Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/267

 knowledge of her fellow-tribesmen and their environ- ment, I contrived to piece her narrative together into something like a connected whole. For the rest, the Sâkai people of the upper Plus, into whose country duty often took me in those days, gave me their version of the facts, not once but many times, as is the manner of natives. Therefore, I think it is probable that in what follows I have not strayed far from the truth.

The Sakai camp was pitched far up among the little straying spurs of hill which wander off from the main range of the Malay Peninsula, on its western slope, and straggle out into the valleys. In front of the camp a nameless stream tumbled its hustling waters down a gorge to the plain below. Across this slender rivulet, and on every side as far as the straitened eye could carry, there rose forest, nothing but forest, crowding groups of giant trees, underwood twenty feet in height, and a tangled network of vines and creepers, the whole as impenetrable as a quickset hedge.

It had been raining heavily earlier in the day, and now that evening was closing in, each branch and leaf and twig dripped slow drops of moisture persistently with a melancholy sound as of nature furtively weeping. The fires of the camp, smouldering sul- lenly above the damp fuel, crackled and hissed their discontent, sending wreaths of thick, blue smoke curling upward into the still, moisture-laden air in such dense volumes that the flames were hardly visible even in the gloom of the gathering night. In