HOTEL DE L'EUROPE, PINANG, February 9.

In the evening we reached the Dindings, a lovely group of small islands
ceded to England by the Pangkor Treaty, and just now in the height of
an unenviable notoriety. The sun was low and the great heat past, the
breeze had died away, and in the dewy stillness the largest of the
islands looked unspeakably lovely as it lay in the golden light between
us and the sun, forest-covered to its steep summit, its rocky
promontories running out into calm, deep, green water, and forming
almost land-locked bays, margined by shores of white coral sand backed
by dense groves of cocoa-palms whose curving shadows lay dark upon the
glassy sea. Here and there a Malay house in the shade indicated man and
his doings, but it was all silent.

On a high, steep point there is a small clearing on which stands a mat
bungalow with an attap roof, and below this there is a mat police
station, but it was all desolate, nothing stirred, and though we had
intended to spend the early hours of the night at the Dindings, we only
lay a short time in the deep shadow upon the clear green water,
watching scarlet fish playing in the coral forests, and the exquisite
beauty of the island with its dense foliage in dark relief against the
cool lemon sky. Peace brooded over the quiet shores, heavy aromatic
odors of night-blooming plants wrapped us round, the sun sank suddenly,
the air became cool, it was a dream of tropic beauty.

"Chalakar! Bondo!" Those jarring sounds seemed to have something
linking them with the tragedy of which the peaceful-looking bungalow
was lately the scene, and of which you have doubtless read. A Chinese
gang swooped down upon the house from behind, beating gongs and