Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/398

 pressors, and Malayan villagers, the serfs and the oppressed. The power of the former (which was usually exerted for evil) had not yet been broken or fettered; the spirit of independence which to-day animates the latter class had not at that time been awakened, and the world into which I was suddenly precipitated an influence shot straight out of the civilized nineteeth century into a living past-was one as primitive as any which existed in Europe in the early Middle Ages.

I had a hut on the banks of the Lipis River, a single room staggering upon six crazy piles some fifteen feet in height, which was at once my dwelling, my office, my treasury, and my courthouse. The ceiling was formed by the browny-yellow thatch running up into a cone, supported upon an irregular arrange- ment of beams and rafters in which by day the big, black, flying beetles bored their holes, covering me with fine wood dust, while at night-time the rats chased one another along them, squeaking dismally.

When I looked out of my window, a little lopsided oblong of sunlight sawn unevenly out of the ragged bamboo wattle, my sight dropped fifty feet sheer into the olive-green waters of the Lipis, for the long stalk- like legs upon which the flooring of my hut rested were canted dangerously riverward. From under their feet the bank fell away in a headlong pitch, so that I lived in the expectation of seeing my habita- tion take a leap into the cool waters of the stream; and when the wind came down in the heavy gusts which, in the spring, heralded the daily afternoon