I had to repose for some days before recovering from the physical and moral shocks of that awful night and for some time afterwards I made my faithful little Sakai accompany me on my tours of inspection round Perak, as with him there was no fear of being lost.
Three types of tatooed Bretak Sakais.
p. [110].
One day we got as far as the summit of the Berumbum where we passed the night among some families that had taken refuge up there. I was enchanted with the starry sky, the quiet air and mild temperature I found upon that height and which made my thoughts fly across oceans and continents to the sea which reflects my Liguria. Up there the nocturnal silence is not rent by the blood-thirsty cries of wild animals, and after having been lulled to sleep for so long by their distant clamour, and especially after the strong emotions I had quite recently experienced, that profound calmness was to me so full of sentimental suggestion that instead of sleeping my spirit wandered into the past, recalling with pleasure and sadness those evenings of sweet intimacy once enjoyed in the bosom of my family, then a numerous one but now reduced by death and other events.
When at last I fell asleep I did not awake till morning.
As soon as I had got up my young Sakai servant took the pillow I always carried with me, and began to shake it, but he shrank back with a frightened cry as a little snake of about a yard long, belonging to a very poisonous class, fell from under it.
The dear little beast had slept upon the same pillow as I, perhaps to prove to me that his sort is very much maligned and that if you leave them alone to do what they like, without giving them any disturbance, they will never think of biting you.