She left a lingering smudge of smoke
on the sky, and two vanishing trails of foam on the water. On the place
where she had stopped a round black patch of soot remained, undulating
on the swell--an unclean mark of the creature's rest.
The _Narcissus_ left alone, heading south, seemed to stand resplendent
and still upon the restless sea, under the moving sun. Flakes of foam
swept past her sides; the water struck her with flashing blows; the land
glided away slowly fading; a few birds screamed on motionless wings over
the swaying mastheads. But soon the land disappeared, the birds went
away; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow running for
Bombay, rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge of the horizon,
lingered and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship's wake, long and
straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The
setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below
the blackness of heavy rain clouds. The sunset squall, coming up from
behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge of a hissing shower. It
left the ship glistening from trucks to water-line, and with darkened
sails.
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