truggle for life, mingled their foliage in one solid wall
of leaves, with here and there the shape of an enormous dark pillar
soaring, or a ragged opening, as if torn by the flight of a cannonball,
disclosing the impenetrable gloom within, the secular inviolable shade
of the virgin forest. The thump of the engines reverberated regularly
like the strokes of a metronome beating the measure of the vast silence,
the shadow of the western wall had fallen across the river, and the
smoke pouring backwards from the funnel eddied down behind the ship,
spread a thin dusky veil over the somber water, which, checked by the
flood-tide, seemed to lie stagnant in the whole straight length of the
reaches.

Sterne's body, as if rooted on the spot, trembled slightly from top to
toe with the internal vibration of the ship; from under his feet came
sometimes a sudden clang of iron, the noisy burst of a shout below; to
the right the leaves of the tree-tops caught the rays of the low sun,
and seemed to shine with a golden green light of their own shimmering
around the highest boughs which stood out black against a smooth blue
sky that seemed to droop over the bed of the river like the roof of a
tent. The passengers for Batu Beru, kneeling on the planks, were engaged
in rolling their bedding of mats busily; they tied up bundles, they
snapped the locks of wooden chests. A pockmarked peddler of small wares
threw his head back to drain into his throat the last drops out of an
earthenware bottle before putting it away in a roll of blankets. Knots
of traveling traders standing about the deck conversed in low tones;
the followers of a small Rajah from down the coast, broad-faced, simple
young fellows in white drawers and round white cotton caps with their
colored sarongs twisted across their bronze shoulders, squatted on their
hams on the hatch, chewing betel with bright red mouths as if they had
been tasting blood. Their spears, lying piled up together within the
circle of their bare toes, resembled a casual bundle of dry bamboos; a
thin, livid Chinaman, with a bulky package wrapped up in leaves already
thrust under his arm, gazed ahead eagerly; a wandering Kling rubbed his
teeth with a bit of wood, pouring over the side a bright stream of water
out of his lips; the fat Rajah dozed in a shabby deck-chair,--and at the
turn of every bend the two walls of leaves reappeared running parallel
along the banks, with their impenetrable solidity fading at th