the water, and soon I was forced to move, and the
hundreds of butterflies in front of me. When the last one had left I
went away, returning two hours later. It was then that I witnessed the
most significant happening in the Bay of Butterflies--one which shook
to the bottom the theory of my lepidopterist friend, together with my
thoughtless use of the word normal. Over two feet of restless brown
water covered the sand patches and rocked the scouring rushes. A few
feet farther up the little bay the remaining sand was still exposed.
Here were damp sand, sand dotted with rushes, and sand dry and white
in the sun. About a hundred butterflies were in sight, some
continually leaving, and others arriving. Individuals still dashed
into sight and swooped downward. But not one attempted to alight on
the exposed sand. There was fine, dry sand, warm to a butterfly's
feet, or wet sand soaked with draughts of good Mazaruni water. But
they passed this unheeding, and circled and fluttered in two swarms,
as low as they dared, close to the surface of the water, exactly over
the two patches of sand which had so drawn and held them or their
brethren two hours before. Whatever the ultimate satisfaction may
have been, the attraction was something transcending humidity,
aridity, or immediate possibility of attainment. It was a definite
cosmic point, a geographical focus, which, to my eyes and
understanding, was unreasonable, unsuitable, and inexplicable.

As I watched the restless water and the butterflies striving to find a
way down through it to the only desired patches of sand in the world,
there arose a fine, thin humming, seeping up through the very waves,
and I knew the singing catfish were following the tide shoreward. And
as I considered my vast ignorance of what it all meant, of how little
I could ever convey of the significance of the happenings in the Bay
of Butterflies, I felt that it would have been far better for all of
my green ink to have trickled down through the grains of sand.

XII

SEQUELS

Tropical midges of sorts live less than a day--sequoias have felt
their sap quicken at the warmth of fifteen hundred springs. Somewhere
between these extremes, we open our eyes, look about us for a time and
close them again. Modern political geography and shifts of government
give us Methusalistic feelings--but a glance at rocks or stars sends
us shuddering among the other motes which glisten for a moment in the
sunlight an