Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/408

 sins of a kite, and had run ourselves dizzy and had half drowned ourselves in the river when we should have done better to sit still. The situation was sufficiently humiliating.

Next day we continued our interrupted march, and nothing worth detailed record happened for a week or so. At one village a stealthy visit was paid to me by three young nobles, whose father had recently had a difference of opinion with the rulers of the land, which had resulted for him in a violent death. His sons who had had no share in their father's misdeeds, had promptly taken to the jungle, and as they were fighting men of some repute, all manner of wild rumours as to the trouble they were meditating were afloat in the district on my arrival in it. I had known them intimately before I left Pahang on leave, and as soon as they learned that I was once again in their neighbourhood, they sought me out for the purpose of talking matters over and, if possible, of making their peace with the Govern- ment. They crept into my camp in the dead of night, armed to the teeth, very apprehensive, and ready for all eventualities. At first they were like hunted jungle creatures that feared a trap, but they ended by spreading their sleeping mats alongside mine and snoring contentedly until the daybreak woke us.

Another night I passed in a mining camp, where a crowd of depressed Australians were squatting in a couple of makeshift huts beside a pool filled to the brim with dirty water, green with arsenic and duck-