Wide, savage sunlight lay so hot upon
it, that to aching eyes the water shone solid, like a broad road of
yellow clay. Only close at hand and by an effort of vision, appeared the
tiny, quiet lines of the irresistible flood pouring toward the sea;
there whipped into the pool of banyan shade black snippets and tails of
reflection, darting ceaselessly after each other like a shoal of
frightened minnows. But elsewhere the river lay golden, solid, and
painfully bright. Things afloat, in the slumberous procession of all
Eastern rivers, swam downward imperceptibly, now blurred, now outlined
in corrosive sharpness.
The white men stood crowding along the spacious window. The dogs barked
outrageously; but at last above their din floated, as before, the high
wailing cries. A heaping cairn of round-bellied, rosy-pink earthen jars
came steering past, poled by a naked statue of new copper, who balanced
precariously on the edge of his hidden raft. No sound came from him; nor
from the funeral barge which floated next, where still figures in white
robes guarded the vermilion drapery of a bier, decked with vivid green
boughs.
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