The Secret Sharer

On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious system ofhalf-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropicalfishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen nowgone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as theeye could reach. To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still andstable did it lie below my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shonesmoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple. And when Iturned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had just left us anchored outsidethe bar, I saw the straight line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with aperfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor half brown, half blue under theenormous dome of the sky. Corresponding in their insignificance to the islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint, markedthe mouth of the river Meinam we had just left on the first preparatory stage of ourhomeward journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grovesurrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest fromthe vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the horizon. Here and there gleams asof a few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings of the great river; and on thenearest of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became lost to mysight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive earth had swallowed her upwithout an effort, without a tremor. My eye followed the light cloud of her smoke, nowhere, now there, above the plain, according to the devious curves of the stream, but alwaysfainter and farther away, till I lost it at last behind the miter-shaped hill of the great pagoda.And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Sia