Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/139

 myself; but I have a good mind to tell you about it, because you are the only man I know who will not write me down a liar if I do."

"That's all right. Fire away," I said.

"Well," said Middleton. "It was like this. You remember Juggins, of course? He was a naturalist, you know, dead nuts upon becoming an F. R. S. and all that sort of thing, and he came to stay with me during the close season last year. He was bunting for bugs and orchids and things, and spoke of himself as an anthropologist and a botanist and a zoölogist, and Heaven knows what besides: and he used to fill his bedroom with all sorts of creeping, crawling things, kept in very indifferent custody, and my veranda with all kinds of trash and rotting green trade that he brought in from the jungle. He stopped with me for about ten days, and when he heard that duty was taking me upriver into the Sâkai country, he asked me to let him come, too. I was rather bored, for the tribesmen are mighty shy of strangers and were only just getting used to me; but he was awfully keen, and a decent beggar enough, in spite of his dirty ways, so I couldn't very well say 'No.' When we had poled upstream for about a week, and had got well up into the Sâkai country, we lad to leave our boats behind at the foot of the big rapids, and leg it for the rest of the line. It was very rough going, wading up and down streams when one wasn't clambering up a hillside or sliding down