It was for me an
expedition into the realms of undisciplined nature out of the world that
is ruled by men, my first bout with that hot side of our mother that
gives you the jungle--that cold side that gives you the air-eddy I was
beginning to know passing well. They are memories woven upon a fabric
of sunshine and heat and a constant warm smell of decay. They end
in rain--such rain as I had never seen before, a vehement, a frantic
downpouring of water, but our first slow passage through the channels
behind Mordet's Island was in incandescent sunshine.
There we go in my memory still, a blistered dirty ship with patched
sails and a battered mermaid to present Maud Mary, sounding and taking
thought between high ranks of forest whose trees come out knee-deep
at last in the water. There we go with a little breeze on our quarter,
Mordet Island rounded and the quap, it might be within a day of us.
Here and there strange blossoms woke the dank intensities of green with
a trumpet call of colour. Things crept among the jungle and peeped and
dashed back rustling into stillness.
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