Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/410

 inal starting-place was behind us. When, a few minutes later, this assertion was disproved, he re- mained quite unabashed. The difference between the two distances a matter of some seven miles- was to him, he declared, imperceptible. They were both "a long way," and viewed from this standpoint, they were to the limitations of his intellect indis- tinguishably alike.

At the point where we struck the Sempam River, its banks were covered by dense clumps of bamboos of the kind the Malays call buloh padi, graceful, drooping stems, tapering to slender shoots five and twenty feet from the ground, all rising, plumelike, from a common centre, and set with innumerable delicate branches and feathery foliage. The river, at this point about a dozen yards in width, ran swiftly and silently, an olive-green flood, flecked here and there by little splashes of sunlight. The forest around us was intensely still, for the hot hours of the day were upon us, and a sense of the wildness of the place and of its utter remoteness from mankind, filled me with a sort of awe. It was with a feeling akin to shame that I gave the word which was to disturb the profound peace and to set man's defacing thumb mark upon all this inviolate beauty.

As soon as they had stacked their loads, however, my men drew their woodknives and set to work felling bamboos from which to fashion cur rafts. The ringing notes of their blades simiting the hollow stems carried far and wide, awaking the forest echoes, and the bamboos creaked and groaned like things in