, green
air above the shoals.

Their bodies stalked brown and emaciated as if dried up in the sunshine;
their lives ran out silently; the homes where they were born, went to
rest, and died--flimsy sheds of rushes and coarse grass eked out with a
few ragged mats--were hidden out of sight from the open sea. No glow
of their household fires ever kindled for a seaman a red spark upon the
blind night of the group: and the calms of the coast, the flaming long
calms of the equator, the unbreathing, concentrated calms like the deep
introspection of a passionate nature, brooded awfully for days and weeks
together over the unchangeable inheritance of their children; till at
last the stones, hot like live embers, scorched the naked sole, till
the water clung warm, and sickly, and as if thickened, about the legs of
lean men with girded loins, wading thigh-deep in the pale blaze of the
shallows. And it would happen now and then that the Sofala, through some
delay in one of the ports of call, would heave in sight making for Pangu
bay as late as noonday.

Only a blurring cloud at first, the thin mist of her smoke would arise
mysteriously from an empty point on the clear line of sea and sky. The
taciturn fishermen within the reefs would extend their lean arms towards
the offing; and the brown figures stooping on the tiny beaches, the
brown figures of men, women, and children grubbing in the sand in search
of turtles' eggs, would rise up, crooked elbow aloft and hand over
the eyes, to watch this monthly apparition glide straight on, swerve
off--and go by. Their ears caught the panting of that ship; their eyes
followed her till she passed between the two capes of the mainland going
at full speed as though she hoped to make her way unchecked into the
very bosom of the earth.

On such days the luminous sea would give no sign of the dangers lurking
on both sides of her path. Everything remained still, crushed by the
overwhelming power of the light; and the whole group, opaque in the
sunshine,--the rocks resembling pinnacles, the rocks resembling spires,
the rocks resembling ruins; the forms of islets resembling beehives,
resembling mole-hills, the islets recalling the shapes of haystacks, t