Tales of the Malayan Coast / From Penang to the Philippines

by Rounsevelle Wildman

I could hear them singing as they crossed the compound and struck into the jungle road:—

“Oh, it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy, go away’;

But it’s ‘Thank you, Mister Atkins,’ when the band begins to play,

The band begins to—”

A peal of thunder that shook the bungalow from its attap roof to its nebong pillars drowned the melody and drove me inside.

A Pig Hunt

In the Malayan Jungle

The thermometer stood at 155 degrees in the sun. The dry lallang grass crackled and glowed and returned long irregular waves of heat to the quivering metallic dome above.

The sensitive mimosa, at our feet, had long since surrendered to the fierce wooing of the sun-god, submissively folding its leaves and then its branches and putting aside its morning dress of green for one more in keeping with the color of the earth and sky. Even the clamorous cicada had hushed its insistent whir.