Conrad Joseph. The Secret Sharer

Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, and AP English Test Preparation.On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious
system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the
domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some
nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was
no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach. To the left a group of
barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its
foundations set in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie
below my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly,
without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple. And when I
turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had just left us
anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the flat shore joined to the
stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled
floor half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of the sky. Corresponding
in their insignificance to the islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on
each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river
Meinam we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward journey;
and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding
the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest from
the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the horizon. Here and there
gleams as of a few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings of the great