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Here and there a flying-fish rose out of the mirror-like deep, skimming across it, again to disappear. Once more I rose, and was about to seize the oars, when I bethought me that it would be labour in vain. In what direction should I pull? Hunger reminded me of the provisions Ali had put on board the boat. I took a draught of water and ate some food.
The rich golden sunlight of the late afternoon soon followed by the short-lived, glorious flushes of colour of the sunset and the after-glow, play over the scene as we paddle across the lake to the N.N.E. our canoe leaving a long trail of frosted silver behind her as she glides over the mirror-like water, and each stroke of the paddle sending down air with it to come up again in luminous silver bubbles not as before in swirls of sand and mud.
And there, immediately over the long, tapering, conical-pointed bow of the Flying Fish they beheld, some ten miles distant, a small, faintly denned grey blotch on the mirror-like surface of the sea, with a trail of black smoke issuing from it, as though the furnaces on board her had just been freshly stoked. "We will descend and take to the water at once," remarked Mildmay.
By degrees the bright colours on the sea and overspreading the sky faded out, and all grew dark, save where there was a glow in the north. The stars had come out bright and clear, and covered the sky like so many points of light looking down at themselves in the mirror-like sea.
It stretched away in all directions, a great sheet of filthy water, out of which sprang gorgeous marsh plants, in islands, great banks of screw pine, and coppices of wine palm, with their lovely fronds reflected back by the still, mirror-like water, so that the reflection was as vivid as the reality, and above all remarkable was a plant, new and strange to me, whose pale- green stem came up out of the water and then spread out in a flattened surface, thin, and in a peculiarly graceful curve.
It extended about twelve miles, to where a gap in the woods seemed to indicate a fort, which we imagined to be Fort Darling, at that time the principal fortification defending the passage of the James. Between that point and where we were lay the river, in a long, broad mirror-like expanse, like a pretty little inland lake.
From this point we could trace the windings of the brook for some distance in one direction, while below us, in the opposite one, spread the moonlit lake, reflecting in its mirror-like surface the dark masses of foliage that fringed its shores. It was one of those tranquil, dreamy nights, known only in tropical countries. A subtle fragrance of fresh buds and blossoms filled the air.
The light air scarce descended as low as the bed of the lake, hovering over it, as if unwilling to disturb its deep tranquillity, or to ruffle its mirror-like surface. Even the forests appeared to be slumbering in the sun, and a few piles of fleecy clouds had lain for hours along the northern horizon like fixtures in the atmosphere, placed there purely to embellish the scene.
Pausing for a few minutes on the bridge, they leaned on the rail and looked down into the clear, mirror-like water of the race. Their own eyes looked up at them; they smiled into their own faces. And a fleecy white cloud passed over the glittering stream and swept through their faces, off to the bank, and was gone for ever. Suddenly he looked up from the water and fixed his eyes on her face.
It was not a rude wilderness: all that Northern woods have of foliage, verdurous, slender, delicate, tremulous, overhung our shadowy path, dense as the vines that drape a tropic stream. Every giant tree, every one of the Pinus oligarchy, had been lumbered away: refined sylvan beauty remained. The dam checked the river's turbulence, making it slow and mirror-like.
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