“And this is how I see the East.  I have seen its secret places and have looked into its very soul; but now I see it always from a small boat, a high outline of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like faint mist at noon; a jagged wall of purple at sunset.  I have the feel of the oar in my hand, the vision of a scorching blue sea in my eyes.  And I see a bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, shimmering in the dark.  A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and the night is soft and warm.  We drag at the oars with aching arms, and suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night—­the first sigh of the East on my face.  That I can never forget.  It was impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of mysterious delight.

“We had been pulling this finishing spell for eleven hours.  Two pulled, and he whose turn it was to rest sat at the tiller.  We had made out the red light in that bay and steered for it, guessing it must mark some small coasting port.  We passed two vessels, outlandish and high-sterned, sleeping at anchor, and, approaching the light, now very dim, ran the boat’s nose against the end of a jutting wharf.  We were blind with fatigue.  My men dropped the oars and fell off the thwarts as if dead.  I made fast to a pile.  A current rippled softly.  The scented obscurity of the shore was grouped into vast masses, a density of colossal clumps of vegetation, probably—­mute and fantastic shapes.  And at their foot the semicircle of a beach gleamed faintly, like an illusion.  There was not a light, not a stir, not a sound.  The mysterious East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave.

“And I sat weary beyond expression, exulting like a conqueror, sleepless and entranced as if before a profound, a fateful enigma.

“A splashing of oars, a measured dip reverberating on the level of water, intensified by the silence of the shore into loud claps, made me jump up.  A boat, a European boat, was coming in.  I invoked the name of the dead; I hailed:  Judea ahoy!  A thin shout answered.

“It was the captain.  I had beaten the flagship by three hours, and I was glad to hear the old man’s voice, tremulous and tired.  ’Is it you, Marlow?’ ‘Mind the end of that jetty, sir,’ I cried.

“He approached cautiously, and brought up with the deep-sea lead-line which we had saved—­for the under-writers.  I eased my painter and fell alongside.  He sat, a broken figure at the stern, wet with dew, his hands clasped in his lap.  His men were asleep already.  ’I had a terrible time of it,’ he murmured.  ‘Mahon is behind—­not very far.’  We conversed in whispers, in low whispers, as if afraid to wake up the land.  Guns, thunder, earthquakes would not have awakened the men just then.