Life in the tropics I take to be a placid
torpidity. During the long, warm mornings of nearly half a century, my
grandfather Titbottom had sat in his dressing-gown and gazed at the
sea. But one calm June day, as he slowly paced the piazza after
breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by a little vessel,
evidently nearing the shore. He called for his spyglass, and surveying
the craft, saw that she came from the neighboring island. She glided
smoothly, slowly, over the summer sea. The warm morning air was sweet
with perfumes, and silent with heat. The sea sparkled languidly, and
the brilliant blue hung cloudlessly over. Scores of little island
vessels had my grandfather seen come over the horizon, and cast anchor
in the port. Hundreds of summer mornings had the white sails flashed
and faded, like vague faces through forgotten dreams. But this time he
laid down the spyglass, and leaned against a column of the piazza, and
watched the vessel with an intentness that he could not explain. She
came nearer and nearer, a graceful spectre in the dazzling morning.
"'Decidedly I must step down and see about that vessel,' said my
grandfather Titbottom.
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