"I have seen the strange white man walking on the narrow path before
the sun could dry the drops of dew on the bushes, and I have heard the
whisper of his voice when he spoke through the smoke of the morning fire
to that woman with big eyes and a pale skin. Woman in body, but in heart
a man! She knows no fear and no shame. I have heard her voice too."

He nodded twice at Lakamba sagaciously and gave himself up to silent
musing, his solitary eye fixed immovably upon the straight wall of
forest on the opposite bank. Lakamba lay silent, staring vacantly. Under
them Lingard's own river rippled softly amongst the piles supporting the
bamboo platform of the little watch-house before which they were lying.
Behind the house the ground rose in a gentle swell of a low hill cleared
of the big timber, but thickly overgrown with the grass and bushes, now
withered and burnt up in the long drought of the dry season. This old
rice clearing, which had been several years lying fallow, was framed
on three sides by the impenetrable and tangled growth of the untouched
forest, and on the fourth came down to the muddy river bank. There
was not a breath of wind on the land or river, but high above, in the
transparent sky, little clouds rushed past the moon, now appearing in
her diffused rays with the brilliance of silver, now obscuring her face
with the blackness of ebony. Far away, in the middle of the river, a
fish would leap now and then with a short splash, the very loudness of
which measured the profundity of the overpowering silence that swallowed
up the sharp sound suddenly.

Lakamba dozed uneasily off, but the wakeful Babalatchi sat thinking
deeply, sighing from time to time, and slapping himself over his naked
torso incessantly in a vain endeavour to keep off an occasional and
wandering mosquito that, rising as high as the platform above the swarms