Subject  | Path | | | | | • | UVA-LIB-Text | [X] | | • | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | [X] |
| | 1 | Author: | Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Secret Sharer  | | | | Published: | 1993 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes
resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged
bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of
the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if
abandoned for ever by some nomad tribe of fishermen
now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was
no sign of human habitation as far as the eye 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 and stable did it lie below my feet; even the
track of light from the westering, sun shone smoothly,
without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible
ripple. And when I turned my head to take
a parting glance at the tug which had just left us
anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the
flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with
a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor
half brown, half blue under the enormous 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,
marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just
left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward
journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger
and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great
Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye
could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep
of the horizon. Here and there gleams as
of a few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings
of the great river; and on the nearest of them, just
within the bar, the tug steaming right into the
land became lost
to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as
though the impassive earth had swallowed her up
without an effort, without a tremor. My eye followed
the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there,
above the plain, according to the devious curves of the
stream, but always fainter and farther away, till I
lost it at last behind the miter-shaped hill of the great
pagodas. And then I was left alone. with my ship,
anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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