The Malay only grunted, and went on looking fixedly at the river. The
white man rested his chin on his crossed arms and gazed at the wake of

the boat. At the end of the straight avenue of forests cut by the
intenseglitter of the river, the sun appeared unclouded and dazzling,

poised low over the water that shone smoothly like a band of metal.
The forests, sombre and dull, stood motionless and silent on each side

of the broad stream. At the foot of big, towering trees, trunkless
nipa palms rose from the mud of the bank, in bunches of leaves

enormous and heavy, that hung unstirring over the brown swirl of
eddies. In the stillness of the air every tree, every leaf, every

bough, every tendril of creeper and every petal of minute blossoms
seemed to have been bewitched into an immobility perfect and final.

Nothing moved on the river but the eight paddles that rose flashing
regularly, dipped together with a single splash; while the steersman

swept right and left with a periodic and sudden flourish of his blade
describing a glinting semicircle above his head. The churned-up water

frothed alongside with a confused murmur. And the white man's canoe,
advancing upstream in the short-lived disturbance" target="_blank" title="n.扰乱，骚动">disturbance of its own making,

seemed to enter the portals of a land from which the very memory of
motion had forever departed.

The white man, turning his back upon the setting sun, looked along the
empty and broad expanse of the sea-reach. For the last three miles of

its course the wandering, hesitating river, as if enticed irresistibly
by the freedom of an open horizon, flows straight into the sea, flows

straight to the east--to the east that harbours both light and
darkness. Astern of the boat the repeated call of some bird, a cry

discordant and feeble, skipped along over the smooth water and lost
itself, before it could reach the other shore, in the breathless

silence of the world.
The steersman dug his paddle into the stream, and held hard with

stiffened arms, his body thrown forward. The water gurgled aloud; and
suddenly the long straight reach seemed to pivot on its centre, the

forests swung in a semicircle, and the slanting beams of sunset
touched the broadside of the canoe with a fiery glow, throwing the

slender and distorted shadows of its crew upon the streaked glitter of
the river. The white man turned to look ahead. The course of the boat

had been altered at right-angles to the stream, and the carved
dragon-head of its prow was pointing now at a gap in the fringing

bushes of the bank. It glided through, brushing the overhanging twigs,
and disappeared from the river like some slim and amphibious

creature leaving the water for its lair in the forests.
The narrow creek was like a ditch: tortuous, fabulously deep; filled

with gloom under the thin strip of pure and shining blue of the
heaven. Immense trees soared up, invisible behind the festooned

draperies of creepers. Here and there, near the glistening blackness
of the water, a twisted root of some tall tree showed amongst the

tracery of small ferns, black and dull, writhing and motionless, like
an arrested snake. The short words of the paddlers reverberated loudly

between the thick and sombre walls of vegetation. Darkness oozed out
from between the trees, through the tangled maze of the creepers, from

behind the great fantastic and unstirring leaves; the darkness,
mysterious and invincible; the darkness scented and poisonous of

impenetrable forests.
The men poled in the shoaling water. The creek broadened, opening out

into a wide sweep of a stagnantlagoon. The forests receded from the
marshy bank, leaving a level strip of bright green, reedy grass to

frame the reflected blueness of the sky. A fleecy pink cloud drifted
high above, trailing the delicatecolouring of its image under the

floating leaves and the silvery blossoms of the lotus. A little house,
perched on high piles, appeared black in the distance. Near it, two

tall nibong palms, that seemed to have come out of the forests in the
background, leaned slightly over the ragged roof, with a suggestion of

sad tenderness and care in the droop of their leafy and soaring heads.
The steersman, pointing with his paddle, said, "Arsat is there. I see

his canoe fast between the piles."
The polers ran along the sides of the boat glancing over their

shoulders at the end of the day's journey. They would have preferred
to spend the night somewhere else than on this lagoon of weird

aspect and ghostlyreputation. Moreover, they disliked Arsat, first as
a stranger, and also because he who repairs a ruined house, and dwells

in it, proclaims that he is not afraid to live amongst the spirits
that haunt the places abandoned by mankind. Such a man can disturb the

course of fate by glances or words; while his familiar ghosts are not
easy to propitiate by casual wayfarers upon whom they long to wreak

the malice of their human master. White men care not for such things,
being unbelievers and in league with the Father of Evil, who leads

them unharmed through the invisible dangers of this world. To the
warnings of the righteous they oppose an offensivepretence of

disbelief. What is there to be done?
So they thought, throwing their weight on the end of their long poles.

The big canoe glided on swiftly, noiselessly, and smoothly, towards
Arsat's clearing, till, in a great rattling of poles thrown down, and

the loud murmurs of "Allah be praised!" it came with a gentle knock
against the crooked piles below the house.

The boatmen with uplifted faces shouted discordantly, "Arsat! O
Arsat!" Nobody came. The white man began to climb the rude ladder

giving access to the bambooplatform before the house. The juragan of
the boat said sulkily, "We will cook in the sampan, and sleep on the

water."
"Pass my blankets and the basket," said the white man, curtly.

He knelt on the edge of the platform to receive the bundle. Then the
boat shoved off, and the white man, standing up, confronted Arsat, who

had come out through the low door of his hut. He was a man young,
powerful, with broad chest and muscular arms. He had nothing on but

his sarong. His head was bare. His big, soft eyes stared eagerly at
the white man, but his voice and demeanour were composed as he asked,

without any words of greeting--
"Have you medicine, Tuan?"

"No," said the visitor in a startled tone. "No. Why? Is there sickness
in the house?"

"Enter and see," replied Arsat, in the same calm manner, and turning
short round, passed again through the small doorway. The white man,

dropping his bundles, followed.
In the dim light of the dwelling he made out on a couch of bamboos a

woman stretched on her back under a broad sheet of red cotton cloth.
She lay still, as if dead; but her big eyes, wide open, glittered in

the gloom, staring upwards at the slender rafters, motionless and
unseeing. She was in a high fever, and evidentlyunconscious. Her

cheeks were sunk slightly, her lips were partly open, and on the young
face there was the ominous and fixed expression--the absorbed,

contemplating expression of the unconscious who are going to die. The
two men stood looking down at her in silence.

"Has she been long ill?" asked the traveller.
"I have not slept for five nights," answered the Malay, in a

deliberate tone. "At first she heard voices calling her from the water
and struggled against me who held her. But since the sun of to-day

rose she hears nothing--she hears not me. She sees nothing. She sees
not me--me!"

He remained silent for a minute, then asked softly--
"Tuan, will she die?"

"I fear so," said the white man, sorrowfully. He had known Arsat years
ago, in a far country in times of trouble and danger, when no

friendship is to be despised. And since his Malay friend had come
unexpectedly to dwell in the hut on the lagoon with a strange woman,

he had slept many times there, in his journeys up and down the river.
He liked the man who knew how to keep faith in council and how to

fight without fear by the side of his white friend. He liked him--not
so much perhaps as a man likes his favourite dog--but still he liked

him well enough to help and ask no questions, to think sometimes
vaguely and hazily in the midst of his own pursuits, about the lonely

man and the long-haired woman with audacious face and triumphant
eyes, who lived together hidden by the forests--alone and feared.

The white man came out of the hut in time to see the enormous
conflagration of sunset put out by the swift and stealthy shadows

that, rising like a black and impalpable vapour above the tree-tops,
spread over the heaven, extinguishing the crimson glow of floating

clouds and the red brilliance of departing daylight. In a few moments
all the stars came out above the intenseblackness of the earth and