“Let’s put it up, then. I say, how rough your hair looks.”
“Well, you look as if you had not washed. Shall we go and have a swim?”
“Yes. Put the things away; here’s the towels.”
They replaced their breakfast things anywhere, leaving the teapot on the bed, and went down to the water, choosing the shore opposite Serendib, because on that side there were no weeds.
As they came down to the strand, already tearing off their coats, they stopped to look at the New Sea, which was still, smooth, and sunlit. Though it was so broad it did not seem far to-day to the yellow cliff of the quarry, to the sward of the battlefield, and the massive heads of the sycamores under which the war had raged.
There was not a breath of wind, but the passage of so much air coming from the eastwards during the last week or so had left the atmosphere as clear as it is in periods of rain. The immense sycamores stood out against the sky, with the broad green curve of their tops drawn along the blue. Except a shimmer of uncertain yellow at the distant shore they could not see the reflection of the quarry which was really there, for the line of vision from where they stood came nearly level with the surface of the water, so that they did not look into it but along it.
Beneath their feet they saw to the bottom of the New Sea, and slender shapes of fish hovering over interstices of stones, now here, now gone. There was nothing between them and the fish, any more than while looking at a tree. The mere surface was a film transparent, and beneath there seemed nothing. Across on Serendib the boughs dipped to the boughs that came up under to meet them. A moorhen swam, and her imago followed beneath, unbroken, so gently did she part the water that no ripple confused it. Farther the woods of the jungle far away rose up, a mountain wall of still boughs, mingled by distance into one vast thicket.
Southwards, looking seawards, instead of the long path of gold which wavelets strew before him, the sun beamed in the water, throwing a stream of light on their faces, not to be looked at any more than the fire which Archimedes cast from his mirrors melting the ships. All the light of summer fell on the water, from the glowing sky, from the clear air, from the sun. The island floated in light, they stood in light, light was in the shadow of the trees, and under the thick brambles; light was deep down in the water, light surrounded them as a mist might; they could see far up into the illumined sky as down into the water.
The leaves with light under them as well as above became films of transparent green, the delicate branches were delineated with finest camel’s hair point, all the grass blades heaped together were apart, and their edges apparent in the thick confusion; every atom of sand upon the shore was sought out by the beams, and given an individual existence amid the inconceivable multitude which the sibyl alone counted. Nothing was lost, not a grain of sand, not the least needle of fir. The light touched all things, and gave them to be.
The tip of the shimmering poplar had no more of it than the moss in the covert of the bulging roots. The swallows flew in light, the fish swam in light, the trees stood in light. Upon the shore they breathed light, and were silent till a white butterfly came fluttering over, and another white butterfly came under it in the water, when looking at it the particular released them from the power of the general.