One day the brig, always butting like a ram against the blue sky and
empty sea, gave them view of a mountain and land, stretching in the
distance from north to south as though all the islands of the ocean had
been drawn and joined together making one solid piece.
Then presently, as they drew in, Uliami saw a break in the land near the
mountain. They told him it was the Golden Gate and the city of San
Francisco where all the rich men in the world lived, but he had little
time to listen to their tales. For they were now on the bar, and the
brig was tumbling this way and that, and the mate and captain cursing
and kicking those in the way, and giving orders to haul now on this
rope, now on that.
Uliami had been used to swearing and cursing on board that brig, but,
when they got to the wharf, what he heard overpassed all he had heard in
that way, as though all the curses in the world, like all the men, and
all the houses, and all the ships, had come to roost at that spot.
But Uliami did not mind. He was filled with one great desire--to go
ashore to see for himself the great houses and the rich men and the new
things to be seen. Next morning when the crew were paid and he had
received five dollars as his pay, he joined up with Sru, a man from the
low islands, who had been friendly to him on the voyage, and the pair,
crossing the plank, set their feet on the wharf, and Sru, landing, made
for the first tavern. That was the sort of man Sru was, old in the ways
of harbors and ports, and with a liking for rum. But Uliami had no
stomach for drink and, presently, he left the other and found himself in
the streets round the dockside.
It was very windy here and his thin coat and trousers flapped around him
as a flag flaps on its staff, and the dust blew with the wind in great
clouds. And, just as things touched by a wizard change and alter, so the
mind of Uliami began to wither in him, for here there were no rich men
to be seen, only dirty children playing their games, and there was not a
child that did not see in him a man new to the place. They called after
him, ridiculing him, and the houses were not proper houses set in
gardens, but all of a piece and evil-looking beyond words.
Then pursuing his way he found himself in a broader street where cars
ran without horses and where there were so many people that no one
noticed him.
And that was the most curious thing that had happened to him yet, for at
Tilafeaa every one had a nod or a smile or a word for every one else,
but here the people all passed along in two streams, rapidly, like
driven fish, with not a word for each other, nor a look nor a smile, so
that, in all that crowd, Uliami felt more alone than in the woods yet
not alone--for here were men and women, almost in touch, by the hundred
and the thousand.
Then the shops took him where the traders exposed their goods, not in
the open but behind windows of glass, each ten hundred times bigger than
the window of glass in the church at Raupee. But the goods exposed were
things, many of them, which he had never seen before, and they caused no
desire in his mind, only distress and more loneliness, till he came to a
shop where great bunches of bananas hung just as though they had been
new cut down from the trees at Tilafeaa.
Here he hung, disregarding the other fruit exposed, and with tears
filling his eyes, till the man of the shop spoke to him roughly, asking
him what he wanted and bidding him be gone.