Another hot and clammy day was in store for the island. No matter. This
sirocco, of which older inhabitants might well complain, had so far
exerted no baleful influence upon him. Quite the reverse. Under its
tender moistening touch his frame, desiccated in the tropics, seemed to
open out, even as a withered flower uncloses its petals in water. In
Africa all this thoughts and energies had been concentrated upon a
single point. Here he expanded. New interests, new sensations, seemed
to lie in wait for him. Never had he felt so alert, so responsive to
spiritual impressions, so appreciative of natural beauty.
Lying in motionless ecstasy on the buoyant element he watched the mists
of morning as they soared into the air. Reluctantly, with imperceptible
movement, they detached themselves from their watery home; they
clambered aloft in spectral companies, drawn skyward, as by some
beckoning hand, under the stealthy compulsion of the sun. They crept
against the tawny precipices, clinging to their pinnacles like shreds
of pallid gauze, and nestling demurely among dank clefts where
something of the mystery of night still lingered.
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