Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/401

 enough work to keep the mind as fit and supple as the limbs. I had been jerked out of the age in which I had been born, out of the scurry and bustle of Euro- pean life, out of touch with the mechanical contriv. ances which restrict a man's freedom of action and judgment and cause his love of responsibility to atrophy into a world of unfettered freedom among a semi-civilized people, where nature still had her own way unchecked by the intrusions of applied science, and where men and things were primitive and ele- mental.

I had had plenty of experience as a jungle-dweller long before I look charge of the interior district of Palang; and since a knowledge of how to travel and how to live in a Malayan forest land is more than half the battle, I escaped, for the most part, the heavy troubles of which so many newcomers are able to tell such moving tales. None the less, the jungles played their pranks with me more than once, and the first trip which I took after my return to duty was packed as closely with small adventures as is the average boy's book with hair-breadth es- capes and perils miraculously overcome.

I left my hul early one morning with half a dozen of my Malay followers trailing behind me in single file. A Gladstone bag, a japanned despatch box, and a large basket carried knapsackwise, and filled to the brim with cooking-pots, plates, dishes, and miscellaneous kitchen utensils, were the three princi- pal loads. A fourth man carried my bed. I remem- ber thinking, when I was a small boy, that the facility