rope at the height of her head, while the way of the tug carried slowly
past her the lingering and profound homage of the man. There was for me
an enormous significance in the scene, the sense of having witnessed
a solemn declaration. The die was cast. After such a manifestation he
couldn't back out. And I reflected that it was nothing whatever to me
now. With a rush of black smoke belching suddenly out of the funnel, and
a mad swirl of paddle-wheels provoking a burst of weird and precipitated
clapping, the tug shot out of the desolate arena. The rocky islets lay
on the sea like the heaps of a cyclopean ruin on a plain; the centipedes
and scorpions lurked under the stones; there was not a single blade
of grass in sight anywhere, not a single lizard sunning himself on a
boulder by the shore. When I looked again at Hermann's ship the girl
had disappeared. I could not detect the smallest dot of a bird on the
immense sky, and the flatness of the land continued the flatness of the
sea to the naked line of the horizon.

This is the setting now inseparably connected with my knowledge of
Falk's misfortune. My diplomacy had brought me there, and now I had only
to wait the time for taking up the role of an ambassador. My diplomacy
was a success; my ship was safe; old Gambril would probably live; a
feeble sound of a tapping hammer came intermittently from the Diana.
During the afternoon I looked at times at the old homely ship, the
faithful nurse of Hermann's progeny, or yawned towards the distant
temple of Buddha, like a lonely hillock on the plain, where shaven
priests cherish the thoughts of that Annihilation which is the worthy
reward of us all. Unfortunate! He had been unfortunate once. Well, that
was not so bad as life goes. And what the devil could be the nature
of that misfortune? I remembered that I had known a man before who had
declared himself to have fallen, years ago, a victim to misfortune; but
this misfortune, whose effects appeared permanent (he looked desperately