nk so close that the gigantic
wall of leaves came gliding like a shutter against the port; the
darkness of the primeval forest seemed to flow into that bare cabin with
the odor of rotting leaves, of sodden soil--the strong muddy smell of
the living earth steaming uncovered after the passing of a deluge. The
bushes swished loudly alongside; above there was a series of crackling
sounds, with a sharp rain of small broken branches falling on the
bridge; a creeper with a great rustle snapped on the head of a boat
davit, and a long, luxuriant green twig actually whipped in and out of
the open port, leaving behind a few torn leaves that remained suddenly
at rest on Mr. Massy's blanket. Then, the ship sheering out in the
stream, the light began to return but did not augment beyond a subdued
clearness: for the sun was very low already, and the river, wending its
sinuous course through a multitude of secular trees as if at the
bottom of a precipitous gorge, had been already invaded by a deepening
gloom--the swift precursor of the night.

"Oh, no, you don't!" murmured the engineer again. His lips trembled
almost imperceptibly; his hands too, a little: and to calm himself
he opened the writing-desk, spread out a sheet of thin grayish
paper covered with a mass of printed figures and began to scan them
attentively for the twentieth time this trip at least.

With his elbows propped, his head between his hands, he seemed to lose
himself in the study of an abstruse problem in mathematics. It was the
list of the winning numbers from the last drawing of the great lottery
which had been the one inspiring fact of so many years of his existence.
The conception of a life deprived of that periodical sheet of paper had
slipped away from him entirely, as another man, according to his nature,
would not have been able to conceive a world without fresh air, without
activity, or without affection. A great pile of flimsy sheets had been
growing for years in his desk, while the Sofala, driven by the faithful
Jack, wore out her boilers in tramping up and down the Straits, from
cape to cape, from river to river, from bay to bay; accumulating by that
hard labor of an overworked, starved ship the blackened mass of these
documents. Massy kept them under lock and key like a treasure. There
was in them, as in the experience of life, the fascination of hope, the
excitement of a half-penetrated mystery, the longing of a half-satisfied
desire.

For days toge