The End of the Rainbow — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The End of the Rainbow
John Stuart Mill · en
As he did so he felt a light breeze lift him. It came from the north,
where those dark clouds had swallowed up his rainbow. A strange, weird
thing was happening up there in those clouds, and the boy paused to
watch. Down the shimmering floor of the lake, sweeping slowly towards
him, came a great army. Stealthy, hurrying shapes, with bent,
grey-cowled heads, and trailing garments, rank on rank they stole
forward, mystery and fear in their every movement. Many a time, on an
autumn evening, the boy had watched the fog start away up the lake and
come stealing down, until the islands and the town and the forest were
covered as with a blanket. But he had never seen anything so awesome
as this. The strange shapes into which the light gusts of wind had
driven the mist made them look like an army of ghosts driven out of the
haunts of night. They were bringing night in their train, too. For as
they swept silently onward, everything in earth and lake and sky was
blotted out. One by one the islands vanished; the far-off eastern
shore was wiped away as if by some magic hand. The tower of the little
Indian church stood out for a moment above the flood and then sank
engulfed; and the next moment the great host had swept over the little
sailor and he was walled in and cut off from land and water, alone in a
cloudy sea with neither shore nor sky nor surface. The boy turned
swiftly towards his home, and when he saw that it, too, was gone, he
uttered a cry of terror. "Daddy, oh, Daddy!" he wailed. Collie came
close and licked his face and whined, then looked about him and growled
disapprovingly at the weird thing that surrounded them. The boy put
his arms tight around the dog's neck and hugged him. "Oh, Collie!" he
cried, "we're lost, and I don't know where home is and where Daddy is."
It was not the loss of gold that troubled him now. He stared about him
in the greyness, striving to make out some object. The fog was so
thick that he could see only the length of the canoe, but a big, darker
mass of shadow in a world of shadows, told him where Wanda Island lay,
and grasping his paddle, he started in what he believed to be the
direction of home. He paddled until he was out of breath, rested a
moment, then went at it again with all his might. The pain in his arm
returned, but he dared not stop. And as he worked madly in his efforts
to reach home, the gentle wind was slowly but surely carrying him out
to the open lake.