On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes
resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo
fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain
of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned
forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to
the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign
of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.
To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins
of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations
set in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still
and stable did it lie below my feet; even the track
of light from the westering sun shone smoothly, without
that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible
ripple. And when I turned my head to take a parting
glance at the tug which had just left us anchored
outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the flat
shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with
a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor
half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of the
sky. Corresponding in their insignificance to
the islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one
on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint,
marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just left
on the first preparatory stage of our homeward journey;
and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier
mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda,
was the only thing on which the eye could rest from
the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of
the horizon. Here and there gleams as of a few
scattered pieces of silver marked the windings of
the great river; and on the nearest of them, just
within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land
became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts,
as though the impassive earth had swallowed her up
without an effort, without a tremor. My eye followed
the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there,
above the plain, according to the devious curves of
the stream, but always fainter and farther away, till
I lost it at last behind the miter-shaped hill of
the great pagoda. And then I was left alone with
my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam.
She floated at the starting point of a long journey,
very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of
her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting
sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks.
There was not a sound in her—and around
us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the
water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.
In this breathless pause at the threshold of a long
passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for
a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed task
of both our existences to be carried out, far from
all human eyes, with only sky and sea for spectators
and for judges.
