Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/110

 the rice, with a spoon improvised from a piece of wood, and the other plucked leeches from his bleeding legs, and cut them thoughtfully into pieces with his pârang, Pandak Âris began to prepare a quid of betel nut from the ingredients, which he carried in a set of little brass boxes, wrapped in a cotton handkerchief. The gentle murmur of bird and insect, which precedes the wild clamour of the sunset hour, was beginning to purr through the forest, and the Mîsong sang drowsily as it pattered over its pebbles. Pandak Âris's eyes began to blink sleepily, and the Sâkai who had dismembered his last leech, stretched. himself in ungainly wise, and then, rolling over on his face, was asleep before his nose touched the grass. This is the manner of the Sâkai, and of some of the other lower animals.

Suddenly a wild tumult of noise shattered the stillness. The Sâkai, who was minding the rice, screamed a shrill cry of warning to his companions, but it was drowned by the sound of a ferocious trumpeting, not unlike the sound of a steam siren, the explosive crashing of boughs and branches, the rending of underwood, and a heavy, rapid tramping that seemed to shake the ground. The cooking Sâkai had swung himself into a tree, and was now swarming up it, like a monkey, never pausing to look below until the topmost fork was reached. His sleeping fellow had awakened, at the first alarm, with a leap that carried him some yards from the spot where he had been lying—for the Sâkai, who can fall asleep like an animal, can wake into