midnight
I could not make out who the people were that lived here : for the relics of some seemed quite black , like New Zealand races , and I could still detect the traces of tattooing , while others suggested Mongolian types , and some looked like pigmies , and some like whites . But I can not detail the two-years ' incidents of that voyage : for it is past , and like a dream : and not to write of that -- of all that -- have I taken this pencil in hand after seventeen long , long years . * * * * * Singular my reluctance to put it on paper . I will write rather of the voyage to China , and how I landed the motor on the wharf at Tientsin , and went up the river through a maize and rice-land most charming in spite of intense cold , I thick with clothes as an Arctic traveller ; and of the three dreadful earthquakes within two weeks ; and how the only map which I had of the city gave no indication of the whereabouts of its military depositories , and I had to seek for them ; and of the three days ' effort to enter them , for every gate was solid and closed ; and how I burned it , but had to observe its flames , without deep pleasure , from beyond the walls to the south , the whole place being one cursed plain ; yet how , at one moment , I cried aloud with wild banterings and glad laughters of Tophet to that old Chinaman still alive within it ; and how I coasted , and saw the hairy Ainus , man and woman hairy alike ; and how , lying one midnight awake in my cabin , the _ Speranza _ being in a still glassy water under a cliff overhung by drooping trees -- it was the harbour of Chemulpo -- to me lying awake came the thought : ` Suppose now you should hear a step walking to and fro , leisurely , on the poop above you -- _ just suppose ' _ ; and the night of horrors which I had , for I could not help supposing , and at one time really thought that I heard it : and how the sweat rolled and poured from my brow ; and how I went to Nagasaki , and burned it ; and how I crossed over the great Pacific deep to San Francisco , for I knew that Chinamen had been there , too , and one of them might be alive ; and how , one calm day , the 15th or the 16th April , I , sitting by the wheel in the mid-Pacific , suddenly saw a great white hole that ran and wheeled , and wheeled and ran , in the sea , coming toward me , and I was aware of the hot breath of a reeling wind , and then of the hot wind itself , which deep-groaned the sound of the letter _ V _ , humming like a billion spinning-tops , and the _ Speranza _ was on her side , sea pouring over her port-bulwarks , and myself in the corner between deck and taffrail , drowning fast , but unable to stir ; but all was soon past and the white hole in the sea , and the hot spinning-top of wind , ran wheeling beyond , to the southern horizon , and the _ Speranza _ righted herself : so that it was clear that someone wished to destroy me , for that a typhoon of such vehemence ever blew before I can not think ; and how I came to San Francisco , and how I burned it , and had my sweets : for it was mine ; and how I thought to pass over the great trans-continental railway to New York , but would not , fearing to leave the _ Speranza _ , lest all the ships in the harbour there should be wrecked , or rusted , and buried under sea-weed , and turned unto the sea ; and how I went back , my mind all given up now to musings upon the earth and her ways , and a thought in my soul that I would return to those deep places of the Filipinas , and become an autochthone -- a tree , or a snake , or a man with snake-limbs , like the old autochthones : but I would not : for Heaven was in man , too : Earth and Heaven ; and how as I steamed round west again , another winter come , and I now in a mood of dismal despondencies , on the very brink of the inane abyss and smiling idiotcy , I saw in the island of Java the great temple of Boro Budor : and like a tornado , or volcanic event , my soul was changed : for my recent studies in the architecture of the human race recurred to me with interest , and three nights I slept in the temple , examining it by day . It is vast , with that look of solid massiveness which above all characterises the Japanese and Chinese building , my measurement of its width being 529 feet , and it rises terrace-like in six stories to a height of about 120 or 130 feet : here Buddhist and Brahmin forms are combined into a most richly-developed whole , with a voluptuousness of tracery that is simply intoxicating , each of the five off-sets being divided up into an innumerable series of external niches , containing each a statue of the sitting Boodh , all surmounted by a number of cupolas , and the whole crowned by a magnificent dagop : and when I saw this , I had the impulse to return to my home after so long wandering , and to finish the temple of temples , and the palace of palaces ; and I said : ` I will return , and build it as a testimony to God . ' * * * * * Save for a time , near Cairo , I did not once stop on that homeward voyage , but turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil sunset on the 7th of March -LRB- as I reckon -RRB- , and I moored the _ Speranza _ to the ring in the little quay , and I raised the battered motor from the hold with the middle air-engine -LRB- battered by the typhoon in the mid-Pacific , which had broken it from the rope-fastenings and tumbled it head-over-heels to port -RRB- , and I went through the windowless village-street , and up through the plantains and cypresses which I knew , and the Nile mimosas , and mulberries , and Trebizond palms , and pines , and acacias , and fig-trees , till the thicket stopped me , and I had to alight : for in those two years the path had finally disappeared ; and on , on foot , I made my way , till I came to the board-bridge , and leant there , and looked at the rill ; and thence climbed the steep path in the sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a groan ; and half-way up , I saw the tip of the crane-arm , then the blazing top of the south pillar , then the shed-roof , then the platform , a blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun . But the tent , and nearly all that it contained , was gone .