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
fostering love upon the placid tenderness of a mother’s
face. Below the roof of awnings, surrendered to
the wisdom of white men and to their courage, trusting
the power of their unbelief and the iron shell of
their fire-ship, the pilgrims of an exacting faith
slept on mats, on blankets, on bare planks, on every
deck, in all the dark corners, wrapped in dyed cloths,
muffled in soiled rags, with their heads resting on
small bundles, with their faces pressed to bent forearms:
the men, the women, the children; the old with the
young, the decrepit with the lusty—all
equal before sleep, death’s brother.
