And Dominica draws nearer,--sharply massing her hills against the vast
light in purple nodes and gibbosities and denticulations. Closer and
closer it comes, until the green of its heights breaks through the
purple here and there,--in flashings and ribbings of color. Then
it remains as if motionless a while;--then the green lights go out
again,--and all the shape begins to recede sideward towards the south.
... And what had appeared a pearl-grey cloud in the north slowly
reveals itself as another island of mountains,--hunched and horned and
mammiform: Guadeloupe begins to show her double profile. But Martinique
is still visible;--Pelée still peers high over the rim of the south....
Day wanes;--the shadow of the ship lengthens over the flower-blue water.
Pelée changes aspect at last,--turns pale as a ghost,--but will not fade
away....
... The sun begins to sink as he always sinks to his death in the
tropics,--swiftly,--too swiftly!--and the glory of him makes golden all
the hollow west,--and bronzes all the flickering wave-backs. But still
the gracious phantom of the island will not go,--softly haunting us
through the splendid haze. And always the tropic wind blows soft and
warm;--there is an indescribable caress in it! Perhaps some such breeze,
blowing from Indian waters, might have inspired that prophecy of Islam
concerning the Wind of the Last Day,--that "Yellow Wind, softer than
silk, balmier than musk,"--which is to sweep the spirits of the just to
God in the great Winnowing of Souls....
Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the ghost of
Pelée; and the moon swings up,--a young and lazy moon, drowsing upon her
back, as in a hammock.... Yet a few nights more, and we shall see this
slim young moon erect,--gliding upright on her way,--coldly beautiful
like a fair Northern girl.