course the wandering, hesitating river as if enticed <ins>insistently</ins> by the freedom of an open horizon, flows straight into the sea, flows straight to the east: to the east that harbours both light and darkness. <ins>A sturn of the boat</ins>

The repeated call of some bird, a cry discordant and feeble <ins>skipped</ins>, along over the smooth water and lost itself, before it could reach the other shore, in the breathless silence of the world.

The steersman dug his paddle into the stream and held hard with stiffened arms, his body thrown forward. The water gurgled aloud; and, suddenly the long straight reach seemed to pivot on <ins>its</ins> centre, the forests swung round in a semicircle, and the <ins>slanting</ins> beams of sunset touched the broadside of the canoe with a finey glow, <ins>unwitting</ins> the slender and distorted shadows of its crew. <ins>Adown</ins> <ins>and</ins> <ins>up</ins> <ins>skidding</ins> <ins>down</ins> upon the streaked glitter of the river. The white man turned to look ahead. The course of the boat had been altered at right angles to the stream and the carved <ins>dragon-head</ins> of its prow was painting <ins>over</ins> <ins>at</ins> a gap in the banking, <ins>beside</ins> the bank. It glided through, brushing the <ins>overhanging</ins> twigs, and disappeared from the river like some slim and amphibious creature <ins>leaving</ins> the water for its lair in the forests.

The narrow creek was like a ditch; tortuous, fabulously deep; filled with gloom under the thin strip of pure and shining blue of the heaven. Immense trees soared up, invisible behind the festooned draperies of creepers. Here and there, near the glistening blackness of the water, a <ins>shoal</ins> of some tall tree <ins>stems</ins> <ins>rested</ins> <ins>on</ins> some <ins>shoal</ins> of black and dull, writhing and motionless like an arrested snake. The short words of the paddlers reverberated loudly between the thick and sombre walls of vegetation.

woman stretched out on her back under a wide sheet of red cotton cloth.

She lay still as if dead; but her big eyes, wide open, glittered in the gloom, staring upwards at the slender rafters, motionless and unseeing. She was in a high fever and evidently unconscious. Her cheeks were sunk slightly, her lips were partly open—and on the young face there was the ominous and linked expression: the absorbed, contemplating expression of the unconscious who are going to die. The two men stood looking down at her in silence.

--"Has she been long ill" asked the traveller.?

--"I have not slept for five nights" answered the Malay in a deliberate tone. "At first she heard voices calling her from the water and struggled against me who held her. But since the sun of to-day rose she hears nothing—she hears not me. She sees nothing. She sees not me....me !"

He remained silent for a minute then asked softly.

--"Tuan! Will she die ?"

--"I fear so" said the white man sorrowfully. He had known Arsat years ago in a far country in times of trouble and danger, when no friendship is to be despised. And since his Malay friend had come unexpectedly to dwell in the hut on the lagoon with a strange woman, he had slept there, many times, in his journeys up and down the river. He liked the man who knew how to keep faith in council and how to fight without fear by side of his white friend. He liked him—not so much perhaps as a man likes his favourite dog—but still he liked him well enough to help and ask no questions, to think sometimes vaguely and hazily in the midst of his own pursuits, about the lonely man and the long-haired woman with audacious face and triumphant eyes, who lived together, hidden by the forests: alone and feared.

other sitting still outside could hear the voice in the hut. Arsat said:
"Hear me! Speak!" His words were succeeded by a complete silence...
"O! Diamelen!" he cried suddenly. After that cry there was a deep sigh,
Arsat came out and sank down again in his old place.

They sat in silence before the fire. There was no sound within the house,
there was no sound near them; but far away on the lagoon they
could hear the voices of the boatmen ringing fitful and distinct on the
calm water. The fire in the bows of the sampan shone faintly in the dis-
tance with a hazy red glow. Then it died out. The voices ceased. The
land and the water slept invisible, unstirring and mute. It was as though
there had been nothing left in the world but the glimmer of stars strea-
ming, ceaseless and vain, through the black stillness of the night.

The white man gazed straight before him into the darkness with wide
open eyes. The fear and fascination, the inspiration and the wonder of
death; of death near, unavoidable and unseen, soothed the unrest of his
race and stirred the most indistinct, the most intimate of his thoughts.
The ever-ready suspicion of evil, the gnawing suspicion that lurks in
our hearts, flowed out into the stillness round him; into the stillness
profound and dumb, and made it appear untrustworthy and infamous, like
the placid, and impenetrable mask of an unjustifiable violence. In that
fleeting and powerful disturbance of his being the earth enfolded in
the starlight peace became a shadowy country of inhuman strife, a battle-
field of phantoms terrible and charming, an august or ignoble,
struggling ardently for the possession of our helpless hearts. An un-
quiet and mysterious country of inextinguishable desires and fears.

A plaintive murmur rose in the night; a murmur saddening and startling, as of the great

great was our prudence, so paint was the murmur of our great longing.

The time passed...and there were whispers amongst women--and our enemies watched--my brother was gloomy, and I began to think of killing and of a fierce death....We are of a people who take what they want--like you whites. There is a time when a man should forget loyalty and respect. Might and authority are given to Rulers but to all men is given love and strength and courage. My brother said: "You shall take her from their midst. We are two who are like one." And I answered: "Let it be soon for I find no warmth in sunlight that does not shine upon her."... Our time came when the Ruler and all the great people went to the mouth of the river to fish by torchlight. There were hundred of boats, and on the white sand, between the water and the forests, dwelt the people of leaves were built for the households of the Rajahs. The smoke of cooking fires was like a blue mist of the evening and many voices rang in it joyfully.

While they were making the boats ready to beat up the fish, my brother came to me and said: "To-morrow!" I made ready my weapons and when the time came our canoe took its place in the circle of boats carrying the torches. The lights blazed on the water but behind the boats there was darkness. When the shouting began and the excitement made them like mad we dropped out. The water swallowed our fire and we floated back to the shore that was dark with only here and there the glimmer of embers. We could hear the talk of slave girls amongst the sheds. Then we found a place deserted and silent. We waited there. She came. She came running along the shore rapid and leaving no trace, like a leaf driven by the wind into the sea. My brother said gloomily: "Go and take her, carry her into our boat." I lifted her in my arms. She panted. Her heart was beating

10

against my breast. I said: "I take you from those people. You came to
to the cry of my heart but my arms take you into my boat against the
will of the great !—"It is right" said my brother. "We are men who take
what we want and can hold it against many. We should have taken her in
davlight." I said: "Let us be off"; for since she was in my boat I began
to think of our Ruler's many men.—"Yes. Let us be off" said my brother.

"We are cast out and this boat is our country now—and the sea is our
refuge." He lingered with his foot on the shore and I entreated him to
hasten, for I remembered the strokes of her heart against my breast and
thought that two men cannot withstand a hundred. We left, paddling down-
stream close to the bank; and as we passed by the creek where they were
fishing, the great shouting had ceased but the murmur of voices was loud
like the humming of insects flying at noon day. The boats floated, clus-
tered together in the light of torches, under a roof of smoke; and men
talked of their sport. Men that boasted, and praised, and jeered—men that
had been our friends of the morning, but on that night already our enemies.
We paddled swiftly past. We had no more friends in the country of our
birth. She sat in the middle of the canoe, with covered face; silent as
she is now; unseeing as she is now—and I had no regret at what I was
leaving because I could hear her breathing close to me—as I can hear
her
now."

He paused, listened with his ear turned to the doorway, then shook his
head and went on.

"My brother wanted to show—" the cry of challenge—one cry only—to let
the people know we were freeborn robbers that trusted our arms and the
great sea. And again I begged him in the name of our love to be silent.

11

round him. He shouted: "I am coming!" The men were close to him. I looked...Many men...Then I looked at her...Tuan. I pushed the canoe!...I pushed it into deep water...She was kneeling forward looking at me--and I said: "Take your paddle" while I struck the water with mine. Tuan I heard him cry...I heard him cry my name twice; and I heard voices shouting: "Kill! Strike!"...I never turned back...I heard him calling my name again with a great shriek, as when life is going out together with the voice...and I never turned my head...My own name...my brother!...Three times he called...but I was not afraid of life. Was she not there in that canoe? And could I not with her find a country where death is forgotten--where death is unknown!"

The white man sat up. Arsat rose and stood, an indistinct and silent figure above the dying embers of the fire. Over the lagoon a mist drifting and low had crept, erasing slowly the glittering images of the stars. And now a great expanse of white vapour covered the land, flowed cold and grey in the darkness, eddied in noiseless whirls round the tree-trunks, and about the platform of the house, which seemed to float upon a restless and impalpable illusion of a thing surviving the destruction of the world by that undulating and voiceless phantom of a flood. Only far away the tops of the trees stood outlined on the twinkle of the heaven like a sombre and forbidding shore; a coast deceptive, pitiless and black.

Arsat's voice vibrated loudly in the profound peace.

"I had her there! I had her! To get her I would have faced all man-kind...But I had her--and..."

His words went out ringing into the empty distances. He paused and

But she has died and...now...darkness."

He flung his arms wide open, let them fall along his body, then stood still with unmoved face and stony eyes, staring at the sun. The white man got down into his canoe. The polers ran smartly along the sides of the boat looking over their shoulders at the beginning of a weary journey. High in the stern the juragan sat moody, with his head muffled up in white rags, letting his paddle trail in the water. The white man leaning with both arms over the grass roof of the little cabin, looked back at the shining ripple of the boat's wake. Before the sampan passed out of the lagoon into the creek he lifted his eyes. Arsat had not moved. In the searching clearness of crude sunshine he was still standing before the house, he was still looking through the great light of a cloudless day into the hopeless darkness of the world.

The End.