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 the warm wood ashes in which he had been lying when Kûlop's coming interrupted his midday snooze.

"Bid these, your children, build me eight rafts of bamboo, strong and firm, and moor them at the foot of the rapid yonder," ordered Kûlop. "And hearken, be not slow, for I love not indolence."

"It can be done," said the Sâkai headman submissively.

"That is well," returned Kûlop. "And I counsel you to see to it with speed, for I am a man very prone to wrath."

Casting furtive glances at the Malay, the Sâkai set to work, and by nightfall the new rafts were completed. For his part, Kûlop of the Harelip, who had declared that he loved not indolence, lay upon his back on the floor of the chief's hut, while the jungle-people toiled for him, and roared a love song in a harsh, discordant voice to the hypothetical lady whose heart was presently to be subdued by the wealth which was now almost within his grasp.

Kûlop slept that night in the Sakai hut among the restless jungle-folk. Up here in the foothills the air was chilly, and the fire, which the Sâkai never willingly let die, smoked and smouldered in the middle of the floor. Half a dozen long logs, all pointing to a common centre, like the spokes of a broken wheel, met at the point where the fire burned red in the darkness, and between these boughs, in the warm gray ashes, men, women, and children sprawled in every attitude into which their naked brown limbs could twist themselves. Ever and anon some of