Page:Malay Sketches.pdf/306

 colours fade from sky and sea, only the shore-line keeps its sheen. Then this too dies, and great white clouds, coming from out the mines and marshes like a troop of giant spectres risen in their grave-clothes, stalk slowly round the foothills of the mountain, through the Pass into the valley of the Perak River.

Here, at this elevation, the night is not quite yet.

Close around us still the jungle, but the trees are dwarfed, the boughs are covered with moss and lichen, orchids and ferns flourish in the forks, gorgeously blossomed creepers twine round the branches and hang from tree to tree. The air is full of the scent of the magnolia, the moss-carpeted ground is gay with a myriad flowers, some brilliantly plumaged songless birds flit silently between the trees, and a great bat sails aimlessly across the waning light. The shrill scream of the cicada is but faintly heard far down the height, and night comes, like a closing hand grasping in resistless darkness all things visible. The only sound to break the silence is the fitful and plaintive croak of a wood-frog.

If night treads closely on the heels of day, there is no need for regret. The darkness is but for a moment, and over the eastern peaks spreads a