Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/296

 velvet carpet. He half sits, half lies, huddled up in a wicker-work armchair, his head canted stiffly over his right shoulder, his eyes tight shut, and his mouth wide open. Two rows of blackened tusks are ex- posed to view, and a fair expanse of gums and tongue stained a dull scarlet with areca nut. His feet are on the seat of the chair one doubled snugly under him, the other supporting the knee upon which his chin may find a resting-place as occasion requires. The pull cord of the punkah is made fast about his right wrist, and his left hand holds it limply, his arms noving forward and backward mechanically in his sleep. It often looks as though the punkah were pulling Ûmat, not Ûmat the punkah, so completely a part of the thing does he appear, and so invisible is the effort which he puts into his work.

At his feet, humming contentedly to himself, sits a very small boy, dressed chastely in a large cap and a soiled pocket-handkerchief; and thus Ûmat dreams away many hours of his life. If his sleeping memory takes him back to the days when he followed me upon the warpath, to one of the dirty nights when we went fishing together, or to hours spent in floundering through the rice-swamps or trudging over the grazing grounds and through the rhododendron scrub when snipe were plentiful and the bag a big one, the pun- kah leaps to and fro vigorously, taking an active part in the scenes of which he dreams. But when mat's mind turns home again to the extraordinarily ill-kept hut in the corner of my compound, which he shares with his soft-eyed, gentle wife, Séléma, and