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The sun had just set; the silence of the sky was full to the brim with ineffable peace and beauty. The vast expanse of water was without a ripple, mirroring all the changing shades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a desolate sandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile of some antediluvian age, with its scales glistening in shining colours.
Just as daylight was about to appear, the raft struck on a sandbank with such violence that the beams were severed from their lashings and carried out to sea. The three poor fellows were almost engulfed in the sand. Two of them sank in it to their waists, while the third disappeared up to his chin, and his companions were obliged to pull him out.
19th February. Good-bye, sweet Bhamo. You weep, and we weep; but we go with a hope we may return. How it pours! The Chinese ponies on the sandbank huddle together. A Burmese lady goes up the bank to loosen the painter of her canoe; she wears a pink silk skirt and white jacket, and carries a yellow paper umbrella and apparently thinks little of the downpour.
The probability of Anjou's marriage with Elizabeth was, in truth, a leading motive with Orange for his close alliance with the Duke. The political structure, according to which he had selected the French Prince as protector of the Netherlands, was sagaciously planned; but unfortunately its foundation was the shifting sandbank of female and royal coquetry.
The accuracy of both barrels was extraordinary; it was only sighted up to 250 yards, but by taking the head very full, it carried with great precision up to 300. I could generally make certain of crocodiles if basking on a sandbank within a hundred yards, as I could put the bullet exactly in the right place, either behind the eye, or right through the centre of the shoulder.
Another entertainment we have at lunch; on a sandbank a little to our right, a long net; some 200 fathoms, is being drawn ashore, and people in canoes are splashing the water outside and at the ends to keep in the fish.
The lamp is filled; the wick is trimmed; the screen, which is ingeniously made to revolve by the heat of the lamp, is lubricated, and the beacon is left to its solitude and its work. There must be land to the eastward, though nothing but the spinning mill is visible. The land is below the level of the sea. There is probably an entrance to some canal behind the moving sandbank.
The Indians went into the forest to hunt, and we took the canoe to shoot fish and get another supply of turtle's eggs, which we found in great abundance on this large sandbank. We went to the little shallow creek, and shot some young caymen about two feet long.
Good-bye. And they all flew away to attend to their own affairs. "After a while Mother Mo-lo tried to build a nest. First she tried to bore a hole in a dead branch, but she couldn't do it. Then she tried the sandbank, but the sand caved in and got in her eyes and almost smothered her. Then she tried the other kinds of nests. But every one was a failure.
It was easy to talk big, but after all it would be difficult for that doughty little sandbank, notwithstanding the indomitable energy which it had so often shown by land and sea, to do battle by itself with the whole Spanish empire.
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