Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/240

 a broad and shining blade. His supplies of food were to last him until the first Sakai camps should be reached, and after that, he told himself, all that. he might need would "rest at the tip of his dagger. He did not propose seriously to begin his operations until the mountain range, which fences the Pêrak boundary, had been crossed, so he was content to leave the Sâkai villages on the western slope unpillaged. He impressed some of the naked and scared aborigines to serve as bearers, and levied such supplies as he required; and the Sâkai, who were glad to get rid of him so cheaply, handed him on from village to village with the greatest alacrity. The base of the jungle-covered mountains of the interior was reached at the end of a fortnight, and Kûlop and his Sâkai began to drag themselves up the steep ascent by means of roots, trailing creepers, and slender saplings.

Upon a certain day they attained the summit of a nameless mountain, and threw themselves down. panting for breath, upon the bare, circular dramming-ground of an argus pheasant. On the crest of nearly every hill and hogsback in the interior of the Peninsula these drumming-grounds are found, patches of naked earth trodden to the hardness of a threshing-floor, and carpeted with a thin litter of dry twigs. Sometimes, if you keep very still. yon may hear the cocks strutting and dancing, and mightily thumping The ground, but no man, it is said, has ever actually seen the birds going through their vainglorious performance. At night-time their challenging yell—