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.But how to know where pleasure ended and sin began? Or did sin belong here at all, in this enchanted, heathen place? Could he sin with a girl who had torn a living man to pieces with her teeth.Was she not, equally, his plaything, to be done with as he chose? There was a satisfying thought, and when he remembered the law laid down by Father on their first day here, he could not convince himself that sin had come into that at all.Father had been afraid of antagonizing the natives.He was just as afraid of that, and lived for some weeks in terror of what Wapisiane might do or say, but Yarico was reassuring, and certainly it seemed that she knew her people, and her designated husband, for Tegramond was as unfailingly good humoured as ever, and every day his women made the trekalong the beach with their fish for the white men, and stood and giggled together and pointed at whatever took their fancy, and seemed amazed that the men should choose to keep to themselves.Surely, no sin in paradise.Nothing, in paradise, save unchanging sun and heat, daylight and darkness, a dawn breeze and a midday rain shower, the rumble of the surf and the desire of Yarico.Until the day that she was not on the hilltop when he got there, towards dusk, as was usual.For a moment he was too surprised to think.It had been an unnaturally hot day, even for St Christopher, and so they had done less work than usual, and now he was surprised to discover that it was as hot at dusk as it had been at noon.The breeze was absent, yet the clouds still moved, and when he looked at them from this vantage point he saw that they were far more numerous than usual, and thickly clustered, and in many places dark grey and even black, instead of fleecy white.And strange, now his interest was aroused, there were no Indian children bathing off the village, usually clearly to be seen from up here.The Island gave the appearance of having been deserted, save for the three Englishmen below him, lying on the sand and smoking their rolled leaves, and dreaming aloud to each other.The breeze puffed against his cheek, returning without warning, and he looked up in surprise.There was no twilight in these latitudes, but this transition from light to darkness was too sudden.It was caused by the cloud.It was huge, and black, and it spread and spread and spread to the eastern horizon, and the breeze was suddenly filled with rain, moving along, stinging his face and hands, filling his belly with fear.But Yarico was here.She stood amidst the trees, arms outstretched.'Hurricane,' she said, and pointed.'Wind.' And waved her hand.He ran to her, and they ducked into the trees.But this was Guyana again, as the huge raindrops crashed downwards, only here there was wind, stinging and sending branches thrashing to and fro.And then there was a louder sound, a noise he had never heard before, a growing whine as if every bird in the world was gathered together and rushing at St Christopher, crying and beating their wings in unison.Yarico threw herself to the ground, and he dropped with her.He watched her digging her toes and fingers into the earth, hands scrabbling to find some solidity, and wondered if this was a new means of self-satisfaction.Then she was gone, and he was gone.He did not know how or where.He felt no pain, just an enormous dizziness, and looked up.But he saw nothing, although his instincts told him he had been rolled off the path and down into the jungle below.How long he lay there he had no idea.The howling of the wind became one continuous roaring in his ears, shutting out all possibility of thought.The rain pounded on his face and body, hurting him, but not suggesting that he move.And then, sometimes, it would stop, and leave only the wind, before returning again with incessant power.The night grew ever darker, and the noise around him, when he could hear it above the wind, the crashes and the thuds, the huge booms of the breakers on the beach far below, the rumble of the thunder and the crackle of the lightning which cut vivid slashes through the darkness, grew ever more terrifying.In time, Yarico came to him again.Certainly she was as terrified as himself, but she had experienced such a storm before, and besides, she loved.This night he truly realized that.She was a savage, a bloodthirsty cannibal, and he would never be able to forget her as she had been on that terrible day, but she loved, with a protective desire which made nonsense of differences hi language, and religion, and outlook, in past and no doubt in future, in present.Where there was a love of this calibre, there could never be sin.And again in time, there was dawn.The wind dropped, although it remained a gale, but the terrifying whine and the equally terrifying clouds had passed away, and the sky was a more brilliant blue than he had ever seen, a drenched blue, washed clean by the pounding rain.He sat up, and then stood up, cautiously, because his muscles were cramped and he could not help but wonder if anything was broken.Amazingly he was unharmed, and so was the girl.In their mossy hollow they had lain in safety.Not so the forest.A giant hand had swept across St Christopher, plucking and flicking, enjoying itself with all the gusto of the Caribs destroying the man from Dominica.The analogy came strongly to mind as he looked at the uprooted trees, the overturned boulders, the swathes of bushes and scattered shrubs, almost as if a gigantic scythe had been at work.And the wind had come from the east, so there had been the mountain between them and the worst.What the windward side of the island must be like did not bear consideration.And the beach.'By Christ,' he shouted, and ran from Brimstone Hill.Yarico came behind, more slowly.She knew what he would find.He stood on the lip of the hill.The beach was obliterated beneath the huge foaming breakers which still hurled themselves at the shore, ripping up the sand with horrific force, smashing it and swirling it, and sucking it back out to sea.The village remained above the high water mark.Tegramond had made them build wisely.Above the high water mark.But not above the high wind mark.There had been a village.This much was evident in the discoloured sand, the timber which lay scattered across the grass and into the field.But then, there had had been a field, and the field had contained an almost ripe tobacco crop.Now it was nothing more than a scar.Even the seed beds had disappeared, the carefully prepared earth demolished as a child might have demolished an unwanted sandcastle.He was obsessed with this relationship to childishness, to the childish fiendishness of the Caribs, and now of the weather.He wondered how any responsible adult mind could conceive of destruction on such a vast scale, and then implement such a concept.But there had been people here.He ran down the path, panting, amazed at his selfishness, for his soul cried out, no, I cannot be the only white person left alive in this terrible community.No love there, no feeling to Tony and Hal Ashton and Berwicke.No love such as had brought Yarico feeling her way through the darkness and the danger to find him, last night.Such as brought her behind him now, scurrying down the path, anxious for his friends because he was anxious for them, although her mind must be consumed with worry for her own people; the Carib village was much more exposed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.But how to know where pleasure ended and sin began? Or did sin belong here at all, in this enchanted, heathen place? Could he sin with a girl who had torn a living man to pieces with her teeth.Was she not, equally, his plaything, to be done with as he chose? There was a satisfying thought, and when he remembered the law laid down by Father on their first day here, he could not convince himself that sin had come into that at all.Father had been afraid of antagonizing the natives.He was just as afraid of that, and lived for some weeks in terror of what Wapisiane might do or say, but Yarico was reassuring, and certainly it seemed that she knew her people, and her designated husband, for Tegramond was as unfailingly good humoured as ever, and every day his women made the trekalong the beach with their fish for the white men, and stood and giggled together and pointed at whatever took their fancy, and seemed amazed that the men should choose to keep to themselves.Surely, no sin in paradise.Nothing, in paradise, save unchanging sun and heat, daylight and darkness, a dawn breeze and a midday rain shower, the rumble of the surf and the desire of Yarico.Until the day that she was not on the hilltop when he got there, towards dusk, as was usual.For a moment he was too surprised to think.It had been an unnaturally hot day, even for St Christopher, and so they had done less work than usual, and now he was surprised to discover that it was as hot at dusk as it had been at noon.The breeze was absent, yet the clouds still moved, and when he looked at them from this vantage point he saw that they were far more numerous than usual, and thickly clustered, and in many places dark grey and even black, instead of fleecy white.And strange, now his interest was aroused, there were no Indian children bathing off the village, usually clearly to be seen from up here.The Island gave the appearance of having been deserted, save for the three Englishmen below him, lying on the sand and smoking their rolled leaves, and dreaming aloud to each other.The breeze puffed against his cheek, returning without warning, and he looked up in surprise.There was no twilight in these latitudes, but this transition from light to darkness was too sudden.It was caused by the cloud.It was huge, and black, and it spread and spread and spread to the eastern horizon, and the breeze was suddenly filled with rain, moving along, stinging his face and hands, filling his belly with fear.But Yarico was here.She stood amidst the trees, arms outstretched.'Hurricane,' she said, and pointed.'Wind.' And waved her hand.He ran to her, and they ducked into the trees.But this was Guyana again, as the huge raindrops crashed downwards, only here there was wind, stinging and sending branches thrashing to and fro.And then there was a louder sound, a noise he had never heard before, a growing whine as if every bird in the world was gathered together and rushing at St Christopher, crying and beating their wings in unison.Yarico threw herself to the ground, and he dropped with her.He watched her digging her toes and fingers into the earth, hands scrabbling to find some solidity, and wondered if this was a new means of self-satisfaction.Then she was gone, and he was gone.He did not know how or where.He felt no pain, just an enormous dizziness, and looked up.But he saw nothing, although his instincts told him he had been rolled off the path and down into the jungle below.How long he lay there he had no idea.The howling of the wind became one continuous roaring in his ears, shutting out all possibility of thought.The rain pounded on his face and body, hurting him, but not suggesting that he move.And then, sometimes, it would stop, and leave only the wind, before returning again with incessant power.The night grew ever darker, and the noise around him, when he could hear it above the wind, the crashes and the thuds, the huge booms of the breakers on the beach far below, the rumble of the thunder and the crackle of the lightning which cut vivid slashes through the darkness, grew ever more terrifying.In time, Yarico came to him again.Certainly she was as terrified as himself, but she had experienced such a storm before, and besides, she loved.This night he truly realized that.She was a savage, a bloodthirsty cannibal, and he would never be able to forget her as she had been on that terrible day, but she loved, with a protective desire which made nonsense of differences hi language, and religion, and outlook, in past and no doubt in future, in present.Where there was a love of this calibre, there could never be sin.And again in time, there was dawn.The wind dropped, although it remained a gale, but the terrifying whine and the equally terrifying clouds had passed away, and the sky was a more brilliant blue than he had ever seen, a drenched blue, washed clean by the pounding rain.He sat up, and then stood up, cautiously, because his muscles were cramped and he could not help but wonder if anything was broken.Amazingly he was unharmed, and so was the girl.In their mossy hollow they had lain in safety.Not so the forest.A giant hand had swept across St Christopher, plucking and flicking, enjoying itself with all the gusto of the Caribs destroying the man from Dominica.The analogy came strongly to mind as he looked at the uprooted trees, the overturned boulders, the swathes of bushes and scattered shrubs, almost as if a gigantic scythe had been at work.And the wind had come from the east, so there had been the mountain between them and the worst.What the windward side of the island must be like did not bear consideration.And the beach.'By Christ,' he shouted, and ran from Brimstone Hill.Yarico came behind, more slowly.She knew what he would find.He stood on the lip of the hill.The beach was obliterated beneath the huge foaming breakers which still hurled themselves at the shore, ripping up the sand with horrific force, smashing it and swirling it, and sucking it back out to sea.The village remained above the high water mark.Tegramond had made them build wisely.Above the high water mark.But not above the high wind mark.There had been a village.This much was evident in the discoloured sand, the timber which lay scattered across the grass and into the field.But then, there had had been a field, and the field had contained an almost ripe tobacco crop.Now it was nothing more than a scar.Even the seed beds had disappeared, the carefully prepared earth demolished as a child might have demolished an unwanted sandcastle.He was obsessed with this relationship to childishness, to the childish fiendishness of the Caribs, and now of the weather.He wondered how any responsible adult mind could conceive of destruction on such a vast scale, and then implement such a concept.But there had been people here.He ran down the path, panting, amazed at his selfishness, for his soul cried out, no, I cannot be the only white person left alive in this terrible community.No love there, no feeling to Tony and Hal Ashton and Berwicke.No love such as had brought Yarico feeling her way through the darkness and the danger to find him, last night.Such as brought her behind him now, scurrying down the path, anxious for his friends because he was anxious for them, although her mind must be consumed with worry for her own people; the Carib village was much more exposed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]