Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/221

 presently, in an awed whisper. "The water was certainly boiling for my fingers are all a-frizzle, yet I felt no pain, and even now What is it, Mînah?"

His wife inspected the ugly hand which he ex- tended toward her, and was as bewildered as Mamat.

"Perchance you have acquired some magic art that drives pain far from you," she suggested.

Among the villagers of the Malay Peninsula magic is accounted so much a commonplace of everyday experience that neither Mamat nor Minah saw anything extravagant in her explanation. Mamat, indeed, felt rallier flattered by the idea, but he none the less denied having had any dealings with the spirits, and for some weeks he thought little more about the discovery of his strange insensibility to pain. The sores on his hands, however, did not heal, and at length matters began to look serious, since he could no longer do his usual share of work in the fields. By Minah's advice the aid of a local medicine- man of some repute was had recourse to, and for days the little house was noisy with the sound of old- world incantations, and redolent of the heavy odours given off by the spices that burned in the wizard's brazier. Mamal, too, went abroad with his hand stained all manner of unnatural hues, and was hedged about by numerous taboos, which deprived his life of a good deal of its comfort and his meals of most things that made his rice palatable.

For some weeks, as is the manner of his kind in Asia and out of it, the medicine-man struggled with