An island is but the top of a mountain. Axel Heyst,
perched on it immovably, was surrounded, instead of the imponderable
stormy and transparent ocean of air merging into infinity, by a tepid,
shallow sea; a passionless offshoot of the great waters which embrace
the continents of this globe. His most frequent visitors were shadows,
the shadows of clouds, relieving the monotony of the inanimate, brooding
sunshine of the tropics. His nearest neighbour--I am speaking now of
things showing some sort of animation--was an indolent volcano which
smoked faintly all day with its head just above the northern horizon,
and at night levelled at him, from amongst the clear stars, a dull red
glow, expanding and collapsing spasmodically like the end of a gigantic
cigar puffed at intermittently in the dark. Axel Heyst was also a
smoker; and when he lounged out on his veranda with his cheroot, the
last thing before going to bed, he made in the night the same sort of
glow and of the same size as that other one so many miles away.
In a sense, the volcano was company to him in the shades of the
night--which were often too thick, one would think, to let a breath of
air through. There was seldom enough wind to blow a feather along. On
most evenings of the year Heyst could have sat outside with a naked
candle to read one of the books left him by his late father.
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