p. There are fleecy clouds on
the horizon, and at sunset they take strange shapes so that it is
impossible not to believe that you see a range of lofty mountains. They
are the mountains of the country of your dreams. You sail through an
unimaginable silence upon a magic sea. Now and then a few gulls suggest
that land is not far off, a forgotten island hidden in a wilderness of
waters; but the gulls, the melancholy gulls, are the only sign you have
of it. You see never a tramp, with its friendly smoke, no stately bark
or trim schooner, not a fishing boat even: it is an empty desert; and
presently the emptiness fills you with a vague foreboding.

II

_Mackintosh_

He splashed about for a few minutes in the sea; it was too shallow to
swim in and for fear of sharks he could not go out of his depth; then he
got out and went into the bath-house for a shower. The coldness of the
fresh water was grateful after the heavy stickiness of the salt Pacific,
so warm, though it was only just after seven, that to bathe in it did
not brace you but rather increased your languor; and when he had dried
himself, slipping into a bath-gown, he called out to the Chinese cook
that he would be ready for breakfast in five minutes. He walked barefoot
across the patch of coarse grass which Walker, the administrator,
proudly thought was a lawn, to his own quarters and dressed. This did
not take long, for he put on nothing but a shirt and a pair of duck
trousers and then went over to his chief's house on the other side of
the compound. The two men had their meals together, but the Chinese cook
told him that Walker had set out on horseback at five and would not be
back for another hour.

Mackintosh had slept badly and he looked with distaste at the paw-paw
and the eggs and bacon which were set before him. The mosquitoes had
been maddening that night; they flew about the net under which he slept
in such numbers that their humming, pitiless and menacing, had the
effect of a note, infinitely drawn out, played on a distant organ, and
whenever he dozed off he awoke with a start in the belief that one had
found its way inside his curtains. It was so hot that he lay naked. He
turned from side to side. And gradually the dull roar of the breakers on
the reef, so unceasing and so regular that generally you did not hear
it, grew distinct on his consciousness, its rhythm hammered on his tired
nerves and he held himself with clenched hands in the effort