I do not believe
this can be the end; no human soul can believe in such an end and go on
living, but to it science points as a possible thing, science and reason
alike. If single human beings--if one single ricketty infant--can be
born as it were by accident and die futile, why not the whole race?
These are questions I have never answered, that now I never attempt to
answer, but the thought of quap and its mysteries brings them back to
me.
I can witness that the beach and mud for two miles or more either way
was a lifeless beach--lifeless as I could have imagined no tropical mud
could ever be, and all the dead branches and leaves and rotting dead
fish and so forth that drifted ashore became presently shrivelled and
white. Sometimes crocodiles would come up out of the water and bask, and
now and then water birds would explore the mud and rocky ribs that rose
out of it, in a mood of transitory speculation. That was its utmost
admiration. And the air felt at once hot and austere, dry and
blistering, and altogether different the warm moist embrace that had met
us at our first African landfall and to which we had grown accustomed.
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