Page:Malay Sketches.pdf/94

 I have said there was a ladderless watch-tower outside the stockade. The police wanted firewood, they were not allowed to burn the logs forming our walls, but at the top of the watch-tower there were also log walls that they were told they could burn. They were lazy, however, and did not see how they were going to get up, so they ordered Kâsim the younger to climb up, which he did as he had climbed the coco-nut tree, and, when once there, they told him to throw down logs until they thought they had enough. I watched that operation, and the feverish haste with which the man swarmed up one of the supports, gained the platform of the tower, and threw down huge logs as though his life depended on it, was rather remarkable. I gave orders that the man's infirmity was not to be used, for this purpose again, but in my absence I know that when more firewood was wanted Kâsim went up to the watch-tower for it until that supply was exhausted.

The path from the stockade to the village was in sight of the stockade throughout its length, and one day I noticed Kâsim Minor, as he walked leisurely down this mud embankment, stop every now and then and behave in a peculiar fashion as though he were having conversation with the frogs, snakes and