ISLANDS 57 



ingly beautiful. At four bells the sun sank on 

 the side away from the island, in a blaze of 

 yellow and orange with one particular cloud 

 touching the water line with flame color, as if a 

 mighty distant volcano had just reared its head 

 above the sea, still in the throes of molten erec- 

 tion. On the opposite side were passing the 

 dark green headlands and fiords of the land, 

 while upward, high into the sky, there arose 

 now and then some tremendous cloud, on fire 

 with rich rose or salmon afterglow, or a maze 

 of other tints defying human name or pigment. 

 In front was the living blue water dulled by 

 the dimming light and above all the transparent 

 blue of the tropic sky. 



Without warning, from out of the soft folded 

 edges of one of the filmy clouds, crept a curved 

 edge of cold steel, like some strange kind of 

 floating shell coming forth from its cloud of 

 smoke, and a moment later the full moon was 

 revealed, unlike any other color note in this mar- 

 velous scene. The icy, unchanging moon craters, 

 the more plastic island mountains fringed by the 

 wind-shapen trees, the still more shifting waters 

 and the evanescent cloud mist, all were played 

 upon and saturated and stained by colors which 



