When he rose to his feet, the ship had disappeared, and it was evening.
At evening the mournful country grew stiller and colder. In the twilight the great tree appeared as a mass of absolute blackness, rearing itself aloft in the midst of the vast African solitude.
Before him in the distance lay the pacified sea, infinitely calm; beneath him, at his feet, the cliffs descending in terraces to the great Cape Verde; flat stretches of land, intersected by straight ravines bare of vegetation—a wide landscape of a heart-rending dreariness of aspect.
Behind him, on the side verging upon the interior, rose mysterious ridges of low hills, stretching away out of sight, and distant outlines of baobabs, resembling silhouettes of madrepores.
Not a breath of air disturbs the dense atmosphere; the sun, already obscured, sinks down among heavy vapours, its yellow disk strangely magnified and distorted by the mirage.... All over the sand the daturas open their great white calyces to the influence of evening; the air is heavy with their unwholesome perfume and charged with the maleficent scent of belladonna. Moths flutter about the poisonous flowers. Everywhere among the tall grasses is heard the plaintive call of the turtle doves. This whole land of Africa is shrouded in a deadly vapour, and already the horizon is vague and sombre.
Yonder, behind him, lies that mysterious interior of the land, which once inspired his dreams, ... but now, between this and Podor or Medina or the country of Galam or mysterious Timbuctoo, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that he would care to see.
He knows, or can imagine, all the melancholy, all the suffocating heat of this land. His thoughts are elsewhere now—in a word, this whole country fills him with dread.
His one desire is to break away from all these nightmares, to depart, to go hence at all costs.
Tall, wild-looking African shepherds pass by, driving before them to the village their lean herds of hump-backed cattle.
That simulacrum of the sun, which the Bible would have called “a sign in the heavens,” fades slowly like a pale meteor. Night is here.... All things are veiled in unhealthy vapour, and the silence grows intense.... Beneath the great tree it is still and dark as in a temple.