44 ALONGSHORE i 



boots. There they were ! a pair of boots with 

 feet in them; and they moved up and down 

 laboriously. To the boots legs added themselves, 

 trousered legs; then hips and waist and shoulders. 

 It was like an apparition, like the creation from 

 nothingness of a modern man, clothes and all. 

 At last, just where the fog was darkest and tinged 

 with red, owing to the red cliffs behind it, there 

 appeared the complete figure of a man walking on 

 the beach beneath the low-lying cloud. We had 

 been, without knowing It, not a couple of hundred 

 yards from land ! 



While we rowed home with a cheerier stroke, 

 the fog gradually lifted Itself up the face of the 

 cliffs, like a balanced canopy of gossamer fabric 

 suspended In the air by countless threads of 

 Infinite fineness and elasticity, until finally — as if 

 the bushes at the top of the cliff were smouldering 

 — very slowly, very gently, very llngerlngly, It 

 drifted away over land. 



The boat we had spoken followed us ashore, 

 and when Benjie reproached us with trying to row 

 back. Instead of waiting for the fog to lift, we 

 retorted gaily: 'Well, anyhow, Benjie, we got 

 here, and we piloted a drifter home into the 

 bargain.' Benjie, at that, began a discourse on 



