ecessary wood. At night-fall they
would dig a hollow on the beach, fill it with shavings and faggots; then
they would put in large logs, and the corpse; on top of this, more wood,
and after the pyre had ceased to burn for lack of fuel Khiamull's
religious brethren would gather the ashes and bear them off in a boat to
scatter them at sea.

Aguirre listened coldly to these details. Happy Khiamull, who was
departing thus! Fire, plenty of fire! Would that he could burn the town,
and the near-by lands, and finally the whole world!...

At ten o'clock the transatlantic liner raised anchor. The Spaniard,
leaning over the rail, saw the black mountain and the huge Rock, its
base speckled with rows of lights, grow small as if sinking into the
horizon. Its obscure ridge was silhouetted against the sky like a
crouching monster toying with a swarm of stars between its paws.

The vessel rounded Europa Point and the lights disappeared. Now the
cliff was visible from its Eastern face, black, imposing, bare, with no
other light than that of the lighthouse at its extreme end.

Suddenly a new light arose,--a red line, a perpendicular flame,--at the
foot of the mountain, as if it came out of the sea. Aguirre guessed what
it was. Poor Khiamull! The flames were beginning to consume his body
upon the beach. The bronze-faced men were at this moment gathered about
the pyre, like priests of a remote civilization, hastening the disposal
of their companion's remains.

Farewell, Khiamull! He had died with his hope placed in the Orient,--the
land of love and perfumes, the abode of delights,--without having been
able to realize his dreams. And here was Aguirre traveling thither with
an empty heart, a paralyzed soul, wearied and bereft of strength, as if
he had just emerged from the most terrible of ordeals.

"Farewell, melancholy and gentle Hindu, poor poet who dreamed of light
and love as you sold your trinkets in that damp hole!..." His remains,
purified by flame, were going to be lost in the bosom of the great
mother. Perhaps his delicate, bird-like soul would survive in the
sea-gulls that fluttered about the cliff; perhaps he would sing in the
roaring foam of the submarine caverns, as an accompaniment to the vows
of other lovers who would come there in their turn, on the impulse of
the deceptive illusion, the sweet lie of love that gives us new strength
to continue on our way.

END

THE TOAD

"I WAS spending the summer at Nazare