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I nodded at his words, scarcely co them The end of breakfast could not come too soon for me, and as soon as I politely could, I left the table, foolishly thinking to find fresher air outside

As I stepped out onto the deck, an inconceivable sightlow in the air The lower half of the hillside on the port side of the boat was stripped of life Every tree of decent size had been cut The raw stuainst the scored earth The reroere crushed and ged over the branches; the hearts of the fires burned a dull red The hillside scene reots Men swarmed everywhere on the hillside Souided the harnessed draft horses that dragged the stripped logs down to the river’s edge The track of their repeated passage had cut a deep muddy furrow in the hill’s flank, and the rainfall of the last few days hadinto the river that here ran thick with muck The brown curl of it wavered out into the river’s current like a rivulet of clotting blood Stripped logs like gnawed bones rested in piles at the river’s edge or bobbed in the shallows Men scuttled about on the floating logs with peevees and lengths of chain and rope, corralling the logs into crude rafts It was carnage, the desecration of a god’s body

On the upper half of the hill, logging tea’s back As I watched, men in the distance shouted triumphantly as an iave way to its fall, their roots tearing free of the mountain’s flesh as they collapsed under the tree’sof branches ceased,and fallen as they chopped away the branches

I turned aside froht, sickened and cold A terrible premonition washed over me This was how the whole world would end No matter how h for thesedesecration and devastation behind thes made of stone wrenched from the earth or from dead trees They would has, and dirty the rivers and subdue the land until it could recall only the will ofwhat they did They did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not kno to stop They no longer kneas enough Man could no longer stop od hi the only god who th to stop the and triue flock of birds flew up, cawing in distress and circling the carnage as crows circle a battlefield My knees buckled and I fell to the deck, clutching at the railing I coughed in the thick air, gagged on it, and coughed some more I could not catch my breath, but I do not think it was the shtened o down Ame what ailed me I shook my head, unable to find words to express my distress A short time later my father was at my side, and the captain, his napkin still clenched in his hands

"Nevare? Are you ill?"the world," I said vaguely I closed ht, and forced myself to my feet "I…I don’t feel well," I said Some part of me didn’t wish to shame myself before my father and the captain and crew Solimpsed was too o back to bed for a while"

"Prob’ly the stink froely "That set used to it, lad, in a few hours Stinks a lot less than Old Thares on an early , believerafts don’t block our way A ood stone was the only thing a rich man would build with Now they ood, wood, and o back to honest stone when this last strip is gone Then we’ll see the quarries bustle again Men will do whatever brings in the coin I’ll be glad when they’ve cut the last tiain"