with black rocks, upon a coast of sand and desolation.  And everywhere we watched, we listened, we asked.  We asked traders, robbers, white men.  We heard jeers, mockery, threats—­words of wonder and words of contempt.  We never knew rest; we never thought of home, for our work was not done.  A year passed, then another.  I ceased to count the number of nights, of moons, of years.  I watched over Matara.  He had my last handful of rice; if there was water enough for one he drank it; I covered him up when he shivered with cold; and when the hot sickness came upon him I sat sleepless through many nights and fanned his face.  He was a fierce man, and my friend.  He spoke of her with fury in the daytime, with sorrow in the dark; he remembered her in health, in sickness.  I said nothing; but I saw her every day—­always!  At first I saw only her head, as of a woman walking in the low mist on a river bank.  Then she sat by our fire.  I saw her!  I looked at her!  She had tender eyes and a ravishing face.  I murmured to her in the night.  Matara said sleepily sometimes, ‘To whom are you talking?  Who is there?’ I answered quickly, ‘No one’ . . .  It was a lie!  She never left me.  She shared the warmth of our fire, she sat on my couch of leaves, she swam on the sea to follow me. . . .  I saw her! . . .  I tell you I saw her long black hair spread behind her upon the moonlit water as she struck out with bare arms by the side of a swift prau.  She was beautiful, she was faithful, and in the silence of foreign countries she spoke to me very low in the language of my people.  No one saw her; no one heard her; she was mine only!  In daylight she moved with a swaying walk before me upon the weary paths; her figure was straight and flexible like the stem of a slender tree; the heels of her feet were round and polished like shells of eggs; with her round arm she made signs.  At night she looked into my face.  And she was sad!  Her eyes were tender and frightened; her voice soft and pleading.  Once I murmured to her, ‘You shall not die,’ and she smiled . . . ever after she smiled! . . .  She gave me courage to bear weariness and hardships.  Those were times of pain, and she soothed me.  We wandered patient in our search.  We knew deception, false hopes; we knew captivity, sickness, thirst, misery, despair . . . .  Enough!  We found them! . . .”

He cried out the last words and paused.  His face was impassive, and he kept still like a man in a trance.  Hollis sat up quickly, and spread his elbows on the table.  Jackson made a brusque movement, and accidentally touched the guitar.  A plaintive resonance filled the cabin with confused vibrations and died out slowly.  Then Karain began to speak again.  The restrained fierceness of his tone seemed to rise like a voice from outside, like a thing unspoken but heard; it filled the cabin and enveloped in its intense and deadened murmur the motionless figure in the chair.