The road out of Colombo, lying along the ocean, runs through dense coconut groves. To the right, within their sun-dappled shady depths, under the high canopy of feathery broom-like treetops, are scattered the Senegalese cabins, half-hidden by the pale green laminae of bananas, resembling gigantic ears of corn, so small and low are they in comparison with the tropical forest surrounding them. To the left, through the dark-ringed trunks, tall and slender, fantastically bent in all directions, one sees stretches of deep, silky sands, a gleam of a golden, blazing mirror of smooth water, and, anchored upon it, as though blending with the tree trunks, are the coarse sails of primitive pirogues⁠—frail, cigar-shaped hollowed-out small oaks. Upon the sand, in paradisaical nudity, are sprawling the coffee-coloured bodies of black-haired striplings. Many such bodies are also plashing, with laughter and yells, in the warm transparent water of the stony coast.⁠ ⁠… Of what need, one thinks, to these people of the forests, these direct heirs of the Land of our First Parents, as Ceylon is styled even now⁠—of what need to them are cities, cents, rupees? Do not the forest, ocean, sun give them everything? And yet, upon attaining the years of maturity, some of them take to trading, others labour upon the rice and tea plantations, a third lot⁠—in the north of the island⁠—dive for pearls together with negroes, going down to the bottom of the ocean and arising thence with bloodshot eyes; a fourth group replace horses⁠—they carry Europeans over the towns and their environs, over dark red footpaths, shaded by enormous vaults of forest verdure over that very kabouk out of which Adam was created. Horses bear but illy the sultriness of Ceylon⁠—even Australian horses; every wealthy resident who keeps a horse sends it away for the summer to the mountains, into Candy, into Nurillia.

Upon the rickshaw-man’s left arm, between his shoulder and elbow, the Englishmen, the present lords of the island, put a badge with a number. There are ordinary numbers, and there are special ones. To one old Senegalese rickshaw-man, living in a forest hut near Colombo, had fallen a special number⁠—seven. “Wherefore,” the Exalted One might have said⁠—“wherefore, monks, did this old man desire to multiply his earthly sorrows?” “Because,” the monks might have answered, “because, oh Exalted One, he was moved by earthly love, by that which, from the start of time, summons all creatures into being⁠—therefore did this old man desire to increase his earthly sorrows.” He had a wife, a son, and many little children, dreading not that “he who hath them, hath also the care of them.” He was black, very thin and unsightly, resembling both a stripling and a woman; his long hair, gathered in a knot at the nape of his neck and anointed with coconut oil, had grown gray; the skin over all his body⁠—or, to put it better, over his bones⁠—had wrinkled; as he ran, sweat streamed down from his nose, chin, and the rag tied about his scanty pelvis; his narrow chest drew breath with whistling and gasping. But strengthening himself with the headiness of the betel, working up and expectorating a bloody froth that soiled his moustache and lips, he sped quickly; and the white men rolling in his black lacquered cart through the sun-scorched city, over the dark-red pavements, soft from the sun and smelling of naphtha and the humus of flowers, were satisfied.

Moved by love, not for himself, but for his family, for his son, did he desire happiness, that which was not destined to be his, that which was not given to him. He knew English but poorly; he could not make out at once the names of the places where he was to run to⁠—and frequently ran at a venture. The rickshaw-man’s carriage is very small; it has a top that can be thrown back, its wheels are narrow and high, each shaft is no thicker than an average cane. And lo! A big man, his eyes almost all whites, all in white, with a white sun helmet, in rough but expensive footgear, clambers into it, seats himself snugly therein, crosses one leg over the other, and, restrainedly commanding, deep in his throat, hoarsely croaks his destination. Seizing his shafts, the old man bends down to the ground and flies forward like an arrow, scarce touching the ground with his light feet. The man in the helmet, holding a stick in his hands covered with tow-like hair, has gone into deep thought over his affairs, staring vacantly⁠—when suddenly he rolls his eyes in wrath: why, the fellow’s rushing in an altogether wrong direction! To put it shortly, not a few sticks had fallen upon his back, upon his black shoulder blades, always hunched up in presentiment of a blow. But also not a few extra cents had he snatched from Englishmen⁠—checking himself at full speed at the entrance of some hotel or office and dropping the shafts, he would so wrinkle his face, so hurriedly throw out his thin arms, his moist, monkey-like palms cupped, that it was impossible not to give him something additional.

One day he ran home at an altogether unaccustomed hour in the very heat of noonday, when those lemon-coloured birds which are called sun-birds flutter through the forest like golden arrows; when so gaily and shrilly scream the parrots, darting from the trees and flashing like rainbows through the dappled boskage of the forests, through their shade and gleaming light; when, within the enclosures of ancient Buddhistic sanctuaries, roofed with terra-cotta tiles, the plum-coloured blossoms of the leafless Tree of Sacrifice, that resemble little tuberoses, yield such a sweet and heavy odour; when thick-throated chameleons play with such vivid primary colours as they flash over smooth-trunked trees, as well as over trees that are as ringed as an elephant’s trunk; when so many huge, gorgeous butterflies soar and float without motion in the sun; and when the hot, fawn-coloured anthills swarm and spout, as though with agate grain. All things in the forests chanted and praised Maru, the God of Life and Death, the God of the “Thirst of Being”; all creatures were pursuing one another, rejoicing with a brief joy even as they destroyed one another; but the old rickshaw-man, no longer athirst for anything but a cessation of his sufferings, lay down in the stuffy murk of his mud-hut, under its parched-up roof of leaves arustle with little red snakes, and toward evening was dead⁠—from icy cramps and watery dysentery. His life was extinguished together with the sun, that went down beyond the lilac smoothness of great watery expanses, retreating toward the west, into the purple, ashes, and gold of the most magnificent clouds in the universe. And night came⁠—a night on which, in the forests near Colombo, all that was left of the rickshaw-man was only a little contorted corpse, that had lost its number, its name, even as the river Kellani loses its appellation when it reaches the ocean. The sun, upon sinking, changes to a wind; but into what does he that has died change?⁠ ⁠… Night was rapidly extinguishing the roseate and green colours of the fleeting twilight⁠—colours as tender as those of some fairy tale; the flying foxes darted noiselessly underneath the branches, seeking shelter for the night; and the forests were filling up with a black, warm darkness, were bursting into flame with myriads of fireflies, and were mysteriously, languishingly murmurous with cicadas and with the flowers of which the tiny tree frogs make their home. In the distant forest idol-temple, before a little sacred lamp barely glimmering upon a black altar for offerings that was drenched with coconut oil and strewn with rice and withered flower petals, upon his right side, with one hand laid meekly under his cheek, reposed the Exalted One⁠—a giant of sandalwood, with a broad gilded face and elongated slanting eyes of sapphires, with a smile of peaceful sadness upon his thin lips. In the dark cabin, upon his back, was lying the rickshaw-man, and the suffering of death distorted his pitiful features⁠—for that the voice of the Exalted One had not reached him when it had summoned him to forsake earthly love; for that beyond the grave a new life of sorrow awaited him, as a consequence of his previous unrighteous one. The bucktoothed old woman, sitting at the threshold of the cabin, at the fire under a cauldron, wept on this night, nourishing her grief with the selfsame unreasoning love and pity. The Exalted One would have likened her emotions to the copper earring, resembling a little barrel, which hung in her right ear⁠—the earring was big and heavy; it had so pulled down the slit in the lobe of her ear that a considerable hole had formed. Her short blouse of cotton stuff, put on right over the bare coffee-coloured body, stood out sharply white in the darkness. Near by, naked, imp-like children were playing, squealing, pursuing one another. As for the son, a light-footed youth⁠—he was standing in the semidarkness beyond the fire. He had that evening seen his bride⁠—a round-faced, thirteen-year-old girl from a neighbouring settlement. He was frightened and dumbfounded upon hearing of his father’s death⁠—he had not thought that this would come so soon. But, probably, he was too much aroused by another love, which is stronger than the love men bear for their fathers. “Forget not,” saith the Exalted One, “forget not, O Youth, longing to enkindle life with life, even as fire is enkindled with fire, that all the torments of this universe, where everyone is either slayer or slain, that all its sorrows and plaints, come from love.” But love had already crept into the youth in its entirety, even as a scorpion creeps into its lair. He stood and gazed into the fire. As with all savages, his legs were disproportionately long. But even Siva would have envied the beauty of his torso, that was of the colour of dark cinnamon. The fire made his blue-black hair glisten⁠—it was as thick as horse hair, and stretched taut and gathered at the top of his head; made his eyes glow from under their long lashes⁠—and their glow was like the glow of coke near the mouth of a forge.

On the next day the neighbours carried off the dead little old man into the depths of the forest; laid him in a pit, with his head to the west, toward the ocean; hurriedly, but trying not to make noise, cast earth and leaves over him; and hurried away to perform their cleansing ablutions. The little old man was done with his running; the brass badge was taken off the thin arm that had grown gray and wrinkled⁠—and, admiring it, distending his thin nostrils, the youth put it upon his own, that was rounded and warm. At first he only followed the experienced rickshaw-men, trying to catch the destinations of their passengers, memorizing English words and the names of the streets; then he began carrying passengers independently, began earning money himself; he was preparing for a family, for a love of his own⁠—the desire for which is a desire for sons, just as the desire for sons is a desire for property, and desire for property⁠—a desire for well-being. But one day, having come home, he came upon other horrible tidings: his bride had vanished⁠—she had gone to Slave Island, to purchase something, and had not returned. The bride’s father, who knew Colombo well, having frequently gone there, searched for her for three days, and he must have found out something, because he returned reassured. He sighed and cast down his eyes, expressing his submission to fate; but he was a great hypocrite, a sly old man, like all those who have property, who trade in the city. He was corpulent, with breasts like a woman’s; he had hoary hair, carefully combed, and ornamented with an expensive comb of tortoise shell; he walked about barefooted, but under a sunshade; he girt his hips with a piece of gaudy material, of good quality; his blouse was of piqué. It was impossible to get the truth out of him; furthermore, all women, all maidens, are frail, even as all rivers are full of turnings and windings; and the young rickshaw-man understood this. After sitting at home for two days in a daze, without touching food, only chewing betel, he finally came to himself and again ran off into Colombo. He seemed to have forgotten entirely about his bride. He ran with the rickshaw, he covetously hoarded money⁠—and it was impossible to understand which he was more in love with: his running, or those circles of silver which he gathered for it. One Russian seaman had had a photograph taken of himself and the rickshaw-man, and had presented him with one of these pictures. For a long time after that the young rickshaw-man joyously marvelled at his image: he was standing between his shafts, his face turned toward the imaginary spectators, and everyone could recognize him immediately⁠—even the badge on his arm had come out. With all good fortune, apparently even with happiness, he had laboured thus for about half a year.

And one morning he was sitting with other rickshaw-men underneath a many-trunked banyan tree that stood upon that lengthy street which extends from Slave Island to Victoria Park. The hot sun had just appeared from behind the trees, from the direction of Maradana. But the banyan tree had grown high, and there was no longer any shade about its roots, strewn over with parched leaves. The little carriages grew hot from the heat, their thin shafts lay upon the dark-red, heated earth, that smelt both of naphtha and of freshly-ground coffee. With this odour were blended the pungent sweet odours of the surrounding, ever-blossoming gardens, the odours of camphor, of musk, and of that which the rickshaw-men were eating⁠—and they were eating bananas⁠—small, warm, tenderly roseate, in aureate skins; they were eating those orange fruits, with a tang of turpentine, the meat of which has the appearance of the flesh of children. They were chattering as they sat on the ground, their knees raised in sharp angles up to their chins, with their arms on top of the knees, and with their feminine heads on top of their arms. Suddenly, in the distance, near the white enclosing walls of a bungalow, dappled by the light and shade, appeared a man clad in white. He was walking in the middle of the street with that determined and firm step with which only Europeans walk. And, jumping up as quick as lightning from the ground, the entire flock of these naked, long-legged men dashed toward him, racing to get ahead of one another. They darted upon him from all sides, and he yelled threateningly, swinging out with his cane. Timid and sensitive, they checked themselves at full speed, gathering around him. He glanced at them⁠—and number seven, with his pitch-black, horse-like hair, appeared to him stronger than the others. And so his choice fell upon number seven.

He was short and strong, in gold spectacles, with black eyebrows grown together over the bridge of his nose, with a short black moustache, with an olive complexion; the sun of the tropics and liver trouble had already left their sallow trace upon his face. His helmet was gray; his eyes, in some strange way, as though they beheld nothing, looked out of the coal-black darkness of his eyebrows and lashes, from behind the shining lenses. He sat down like one accustomed to rickshaws⁠—immediately finding in the little carriage that spot which makes it the easiest for the rickshaw-men to run, and glancing at the little watch in a leathern socket strapped around his wrist⁠—it was tattooed, and the hand was powerful and stubby⁠—called out “York Street!” His expressionless voice was firm and calm, but his eyes had a strange look. And the rickshaw-man snatched up the shafts and flew off at a considerably greater speed than was called for, every moment clicking the bell that was fastened at the end of the shaft, and shuffling in and out among pedestrians, tilted arba carts, and other rickshaws that were running back and forth.

It was the end of March⁠—the most sultry period. Not even three hours had passed since the rising of the sun⁠—yet it already seemed as if noon were near, so hot and bright was it everywhere, and so thronged in the neighbourhood of the stores at the farther end of the street. The earth, the gardens, all that tall, spreading vegetation which was growing green and blossoming over the bungalows, over their chalky roofs, and over the old black stores⁠—all these had cloyed the air with warmth and fragrance, whereas the rain-trees had curled up tightly their little cup-like leaves. The rows of shops⁠—or, rather, of sheds⁠—roofed with black tiles, their walls hung about with enormous bunches of bananas, with dried fish, with sun-cured shark-meat, were filled with buyers and sellers⁠—both alike resembling dark-skinned bath-attendants. The rickshaw-man, bending forward, his long legs twinkling, was running rapidly, and as yet there was not a single drop of sweat upon his back, glistening with coconut oil, nor upon his rounded shoulders, between which the slender trunk of his girlish neck gracefully supported his pitch-black head, upon which the blazing sun beat down. At the very end of the street, he came to a sudden stop. Turning his head just the least trifle, he rapidly said something in his own tongue. The Englishman, his passenger, caught sight of the tips of his curved eyelashes, caught the word “betel,” and raised his eyebrows. How? Such a young, strong fellow was already wanting betel, after having run only some two hundred steps? Without answering, he struck the rickshaw-man over his shoulder blades with his cane. But the latter, timorous like all Senegalese but at times also insistent, only shrugged his shoulders and flew like an arrow diagonally across the street, toward the shops.

“Betel,” repeated he, turning wrathful eyes upon the Englishman, and baring his teeth in a doglike snarl. But the Englishman had already forgotten about him. And a minute later the rickshaw-man jumped out of a shop, holding upon his narrow palm a leaf of the pepper tree, smearing it over with lime and wrapping within it a bit of the areca fruit, resembling a bit of flint. Kill not, steal not, commit no fornication, lie not, nor become intoxicated with aught, the Exalted One hath commanded. Yes⁠—but what did the rickshaw-man know of Him? Vaguely echoed within him that which had been vaguely accepted by the countless hearts of his forefathers. In the rainy season of the year he had gone with his father to the sacred tabernacles; and there, among the women and the beggars, he had listened to the priests reading in an ancient tongue forgotten of all, and understanding nothing, only chiming in in the common joyous acclamation whenever the name of the Exalted One was uttered. More than once it had happened that his father had prayed in his presence upon the threshold of the idol temple; he would bow down before the recumbent statue of wood, muttering its commandments, lifting his joined palms to his forehead, and then would lay upon the altar for offerings the smallest and most worn of his hard-earned coins. But he muttered his prayers with indifference⁠—for he was merely afraid of the pictures upon the walls of the idol-temple, the depictions of the torment of sinners; he bowed down before other gods as well⁠—before horrible Hindu statues; in them, too, did he believe, just as he believed in the power of demons, serpents, stars, darkness.⁠ ⁠…

Having thrust the betel into his mouth, the rickshaw-man, fitfully volatile in his emotions, turned amiably smiling eyes upon the Englishman, seized the shafts, and, starting off with a thrust of his left foot, began running again. The sun was blinding; it gleamed on the gold and the lenses of the spectacles whenever the Englishman raised his head. The sun was scorching his hands and knees; the earth was breathing heavily⁠—one could even see that the air was aquiver above it, as above a brazier⁠—but he sat immovably, without touching the hood of the little carriage. Two roads led into the city⁠—or, as the residents called it, into the Fort: one, on the right, passed by the Malay pagoda, over the dam between the lagoons; the other, to the left, led toward the ocean. The Englishman wanted to go by the latter. But the rickshaw-man turned around as he ran, showing his bloodied lips, and pretended that he did not understand what was wanted from him. And the Englishman again yielded⁠—he was absentmindedly looking about him. The green lagoon, sparkling, warm, filled with turtles and rotting vegetation, bordered in the distance by a coconut grove, lay on the right. Upon the dam people were walking, riding, running to the clanging of bells. Rickshaw-men in fezes, white jackets, and short white pantaloons were now occasionally met with. The Europeans sitting in the little carriages were pale after the exhausting night; they held their white shoes high, putting one knee over the other. A two-wheeled cart, with a gray humped bullock harnessed to it, rolled by.⁠ ⁠… Beneath its top, in the light, warm shadow, was sitting a Parsee⁠—a yellow-faced old man who looked like an eunuch, in a gown and a conical velvet skull cap, the latter worked with gold. A giant Afghan, in wide trousers to his knees, in soft boots with upturned toes, in a white casaque and an enormous pink turban, was immovably standing, bent over the lagoon, gazing at the turtles, at the warm water. Long covered arba carts stretched on endlessly, dragged along by oxen. Under their narrow arched tops of straw were piled up bales of goods, and, at times, there would be a whole cluster of the brown bodies of young labourers. Shrivelled old men, parched by the heat, their feet reddened from the red dust, looking like the mummies of old women, paced beside the wheels. There were stonecutters pacing along, and stalwart black Tomilas.⁠ ⁠… “The Pagoda,” said the Englishman, referring to a certain teahouse, when they had come beneath those patriarchal trees that grow at the entrance into the Fort, beneath the unencompassable canopies of their verdure, shot with the sun that penetrated through it.

They stopped near the entrance of an old Dutch building, with arcades on its ground floor. The Englishman glanced at his watch and went off to drink tea and to smoke a cigar. As for the rickshaw-man, he made half a turn about the broad, shady street, over the reddishly-lilac pavement, strewn over with the yellow and scarlet blossom of the ketmias, and dropping the shafts at the roots of a tree, without checking his impetus, sank down. He raised up his knees and put his elbows upon them, avidly breathing in the steaming, sweetly odorous warmth of noonday, and aimlessly letting his eyes follow the Senegalese and Europeans passing by. Taking a rag from some recess of his apron, he wiped with it his lips, made bloody by the betel, wiped his face, the convexities on his thin chest, and, folding it into a bandage, tied it around his head⁠—this did not at all look well, giving him the appearance of a sick man; but then, many rickshaw-men do it. He sat, and, perhaps, he may have been pondering.⁠ ⁠… “Our bodies, O Master, are different⁠—but then, we all have but one heart,” Ananda had said to the Exalted One, and, therefore, one can imagine what must be the thoughts or emotions of a youth who had grown up in the paradisaical forests near Colombo and who had already tasted the most potent of poisons⁠—love for woman; who had already plunged into life⁠—life, fleetly flying after joys or fleeing from sorrows. Mara had already wounded him⁠—but then, Mara also healeth wounds. Mara snatches out of the hands of man that which man had seized upon⁠—but then, Mara also inflames a man to seize anew that which had been taken away, or to seize something else that is like that which had been taken away.⁠ ⁠…

Having had his tea, the Englishman wandered through the street, entering shops, gazing at the showcases displaying precious stones, elephants and Buddhas made of ebony wood, all sorts of bright coloured stuffs, the golden skins of panthers, spotted with black⁠—while the rickshaw-man, meditating of something, or, perhaps, merely sentient, was exchanging bright glances with the other rickshaw-men and followed the Englishman, dragging his little carriage after him. Exactly at noon the Englishman gave him a rupee to buy himself some food, while he himself went into the office of a big European steamship line. The rickshaw-man bought some cigarettes, started smoking, inhaling deeply, watching his cigarette, as women do⁠—and smoked five of them, one after the other. In a delectable daze he sat in the fretted shade, opposite the three-story building where the office was, and suddenly, having raised his eyes, saw that his passenger, and also five other Europeans, had appeared on the balcony under the white awning. They were all looking through binoculars at the harbour⁠—and now, beyond the roofs of the wharf, appeared two tall, slender masts, slightly inclined backward. The people on the balcony started waving their handkerchiefs, while from beyond the roofs, morosely, mightily and majestically, a whistle began to roar, echoed all over the roadstead and in the city⁠—the steamer from faraway Europe that the passenger of rickshaw number seven had been awaiting had arrived. With English punctuality did it enter after twenty days’ sail to Colombo⁠—and that which the rickshaw-man, still filled with hopes and desires, did not at all expect⁠—that dinner, so fatal for him, to be held in the house near the lagoon, at the steamship agent’s home⁠—was decided upon.

But until dinner, until evening, there still remained much time. And again this man in spectacles who saw nothing came out into the street. He said goodbye to the two men who had come out with him and who had gone in the direction of the white statue of Victoria, toward the covered wharf; and again the rickshaw-man started ambling through the street⁠—this time toward the hotel, where at this time many tourists and rich residents were eating and drinking in a semi-dark hall, whose sultry stuffiness was stirred and mixed with the odours of the food by blades turning near the ceiling. And again, like a dog, the rickshaw-man squatted down upon the pavement, upon the petals of the ketmias. The fretted shade of trees whose light-green tips were interlaced spread over the street, and in this shade went past him the womanish Senegalese, thrusting upon the Europeans coloured postal cards, tortoiseshell combs, precious stones⁠—one native was even dragging after him by a cord a little beast in a coat of long quills, trying to sell it⁠—and these half-savages, these rickshaw-men, kept up their ceaseless racing through this rich European thoroughfare.⁠ ⁠… In the distance, in the centre of an open square, a woman of heroic size, in marble⁠—proud, double-chinned, in crown and royal mantle, seated on her throne upon a high pedestal of marble⁠—was blazing in her whiteness. And those who had just arrived from Europe were trooping from that direction. Black and dove-coloured servants jumped out upon the entrance to the hotel; bowing, they snatched the canes and small baggage from the hands of the arrivals, who were also met by the bows, restrained and graceful, of a man resplendent with the parting of his pomatumed hair, with his eyes, his teeth, his cuffs, his starched linen, his piqué dinner jacket, his piqué trousers, and his white footgear. “Men are forever going to feasts, to excursions, to diversions,” saith the Exalted One, Who had at one time visited this paradisaical corner of the first men who had come to know desire. “The sight, sounds, taste, and odours of things intoxicate them,” He had said; “desire entwines them, even as a creeping plant, green, beautiful, and death-bearing, entwines the tree Shala.” Traces of fatigue, of exhaustion from heat, from the rocking of the boat at sea and from maladies, were upon the ashen faces of those going to the hotel. They all had the appearance of being half-dead, they spoke without moving their lips; but they all walked on, looking about them, and one after the other disappeared within the darkness of the vestibule, in order to go to their rooms, to wash up and refresh themselves. And then, having intoxicated themselves with food, drink, cigars and coffee, until their faces flushed crimson, they would roll away in rickshaws to the shore of the ocean, into the Cinnamon Gardens, to the Hindu temples and the Buddhistic sanctuaries. Every one of them⁠—every one!⁠—had within his soul that which compels a man to live and to desire the sweet deception of life! And was not this deception doubly sweet to the rickshaw-man, born in the land of the first people? Ladies and gentlemen walked to and fro before him⁠—elderly, ugly, just as buck-toothed as his black mother, sitting in the distant forest hut; but at times young women also went past him⁠—pleasant to look upon, in white raiment, in small helmets wound with light veils, and, arousing desire within him, they looked intently upon his splendid, upraised eyelashes, upon the rag around his pitch-black head, and upon his blood stained mouth. But then, was she who had disappeared in the city inferior to them? The warmth of the tropical sun had made her grow. She seemed darker on account of her short blouse, white, with little blue flowers, and her skirt, just as short and of the same material, both put directly upon her naked body⁠—just a trifle full, but strong and small. She had a little rounded head, a convex little forehead, round shining eyes in which childish timidity was already being commingled with a joyous curiosity about life, with a hidden muliebrity, both tender and passionate; there was a coral necklace upon her rounded neck; her little hands and feet were braceletted with silver.⁠ ⁠… Jumping up from his place, the rickshaw-man ran into one of the nearest by-streets, where, in an old, one-storied house under brick tiles, with thick wooden pillars, there was a bar for the lower classes. There he put twenty-five cents on the bar, and for that price gulped down a whole glass of whiskey. Having mixed this fire with the betel, he had assured himself of a beatific exaltation almost until the very evening, until the time when the forests near Colombo, filling with black, sultry darkness, would begin to resound mysteriously with murmurings and moanings of countless cicadas and tree toads, and the thickets of bamboo would be aquiver with myriads of fiery sparks.

The Englishman, too, was intoxicated, as he walked out of the hotel with a cigar⁠—his eyes were drowsy, his face, heightened in colour, seemed to have become fuller. Glancing at his watch from time to time and thinking of something, apparently not knowing how to kill time, he stood a while near the hotel in indecision. Then he ordered himself carried first to the post office, where he dropped three postal cards into the box, and from the post office to Gordon’s Garden, which he did not even enter⁠—he simply glanced in at the gates at the monument and the pathways; and from the garden he went at random: to Black Town, to the market place in Black Town, to the Kellani River.⁠ ⁠… And then he was whirled on and on, hither and thither, by the intoxicated rickshaw-man, who was bathed in sweat from head to foot, aroused both by whiskey and by betel, and by the hope of receiving a whole heap of pennies, and by certain other dreams that stir the body and soul and that never forsake a man. At the most oppressive hour of the afternoon heat and glare, when, after having sat on a bench under a tree for two minutes one leaves upon it a dark ring of perspiration, he, to please the Englishman, who did not know what to do until dinner, ran all over Black Town⁠—ancient, populous, redolent of spicy odours; and many naked coloured bodies and many bright stuffs girt about hips did the sleepy Englishman see; many Parsees, Hindus, yellow faced Malayans; malodorous Chinese shops, brick-tiled and bamboo-covered roofs, temples, minarets and idol-temples; sailors from Europe on shore leave, as well as Buddhistic monks⁠—shaven, thin, with insane eyes, clad in canary-coloured toga-like garments, with the right shoulder bared, and carrying fans made out of the foliage of the sacred palm. Rapidly, rapidly, did the rickshaw-man and his passenger dash through this teeming density and dirt of the ancient East, as though they were escaping from someone. Up to the very river Kellani did they run⁠—the narrow, turbid, and deep Kellani, made too warm by the sun, half-covered with impenetrable green overgrowths that bent low from its banks; the river beloved of crocodiles, who retreat farther and farther into the depths of the virgin forests before the barges with straw-thatched arched covers; barges laden with bales of tea, with rice, cinnamon, precious stones still in the rough⁠—barges floating with especial deliberation in the golden deep glitter of the sun before evening.⁠ ⁠… Then the Englishman gave orders to return to the Fort, by now deserted, with all its offices, agencies and banks closed; he was shaved in a barber shop and grew unpleasantly younger; he bought cigars, dropped into an apothecary’s.⁠ ⁠… The rickshaw-man, grown thinner, all bathed in sweat, was by now gazing upon him inimically, with the eyes of a dog that feels attacks of madness coming on.⁠ ⁠… At six o’clock, having run past the lighthouse at the end of Queen’s Street, having run through the quiet and clean military streets, he ran out upon the shore of the ocean, that struck his eyes with its freedom, with its glaucously aureate sheen from the low-lying sun, and started running over Gull Face Place toward Slave Island.

“From longing is born the desire for joy,” the Exalted One hath said, “from happiness is born sorrow; out of joy and sorrow doth fear arise.” And now within the eyes of the rickshaw-man had already appeared sorrow, and fear, and malice. He had grown daft from running, had more than once, with sad weariness, turned around toward his tormentor; he breathed heavily, putting behind him with his long legs the broad, well-laid road of the Place. At the setting of the sun this Place is vast, empty and melancholy. Having done with business, the Englishmen stroll here before dinner, are driven in costly horse equipages, or drive their wives, mistresses, and children; play tennis and football; and admire the ocean and the magnificent beauty of the tropical sunset⁠—a sunset not like that of their own land. The rickshaw-man ran on, looking wildly upon these sinewy, red-haired men in short white trunks and gay sweaters, who careered over the Place of their own free will, racing after one another with all their might, jumping up after the soaring balls and kicking them resoundingly with the rough tips of their heavy shoes. The sun was sinking; the sky above the setting sun was growing green; a light, downy cloud, that had been lurking in the skyey depths, became entirely roseate.⁠ ⁠… “Carlton Hotel!” in a lifeless voice said the Englishman, who had all the time been sadly and drowsily gazing toward the west, upon the ocean, upon its softly murmurous surge, scattering into heliotrope foam upon the boulders on shore.⁠ ⁠… The rickshaw-man, as he ran, would bare his teeth; by now he wanted to gnaw this man who had driven him so hard⁠—but it was impossible not to run: the Englishman, without changing the expression of his drowsily sad face, more and more often prodded the rickshaw-man with the tip of his cane. And besides, the rickshaw’s beatific exaltation had already passed into something else⁠—into a tense submissiveness, into a coma of ceaseless running. All the hotels in the Fort were filled up, and the Englishman lived in a common one beyond Slave Island⁠—and now the rickshaw-man once more ran past the banyan tree, under which he had sat down this very morning in his greed of earning money from these merciless and enigmatic white men, in his obstinate hope of happiness. Once more the familiar gardens, one after another; the stone enclosures; the Dutch-tile roofs of bungalows⁠—low, squat, by comparison with the trees spreading over them.⁠ ⁠… Having run into the yard of one such bungalow, the rickshaw-man rested for half an hour near the terrace, while the Englishman was changing his clothes for dinner. His heart was pounding like a poisoned man’s, his lips had blanched, the features of his dark brown face had grown sharper, his splendid eyes had grown still blacker and wider, the rag upon his head had become so saturated that he snatched it off and flung it far from him. The odour of his heated body had become unpleasant⁠—it was now the odour of warm tea mixed with coconut oil, and some other, spirituous, ingredient, such as would be produced by taking and rubbing a cluster of ants in one’s hands.

Meanwhile the sun had set. An elderly maiden was half-lying under the awning of the terrace in a rocker, reading a prayerbook by the remaining daylight. Having caught sight of her from the street, there noiselessly entered the yard a mute Hindu of Madura⁠—a tall, dark old man, as thin as a skeleton, with gray hair curling upon his chest and abdomen, in a beggar’s turban, in a long apron of stuff that had at one time been red and crossed with yellow stripes. Upon his arm the old man carried a closed basket of palm-wattle. Walking up to the terrace, he salaamed subserviently, putting his hand to his forehead, and sat down upon the ground, lifting up the cover of the basket. Without looking at him, the woman reclining in the rocker waved him away with her hand. But he was already taking a bamboo flute out of his belt. And at this point the rickshaw-man jumped to his feet, and in an inexplicable fury yelled loudly at him. The old man, too, jumped up, slammed shut the basket, and, turning about, ran toward the gates. But, for a long while, the eyes of the rickshaw-man were round⁠—altogether as with that fearful creature whom he pictured to himself⁠—slowly, like a tightly wound cord, crawling out of the basket and hissingly puffing out its throat, that glimmered with a blue sheen.

The darkness was falling rapidly⁠—it was already dark when the Englishman, freshly laved, came out upon the terrace in his white dinner jacket, and the rickshaw-man submissively darted toward the shafts. The Englishman called out briskly the name of the place he was to run to⁠—and who knows if his order found no eerie echo in the heart of the rickshaw-man? It was already night, and an exceptionally hot one⁠—as always before the oncoming of the rainy season; a night still more fragrant than the day. Still denser had grown the warm and cloying aroma of musk, blended with the odour of the warm earth, pinguid with the humus of flowers. It was so dark in the gardens through which the rickshaw-man was running that only by his heavy breathing and by the scanty light of the little lantern upon the shaft, could one gather that he was bearing down upon one. Then, beneath the black canopies of the trees, came the faint glimmering of the rotting lagoon; and next⁠—red lights lengthily reflected in it. The big two-storied house in which the agent lived shone through and through in this tropical blackness with the openings of its windows. It was dark in the compound. A large number of rickshaw-men, their bodies blending into the darkness and their loin cloths showing dimly white, had come into this compound with those who had been invited. And the large balcony, open toward the lagoon, was aglow with candles in glass chimneys, clustered about with countless thrips; it was dazzling with the cover of the long table, set with china, bottles, and pails of ice, and was white with the dinner jackets of the people sitting at it, who ate, drank, and without a moment’s silence, even though restrainedly, spoke deep down in their throats, as barefooted corpulent servants, that looked like wet-nurses, waited upon them, their bare soles rustling. And an enormous punkah of Chinese matting, attached by one edge to the ceiling, swayed and swayed over their heads, brought into motion by Malayans sitting behind a partition that did not reach to the ceiling, and kept pouring a constant current of air upon the diners, upon their cold and clammy foreheads. Rickshaw-man number seven dashed up to the balcony. Those seated at the table greeted the newly arrived guest with glad murmuring. The guest jumped out of the little carriage and ran up into the balcony. As for the rickshaw-man, he started off at a gallop to go round the house, in order to get again to the gates, into the compound, to the other rickshaws. And, as he was turning the corner of the house, he suddenly recoiled, as though he had been struck with a stick: standing near an open and illuminated window on the second story⁠—in a small Japanese kimona of red silk, in a triple necklace of rubies, in broad bracelets of gold upon her round arms⁠—looking upon him with round shining eyes was his bride: that very girl-woman with whom he had agreed, already a half-year back, to exchange balls of rice! She could not see him below, in the darkness. But he had recognized her instantly⁠—and, having staggered back, stood stock still on the spot. He did not fall down, his heart did not burst asunder⁠—it was too young and strong. Having stood for a minute or so, he sat down on the ground, under an age-old fig-tree, whose entire top, like a tree of paradise, burned and flickered with the dust of fiery-green sparks. For a long time did he gaze upon the dark round little head, upon the red silk that loosely embraced the little body, and upon the arms, raised as she patted her hairdress, of her who stood framed in the window. He squatted on his heels until she had turned about and had gone into the recesses of the room. And when she had disappeared he instantly jumped to his feet, caught the shafts that had been lying on the ground, and flew like a bird through the yard and out of the gates; again did he start running, on and on⁠—this time knowing unerringly whither he was running, and wherefore, and now himself directing his suddenly liberated will.

“Awake, awake!” clamoured within him the thousands of soundless voices of his mournful ancestors, mouldered for hundreds of generations in this paradisaical earth. “Shake off thee the seductions of Mara, the dream of this brief life! Is sleep for thee⁠—thou who hast been empoisoned with venom, pierced through with an arrow! An hundredfold doth he suffer who hath that which is an hundredfold dear; all sorrows, all complaints, come from love, from the attachments of the heart⁠—therefore, slay thou them! Not for long shalt thou be in the tranquillity of rest; anew and anew, in a thousand incarnations, shalt thou be put forth by this thy land of Eden, the shelter of the first men who had come to know desire. But still this brief rest shall come to thee, thou that hast too early run forth upon the path of life, passionately setting out after happiness, and that hast been wounded by the sharpest of all arrows⁠—by the yearning for love and for new inceptions in this ancient universe, where from time out of mind the conqueror stands with a heavy sole upon the throat of the conquered!”

The lights of the open air stalls of Slave Island appeared under the canopies of the trees whose tops were interlaced. The rickshaw-man hungrily ate in one of these stalls a small bowl of rice over-spiced with pepper, and then darted on. He knew where the old man from Madura lived, who had an hour ago entered the yard of the hotel: he dwelt with his nephew, at his large fruit store, in a low house with wooden columns. The nephew, in a dirty European suit of duck, with an enormous mane of black twining wool upon his head, was dragging in the baskets of fruits into the interior of the store, his eyes puckering from the smoke of a cigarette that had stuck to his lower lip. He paid no attention to the insane appearance of the perspiring, heated rickshaw-man. And the rickshaw-man silently hopped up under the shelter of the awning, among the pillars, went to the left, and with his foot pushed a small door behind which he hoped to find the old mute. In his perspiring hand he was clutching a treasured gold-piece, which, while he was still running, he had taken out of a leather pouch that hung at his belt, beneath his apron. And the gold-piece speedily did its work. When the rickshaw-man jumped out again, he bore a large cigar box, tied with a cord. He had paid a great price for it, but then, it was not empty: that which it contained was struggling, writhing, knocking against the lid with its tensed coils, swishingly.

Why did he take the little carriage along with him? For take it along he did⁠—and at an even, powerful pace flew for the shore of the ocean, toward Gull Face Place. The place was empty; darkly did it extend into the distance under the light of the stars. Beyond it were scattered the small and infrequent lights of the Fort, and against the sky was slowly turning the watchtower of the lighthouse, with its reflectors, throwing fumid stripes of white light in the direction of the roadstead only. The rickshaw-man felt a faint cool breeze blowing from the ocean, whose drowsy murmur was barely audible. Having reached at a run the shore, the middle of the road, the rickshaw-man for the last time threw down the slender shafts, into which at such an early age, but not for long, life had harnessed him, and sat down⁠—this time not upon the ground, but on a bench; sat down without fear, as though he were a white resident.

In giving a whole pound to the Hindu, he had demanded the smallest and the strongest, the most deathbearing one. And it was⁠—besides having a faery beauty, being all in black rings, with green edgings, with a dark blue rounded head, with an emerald stripe back of its head, and with a funereal tail⁠—it was, despite its small size, unusually powerful and malignant; but now, after it had been coiled up in a smelly wooden box, it was especially so. It coiled convulsively, like a steel spring; it writhed, rustled, and knocked against the lid of the box. And he rapidly untied, unwound the cord.⁠ ⁠… However, who knows just how he did it? Were his hands steady, or did they tremble? Was he rapid, resolute, or no? And did he waver long after untying the cord? Did he gaze for long at the murmurous dark ocean, upon the faint starlight, upon the Southern Cross, the Crow, upon Canopus? Did he bare his teeth in a canine snarl in the direction of the residential quarter, in the direction of the rich hotel with its entrance shining in the distance? Most probably, he had at once unhesitatingly opened the box, and had laid his left hand firmly upon those springy coils, icy as a dead body, that were writhing in the box; he was bitten right in the palm.

And that bite is intolerably searing⁠—it is like the shock of an electric current, and transpierces a man’s entire body with untold pain, with such torture that after feeling it even monkeys cry out piteously and burst into sobs⁠—childish, passionate, despairingly-imploring. The rickshaw-man, most probably, did neither cry out nor burst into sobs; full well did he know what he had set out to do. But there is no doubt that, having felt this fiery shock, he turned a pinwheel on the bench, and that the box flew aside. And then, instantly, a bottomless darkness spread out beneath him, and all things darted off somewhere upward, obliquely: the ocean, and the stars, and the lights of the hotel. The surging of the ocean went to his head⁠—and ceased abruptly: a dead faint always occurs after such a shock. But after such a faint a man always comes quickly to himself⁠—seemingly only to be nauseated, until blood comes, and to be again plunged into non-being. There are several of these death-swoons, and each one of them, breaking a man, making him gasp, tears away human life, in parts: thought, memory, vision, hearing, pain, grief, joy, hatred⁠—and that ultimate, all-embracing thing which is called love, the yearning to encompass within one’s heart all the universe, seen and unseen, and to bestow it anew upon some other.

Some ten days later, on a dark, sultry dusk before a thunderstorm, two pair of oarsmen were racing in a small boat through the harbour of Colombo, toward a great Russian steamship that was about to sail for Suez. The passenger whom rickshaw-man number seven had once carried was half-reclining in the boat. The steamer was already booming with the rattling of the rising anchor chain, when, getting near the enormous iron wall of the ship’s side, he ran up the long trap-ladder to the deck. The captain at first flatly refused to take him on board: the steamer carried freight only, he declared; the agent had already gone away⁠—the thing was impossible. “But I beg you⁠—very, very much!” retorted the Englishman. The captain looked at him with wonder; he was apparently strong, energetic, but there was the tint of an unwholesome tan upon his face, while the eyes behind the glistening spectacles were unmoving, seeming to see nothing, and perturbed. “Wait until the day after tomorrow,” said the captain; “there will be a German mail-packet then.” “Yes, but to spend two more nights at Colombo would be very hard for me,” answered the Englishman. “This climate exhausts me⁠—my nerves trouble me. Besides that, the German packet, as is always the case, will be packed to overflowing, whereas I desire to be alone. I am done up by these Ceylon nights, by insomnia, and by all that which a nervous man experiences before thunderstorms at dusk. But just glance at this darkness, at these clouds that have obscured the horizon everywhere: the night will again be a horrible one, the rain season has, properly speaking, already set in.⁠ ⁠…” And, with a shrug of his shoulders, upon reflection, the captain gave in. And a minute later the Senegalese, thin as eels, were already dragging up the trap-ladder a trunk covered with shining black leather, all gay with varicoloured labels and marked with red initials.

The surgeon’s vacant cabin, which was put at the disposal of the Englishman, was very small and stuffy; but the Englishman found it splendid. Having hurriedly disposed his things about it, he passed through the dining cabin up to the deck. Everything was rapidly sinking in the darkness. The ship had already weighed anchor and was heading for the open sea. To the right, other ships, with lights on their masts, seemed to be sailing toward them⁠—these were the lights of the Fort. To the left, under the high taffrail, the shifting level expanse of the dark water rushed toward the low shore, toward the mounds of coal, and the dark density of the groves of slender trunked palms that were beyond the coal mounds. The water still bounded the darkness and the mournfulness of the clouds, and its shifting rapidity made one’s head reel. Constantly veering, constantly increasing, a humid, nauseatingly-fragrant wind was blowing from somewhere. The taciturn clouds suddenly burst into such an abysmal pale-blue light, that, lit up by it, in the very depth of the forest, the trunks of the palms and bananas, and the Senegalese huts underneath them, flashed upon the vision. The Englishman blinked in affright; he looked over his shoulder upon the pallid jetty with the little red light at the end of it, by now seemingly sailing upon his left; he looked at the leaden-hued ocean in the distance, beyond the jetty⁠—and quickly started back for his cabin.

The old steward, a man irritated with fatigue, needlessly suspicious and observant, peeped in several times behind the curtain of the Englishman’s cabin before dinner. The Englishman was sitting on a folding canvas chair, holding a thick leather-bound notebook on his knees. He was writing in it with a gold-tipped pen, and his expression, whenever he raised his face, his spectacles flashing, was dull, and, at the same time, wondering. Then, having put his pen away, he went off into a brown study, as though he were listening to the surging and swishing of the waves, ponderously rushing by on the other side of the cabin wall. The steward passed by, swinging a clamorous little bell. The Englishman got up and stripped himself naked. Having sponged himself off with water and eau-de-cologne from head to foot, he shaved, clipped evenly his short, bushy moustache, painstakingly smoothed down with military brushes his straight black hair, parting it at a slant, put on fresh linen and his dinner jacket, and went to dinner with his habitual firm, soldierly bearing.

The ship’s personnel, who had long since been seated at table and had been swearing at him for his lateness, met him with exaggerated politeness, showing off before one another with their knowledge of English. He responded with a restrained, but not a lesser, politeness, and hastened to add that he liked the Russian cuisine very much, that he had been in Russia, in Siberia.⁠ ⁠… That, in general, he had travelled a great deal, and had always borne up splendidly on his travels, which, however, could not be said of his last stay in India, in Java and Ceylon; here his liver was affected, his nerves were upset⁠—he had even come to eccentricities: such, for example, as that which he had shown an hour ago when he had so suddenly appeared on the steamer.⁠ ⁠… At coffee he regaled the ship’s men with cognac and liqueurs; he fetched a box of thick Egyptian cigarettes and put it on the table, open, for common use. The captain, a man still young, with clever and steady eyes, who endeavoured to be a European in all things, began a conversation about the colonial problems of Europe, about the Japanese, about the future of the Far East. Listening attentively, the Englishman objected or agreed. He spoke well, and not at all with simplicity, but as though he were reading aloud from a well-written article. And at times he would suddenly grow quiet, still more attentively trying to catch the swish of the waves beyond the open door. The thunderstorm had been left behind. Long since the chain of Colombo’s lights, that for a long while had been playing like diamonds, had sunk into black velvet. Now the steamer was in infinite darkness, in the void of ocean and of night. The dining cabin was situated on deck, under the captain’s bridge, and the darkness was etched in an intense black within the open doors and windows: it seemed to be standing and gazing in into the brightly lit dining room. A humid breeze blew out of this darkness⁠—the humid, free breath of a something free since the start of time⁠—and its freshness, reaching those seated at table, made them feel the odour of the tobacco smoke, of the hot coffee, and of the liqueurs. But at times the electric light would suddenly fail⁠—the doors and the windows then became gleaming pale blue quadrangles; the blue abyss of abysses, noiseless and unutterably expansive, spread out around the steamer; the running swell of the watery spaces gleamed; the horizons were flooded with a blackness as of coal⁠—and thence, like the grievous murmur of the Creator Himself, still plunged in primordial chaos, came to their ears the roll of thunder⁠—muffled, sombre and triumphant, shaking all things to their foundation. And at such times the Englishman seemed to be frozen on the spot for a moment.

“This is really frightful!” said he in his lifeless but steady voice after a flash especially blinding. And, getting up from his place, he walked up to the door that gaped into the darkness. “Very frightful,” said he, as though he were talking to himself. “And the most frightful thing of all is that we do not think, do not feel, and cannot, have forgotten how to feel the full frightfulness of this.”

“What, precisely?” asked the captain.

“Why, just this for example,” answered the Englishman, “that under us and around us is that bottomless depth, that shifting trough of the sea of which the Bible speaks with such awesomeness.⁠ ⁠… Oh,” said he sternly, looking intently into the darkness, “both far and near, everywhere, the furrows of foam flare up, flaming with green, and the darkness surrounding this foam is lilac-black, the colour of a raven’s wing.⁠ ⁠… Is it a very eerie thing to be a captain?” he asked gravely.

“Why no, not at all,” answered the captain with assumed nonchalance. “It’s a tiresome business, and responsible, but, in reality not very complicated.⁠ ⁠… It is all a matter of habit.⁠ ⁠…”

“Better say⁠—of our callousness,” said the Englishman. “To be standing there, up on your bridge, at whose sides these two great eyes⁠—the green and the red⁠—look out, blurred, through their thick glass, and to be sailing somewhere into the darkness of night and water, extending for thousands of miles around⁠—it is madness! But, however, it is no better,” he added, again glancing out of the door, “it is no better, on the other hand, to be lying below in a cabin, beyond whose exceedingly thin wall, near your very head, beats and rolls this bottomless deep.⁠ ⁠… Yes, yes⁠—our reason is just as feeble as the reason of a mole; or, rather, still more feeble, for in the case of a mole, of an animal, of a savage, instinct, at least, has been preserved; whereas with us, with Europeans, it has degenerated, is degenerating!”

“However, moles do not navigate over the entire terrestrial globe,” answered the captain smiling. “Moles do not enjoy the benefits of steam, of electricity, of wireless telegraphy. Do you wish to hear me speak with Aden right now? And yet it is a ten days’ sail from here.”

“And that, too, is frightful,” said the Englishman, and cast a stern glance through his spectacles at one of the engineers who had started laughing. “Yes, that too is very frightful. For we, in reality, do not fear anything. We do not fear even death properly: neither life, nor sacred mysteries, nor the depths that surround us, nor death⁠—neither our death nor that of others! I am a colonel of the British Army, a participant of the Boer War; I, commanding cannons to be fired, used to kill men in hundreds; and here I am, not only neither suffering nor going out of my mind because I am a murderer, but never even thinking of these hundreds.”

“What about the beasts, and the savages⁠—do they think of such things?” asked the captain.

“The savages believe that things have to be so, whereas we don’t,” said the Englishman, and became silent; he started pacing the dining room, trying to step as firmly as he could in his dancing shoes.

The flashes of the distant thunder storm, gleaming roseately over the stars, were by now decreasing. The wind blowing through the windows and doors was stronger and cooler, the impenetrable darkness beyond the door surged more loudly. A large seashell that served as an ashtray was sliding upon the table. Under one’s feet, growing unpleasantly weaker, one felt something gathering force below, lifting one up, then falling over on one side, spreading out⁠—and the floor fell deeper and deeper from under one’s feet. The ship’s men, having finished their coffee and smoked their fill, sat in silence for several minutes more, casting glances at their queer passenger; then, wishing him good night, they began picking up their caps. The captain alone stayed on⁠—he was smoking and following the Englishman with his eyes. The Englishman, with a cigar, was walking, swayingly, from door to door; his dark complexion, his spectacles, and his seriousness combined with absentmindedness, irritated the old steward, who was clearing the table.

“Yes, yes,” said the Englishman, “there is only one thing frightful to us⁠—that we have forgotten how to feel fear! There is no God, no religion in Europe, long since; we, with all our business activity and greed, are as cold as ice both toward life and toward death. Even if we do fear death, it is with our reason or only with the remnants of an animal instinct. At times we even try to inspire ourself with that dread, to exaggerate it⁠—and still we do not respond, do not feel in due measure those incomprehensible and horrible things of which the life of man is full.⁠ ⁠… Just as I, even I, do not now feel that which I myself have called fearful,” said he, pointing toward the open door, beyond which the impenetrable darkness murmured, by now raising high the prow, and tumbling the ship, all of whose partitions were creaking, from one side to the other.

“It is Ceylon that has affected you so,” said the captain mechanically.

“Oh, beyond a doubt, beyond a doubt!” agreed the Englishman. “We all⁠—commercial men, mechanical engineers, military men, politicians, colonizers⁠—we all, fleeing from our own dullness and vanity, wander all the world over; for you will agree that the number of travelling Europeans is increasing with a magic rapidity; that the entire terrestrial globe is plastered over with motley placards and timetables. And we try with all our might to be enraptured, now with the mountains and lakes of Switzerland, now with the pauperism of Italy⁠—her pictures and the broken-up fragments of her statues and columns. Or we wander over the slippery stones which have survived from some amphitheatres in Sicily, or we gaze with simulated delight upon the yellow heaps of rubble at the Acropolis in Greece; or attend, as though it were some show-booth spectacle at a fair, the distribution of the sacred fire in Jerusalem. We pay sums unheard of in order to undergo tortures from guides and fleas in the tombs and clay idol-temples of Egypt. We sail to India, to China, to Japan⁠—and it is only here, upon the soil of the most ancient of mankind, in this Eden which we have forfeited, which we style our colonies and which we covetously despoil, in the midst of squalor, bubonic plague, cholera, fevers, and coloured races whom we have turned into cattle⁠—only here do we feel, in some slight measure, life, death, godhood. Here, after having remained indifferent toward all these Osirises, Zeuses, Appolons, toward Christ, toward Muhammad, have I more than once felt that I might perhaps have bowed only before them⁠—these fearful Gods of this cradle of mankind: before the hundred-armed Brahma; before Siva; before the Devil; before Buddha, whose word verily rang forth like the utterance of Methuselah himself, driving nails into the coffin-lid of the universe.⁠ ⁠… Yes, thanks only to the East, and to the diseases contracted in the East; thanks to the fact that in Africa I slaughtered men by the hundreds; that in India, which is being despoiled by England, and, therefore, in part by me, I have seen thousands dying from hunger; that I had bought little girls in Japan to be my wives for a month; that in China I had beaten defenseless, simian old men over their heads with a stick; that in Java and Ceylon I had driven rickshaw-men until I heard the death rattle in their throats; that I had, in my time, contracted a most cruel fever in Anaradhapore, and liver trouble on the shore of Malabar⁠—only thanks to all this do I still feel and think, after a fashion. Those lands, those countless peoples, which still either live a life of infantile immediacy, sentient with all their beings of existence, and death, and the divine majesty of the universe; or those lands and peoples which have already traversed a long and arduous path (historical, religious and philosophical), and who have grown wearied on this path⁠—such lands and peoples we, the men of the new age of iron, aspire to enslave, to divide amongst us, and this we style our colonial problems. And when this division shall come to an end, then on this world will again be enthroned the might of some new Tyre or Sidon, a new Rome, English or German. There will be repeated, inevitably repeated, also that which had been prophesied by Judaean prophets to Sidon, that, according to the word of the Bible, had grown to deem itself God; that which had been prophesied to Rome by the Apocalypse; and to India, to the Aryan tribes that had enslaved it, by Buddha, who has said, ‘O ye princes, ye men in power, rich in treasures, who have arrayed your covetousness against one another, insatiably pandering to your lusts!⁠ ⁠…’ Buddha understood the significance of the life of Individuality in this ‘world of having been,’ in this universe, whose meaning we cannot attain to, and he was horrified with a sacred horror. Whereas we exalt our Individuality above the heavens; we want to centre all the world within it, no matter what may be said of the coming universal brotherhood and equality. And so it is only on the ocean, under stars new and foreign to us, in the midst of the majesty of tropical thunder storms; or in India, in Ceylon, where history is so immeasurable, where at times one glimpses life veritably primitive, and where on dark, sultry nights, in the fevered gloom, one feels man melting, dissolving in this blackness, in these sounds, scents, in this fearful All-Oneness⁠—only there do we in a slight measure grasp the meaning of this our pitiful Individuality.⁠ ⁠… Do you know,” said he, halting again, and flashing his spectacles at the captain, “a certain Buddhistic legend?”

“Which one?” asked the captain, who had already yawned surreptitiously and had glanced at his watch.

“Why, this: A raven darted after an elephant who was running down a wooded mountain toward the sea; wrecking all things in his path, breaking down the overgrowths, the elephant plunged into the waves⁠—and the raven, tortured by ‘desire,’ fell after him, and, having waited until the elephant had swallowed enough water to kill himself and had floated up on the waves, descended on the carcass with its great ears; the carcass floated on, putrefying, while the raven greedily pecked away at it; but when he came to his senses, he saw that he had been borne far, far from land⁠—to a distance from which there is no return even upon the wings of a gull⁠—and he began cawing in a piteous voice, that voice for which Death waits so warily.⁠ ⁠… It is a terrible legend!”

“Yes, it is very significant,” said the captain, indifferently.

The Englishman lapsed into silence and again began pacing from door to door. From the surging darkness faintly floated in the sounds of the second bell, abrupt and, as is always the case on the ocean, plaintive. The captain, after having sat for five minutes more out of politeness, got up, shook the Englishman’s hand, and went off to his big, restful cabin. The Englishman, reflecting upon something, continued pacing. The steward, having endured for half an hour more in the pantry, entered and with an angry face began switching off the electricity, leaving only one bulb lit. The Englishman, when the steward had disappeared, walked up to the wall and turned off this bulb as well. Darkness descended at once, the surging of the waves at once appeared louder, and the starry sky, the masts, the sail-yards at once appeared in the open windows. The steamer creaked and clambered from one watery mountain to another. It swung wider and wider, rising and falling⁠—and in its rigging Canopus, the Crow, the Southern Cross swayed widely to and fro, now flying toward the abyss above, now toward the abyss below, and roseate auroras were still flashing above them.