draperies, too, flowed out, unrolling from some compact centre within themselves. As he spun and somersaulted, his bones ceased to stiffen, his skin to bind, his muscles came untied; gravity was abated, space negated, volume grew fluid. But time danced on, to the tempo of the music without source; and when this music stopped, the negro shrank again to his usual size. In an underground cave, shining warmly from some hidden illumination, a line of swathed dancers began to move, springing up and down on the same spot with magnetic gesticulations. Their leader passed along the lines with an iron whip, lashing them like spinning-tops to make them dance more fiercely. Up and down the line he strode, more and more swiftly; and all at once, as his strokes grew more potent, the dancers began to glow. Then, as he reached each one in turn, they successively burst into flame. Leaping ever higher, these human torches filled the low-roofed cavern with their ardent rite; and finally left the floor, to circle, a chorus of serene fire-balloons, near the ceiling.
Only when my guttering candles had extinguished themselves one by one did I fall asleep.
‘S’entrassi’ndru paradisu, santu, santu,
E nun truvass’ a tia, mi n’esciria.’
– Serenade of Zicava.
With the coming of the false dawn I awoke again, and lay pondering anew my dismal situation. I came at last to the conclusion that, while I could not immediately escape from my Uncle’s domain, I would at least thoroughly explore it. This would not only give me something definite with which to occupy my time, but might even discover to me some means of circumventing his plan of incarceration. I determined that I would first acquaint myself intimately with the lie of all my Uncle’s land, and subsequently disclose to myself even the most recondite crannies of his mansion.
That morning I accordingly set out to traverse that whole strip of the island which belonged to my Uncle; and towards its western extremity I came to a beautiful garden. The path that led up to it through straggling plantations of olives was steep, but when I reached the top a sense of peace rewarded me, a precious peace that must have withstood many invasions. This garden was well kept in all essentials, though it retained an air of going its own sweet way. On its approaches grew poinsettias with ragged flame-coloured quills; and the hedge bordering an avenue of dragon-trees was scattered over with the papery blue flowers of plumbago and with a few nameless trumpet-shaped blooms of tawny pink which had a surface like membrane. Further in, under some very dark leaves, I found one or two rare flowers shaped like a bell, and of so smooth a white that they looked like porcelain that had been painted with crimson and deep yellow within. There were bushes of hibiscus with flowers in all shades of pink, a shrub covered with scarlet cocks-combs, palms, cacti, the pads of a Bar-bary fig. There were oblong pools of water, full to the level of the lawn and spread over with dark blue water-lilies, jacarandas with silver bark and no leaves to disturb their mauve-blue sprays; a cactus in the rockery with a single yellow flower opening only by moonlight; the green-white hanging horns of the datura scenting the still and humid air. I wandered among banana plants, their leaves delicately green when first open, but afterwards easily torn, and tiny cream-coloured tubes laden with honey and almost hidden under huge fleshy bracts of purple and Indian-red; and by Bird-of-Paradise plants with the same leaves, but slender wings of white and blue, sprouting from a glistening purple sheath. All these were taking in peace from the peaceful atmosphere and breathing it out again, consuming and renewing this ‘soil of an Eden forgone.’
Against an ethereal sky the icy peak of the almost-extinct volcano was writing Siempre, siempre, again and again all day long in swiftly-fading steam above the garden.
Innocencio appeared between delicate
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