St Lukes Hospital School of Nursing - Blu Chambray Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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lie. Temple' The tropical sky, a vast blazing expanse of white heat, burned steadily above the ruins of an ancient temple, built ages ago by unknown peoples to a god that has long been forgotten. Tier upon tier of giant stones. curiously carved, rose towards the glaring sky, and great black doorways appeared at intervals, like hollow eyes that stared endlessly into the sunlight. On the south and west, far away, dark masses of jungle country stretched away into the distance, veiled under a screen of poisoned vapors. To the east, brown hills baked under the sun, and beyond them, barely visible, a bit of the ocean gleamed a vivid blue. At long intervals, a breeze from the ocean fanned the temple walls and stirred the dust, bearing sweet odors of salt air and dried grasses, and sometimes the echo of voices from a village of Indians beyond the nearest hill. old and eternally silent though it was, the temple was not dead. It lay there in the sunlight, thinking, wrapped in timeless, brooding thought, but always thinking. And it stared out towards the jungle and hills and sea with a faint, unpitying mockery,-the mockery of the changeless for all things that change and pass away. The earth was eternal, the sea beyond was eternal, the temple, like them, eternal,-and above all. glowed the burning sky with a white liame that seemed also endless. At the head of a crumbling stair, facing the east, was a doorway, and the stone on either hand and above it was curiously carved: Grotesque serpents twined and intertwined, and from among their coils stared carved human faces, distorted with pain. As the waves of heat shimmered up from the stone, it seemed as though the snaky bodies quivered and moved, and the parted lips of the victims drew back with agony, crying out against the age-long silence of their suffering. But above the doorway, in the middle of the lintel, was carved a face unlike the others. It was larger, and its expression was calm. The face was inscrutable, the eyes fixed upon the distant ocean, and the full, regular lips faintly curled in a changeless, mocking smile. The 'whole spirit of the brooding temple lay smouldering in that endless, pitiless, faintly smiling mask. A shadow appeared on the hot pavement before the doorway, and as quickly dis- appeared again, with a faint rustling noise. The face looked steadily out to the ocean, and smiled in the sunlight. The shadow came, and vanished again. Then a buzzard sailed noiselessly down and lit in front of the doorway. ,He drew one 'foot off the burning pavement and stood there, dreaming, but with his bald head tilted to one side, and a watchful eye open for business. :X small Indian child was toiling along the hot path toward the temple. Suddenly something flashed out of the doorway,--something dark, long, sinuous and shining. The buzzard was wrapped about and drawn like a tlash into the shadow. A scaly, black fold gleamed for a moment in the sun. The sound of faint l43l

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rustling came from the blackness of the doorway, then all was silent. The face on the lintel gazed away from the swift little tragedy with ironic amusement. Then, slowly, from the black doorway, appeared the head of a serpent. It stopped at the edge of the shadow and turned quickly to right and left. Then, satisfied, the snake came lazily out, till half its hideous body gleamed in the sun. Finally it lay quiet, basking in the heat . A little puff of wind blew in from the ocean. Suddenly, in an instant, the snake disappeared, slipping back into the darkness like a vanishing nightmare. The little Indian boy reached the head of the stair, rose from his hands and knees, and stood in front of the doorway, his plump little brown body glistening. He put his thumb into his mouth and looked up in the face on the lintel, with eyes that were very round and black and inquiring. Here, indeed, was a mystery! The face looked over and past his, toward the sea, and faintly smiled. The little fellow took a step forward and then stopped, and looked up again at the curious face. Something mysterious beckoned him from the darkness. He slowly took his thumb out of his mouth, stretched out his hands, and toddled forward. The face above him smiled faintly. In the shadow there was a quick, rustling sound. A queer, little cry broke the glaring stillness outsideg then all was again quiet. This tragedy, also, had been swift. Only a faint puff of wind brought from the village, what might have been, the far echo of a wonian's wailing. The giant temple mused on, towering into the flaming sunlight, pondering old thoughts that were old when the universe was still young. Again, as in the countless years of the past, it had seen the tiny lives around it cut off, fading into a mystery, ending. And the face above the doorway gazed steadily out over the brown hills quivering in the heat,--gazed without hope, or memory, or pity,-with only the trace of a mocking smile on its parted lips. H. EMLAY. l 49 l