This man, seeing a white person enter, moved aside for her, but she saw Joss's eyes on her, and said in kitchen kaffir, ‘No, when you've finished.’

The satellites of the Georgium Sidus, too, appear to move nearly at right angles to the plane of his orbit […]

They bickered about dinner every evening.

The longue duree of river and rocks throws into relief the trivial pursuits of the dying man whose last thoughts are of a briefer time span.