THE LURKER IN THE RUINS
East fell at a blow; and the easy slumber of the East at last overcame the tired women. Yet now and then they woke, with weary murmurs of delight, at some picture fleeting past: a tug whipping up-river an endless string of rice-boats, each with a ruddy fire that lighted up the brown legs of a squatting circle, and each leaving a pungent wake of cookery and sour betel; the bellying whiteness of a lateen sail, swan-like, unreal, seen and lost in a moment of ghostly moonshine; splashes of lamp light wriggling deep in the river pools below some floating bazaar or open house-boat, where, as if kneeling on the water, black profiles of Chinamen threatened each other, chattering at Chai-mooey, the coolies game of forfeits. All these passed swiftly in a dream, measured by the monotonous, happy chant of the steersman, and heavy with the perfume of acacias.
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