Perceval Gibbon

“ Thereafter, life for David and Christina was no longer a single phenomenon, but a series of developments. It was like sailing in agreeably rough water. No pensive mood could survive the sight of mighty Trikkie gambolling like a young bull in the company of Paul; nor could quiet hours impart a melancholy while the welkin rang with the voice of the kleintje bullying the adoring Kaffirs. Where before life had glided, now it steeplechased, taking its days bull-headed, and Paul grew to the age of four as a bamboo grows, in leaps. ”

“ A dozen feet from her all was blurred and not to be distinguished, but it seemed to her that many people moved round about her, and now and again there was a rustle of hushed voices, as of folk who met stealthily and spoke with checked breath. In the dimness shapes moved, faintly suggested to her eyes, and presently, though she had no thrill of fear, a loneliness oppressed her that nearly made her weep. She was not as one that has no comrade in the world, for such a one is at least kin by blood and flesh to all others. She was alone, as a living man in a tomb is alone. ”

“ Just before eight bells in the afternoon watch he went forward beneath the forecastle head in search of some rope-yarns, and was cutting an end off a bit of waste-line when the Greek, he of the curly beard and extravagant eyeballs, rose like a demon of pantomime from the forepeak. Conroy had his knife in his hand to cut the rope, and the Greek's sudden smile seemed to rest on that and nothing else. ”

“ Those two days were placid and full of peace, quiet with the lull of emptiness. But in them Truda did not forget. She was realizing herself, and her capacity to deal with a situation that would not be devised to show her talents. She felt that she stood, for the first time, on the threshold of brisk, perilous, actual life, of that life which was burlesqued, exaggerated, in the plays in which she acted. It was expectancy that softened her eyes and lit her face with dreams—expectancy and exhilaration.
She was about to be born into the world. ”

“ It was after a quarrel with Johannes over some little grossness of no consequence that she walked forth from the house and down towards the spruit. It was between afternoon and evening, and she sought a quiet place to sit and prey on her heart. There was a pool that summer, deep and very black, lying between steep banks on which grew bushes and tall grass, and to this she came and sat by the edge of the water, and dabbled her long thin fingers in its coolness and let her thoughts surge in her. ”

“ The streets of Beira are mere channels of loose sand lying between the houses; no horse can use them. A narrow trolley line runs along the middle of each, and those who can afford it pass on their way on little trucks with an awning, propelled by sweating Kaffirs. Save for the rumble of these, Beira is a city of stillness: the sand muffles one's footfalls; one treads abroad at noonday as silently as an eavesdropper. ”

“ As the tramp stared there arose to sight from the other, side of the car the overcoated figure of the fool who had driven it, capless now, holding a handkerchief to his face and steadying himself upon his feet with the other hand upon a mud guard. He seemed to be calling out feebly and inarticulately.
The tramp broke into a run. For all his shuffle when he walked—the labor-saving, mile-eating slouch of the road dweller—he could move handily enough when he liked and he arrived swiftly. He flung down his bundle and stood looking at the unconscious figure of the girl. ”

“ He looked like a man on the verge of a discovery; the aptness of it struck Miss Gregory with a thrill. The watch which she wore in a strap upon her wrist showed her that the hour was three in the morning; it was close upon the time when the man on the angareb would catch his breath with a little astonished gasp, as if the discovery were made, and thereafter would cease to breathe at all. The plague in the last of its stages keeps time like a clock.
A friendly eye might have noted certain changes in Miss Gregory, as she sat, hunched upon her camp-stool, waiting for that final moment. ”

“ The peddler lay at full length, a bundle of strange travel-wrecked clothes, suggesting a lay figure in his limp inertness and the loose sprawl of his limbs. Beside him on the boards, trim in white blouse and tweed skirt, kneeled the vice-consul's clerk, Miss Pilgrim. She had one arm under the man's head, and with the other was drawing towards her his fallen bundle of rugs to serve as a pillow. As she bent, her gentle face, luminously fair, was over the swart, clenched countenance of the unconscious man, whose stagnant eyes seemed set on her in an unwinking stare. ”