CHAPTER VII 



WHEN NIGHT COMES TO WATER 



In the late afternoon of the first day of May I 

 leaned on the rail of my schooner and watched the 

 dusk shift quietly into darkness. Before the last 

 hint of afterglow faded I worked out an idle cal- 

 culation with a pencil stub on the rough wood 

 beneath my hand and found that one hundred 

 and fifty thousand, eight hundred and thirty 

 days ago Christopher Columbus had watched the 

 Haitian sun go down over these same waters. On 

 that day his men "caught many fish like those 

 in Castile, dace, salmon, hake, doree, pampano, 

 mullet, conger eels, shrimp and they saw sardines, " 

 — all perhaps the Nth great-grandparents of the 

 fish who had come this very day to my hooks and 

 seines. 



The earth's horizon along whose farthest rim 

 early rays were at this moment causing Bornean 

 cocks to crow and sleepy Dyak savages to stir, 

 rolled steadily upward from the edge of the glowing 

 path of the great sun. This newest night, which 

 had come to me as I stood alone on the deck 

 of my schooner, was dark and moonless, half 

 cloudy, half brilliant starlight. Before long I 



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