Читать книгу The Dark River онлайн

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"Enough," he said. "Rest, Naia; the breeze is coming."

The girl glanced back, then drew in her paddle and gazed dreamily before her as the old man took up two green palm fronds that had been lying in the bottom of the canoe. These he stood erect, tying the butts to the thwart in front of him and attaching a line to the stems higher up, making the ends fast to cleats on either side of the canoe. The breeze, faint at first, gradually freshened; the tall fronds made an excellent sail for so light a craft, which was soon moving quietly on again, looking smaller than a child's toy in that wide landscape, between the mountains that towered above them on the right hand and the empty sea on the left. In this latter direction the sky was clear, but inland, masses of cloud, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, clung to the shoulders of mountains whose peaks pierced through them here and there or showed in canyons of clear air between, thus giving them the appearance of fantastic height and of stretching away, summit beyond summit, to infinite distances.