Complete Works

ripple.  He stepped on it with a quick but steady motion, and in two strides found himself at the outer end, with the rush and swirl of the foaming water at his feet.
    Standing there alone, as if separated from the world; the heavens, earth; the very water roaring under him swallowed up in the thick veil of the morning fog, he breathed out the name of Nina before him into the apparently limitless space, sure of being heard, instinctively sure of the nearness of the delightful creature; certain of her being aware of his near presence as he was aware of hers.
    The bow of Nina’s canoe loomed up close to the log, canted high out of the water by the weight of the sitter in the stern.  Maroola laid his hand on the stem and leaped lightly in, giving it a vigorous shove off.  The light craft, obeying the new impulse, cleared the log by a hair’s breadth, and the river, with obedient complicity, swung it broadside to the current, and bore it off silently and rapidly between the invisible banks.  And once more Dain, at the feet of Nina, forgot the world, felt himself carried away helpless by a great wave of supreme emotion, by a rush of joy, pride, and desire; understood once more with overpowering certitude that there was no life possible without that being he held clasped in his arms with passionate strength in a prolonged embrace.
    Nina disengaged herself gently with a low laugh.
    “You will overturn the boat, Dain,” she whispered.
    He looked into her eyes eagerly for a minute and let her go with a sigh, then lying down in the canoe he put his head on her knees, gazing upwards and stretching his arms backwards till his hands met round the girl’s waist.  She bent over him, and, shaking her head, framed both their faces in the falling locks of her long black hair.
    And so they drifted on, he speaking with all the rude eloquence of a savage nature giving itself up without restraint to an overmastering passion, she bending low to catch the murmur of words sweeter to her than life itself.  To those two nothing existed then outside the gunwales of the narrow and fragile craft.  It was their world, filled with their intense and all-absorbing love.  They took no heed of thickening mist, or of the breeze dying away before sunrise; they forgot the existence of the great forests surrounding them, of all the tropical nature awaiting the advent of the sun in a solemn and impressive silence.
    Over the low river-mist hiding the boat with its freight of young passionate life and all-forgetful happiness, the stars paled, and a silvery-grey tint crept over the sky from the eastward.  There was not a breath of wind, not a rustle of stirring leaf, not a splash of leaping fish to disturb the serene repose of all living things on the banks of the great river.  Earth, river, and sky were wrapped up in a deep sleep, from which it seemed there would be no waking.  All the seething life and movement of tropical nature seemed concentrated in the ardent eyes, in the tumultuously beating hearts of the two beings drifting in the canoe, under the white canopy of mist, over the smooth surface of the river.
    Suddenly a great sheaf of yellow rays shot upwards from behind the black curtain of trees lining the banks of the Pantai.  The stars went out; the little black clouds at the zenith glowed for a moment with crimson tints, and the thick mist, stirred by the gentle breeze, the sigh of waking nature, whirled round and broke into fantastically torn pieces, disclosing the wrinkled surface of the river sparkling in the broad light of day.  Great flocks of white birds wheeled screaming above the swaying tree-tops.  The sun had risen on the east coast.
    Dain was the first to return to the cares of everyday life.  He rose and glanced rapidly up and down the river.  His eye detected Babalatchi’s boat astern, and another small black speck on the glittering water, which was Taminah’s canoe.  He moved cautiously forward, and, kneeling, took up a paddle; Nina at the stern took hers.  They bent their bodies to the work, throwing up the water at every stroke, and the small craft went swiftly ahead, leaving a narrow wake fringed with a lace-like border of white and gleaming foam.  Without turning his head, Dain spoke.
    “Somebody behind us, Nina.  We must not let him gain.  I think he is too far to recognise us.”
    “Somebody before us also,” panted out Nina, without ceasing to paddle.
    “I think I know,” rejoined Dain.  “The