And only night could halt me,
And the stars in their proud parade,
They bade me look to the fray before,
And back to the kampong maid.
III
Weary at last I reached a height
That showed a fertile glade,
Where the bending trees of the river brink
Leaned out o’er a wild cascade.
And white above the waving banks
The towering giants rose high,
And tossed their heads in hauteur,
Full-plumed across the sky.
And waved their long lianes
A hundred feet in air,
And shook their clinging vine-leaves
As a Dyak maid her hair.
And down by the Moeroeng’s turning
The river rock rose sheer,
And out of the cracks the tasseled palms
Like mighty plumes hung clear.
While still, behind a boulder,
Where the little ripples gleam,
A fisher sat in his sunken proa
In the midst of the gliding stream.
Only the crash of the underbrush
Told where a hunter sped,
And I caught the glint of the morning sun
On the blow-spear’s glittering head.
Only the crack of a mandauw
Felling the little trees,
And the murmuring call of a water-fall
That echoed the jungle breeze.