Standing by the water’s edge, the older man continued to look intently down the river; neither noticing the children at play nor the prayers ascending from the thresholds, nor the offerings of the boatwomen to the gods of the winds and waters.
Suddenly a breathless expectancy fell upon those that were waiting and upon those that were sending their prayers heavenward in fragrant smoke.
Far away, somewhere to the east and south, came a gentle murmur. At this sound some crowded into their houses; others came forth. Only the children did not heed this murmur, which at times became a moan to cease a sigh. The people on the water front and along the eastern rim of the suburbs peered over the rice-fields toward Lung Mun and down the river to where it broadened out into a vast expanse of yellow waters. What they saw filled them with terror.
Across the eastern horizon opened an enormous crack. Many looked into it for an instant then ran and hid themselves in their hovels while those that remained shuddered. This abyss into which they looked commenced several degrees above the horizon; the bottom black, the top ashen; the river, bearing on its mighty current the boatwomen’s fragile offering, disappeared into it.
The crack widened. Awestricken, the people crowded together on the suburb’s edge and water front to watch it open.
The thin blue stems of sandalwood smoke, ascending from each doorway shrine, wavered.
The sky became overcast.
Suddenly the crowd swayed: backward, forward, backward, then scrambling, vanished—a drop of rain had fallen.
For a moment there was twilight, which was ghastly—then night, which was impenetrable.
A gust blew in from the sea and it was like a blast from a furnace. This sirocco that came from the ocean was the first breath of the typhoon.