Read "The Wave" by Algernon Blackwood online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The boat swung out into mid-stream. Behind him the figure of Mrs. Haughstone faded away against the bougainvillaea on the wall; in front, Mohammed's head and shoulders merged with the opposite bank; beyond, the spectral palms and the shadowy fields of clover slipped into the great body of the moon-fed desert. The desert itself sank down into a hollow that seemed to fling those dark Theban hills upwards -- towards the stars.
Everything, as it were, went into its background. Everything, animate and inanimate, rose out of a common ultimate -- the Sea. Yet for a moment only. There was this sense of preliminary withdrawal backwards, as for a leap that was to come. .