evelled in the vastness of the opened horizon, in
the different atmosphere that seemed to vibrate with the toil of life,
with the energy of an impeccable world. This sky and this sea were open
to me. The girl was right--there was a sign, a call in them--something
to which I responded with every fibre of my being. I let my eyes roam
through space, like a man released from bonds who stretches his cramped
limbs, runs, leaps, responds to the inspiring elation of freedom. "This
is glorious!" I cried, and then I looked at the sinner by my side. He
sat with his head sunk on his breast and said "Yes," without raising his
eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear sky of the offing the
reproach of his romantic conscience.

'I remember the smallest details of that afternoon. We landed on a bit
of white beach. It was backed by a low cliff wooded on the brow, draped
in creepers to the very foot. Below us the plain of the sea, of a serene
and intense blue, stretched with a slight upward tilt to the thread-like
horizon drawn at the height of our eyes. Great waves of glitter blew
lightly along the pitted dark surface, as swift as feathers chased by
the breeze. A chain of islands sat broken and massive facing the wide
estuary, displayed in a sheet of pale glassy water reflecting faithfully
the contour of the shore. High in the colourless sunshine a solitary
bird, all black, hovered, dropping and soaring above the same spot with
a slight rocking motion of the wings. A ragged, sooty bunch of flimsy
mat hovels was perched over its own inverted image upon a crooked
multitude of high piles the colour of ebony. A tiny black canoe put off
from amongst them with two tiny men, all black, who toiled exceedingly,
striking down at the pale water: and the canoe seemed to slide painfully
on a mirror. This bunch of miserable hovels was the fishing village
that boasted of the white lord's especial protection, and the two men
crossing over were the old headman and his son-in-law. They landed
and walked up to us on the white sand, lean, dark-brown as if dried
in smoke, with ashy patches on the skin of their naked shoulders
and breasts. Their heads were bound in dirty but carefully folded
headkerchiefs, and the old man began at once to state a complaint,
voluble, stretching a lank arm, screwing up at Jim his old bleared eyes
confidently. The Rajah's people would not leave them alone; there had
been some trouble about a lot of turtles' eggs his peop