Night was already settling like a fine coating of dust on the furthest slopes, but here where they stood on the summit of Top Hill, the last of the evening sun still left daubs of honey on leaves and bark and branches. They could see the foothills, and the villages encircling the hillside, and below them, the greying emptiness that had replaced the canes.
He pointed out to Peter all the places his brother already knew. Told him also what it was like beneath the gatherings of trees that hugged the hollows in the hillsides like the bunched hairs of an armpit; the overhangs of rocks and the far, fragmented patches of grey where the coconuts rose like tall upstanding brooms and swept the sky. He kept talking because he wanted to keep his brother distracted until the foreman's whistle came.