A Tramps Sketches | Page 4

until the morrow. As I lay
so leisurely watching the sun, it occurred to me that there was no
reason why man should not give up quests when he wanted to--he was

not fixed in a definite course like the sun.
Sunset was beautiful, and dark-winged gulls continually alighted on the
glowing waves, alighted and swam and flew again till the night. Then
the moon lightened up the sea with silver, and all night long the waves
rolled and rolled again, and broke and splashed and lapped. The deep
cavern was filled with singing sounds that at first frightened me, but at
last lulled me to sleep as if a nurse had sung them.
III
Between these two beds what a glorious Night picture-book, a book
telling almost entirely of the doings of the moon. I remember how I
slept once under a wild walnut-tree. In front of me rose to heaven
forested hills, and the night clothed them in majesty. Presently the
moon came gently from her apartments and put out a slender hand,
grasped the tree-tops, and pulled herself up over the world. She showed
herself to me in all her glory, and then in a minute was gone again; for
she entered into a many-windowed cloud castle and roamed from room
to room. As she passed from window to window I knew by the light
where she was. A calm night. The moon went right across the sky and
returned to her home. Rain came before the dawn, and then mists crept
down over the forests and hid them from my view. Cold, cold! The
mountains were hidden by a cloud. Loose stones rolled down a cliff
continually and a wind sighed. I snuggled myself into my blanket and
waited for an hour. Then the sun gained possession of the sky.
I went down to the river, gathered sticks--they were very damp--and
made a fire. Once the fire began to burn it soon increased in size, for I
had gathered a great pile of little twigs and they soon dried and burned.
Then in their burning they dried bigger twigs, sticks, cudgels, logs. I
boiled my kettle and made tea.
Whilst I bathed in the river the sun gave a vision of his splendour: a
thousand mists trembled at his gaze. An hour later it was a very hot day,
and the village folk coming out of their houses could scarcely have
dreamed how reluctantly the night had retired at the dawn--with what
cold and damp the morning had begun.
IV
Another night, just after moonrise, a wind arose and drove in front of it
the whole night long a great thunderstorm, with lightnings and rollings
and grumblings and mutterings, but never a spot of rain. At dawn,

when I looked out to sea, I saw the whole dreadful array of the storm
standing to leeward like ships that had passed in the night, and as
though baulked in pursuit the roll of the thunder came across the sky
sullenly, though with a note of defeat.
The nights were often cold and wet, and it became necessary for me to
make my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On the
skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region
where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned of the
natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on bark or
wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At a little
settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logs outside the
village church. On this occasion I wrapped myself up in all the clothes I
possessed, and so saved myself from the damp. Next morning, however,
my blanket was so wet with dew that I could wring it, though I had felt
warm all night. I had always to guard against the possibility of rain, and
I generally made my couch in pleasant proximity to some place of
shelter--a bridge, a cave, or a house; and more than once I had to
abandon my grass bed in the very depth of the night, and take up the
alternative one in shelter.
V
A tremendous thunderstorm took place about a fortnight after I left
home. I had built a stick fire and was making tea for myself at the end
of a long cloudless summer day, and taking no care, when suddenly I
looked up to the sky and saw the evening turning swiftly to night
before my eyes. The sun was not due to set, but the western horizon
seemed as it were to have risen and gone forth to meet it. A great black
bank of cloud had come up out of the west and hidden away the sun
before his time.
I hastened