The Black Parrot

Perhaps he was a planter. Or a trader. Or a shell-hunter. Or an agent from one of those brazen ports where white men turn brown like bricks in a kiln. Certainly he was not a tou...

Night and Singapore. Steamy, sweltering darkness. A stealthy wind rustling mangoes and aloes, swaying banana and cocoa fronds. Song of rippling water beneath the quays. Patter o...

Lhassa Camber, having purposely risen early to see the temple at Paknam, stood by the rail and gazed up-stream. A belated moon, visible above the bow, was retiring into haze; an...

He stood alone by the taffrail smoking; smoking, not because he derived enjoyment from it, but because the tobacco fumes banished from his nostrils the smells of copra and crude...

As the boat carried her out upon the gulf she gazed across the glassy purple at the island of Koh si Chang, bulking somberly above the sea-line. In the dusk it resembled a dark...

Lhassa awoke and stared at the dancing flakes that were reflected upon the ceiling; raised herself and looked out into sunlight so brilliant that it stung her eyes; sat there an...

Morning and the dazzle of sunlight on sea. The water glittered east and west, glittered north and south, in corrugated blue. A heat-mist danced in the sun's path, impalpable as...

Daybreak and a foggy splendor. Lhassa, seated under the thatched shelter amidships, felt as though the proa was carrying her into a filmy, unsubstantial world, a world of apple-...

The white man amidships saw the same wilderness of reed-like plants, the lilies, the orchids and other poisonous blooms; saw the green-mirror pools, and the blue and black butte...