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 TÛKANG BÛROK'S STORY

LD Tûkang Bûrok, the fashioner of wooden dagger hilts and sheaths, sat cross-legged on the narrow veranda of his hut, which, perched upon the high bank, overlooked the Pârit River. I squatted, smoking, at his side, watching him at his work, and luring him on to talk of the days of long ago.

Forty feet below us the red, peat-stained waters of the Pârit, banked back by the tide now flowing up the Pahang River from the sea, crawled lazily toward their source. The thatched roofs of more than a score of rafts lay under our feel, so that anything falling off the Tukang's veranda would drop plump upon the nearest of them. Nuzzling one another, and rubbing sides with a constant creaking, twice as many large native boats were moored. Each of them was furnished with a substantial deck-house, high enough to accommodate a seated man, walled with wood and protected by a strong roof of kâjang, which rose in a graceful curve toward the stern and supported the mâgun, or steersman's perch, which