Chapter 7 - Page 2

verandah. "Is
everybody asleep or dead?"

The settlement was alive and very much awake. It was awake ever since
the early break of day, when Mahmat Banjer, in a fit of unheard-of
energy, arose and, taking up his hatchet, stepped over the sleeping forms
of his two wives and walked shivering to the water's edge to make sure
that the new house he was building had not floated away during the night.

The house was being built by the enterprising Mahmat on a large raft, and
he had securely moored it just inside the muddy point of land at the
junction of the two branches of the Pantai so as to be out of the way of
drifting logs that would no doubt strand on the point during the freshet.
Mahmat walked through the wet grass saying bourrouh, and cursing softly
to himself the hard necessities of active life that drove him from his
warm couch into the cold of the morning. A glance showed him that his
house was still there, and he congratulated himself on his foresight in
hauling it out of harm's way, for the increasing light showed him a
confused wrack of drift-logs, half-stranded on the muddy flat,
interlocked into a shapeless raft by their branches, tossing to and fro
and grinding together in the eddy caused by the meeting currents of the
two branches of the river. Mahmat walked down to the water's edge to
examine the rattan moorings of his house just as the sun cleared the
trees of the forest on the opposite shore. As he bent over the
fastenings he glanced again carelessly at the unquiet jumble of logs and
saw there something that caused him to drop his hatchet and stand up,
shading his eyes with his hand from the rays of the rising sun. It was
something red, and the logs rolled over it, at times closing round it,
sometimes hiding it. It looked to him at first like a strip of red
cloth. The next moment Mahmat had made it out and raised a great shout.

"Ah ya! There!" yelled Mahmat. "There's a man amongst the logs." He
put the palms of his hand to his lips and shouted, enunciating
distinctly, his face turned towards the settlement: "There's a body of a
man in the river! Come and see! A dead--stranger!"

The women of the nearest house were already outside kindling the fires
and husking the morning rice. They took up the cry shrilly, and it
travelled so from house to house, dying away in the distance. The men
rushed out excited but silent, and ran towards the muddy point where the
unconscious logs tossed and ground and bumped and rolled over the dead
stranger with the stupid persistency of inanimate things. The women
followed, neglecting their domestic duties and disregarding the
possibilities of domestic discontent, while groups of children brought up
the rear,