Large spots of rain with jagged edges began to fall on the lead floor of my balcony.
I turned into the twilight of my room and began to write.

I can still feel the tearing of my pen-point on the coarse paper.

It was a hindrance to thought, but my flow of words ignored it, gained impetus from it, as a stream does at the breaking of a dam.
I was writing a paean to a great coloniser.

That sort of thing was in the air then.

I was drawn into it, carried away by my subject.