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The waters of the ocean came up within a rod of this house, and the sound of its moaning waves was even now filling the clear autumn starlight. Evidently something was going on within, for candles fluttered and winked from window to window, like fireflies in a dark meadow, and sounds as of quick footsteps, and the flutter of brushing garments, might be heard.
Could we have secured a band of elaters to go before us, we might, without difficulty, have found our way; but as neither they nor the fireflies could be depended on, we should have to make the expedition in darkness. There was, however, a bright moon in the sky, which, provided we kept along the edge of the river, would give us sufficient light.
Before he drained the last sip of the second pouring he would hold the glass up to the fire, so that the bronze coruscations at the heart of the wine glowed like fireflies in a gold dusk. One imagined him saying to himself: "A perfect woman! A perfect woman God bless her!"
Gordon only laughed. "I say that you young folks had better have supper and a long night's rest. I shall not let you go on to school until to-morrow. For once you will be a day late; but I will chance explaining the circumstances to your instructors." They got into the taxicab again and bowled away up town. The lights came up like rows of fireflies in the cross streets.
But, for all that, night is the time for the Great Wheel, for the conflagration of pleasure at our feet makes us forget the void dark beyond. Then the Wheel seems like a great revolving spider's web, with fireflies entangled in it at every turn, and the little engine-house at the centre, with its two electric lights, seems like the great lord spider, with monstrous pearls for his eyes.
And all the while the warm night wind rushes in through the high open windows; and the fireflies flicker up and down, in and out, and you slip away on to the balcony to enjoy for after all it is very hot the purple star- spangled night; and see aloft the saw of the mountain ridges against the black-blue sky; and below what a contrast! the crowd of white eyeballs and white teeth Negroes, Coolies, Chinese all grinning and peeping upward against the railing, in the hope of seeing through the walls the 'buccra quality' enjoy themselves.
All day boats passed back and forth between the tented bluffs and the roofs of Kaskaskia, carrying the goods of a temporarily houseless people. At dusk, some jaded men came back among them Captain Saucier and Colonel Menard from searching overflow and uplands for Dr. Dunlap. At dusk, also, the fireflies again scattered over the lake, without waiting for a belated moon.
We cannot corner Nature and keep her cornered. She would not be Nature if we could. With the fireflies, it is the male that dominates; the female is a little soft, wingless worm on the ground, always in the larval state. In the plant world, also, the male as a rule is dominant. Behold the showy catkins of the chestnuts, the butternuts, the hazelnuts, the willows, and other trees.
Then it occurred to me that I might better face an imaginary foe than the whirlpools and sunken snags of the Pahang. I posted sentinels fore and aft and lay down and closed my eyes to the legion of fireflies that made the night luminous, and my ears to the low, musical chant that arose fitfully from among my Malay servants on the stern.
After lingering about the place until the sun was far on his way towards the horizon, we returned, by the road we had come, the valley seeming more beautiful than ever under the glow of evening, and arrived at our destination about dusk, to find the fireflies darting about the streets of La Tour. The next day saw us at Turin, and our summer excursion at an end. Mr.
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