headland intercepted the heavy
sea that had been occasioned by the squall, and the tide, which had
been running so fiercely up the river (for we were now in the mouth of a
river), was sluggish before it turned, so we floated quietly, and before
the moon went down managed to bail out the boat thoroughly and get her
a little ship-shape. Leo was sleeping profoundly, and on the whole I
thought it wise not to wake him. It was true he was sleeping in wet
clothes, but the night was now so warm that I thought (and so did Job)
that they were not likely to injure a man of his unusually vigorous
constitution. Besides, we had no dry ones at hand.

Presently the moon went down, and left us floating on the waters, now
only heaving like some troubled woman's breast, with leisure to reflect
upon all that we had gone through and all that we had escaped. Job
stationed himself at the bow, Mahomed kept his post at the tiller, and I
sat on a seat in the middle of the boat close to where Leo was lying.

The moon went slowly down in chastened loveliness; she departed like
some sweet bride into her chamber, and long veil-like shadows crept up
the sky through which the stars peeped shyly out. Soon, however, they
too began to pale before a splendour in the east, and then the quivering
footsteps of the dawn came rushing across the new-born blue, and shook
the high stars from their places. Quieter and yet more quiet grew the
sea, quiet as the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up
her troubling, as the illusive wreaths of sleep brood upon a pain-racked
mind, causing it to forget its sorrow. From the east to the west
sped the angels of the Dawn, from sea to sea, from mountain-top to
mountain-top, scattering light with both their hands. On they sped out
of the darkness, perfect, glorious, like spirits of the just breaking
from the tomb; on, over the quiet sea, over the low coastline, and the
swamps beyond, and the mountains above them; over those who slept in
peace and those who woke in sorrow; over the evil and the good; over the
living and the dead; over the wide world and all that breathes or has
breathed thereon.

It was a wonderfully beautiful sight, and yet sad, perhaps, from the
very excess of its beauty. The arising sun; the setting sun! There we
have the symbol and the type of humanity, and all things with which
humanity has to do. The symbol and the type, yes, and the earthly
beginning, and the end also. And on that morning