I
remember nights and days of calm when we pulled, we pulled, and the
boat seemed to stand still, as if bewitched within the circle of the sea
horizon. I remember the heat, the deluge of rain-squalls that kept us
baling for dear life (but filled our water-cask), and I remember sixteen
hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder and a steering-oar over the
stern to keep my first command head on to a breaking sea. I did not know
how good a man I was till then. I remember the drawn faces, the dejected
figures of my two men, and I remember my youth and the feeling that
will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever,
outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that
lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of
dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold,
grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon--before life itself.
"And this is how I see the East. I have seen its secret places and have
looked into its very soul; but now I see it always from a small boat, a
high outline of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like faint mist
at noon; a jagged wall of purple at sunset. I have the feel of the oar
in my hand, the vision of a scorching blue sea in my eyes. And I see a
bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, shimmering in
the dark. A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and
the night is soft and warm.
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