The song ended when night came. Life had made its sign. It was there. It would sing again in the morning. All dark Malaya contracted down to Ryan’s hut. Only that was left, except some wavering patches of gold which our fire threw on unseen trees. That Chinaman was a good cook; and those nights when we sat in undress, listening to Ryan, and sometimes to a call in the outer dark, caused me to wonder what had become of all my other evenings of the past, when these certainly would be remembered. But my easy confidence went when at last each of us took his place on the logs, for sleep, having made up the fire. Sleep was not easy. One listened. There was no sound. Yet that was the worst of it. When would the sound come? What would make it?
It was two in the morning, and I rested on my elbow and looked out. A thin filtering of moonlight was making the aisles spectral. The trees, it seemed to me, had stopped in an advance on us just as I looked at them. And what was that shape over there? Was it of the moon, or of the firelight? No, the fire was going out. I got up and put on some logs. Shadows jumped from rafter to rafter overhead as the flames changed. The head of the hornbill which was being smoked turned round on its cord in the sparks. All our fellows were asleep. The forest was asleep; or else listening. Then, far off, there was a sound, half snarl, half moan. When I looked out even the trees seemed to be attentive to that call. There was a long silence, and then it came again. It was nearer. It was insultingly confident. I had never heard a tiger in his own place before, and I lost the feeling that man is the noblest work of God; even if he is, perhaps tigers do not know it.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Alongside Ryan’s hut the stream spread out into a pool with a floor of white sand. It had a canopy of leaves. A few rods of sunlight, almost solid in their bright distinction in that shade, rested obliquely on the bottom, firm in the smooth current. And the interior of the hut, that outpost of man, with its heartening reminders of the cunning and knowledge which maintained Ryan so far from his fellows, interested me more, I fear, than could any library. I liked to read the labels on his gallipots, and the names of his books. There were a jar of Epsom salts, and another of carbolic lotion; a bottle of iodine; tins of cabin biscuits; a few photos; surveying instruments; a cheap alarm clock; books on mining and geology; and some whisky bottles, empty. Big black carpenter bees had burrowed in the rafters, and their bolting holes could have been made by mice. Companies of wasps, of a size to fear nothing, gathered round the edges of these holes, gathering sawdust; but I noticed the wasps showed the bee great respect when his ugly head appeared from within. They went, and did not stay to say farewell.
“If you meet a rhinoceros,” said Ryan as we started out one morning, “don’t take any notice of him. Walk by him. He’s a nervous old gentleman and doesn’t like to be looked at.” My friend’s rifle was of the modern kind which will tumble an elephant, but he never used it except for pigs and deer. We waded up the stream for a time, and then entered the woods, the dog buoyantly scouting ahead. Once, when he came back to us, he was a different sort of dog. It was the habit of that white man’s mongrel to murder any too inquisitive native dog. That, no doubt, was merely his snobbery. He would attack an elephant, so Ryan said, and had killed a hamadryad, the most deadly snake in Asia, evidence which may show that there is no natural association between intelligence and courage. But by the look of him at that moment he would have fled from a rabbit, for his tail was clamped underneath, he was trembling, and he looked abject enough as he slunk against Ryan’s feet. Ryan posed his rifle and went ahead warily. Presently he stopped, and stood looking at a hollow where the dry rushes were flattened. That was where a tiger had slept. To the dog the smell of the place was so distressing that he whimpered. In daylight, to me, it was of little more interest than the couch of a deer, for although I would not at night have wandered beyond the range of the firelight, after sunrise one usually has the feeling—usually, but not always—that the time and the place are man’s. The Malays, I noticed, never went alone into the woods, so my feeling of security may have been only the presumption of ignorance.
Ryan told me nothing that morning of the mark of his excursion, and I did not ask him. It was sufficient to be with him. We crawled under thorns, but did not escape every hook, and sometimes then I lost my leader and was compelled to be watchful of his track. That was not really difficult, though once or twice I was surprised to find how near a man may be to panic without knowing its silly livid face is at his elbow. One mountain stream, cascading down a varnished slide of rock where the wet ferns were constantly nodding, gathered into a font, and the drink we had there from goblets of twisted arum leaves reminded me that at home we rarely know what it is to eat and drink. The drops of water left on the waxy surface of my leaf were like globules of silver. Ryan brought out a bag of mangosteens. This fruit is nearly as large as a cricket ball, and about the color of it, when the ball is new. It is opened by pressing its thin rind, and the sections of translucent white pulp within have a flavor rather like the strawberry’s.
The Heavy Shadows Were Hardly Disturbed by a Little Oil Lamp