this came home to me
with a peculiar force. The sun that rose to-day for us had set last
night for eighteen of our fellow-voyagers!--had set everlastingly for
eighteen whom we knew!

The dhow had gone down with them, they were tossing about among the
rocks and seaweed, so much human drift on the great ocean of Death! And
we four were saved. But one day a sunrise will come when we shall be
among those who are lost, and then others will watch those glorious
rays, and grow sad in the midst of beauty, and dream of Death in the
full glow of arising Life!

For this is the lot of man.

V

THE HEAD OF THE ETHIOPIAN

At length the heralds and forerunners of the royal sun had done their
work, and, searching out the shadows, had caused them to flee away.
Then up he came in glory from his ocean-bed, and flooded the earth
with warmth and light. I sat there in the boat listening to the gentle
lapping of the water and watched him rise, till presently the slight
drift of the boat brought the odd-shaped rock, or peak, at the end of
the promontory which we had weathered with so much peril, between me
and the majestic sight, and blotted it from my view. I still continued,
however, to stare at the rock, absently enough, till presently it became
edged with the fire of the growing light behind it, and then I started,
as well I might, for I perceived that the top of the peak, which was
about eighty feet high by one hundred and fifty feet thick at its base,
was shaped like a negro's head and face, whereon was stamped a most
fiendish and terrifying expression. There was no doubt about it; there
were the thick lips, the fat cheeks, and the squat nose standing out
with startling clearness against the flaming background. There, too, was
the round skull, washed into shape perhaps by thousands of years of
wind and weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby
growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the sun looked for all
the world like the wool on a colossal negro's head. It certainly was
very odd; so odd that now I believe it is not a mere freak of nature but
a gigantic monument fashioned, like the well-known Egyptian Sphinx, by a
forgotten people out of a pile of rock that lent itself to their
design, perhaps as an emblem of warning and defiance to any enemies who
approached the harbour. Unfortunately we were never able to ascertain
whether or not this was the case, inasmuch as the rock was difficult of
access