Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/266

 THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK

RÊTING, the old Sâkai slave-woman, first told me this story, as I sat by her side at Sayong, on the banks of the Pêrak River, watching her deft management of her long fishing-rod, and listening to her guttural grunts of satisfaction when she contrived to land anything that weighed more than a couple of ounces. The Malays called her Krêting—which means woolly-head—in derision, because her hair was not so sleek and smooth as that of their own womenfolk, and it was the only name to which she had answered for well-nigh half a century. When I knew her she was repulsively ugly, bent with years and many burdens, lean of body and limb, with a loose skin that hung in pouches of dirty wrinkles, and a shock of grizzled hair which, as the village children were wont to cry after her, resembled the nest of a squirrel. Even then, after many years of captivity, she spoke Malay with a strong Sâkai accent, splitting each word up into the individual syllables of which it was composed; and though the story of her life's tragedy moved her deeply, her telling of it was far from being fluent or eloquent. By dint of making her repeat it to me over and over again, by asking countless questions, and by fitting what she said and what she hinted on to my own