CHAPTER XVI



It was late afternoon by the banks of a swiftly rushing river, a
river that gave back a haze of heat from its waters as though it
were some stagnant steaming lagoon, and yet seemed to be whirling
onward with the determination of a living thing, perpetually eager
and remorseless, leaping savagely at any obstacle that attempted to
stay its course; an unfriendly river, to whose waters you committed
yourself at your peril. Under the hot breathless shade of the
trees on its shore arose that acrid all-pervading smell that seems
to hang everywhere about the tropics, a smell as of some monstrous
musty still-room where herbs and spices have been crushed and
distilled and stored for hundreds of years, and where the windows
have seldom been opened. In the dazzling heat that still held
undisputed sway over the scene, insects and birds seemed
preposterously alive and active, flitting their gay colours through
the sunbeams, and crawling over the baked dust in the full swing
and pursuit of their several businesses; the flies engaged in
Heaven knows what, and the fly-catchers busy with the flies.
Beasts and humans showed no such indifference to the temperature;
the sun would have to slant yet further downward before the earth
would become a fit arena for their revived activities. In the
sheltered basement of a wayside rest-house a gang of native
hammock-bearers slept or chattered drowsily through the last hours
of the long mid-day halt; wide awake, yet almost motionless in the