'As much as ... now?'
'Differently, perhaps.'
'And my love is different. My love....'
But we'll leave Dick's amatory eloquence to the sufficient audience of Norah and the extinct volcanoes that ring the Lake. In their youth, they, too, had known outbursts of fire and passionate contortion: now cold and desolate, with puffs of cloud nestling like patches of snow in their hollow flanks, bluer than any precious stone, they stared down in unmoved silence.
All day the Mimi steamed slowly and fussily, the sun beating fiercely on her crowded deck through the thin awning. Norah lay full length on the camp bed her body servant had put up. The Mimi did not run to cabins—you shared her deck with her doubtfully Arab captain, who lounged in a three-legged wicker chair. Other competitors for the narrow space were the negro crew with their household gods, the couple of lean goats, and the dozen lousy fowls that formed the vessel's food supply.
A portion aft was reserved for native passengers, a class represented this trip by one incredibly lean Indian, with a wiry beard and a blue and white check turban. He sat on a hatch, naked to the waist, his thin legs crossed, motionless for hours. Each time that Norah glanced in his direction his brows seemed to bend in a scowl at the two Europeans.
So all that day they steamed over the Lake, whose sapphire waters were cool to the eye and tepid to the hand. Towards evening they anchored off a fishing village where the captain had told them an Arab was waiting with oxen to ship to a mission up the Lake. He had driven them from a village, a hundred miles to the south, where his father had settled in the days of the slave trade.
Norah was roused from drowsy contemplation of Dick's profile by a shout; she felt the engines go half speed and idly she watched a ragged silhouette sounding over the bows with a painted rod.
'Bili ... bili—two fathoms ... two fathoms.' Another shout, and the engines were silent. She rose and took Dick's arm as he leaned over the bulwarks gazing landwards.
'What is it?' she asked.