Then voices of men rose shrilly above all heavier noises,
as the ship slowly turned and crept beside a floating pontoon. The
journey together was over for Stephen Knight and Victoria Ray.
VII
A first glance, at such close quarters, would have told the least
instructed stranger that he was in the presence of two clashing
civilizations, both tenacious, one powerful.
In front, all along the shore, towered with confident effrontery a
massive line of buildings many stories high, great cubes of brick and
stone, having elaborate balconies that shadowed swarming offices with
dark, gaping vaults below. Along the broad, stone-paved street clanged
electric tramcars. There was a constant coming and going of men. Cloaked
and hooded white forms, or half-clad apparitions wrapped in what looked
like dirty bagging, mingled with commonplace figures in Western dress.
But huddled in elbow-high with this busy town of modern France (which
might have been Marseilles or Bordeaux) was something alien, something
remote in spirit; a ghostly band of white buildings, silent and pale in
the midst of colour and noise. Low houses with flat roofs or miniature
domes, small, secret doorways, tiny windows like eyes narrowed for
spying, and overhanging upper stories supported on close-set, projecting
sticks of mellow brown which meant great age. Minarets sprang up in mute
protest against the infidel, appealing to the sky.
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