In the distance the two planes are merged in one. Sky and water, both are blended in cosmic, vague, infinite depths. And the moon is very low in the sky, a great disk of red, rayless fire, hanging in the midst of a world of pale, flax-coloured, phosphorescent vapours. In the earliest geological ages, before day was divided from night, the universe must have been permeated with this same expectant calm. The pauses between the acts of creation must have been fraught with this same indescribable immobility in those epochs when the worlds were yet nebulous, when light was still diffused and vague, when the brooding clouds were vapourous lead and iron, when infinite and eternal matter was sublimated by the intense heat of aboriginal chaos. * * * * * XXIII The voyage has lasted three days. At sunrise the whole world is bathed in a dazzling golden light. And on this fourth day the rising sun reveals in the east a long line of green—which is at first likewise tinged with gold, changing to a shade so unnaturally vivid that one might compare it to the precise and delicate colouring on a Chinese fan. This line is the coast of Guinea. The troopship has arrived at the Diakhallémé outlet, and is approaching the wide entrance to the river. The land there is as flat as Senegal, but its natural characteristics are different. With it begins a region where the leaves never fall. The whole country is covered with wonderful verdure, a verdure already equatorial, a verdure that never dies—an emerald green whose vividness is never matched by that of our own trees, even in the radiant month of June. Further than the eye can see there is nothing but this one interminable forest, of an unvarying flatness, mirrored in the warm, stagnant water, an unhealthy forest whose damp soil teems with reptiles. XXIV In this country, too, there was a melancholy stillness, yet it was restful to eyes accustomed to those desert sands. At the village of Poupoubal on the Diakhallémé the vessel halted, unable to sail further up the river. The passengers disembarked and waited for the canoes or pirogues which were to convey them to their destination. XXV At nine o’clock one night in July, Fatou and the spahis from Goree took their places in a canoe manned by ten black rowers, under the orders of Samba-Boubou, a skilful skipper, a pilot with experience of the rivers of Guinea. They were bound for the outpost of Gadiangué, which was situated several leagues higher up the river. It was a night without a moon, but cloudless, hot, and starry—a night characteristic of the equator. They glided up the calm river with surprising speed, borne towards the interior on the swift current, aided by the indefatigable efforts of the rowers. In the darkness both banks slid past mysteriously; the trees, massed together in the gloom, flitted away like great shadows. Forest after forest sped by.