Half-way to the beach I came to a broad stretch of shallow water covered with purple water-lilies; three small ducks, with alarmed quacking, shot upward from where they had been resting or feeding under the bank, and vanished over the tree-tops; and a sudden commotion in the water showed me that there were many fish. Its beautiful clearness tempted me to strip off and swim about the floating garden resting on its bosom, and I was just about to undress when I heard a shot quite near. The moment after, I fired in return, and gave a loud hail; then the high reedy cane grass on the other side parted, and a man and a woman came out, stared at me, and then laughed in welcome. They were one Nalik and his wife, people living in my own village. The man carried a long single-barrelled German shot-gun, the woman a basket of pigeons. Stepping down the bank, they waded across and joined me.
“How came ye here?” they asked, as we sat down together to smoke.
I told them, and then learnt that the river ran into the sea through the mangroves at a spot many miles from the village. Then I asked about the big pool. Nalik nodded.
“Ay, 'tis deep, very deep, and hath many fish in it. But it is a place of jelon (haunted) and we always pass to one side. But here where we now sit is a fine place for fish. And there are many wild pigs in the forest.”
“Let us come here to-morrow. Let us start ere the sun is up, and stay here and fish and shoot till the day be gone.”
“Why not?” said Sivi his wife, puffing her cigarette, “and sleep here when night comes, for under the banks are many thousand unkar (crayfish), and I and some other women shall catch them by torchlight.”
And that was how I began to learn this island river and its ways, so that now it has become the river ot my dreams.
II
But with the dawn there came disappointment keen and bitter, for in the night the north-east trade had died away, and now wild, swooping rain squalls pelted and drenched the island from the westward, following each other in quick succession, and whipping the smooth water inside the reef into a blurred and churning sheet of foam, and then roaring away up through the mountain passes and canyons.