the river. Under the laterite shore there gleam the
white flanks of a forest of stakes, lean and vague against
the dark. Lashed to them there ride upon the waters a
fleet of sampans, and as the waves lap their sides, the
scene, the grouping, recall to my mind a wind-driven
night when high tides are in at the Piazetta of St.
Marc.
I sit by the iron stanchions of a floating jetty and
look out across the dark, while the river slowly reveals
its mystery. In its mid-stream there lies a great liner
anchored for the night. Her dark bulk surges up out
of the faint level of the water, and the smoke from
her funnels floats back across the clouds. I can hear
the roar of her steam-cranes and trace the sweep of
their shadowy arms as they work ceaselessly through
the long night, under the concentrated flame of a
hundred electric arcs. The light is stark and dazzling
when one is under it, and it blinds the eyes to all the
surrounding world; but from these distant stanchions
it is a flash only in the vastness of the dark. Faint
waves stream from it over the river in zones of light ;
and across these, recalling old Viking similes of life,
the dark shapes of sampans glide. I can trace for one
instant the swift curve of the prow, the bent and
shadowy form of the darsmjan. A faint huddlfed figure
suggests his fare. They pass like shadows on a screen,
simulacra of sentient life. . . . One wonders idly, vainly,
who they are.
As I look closer yet, new aspects of the river unfold
before my vision. The dark I perceive is really ablaze
with a myriad lights ; far up to the reaches of Kemen-
dine, down away to the meeting of the waters by
Puzun-Daung, and all across to the murky Dalla shore,
the lights twinkle, a great host. Out of the distance
come twin lights threading their way through .the
motionless crowd, and out of the gloom there grows
a sliarht outline, and there comes o a flash like the under-
TH E SAMPAN IN ACTION
gleam of a shark, as a launch, with a quiet policeman
seated within her, throbs past. Here all, or nearly all,
is peace and silence ; but down-stream the night wind
bears the burden ot the dock labourers’ song, as they
sweat and labour into the dawn under the flare of the
furious Lubigen.
The- great elemental forces work in silence, and the
whole stupendous drama is accomplished almost invisibly.