The juggler got up. He smiled—for, figuratively speaking, he possessed a key to certain locked doors.
3
Trent was on the veranda, smoking, when Da-yak presented himself at the Inspection Bungalow, and without a word he rose and accompanied the Tibetan.
"We go to the river, Tajen," the native informed him briefly.
A walk past lighted bungalows and well-kept compounds brought them to the river—the mighty Irrawaddi, flowing down from mountain heights, past dead kingdoms and into tropical seas. A slim saber of a moon was swinging up over the hills as they came within sight of the stream. It showered the water with a wealth of silver coins that collected into a band, and, shimmering and coruscating, stretched from the remote shore to the sharply etched Kachin rafts and country-boats beneath the Myitkyina bank.
Into one of the smaller boats Da-yak led Trent. Two boatmen, both in turban, jacket and lungyi, stepped lazily into the craft, and one shoved off while the other crawled forward and plied his paddle, guiding the boat into midstream and turning its prow with the current. The smell of the jungle, warm, fragrant odors, hung in the air, and the rhythmic dip of the paddle, with the sucking sounds produced by the water as it slapped the sides, only italicized the silence.
Trent, lounging among cushions amidships, let his eyes follow Da-yak, who moved forward and took the paddle from the boatman. The latter, with a murmured word, rose and crawled toward Trent.
"I would sit beside you, Sahib," he announced in a soft voice.
Trent stared—and the boatman laughed, a sweet laugh that rippled low in the throat; laughed, and sank upon the pillows beside the man whose breathing had grown a trifle faster as he inhaled the perfume of sandalwood.
"You are surprised?" asked Sarojini Nanjee, quite pleased with the effect of her sudden appearance.