Café Chic

Café Chic
Franschoek Agricultural Show 2009

The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land..

Joseph Conrad - Master wordsmith

Next morning, at daylight, the Narcissus went to sea.

A slight haze blurred the horizon. Outside the harbour
the measureless expanse of smooth water lay sparkling like
a floor of jewels, and as empty as the sky. The short black
tug gave a pluck to windward, in the usual way, then let
go the rope, and hovered for a moment on the quarter with
her engines stopped; while the slim, long hull of the ship
moved ahead slowly under lower topsails. The loose upper
canvas blew out in the breeze with soft round contours, re-
sembling small white clouds snared in the maze of ropes.
Then the sheets were hauled home, the yards hoisted, and
the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all shin-
ing and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short
round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of
eyes watched her low broad stern crawling languidly over
the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that
turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry. She resem-
bled an enormous and aquatic black beetle, surprised by the
light, overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape with
ineffectual effort into the distant gloom of the land. She left
a lingering smudge of smoke on the sky, and two vanishing
trails of foam on the water. On the place where she had
stopped a round black patch of soot remained, undulating
on the swell— an unclean mark of the creature's rest.

The Narcissus left alone, heading south, seemed to stand
resplendent and still upon the restless sea, under the mov-
ing sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides; the water struck
her with flashing blows; the land glided away, slowly fading;
a few birds screamed on motionless wings over the swaying
mastheads. But soon the land disappeared, the birds went
away; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow
running for Bombay, rose triangular and upright above the
sharp edge of the horizon, lingered and vanished like an
illusion. Then the ship's wake, long and straight, stretched
itself out through a day of immense solitude. The setting sun,
burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below the
blackness of heavy rain clouds. The sunset squall, coming
up from behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge of a
hissing shower. It left the ship glistening from trucks to water-
line, and with darkened sails. She ran easily before a fair
monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving
along with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous
swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men
mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint of
some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud sigh of wind.