I
The sun was sinking towards the Borneo mountains. The forest and the sea, inscrutable to the bullying noon, relented in this discreeter light, revealing secrets of green places. Birds began to rustle in the big trees; the shaking of broad leaves in the undergrowth betrayed the movement of beasts of prey going about their daily work. The stately innocence of Nature grew lovelier in a sudden trouble of virginal consciousness.
There was only one sign of human habitation in the landscape—a worn patch by the shore, like a tiny wilderness in a vast oasis. Battered meat-tins, empty bottles, and old newspapers littered the waterline; under the rock was a tumble-down hut and a shed; from a stable at the side a pony looked out patiently over the half-door; something rustled in a big cage. In the twilight under the shed a man lay sleeping in a low hammock, grizzled and battered, with one bare brown foot hanging over the edge. He yawned and opened his eyes.
‘Are ye thar, Colonel?’
Another figure, which had been crouching beside the hammock with a palm-leaf, watching the sleeper, slowly uprose. Hardly a human figure this, though dressed like a man; something rather akin to the surrounding forest; a thing of large majestic motions, and melancholy eyes, deep-set under thick eyebrows. The man sat up and coughed for a little while.
‘Whar’s the dinner, Colonel? You’ve not lit the fire yet.’
‘Fire crackles,’ said the Colonel.
The man stretched and spat.
‘Ah, you was afraid the noise’d wake me, sonny. Wahl, hurry up now, for I’m as peckish as a pea-hen.’
The man refilled his pipe from the big tin that lay in the hammock with him, while the Colonel, going hither and thither with large, deft movements, piled a fire, boiled a pot and spread the dinner. Dinner ready, he brought it to the man; crouching at his feet he watched him reverently as he handled knife and fork. At the smell of dinner a number of large monkeys came swinging down from the trees and collected outside the shed. A captive chimpanzee came out of a tub-kennel and began to ramble swiftly and silently to and fro on its chain, as if developing in movement some unwholesome purpose conceived in the hours of quiescence. The man threw them pieces from time to time, for which they scrambled and fought in a way that called for interference.