THE SPARE MAN Beyond the scant greenery of Heywood's garden--a ropy little banyan, a low rank of glossy whampee leaves, and the dusty sage-green tops of stunted olives--glared the river.

Wide, savage sunlight lay so hot upon it, that to aching eyes the water shone solid, like a broad road of yellow clay.

Only close at hand and by an effort of vision, appeared the tiny, quiet lines of the irresistible flood pouring toward the sea; there whipped into the pool of banyan shade black snippets and tails of reflection, darting ceaselessly after each other like a shoal of frightened minnows.

But elsewhere the river lay golden, solid, and painfully bright.

Things afloat, in the slumberous procession of all Eastern rivers, swam downward imperceptibly, now blurred, now outlined in corrosive sharpness.
The white men stood crowding along the spacious window.