walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs,
a mass of hands clapping of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes
rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer
toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy.
The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us--who
could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings;
we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane
men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could
not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we
were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone,
leaving hardly a sign--and no memories.

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled
form of a conquered monster, but there--there you could look at a thing
monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were
not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion
of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and
leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just
the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly
enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that
there ywas in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible
frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it
which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend.
And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything
is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after
all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage--who can tell?--but
truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and
shudder--the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at
least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth