The Firing Line | Page 9

screw-pine tree, shedding strange witch-lights over masses of
blossoms, tropical and semi-tropical. Through which the fine-spun
spray of fountains drifted, and the great mousy dusk-moths darted
through the bars of light with the glimmering bullet-flight of summer
meteors.
And everywhere hung the scent of orange bloom and the more subtle
perfume of white and yellow jasmine floated through the trees from
gardens or distant hammocks, combining in one intoxicating aroma,
spiced always with the savour of the sea.

Hamil was aware of considerable noise, more or less musical, afloat
and ashore; a pretentious orchestra played third-rate music under the
hotel colonnade; melody arose from the lantern-lit lake, with
clamourous mandolins and young voices singing; and over all hung the
confused murmur of unseen throngs, harmonious, capricious; laughter,
voice answering voice, and the distant shouts as brilliantly festooned
boats hailed and were hailed across the water.
Hamil passed on to the left through crowded gardens, pressing his way
slowly where all around him lantern-lit faces appeared from the dusk
and vanished again into it; where the rustle of summer gowns sweeping
the shaven lawns of Bermuda grass sounded like a breeze in the leaves.
Sometimes out of the dusk all tremulous with tinted light the rainbow
ray of a jewel flashed in his eyes--or sometimes he caught the glint of
eyes above the jewel--a passing view of a fair face, a moment's
encountering glance, and, maybe, a smile just as the shadows falling
turned the garden's brightness to a mystery peopled with phantoms.
Out along the shell road he sauntered, Whitehall rising from tropic
gardens on his right, on his left endless gardens again, and white villas
stretching away into the starlight; on, under the leaning coco-palms
along quays and low walls of coquina where the lagoon lay under the
silvery southern planets.
After a little he discovered that he had left the bulk of the throng behind,
though in front of him and behind, the road was still dotted with
white-clad groups strolling or resting on the sea-wall.
Far out on the lake the elfin pageant continued, but now he could
scarcely hear the music; the far cries and the hiss of the rockets came
softly as the whizzing of velvet-winged moths around orange blossoms.
The January night was magnificent; he could scarcely comprehend that
this languid world of sea and palm, of heavy odour and slow breezes,
was his own land still. Under the spell the Occident vanished; it was the
Orient--all this dreamy mirage, these dim white walls, this
spice-haunted dusk, the water inlaid with stars, the fairy foliage, the

dew drumming in the stillness like the sound of goblin tattooing.
Never before had he seen this enchanted Southern land which had
always been as much a part of his mother-land as Northern hill and
Western plain--as much his as the roaring dissonance of Broadway, or
the icy silence of the tundras, or the vast tranquil seas of corn rippling
mile on mile under the harvest moon of Illinois.
He halted, unquiet in the strangeness of it all, restless under its exotic
beauty, conscious of the languor stealing over him--the premonition of
a physical relaxation that he had never before known--that he
instinctively mistrusted.
People in groups passed and repassed along the lagoon wall where,
already curiously tired, he had halted beside an old bronze
cannon--some ancient Spanish piece, if he could judge by the arms and
arabesques covering the breech, dimly visible in the rays of a Chinese
lantern.
Beyond was a private dock where two rakish power-boats lay,
receiving their cargo of young men and girls--all very animated and gay
under the gaudy electric lanterns strung fore and aft rainbow fashion.
He seated himself on the cannon, lingering until both boats cleared for
the carnival, rushing out into the darkness like streaks of
multi-coloured flame; then his lassitude increasing, he rose and
sauntered toward the hotel which loomed like a white mountain afire
above the dark masses of tropic trees. And again the press of the throng
hemmed him in among the palms and fountains and hedges of crimson
hibiscus; again the dusk grew gay with voices and the singing overtone
of violins; again the suffocating scent of blossoms, too sweet and
penetrating for the unacclimated, filtered through and through him, till
his breath came unevenly, and the thick odours stirred in him strange
senses of expectation, quickening with his pulses to a sudden prophecy.
And at the same instant he saw the girl of whom he had been thinking.
She was on the edge of a group of half a dozen or more men in evening

dress, and women in filmy white--already close to him--so near that the
frail stuff of her skirt brushed him, and the subtle, fresh aroma of her
seemed to touch his cheek like