There had been a disagreement in the village
We look at each other blankly for a moment and then laugh. We were looking for adventure, weren’t we? Well, we have it. We shall have ample time to study the cannibals at home. Our opportunity could not be better, but we wonder—Oh, well, when in doubt—dine!
Moh is nonplussed at our decision. To dine we must have water. Where to get it worries him. He has visions of himself going to some lonely water-hole back in the jungle, with stealthy Kia Kias creeping up on him, mouths watering in anticipation, to jerk him hence. His face is positively pitiful as he looks at us and says:
“Tuan, ini tida ayer minum. [Master, there is no drinking-water.]”
We allay his fears, for we tell him that we will go with him to find it, and, taking one of the natives for a guide, we set out to find it. It is always plentiful in the jungle, for there are numberless little brooks threading the deep silences of the thickets not far from the shore-line. A hundred yards from the camp we come upon a small stream from which we fill the buckets, and Moh soon has dinner under way. As night falls we mount guard in turns of four hours on and four off. We are under constant attack while on duty, for the mosquitos swarm upon us in clouds. With the help of veils, gloves, and choking smudge we worry through our respective watches.
Moh does not sleep at all the first night, but sits in the drifting smoke of the burning cocoa husks in downcast self-commiseration. We cannot quite make out why he left happy Java to come on a fool trip like this. He thinks all Americans are crazy, for they do not seem to know fear. He keeps the coffee-pot working for us and fills the lamp once when the gasolene runs low. The mantle-lamp, hanging between the tents and the forest, throws a white glare over the camp site. We are burning it for two reasons: it lights up the jungle approach to the camp and draws the myriad insects to its killing heat in swarms. Thus we shall be warned of the approach of danger and at the same time, to some extent, rid of the pests. When on guard we keep in the shadow of a board from a packing-case placed between us and the lamp, so that the light may not blind us with its glare.
The murmur of the surf seems to whisper to us of lurking dangers and the night is eery with unaccustomed sounds that come from the jungle. As the breeze stirs the fronds of the cocoas they rasp together. Now and then a falling nut thumps to the ground with startling abruptness. Each sound is magnified by our nervous expectancy, until the night becomes hideous with sounds and the grotesque shadows the ferns cast in the lamplight move weirdly to and fro like creeping savages. More than once we sit bolt upright with rifles tightly clutched as some shadow takes on a human shape or moves slowly toward us. The rising moon casts a wan half-light over the scene, for it is in its last quarter. The scene is one of indescribable beauty and never-to-be-forgotten tensity. Even the crew of the Nautilus are crouched around a tiny smudge of their own, wide awake and silent. The air is surcharged with an electric expectancy; the darkness a malign mantle of doubt. How the hours drag, and how we wish for dawn?
Those who failed to get a package came to the dead-line and asked for one
