Tide Marks by H.M. Tomlinson — Read

It was time to leave Ryan, and make across country to the Golok. The men had made fast the loads. All was ready. I looked round that narrow well in the trees, into which the sun had just poured the morning, and wondered why I was going. What was there for me at Charing Cross? Ryan made no comment when we left him, except to express urgently a desire that I would secure for him, as soon as I got to London, Bottomley's silk hat. "If it's gone," he said, "Lloyd George's hymn-book will do."

I will confess that when near sunset, a few days later, we came out by the Golok the sight of that river was beneficial. The day had been tiring. We were not far from Nipong, where we had stayed on our first night up country. Yet I had often felt during the journey that we were getting on too fast, especially when we were in the neighborhood of the _campongs_, the little communities of Malays. Sometimes we saw a new homestead, and a patch where the jungle had been only recently cleared. The burnt stumps of the smaller trees studded the earth, and the greater beams were still as they fell, too big to be moved, and amid all that wreckage a Malay pioneer had planted his first crop of dry rice; the slender blades of young rice were curiously emerald in what otherwise was a reminder of a sultry wood near Ypres. There would be a heavy barricade round it to keep out the beasts; yet it was usual, when walking through it, to see the tracks of the smaller creatures of the forest-for they were very noticeable in the new soft earth-especially the lace-like design made by the tiny hoofs of _pelandok_, the diminutive mouse-deer. And how friendly to us those husbandmen always were! They did what they could to make our pause longer and to keep the gossip alive. They sent their monkeys up palms to fetch green cocoanuts for drink, and brought baskets of mangosteens, lansats, and rambutans. It was our folly to hurry away from such people, from such peace in life, from such good manners.