It devoted its time to the study of vril, and taught that the secret of vril could be divined by contemplating the structure of an apple sliced in half.

Every time the little gate creaks--I'm in the shed with the tanks at the end of the garden--I wonder from which of my pasts the person is arriving, seeking me out even here: maybe it is only the past of yesterday and of this same suburb, the squat Arab garbage collector who in October begins his rounds for tips, house by house, with a Happy New Year card, because he says that his colleagues keep all the December tips for themselves and he never gets a penny; but it could also be the more distant pasts pursuing old Ruedi, finding the little gate in the Impasse: smugglers from Valais, mercenaries from Katanga, croupiers from the Veradero casino and the days of Fulgencio Batista.

Expecting to be taken aback with a sharp squall we kept our eyes well to the wind'ard, for you see on this river with cannibals on the lookout and no vessels there was no chance of skulking on shore for a down-river craft.

Of what race could these people be? Their language was a bastard Arabic, and yet they were not Arabs; I was quite sure of that.