He was free of the island at last; sculls and current were sweeping him from it into the wastes of the blue sea; the water, all merry with the breeze, smacked the boat cheerily and flashed away and away, in the level sunlight to where the palms were waving, and the foam was breaking, and the sea gulls calling.
“Come back!—come back!—you are leaving us, but our voices are following you. Go far as you may, our voices will follow you, our weariness, the sunlight, the blueness shall be yours forever—you there in the boat alone, where is Yves—Yves—Yves?”
Then, more far away, the last word, the last echo from the island,
“Yves—Yves—Yves.”
Now, there was nothing but the passing of the wind, the sound of the sculls, and the warbling of the water. There were no waves here, the shallows and the reefs had made the sea choppy close to the island; here there was nothing but a heave of the sea, long lapses of swell, infinitely blue, breeze-strewn and sun-dazzled.
CHAPTER IX
A STAR ON THE SEA
The island had passed away, painted out by distance; the sky above the horizon, paled by the indigo of the sea, lay like a ring of sparkling emerald; to southward, where the emerald passed into the living burning sapphire of the sky, lay a line of white clouds, swan-white and like a flock of flying swans, darkening with their suggestion of snow the blueness of the water, deepening with their remoteness the distance.
The warm wind blew steadily sparkling up the blue, the incredible blue of the sea; the scull-blades, immersed half a foot in the water, were tinted with azure, the floating scraps of seaweed were tinted with indigo; a man floating a yard deep would have shewn like a form of lazulite.