XI 
THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 
BurtrTerFiies doing strange things in very 
beautiful ways were in my mind when I sat 
down, but by the time my pen was uncapped 
my thoughts had shifted to rocks. ‘The ink was 
refractory and a vigorous flick sent a shower of 
green drops over the sand on which I was sitting, 
and as I watched the ink settle into the absorbent 
quartz—the inversions of our grandmothers’ 
blotters—I thought of what jolly things the lost 
ink might have been made to say about butter- 
flies and rocks, if it could have flowed out slowly 
in curves and angles and dots over paper—for 
the things we might have done are always so 
much more worthy than those which we actually 
accomplish. When at last I began to write, a 
song came to my ears and my mind again looped 
backward. At least, there came from the very 
deeps of the water beyond the mangroves a low, 
metallic murmur; and my Stormouth says that 
in Icelandic sangra means to murmur. So what 
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