T H E W I N D 157 



no resting place. 



To break through the trees was impossible, their tangled 

 roots formed an impassable barrier through which only the 

 slim bodies of herons and sandpipers could have slipped. The 

 sun dipped lower and lower, dropped behind the somber trees, 

 tinting the clouds with pink and crimson. The gloom deepened; 

 a star appeared, glinting palely at first; the sky altered swiftly 

 from blue to blue gray, then became dark. A low singing sound 

 came to my ears, the hum of mosquitoes. In vast multitudes they 

 poured out of the shadowy mangroves and settled on my face 

 and arms. Frantically I tried to brush them off. Dozens were 

 crushed; my arms became smeared with broken wings and 

 blood— my own blood extracted by the mosquitoes. The crushed 

 insects were immediately replaced with newcomers; they flew 

 into my eyes; my ears were full of their beating wings; my lips, 

 already sore from the sun, swelled to negroid proportions; 

 even my nostrils became clogged with mosquito bodies. I could 

 feel the flesh of my exposed forehead become turgid with 

 bumps; I tore out a handkerchief and draped it below my eyes, 

 bandit fashion, but the pests flew up underneath and were 

 worse than before. My shirt was no protection, the mosquitoes 

 pierced the thin cloth as though it did not exist. In desperation 

 I tried wetting it, thinking this might discourage the insects, 

 but it made no difference, the fabric only clung stickily. I even 

 tried caking my face and neck with mud but the slime would 

 not cling; it ran down my shirt and across my body in little 

 rivulets. I cursed the spoonbills, cursed my own stupidity, 

 cursed the predicament in which I found myself. 



In a sense I was not altogether to blame, even though I had 

 gone into the swamp against my better judgment, for since 

 the evening when Ophelia had baked our bread in the sand 

 at the Lagoon Christophe there had not been a sign of a mos- 

 quito. Somehow in spite of the salt water, the mangrove swamp 



