FURlMR6HST"ffiHn^sr 
 
 W^RD fflUlR 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARIES 
 
 ItHACA, N. Y. 14853 
 
 John M. Echols 
 Collection on Souiheast Asia 
 JOHN M. OLIN LIBRARY 
 
''Mimt'™M,.™.n'?,f " '^^'^ =3 romantic adven 
 
 3 1924 011 128 463 
 
 t 
 
 ^ahjLQxx 
 
 f^ Joha 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 1 1 28463 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
Books by the Jtuthor of " Further East 
 
 than Asia" 
 Novels : 
 
 THE AMAZING MUTES 
 
 WHEN WE ARE RICH 
 
 CUPID'S CATERERS 
 
 War-Timz Reminiscences : 
 
 OBSERVATIONS OF AN ORDERLY 
 THE HAPPY HOSPITAL 
 
'FURTHER EAST 
 THAN ASIA" 
 
 A ROMANTIC ADVENTURE 
 
 BY 
 
 WARD MUIR 
 
 ' More East, more East than Asia 
 There blows a perfumed breeze 
 Where giants rent a continent 
 
 And flung it on the seas — 
 Here, beyond furthest Asia, 
 
 From pain we were released ; 
 Elysian Field where ills are healed-* 
 Its glamour and its sloth concealed 
 The Sorrows of the East 1" 
 
 From the Poems of 
 
 Alvin Dai.roy Kellock. 
 
 LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, 
 HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD. 
 
 1919 
 
 \All rights ruerveiC] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OHAPTKB 
 
 I. WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE? 
 II. THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 
 
 III. THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY 
 
 IV. THE BATHERS 
 
 V. THE SULTAN OF PULO 
 VL QUEEN — AND GIRL - 
 VII. SULEIMAN'S PLEASURE-HOUSE 
 VIII. TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 
 IX. BETROTHAL - 
 
 X. THE EARTHQUAKE 
 XI. BACK TO THE PALACE 
 XII. INTERLUDE - 
 
 XIII. VIALS OF WRATH 
 
 XIV. THE FLIGHT - 
 XV. RENUNCIATION 
 
 XVI. OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 XVII. FREE AND UNAFRAID 
 
 7 
 
 25 
 
 45 
 
 57 
 
 71 
 
 85 
 
 101 
 
 117 
 
 147 
 
 155 
 
 175 
 
 187 
 
 195 
 
 211 
 
 219 
 
 233 
 
 241 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE? 
 
 Balancing himself against the rail of the poop, 
 yet within the shadow of the awning, the young 
 man in the white duck suit and the solah topee 
 helmet was inscribing — the word " inscribing " 
 suited the quaint fastidiousness with which 
 he wielded his pencil — a sentence upon a rather 
 dog-eared scribbling-tablet. 
 
 " This is to certify "(he wrote) " that Captain 
 Sibthorpe, of the steamship Orpheus, has con- 
 veyed me to the island of Pulo. I have taken 
 observations, and, comparing my results -with 
 the chart, I am satisfied that the land now on 
 our port bow is the said island. It is agreed 
 that I shall here quit the Orpheus, but that I 
 shall be called for again in one week from to-day. 
 Should I not keep this appointment, the failure 
 
 7 
 
8 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 will be mine, and Captain Sibthorpe is at liberty 
 to leave me, without further inquiry, and to 
 deliver this paper, as a proof of good faith, to 
 Dr. Levaloir. 
 
 " (Signed) Alvin D. Kellock, 
 
 " American Citizen." 
 
 This singular document, pencilled in a script 
 which was both legible and minutely dainty, 
 was then torn from its pad, and presented by 
 its writer to the gentleman designated as 
 Captain Sibthorpe. 
 
 What ironic fate had decreed that Captain 
 Sibthorpe, a cockney born in London's most 
 unromantic and respectable suburb — to wit, 
 Balham — should spend his life as master of a 
 tramp steamer cruising for recondite profits in 
 the Eastern Archipelago, it was impossible to 
 divine. As he squatted, now, uppn a decrepit 
 deck-chair, and puffed at a highly-flavoured 
 manilla cheroot, he presented an unattractive 
 figure. Obese, perspiring profusely, attired in 
 soiled pyjamas, and with a stubble of beard 
 sprouting upon his many chins, he looked the 
 last man in the universe either to take charge 
 of a valuable steamship or to be entrusted with 
 a mission which demanded the exercise of 
 honour and secrecy. 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE ? 9 
 
 Captain Sibthorpe, nevertheless — and Kel- 
 lock, in their voyage together, had soon dis- 
 covered this — ^was an expert at his business. 
 He was neither fool nor knave ; and what he 
 did not know about the Archipelago, from the 
 Malacca Straits to Timor, was not worth 
 knowing. 
 
 The Captain, accepting KeUock's slip of 
 paper, bent over it and frowned. As he him- 
 self would have said, he was " no scholar," and 
 it was his habit alwavs to frown when he read. 
 
 " Ah !" he said. The cheroot dangled from 
 his lips, but he did not remove it when he spoke. 
 "Ah! American citizen, eh? Of course I 
 spotted that, Mr. Kellock. StiU, now you've 
 put it in black and white ^"^ 
 
 He paused. 
 
 " These here American Consuls," he resumed, 
 " they're so — what d'ye call it ? — so many of 
 them everywhere " 
 
 " Ubiquitous," Kellock suggested. 
 
 "That's it. Ubiquitous." Captain Sibthorpe 
 grinned. " They're so ubiquitous, out here in the 
 East — everywhere — Borneo — Sumatra — Java 
 — ^the Celebes — can't go anywhere but you find 
 there's a Yank on the lookout for Yanks. 
 Begging your pardon, Mr. Kellock !" The 
 Captain made a gesture of apology. " Yanks 
 
10 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 we call them, you understand : all Americans, 
 you know; but I'm told Yankee isn't correct." 
 
 " No matter," smiled Kellock. 
 
 " So I was thinking " — Captain Sibthorpe's 
 mental processes seemed at last to be bringing 
 him to the point — "that there might be some 
 awkward questions from one of these here 
 Consuls if you was to disappear." 
 
 ^' But I don't intend to disappear." Kellock, 
 with an agile movement, hitched himself up on 
 to the rail, and sat there, swinging his long 
 legs. " My friend, I would have you know that 
 your alarms are groundless. For three reasons. " 
 He ticked them off upon his fingers — the thin, 
 sensitive fingers of a poet. " Item one : I am 
 thirty years of age and intend to see a great deal 
 more of this beautiful world before I — as you 
 politely put it — 'disappear.' Item two: I have 
 given my promise to Dr. Levaloir to return. 
 Item the third : Suppose for some reason I do 
 disappear (this proviso is purely for your benefit, 
 Captain, for I shan't disappear), there isn't a 
 soul will miss me." 
 
 "If you was British," returned Captain 
 Sibthorpe, unconsciously casting a reflection 
 on the international vigilance of his nation's 
 authorities, " I'd believe you. Nobody cares a 
 curse about the God-forsaken sort of Britisher 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE ? 11 
 
 who drifts about this part of the ocean. They've 
 no reason to be here, and the sooner they 
 vanish the better. But with Americans it's 
 different. An American always has a reason 
 for being anywhere." 
 
 The Captain threw off this aphorism with an 
 air of morbid wisdom. "And the reason," he 
 said, " is generally oof" 
 
 '"Oof?" 
 
 "Money," explained the Captain. "They're 
 after money. Schemes. Trade. Tin-mine 
 prospecting, or rubber, or areca-nuts, or some 
 such speculation. They're at the end of a 
 string, and t'other end of the string is in an 
 office in Singapore, or even San Francisco. 
 No ' disappearing ' for them — not without the 
 string getting jiggled and the Consuls asking 
 nasty questions, and maybe a warship coming 
 poking around. That's what money does." 
 
 " True," assented Kellock. " You're a philo- 
 sopher, Captain. Yes, that's what money 
 does." His clean-cut lips curved into a faint 
 grimace. "I speak from experience. It may 
 amuse you to learn that I once owned quite a 
 pile of money. When I was a youth, in New 
 York, I was what is called a millionaire." 
 
 " You don't say !" 
 
 "And I was a slave," pursued Kellock. 
 
12 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " Until, all of a sudden, I gained my freedom. 
 There was what newspaper headlines call ' A 
 Crash.' I woke up to find myself without a 
 cent — but with a soul." 
 
 Captain Sibthorpe expelled a stream of cigar 
 smoke from his nose. " There's some," he opined, 
 " who'd rather have the cents than the soul." 
 
 Kellock laughed. " I guess you're thinking 
 I'm a prig. Maybe I am. But not about 
 money. I tell you, my life began when I lost 
 that million. I've never wanted for food — I 
 learnt that any man, in any place, can earn his 
 food. And I'm happy, just in wandering and 
 in working and in enjoying freedom. No, I'm 
 not out for money, Captain ; you must try and 
 credit me on that score." 
 
 " Then why this voyage ?" 
 
 " Simply because the job came my way. I 
 let things happen. I go anywhere that seems 
 interesting." 
 
 "Not even armed." The Captain was still 
 unsatisfied. " I've a revolver I could lend you, 
 to go ashore with " 
 
 Kellock shook his head. " I'm not afi^aid." 
 
 " Then you ought to be." 
 
 " But>% f " 
 
 Captain Sibthorpe was silent. Presently, 
 with a grunt, he upheaved himself from his 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE? IS 
 
 chair and came to the rail and stood beside 
 Kellock. There he stationed himself, staring, 
 with a critical and disgusted expression, at the 
 line of land which lay at a distance of a mile or 
 less from the motionless Orpheus. 
 
 The sea was calm, glassily calm, and the 
 master of the Orpheus had not seen fit to cast 
 anchor. The ancient tramp steamer, her sides 
 faintly steaming with the moisture and the 
 heat, was as still as though she were some 
 uncouth rock rising above the surface of a lake. 
 An uncanny hush reigned on board, after the 
 ceaseless thump and throb of the engines, which 
 (" like a kind of prolonged artificial headache," 
 as Kellock described it) had vibrated unflag- 
 gingly ever since the Orpheus had sailed from 
 Gah-nung. Engineers and crew, even the mate 
 upon the bridge, appeared to be asleep. 
 
 Asleep, too, seemed the land at which 
 Kellock now turned to gaze with the Captain 
 — asleep or lifeless. As far as eye could reach 
 there was no sign of human hfibitation. Down 
 to the brink of the sea came the jungle — ^that 
 typical, hopeless jungle of the Archipelago, a 
 mass of vegetation so tight-packed, so tortured 
 and struggling and obscenely luxuriant, that 
 the brain is staggered at the thought of ever 
 planning to clear it and make a foothold for 
 
14 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 civilization to plant its outposts. Only at one 
 point was there a tiny fissure, a mere nick, in 
 this solid cliff of greenery ; and this, as Kellock 
 knew, marked the entrance to the river. In- 
 land there were hills ; but even the hills were 
 covered with forest. Neither upon those hills, 
 nor at the river's mouth, was there a vestige of 
 a dwelling, not even smoke rising into the air. 
 
 " What I want to know is — why ain't there 
 no settlement on this here island of Pulo ?" 
 The Captain, his cheroot dangling once more, 
 vo'iced the conundrum which was in Kellock's 
 mind. " Here it is, large as life, marked on 
 the maps — though not a trace of detail in the 
 interior, mind you : there's been no survey, 
 that's plain ; you can't survey jungle, anyhow : 
 half Malaysia isn't surveyed to this day, and 
 folks at home talk of there being no place left 
 to explore ! — here it is, this Puloj with no 
 settlement, no trade, no exports, no imports, 
 nobody in charge, as you might say. The 
 Dutch own this bit of the Archipelago ; but 
 did you ever see a Dutch gunboat stop at Pulo ? 
 Not on your life, Mr. Kellock. And I'll tell you 
 why." 
 
 The Captain, suddenly removing his cigar 
 from between his lips, expectorated over the 
 side of the Orpheus. 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE? 15 
 
 "I don't like the smell," he - announced 
 irrelevantly. 
 
 " Better light another," said Kellock. 
 
 " I wasn't meaning the smell of this here 
 cheroot," the Captain answered. He sniffed 
 noisily. "Don't you smell a smell in the air, 
 Mr. Kellock? Sickly-Uke? It's the smell of 
 Pulo. This ain't my first visit, and I've always 
 noticed it : you strike chunks of the smell as 
 soon as you're straight opposite the river." 
 
 KeUock sniffed. The Captain's cheroot, and 
 the multitudinous oily odours of the Orpheus, 
 rendered it difficult to disentangle any very 
 positive olfactory sensation ; hut— yes — now 
 that he sought €br it he found that he did 
 detect a remote, subtle and sweet perfume, like 
 that of violets, exhaled, apparently, from the 
 sea. 
 
 "Probably some strongly-scented creepers 
 in the jungle," he suggested. " There must be 
 a breeze bringing it from the shore." 
 
 "No breeze, sir, not a breath. That ain't 
 flowers of any sort, thfit stink. It comes from 
 the river water. I don't like it, anyhow ; it's 
 not healthy." The Captain spat again, and 
 resumed his cigar. 
 
 "I find it rather pleasant than otherwise," 
 javerred Kellock. " But you were saying that 
 
 2 
 
16 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 the Dutch never stop at Pulo, and you were 
 going to tell me why not." 
 
 Captain Sibthorpe turned and scrutinised his 
 passenger. 
 
 "Because they're afraid," he announced, 
 bluntly. 
 
 "Afraid of what?" 
 
 " Dunno. They're just afraid, that's all. 
 There's stories and legends about Pulo — silly 
 nonsense, as like as not — but anyway it hasn't 
 a nice name, not amongst them as know these 
 seas. Not a nice name, Pulo hasn't." 
 
 " You are cryptic," smiled Kellock ; but as 
 the adjective was evidently lost on his com- 
 panion he went on : " You say you've been here 
 before, Captain. Now tell me, as friend to 
 friend, what's wrong with Pulo ?" 
 
 " As friend to friend, Mr. Kellock — and thank 
 you, sir, for the compliment — I tell you candidly, 
 I don't know. There's something wrong with 
 Pulo, all the same. I'm an older man than 
 you, and I'm more familiar with these seas 
 than you, and I advise you not to go ashore on 
 Pulo. There's something wrong there. I admit 
 I don't know what it is " 
 
 " Probably malaria," interjected Kellock. 
 
 " No, sir, it is not malaria — though there 
 may be m?il^W£l/r When the boat comes off 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE ? 17 
 
 from the shore to fetch you, you'll agree that 
 its crew are the healthiest brand of niggers 
 -you've ever seen. It's notorious : the few 
 people who have met any of the natives of 
 Pulo are unanimous in their testimony — they're 
 unlike any Malaysians, any Dyaks, any natives 
 oi the Archipelago ; the Pulo niggers are live 
 wires. . . . And yet they don't do no trade, 
 you never catch them off the coast fishing ; they 
 live entirely inland and have no truck with the 
 outer world." 
 
 " And the outer world, you tell me, has no 
 truck with them. It's certainly queer," Kellock 
 mused. 
 
 " There's many queer mysteries in the Archi- 
 pelago," said Captain Sibthorpe. " This is the 
 queerest end of Asia. Of the East, I mean," he 
 corrected himself " The Archipelago, if you 
 take me, Mr. Kellock, is more East than 
 Asia." 
 
 " ' More East than Asia ' : that's a good 
 phrase. You're a poet, Captain Sibthorpe. I'll 
 steal ' more East than Asia ' for one of my own 
 verses, some day. Still ... to return to our 
 discussion. You advise me not to go ashore, 
 when — as we anticipate — a boat comes off to 
 fetch me. I gather that you have previously 
 brought passengers here, who have been met by 
 
18 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 the boatload of healthy ' niggers ' (as you name 
 them, ethnologicaUy incorrectly, if I may say 
 so), and the said passengers have gone ashore. 
 Well, were they any the worse of their hardi- 
 hood ?" 
 
 " I won't say as how they was any the worse," 
 ventured Captain Sibthorpe, cautiously — " be- 
 cause I never set eyes on one of them again. 
 In short, Mr. Kellock, they never came bach. 
 And that, sir, is one of the things that's wrong 
 with Pulo. The chaps as go ashore never come 
 hack." 
 
 Kellock's eyebrows rose. " Now we're getting 
 to the point at last, Captain. Briefly, you hold 
 that when Dr. Levaloir asked me to go to Pulo 
 and fetch a certain object for him, he was 
 asking me to do the impossible." 
 
 " I wouldn't go so far as to say that, sir." 
 The Captain was perturbed. " To tell you the 
 truth, I never meant to let on to you that I'd 
 been here before. Dr. Levaloir pays well. 
 (And I'm not indifferent to money, as you say 
 you are, Mr. Kellock.) He's paid me well 
 every time I brought a passenger for him to 
 Pulo, and he's paid me well for you. But mark 
 this. In each case the bargain was that when 
 I brought the passenger back I'd get double the 
 pay. If I bring you back I'm to get double the 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE ? 19 
 
 pay. Only — in previous cases, no return 
 passenger ever turned up." 
 
 ^ellock considered. " How many times have 
 you brought a passenger to Pulo ?" 
 
 " Seven times. And every time it was fixed 
 in such a way that we arrived here at the full 
 moon. Evidently Dr. Levaloir has some 
 arrangement with the Sultan of Pulo (one of my 
 passengers told me that it was the Sultan of 
 Pulo he was sent to see) -" 
 
 "Yes. I too was given to understand that 
 my errand was to the Sultaa," put in Kellock. 
 
 " That the Sultan was to send a boat down- 
 stream at each full moon on the ofi'-chance of 
 finding a passenger from Dr. Levaloir. Five 
 Englishmen, one Swede, and one Canadian I've 
 brought here for the doctor. And he paid me 
 well to bring them : the old Orpheus earns good 
 money with such passengers. But never once 
 have I been able to claim the double pay by 
 taking the passenger on the return journey." 
 
 " You seem quite certain that Dr. Levaloir 
 would have paid you — genuinely meant, I 
 mean, that his messenger should return," 
 
 " Quite certain." Captain Sibthorpe was 
 positive. " Dr. Levaloir may not be pretty to 
 look at, but he's straight. That's another 
 thing I know by my experience of the East. 
 
20 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Dr. Levalolr, sir, is— what d'ye call it ? — revered 
 by all the Archipelago, nay, from Formosa to 
 the Andamans. Just as I look askance at Pulo 
 because of its reputation — without knowing 
 why — so I respect Dr. Levaloir for his reputa- 
 tion, without knowing why. They call him the 
 Healer of Sorrows. Everywhere, in the Archi- 
 pelago, even in India, and Siam, and Japan, 
 there's a kind of hushed whisper of awe at the 
 miracles of the Healer of Sorrows. That's Dr,' 
 Levaloir." 
 
 Kellock nodded. " You're right. That's 
 precisely why, having given him my v^ord, I say 
 to you, Captain, that — well, you'll earn the 
 double pay by taking me on the return journey." 
 
 " I should mention," said the Captain, " that 
 there have been return passengers. Dr. Levaloir 
 doesn't always charter the Orpheus, you see, sir. 
 My old chum Carnegie, of the Pearl, took a pas- 
 senger to Pulo for the doctor no less than three 
 times, to and from. He was a Yank — I mean 
 an American — this passenger of Carnegie's ; 
 a grand, upstanding fellow, Carnegie said, clean 
 and wholesome like yourself, Mr. Kellock. 
 His name was Van Duysen. But the fourth 
 voyage that Carnegie took him to Pulo, this 
 Van Duysen never reappeared. Gone. Never 
 a word. Carnegie was annoyed at having to 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE? SI 
 
 go back to Gah-nung without his passenger, 
 and not to get the double pay, as per contract ; 
 but he said his annoyance was nothing to the 
 doctor's. When Carnegie went up to Dr. 
 Levaloir's place and told him Van Duysen had 
 failed for the usual appointment and was lost, 
 the doctor (he said) absolutely wrung his hands 
 with grief. ' My God !' he kept exclaiming, 
 ' my God ! Another fine lad fallen ! That 
 accursed temptation !' And then he kept 
 muttering some stuff — Carnegie didn't rightly 
 understand it—- about ' Lotus latid,' and some- 
 thing about a lost 'elixir,' whatever that 
 may be." 
 
 KeUock knitted his brows as he listened to 
 the Captain. " You interest me extraordinarily. 
 I'm as much in the dark as you are. There's 
 some stuff, I don't know what, that I'm to fetch 
 back from the Sultan of Pulo to the doctor. I 
 was assured that it was something beneficial to 
 those hordes of poor sick wretches whom Dr. 
 Levaloir is healing. That was good enough 
 for me. I said I'd fetch it. And I'm going to 
 fetch it." 
 
 The two men were silent for a space. Their 
 shadows had lengthened, and were now visible 
 upon the unwrinkled surface of the pavement 
 of the sea, rising above the massive shadow of 
 
22 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 the hull of the Orpheus, between it and the 
 narrower shadow of the awning above their 
 heads. The sun was sinking and its level rays 
 had penetrated beneath the awning. Its flat, 
 reddish illumination fell, too, upon the forests 
 of the island, tinging their dank foliage with a 
 hue as of a delicate lacquering of gold. 
 
 " Sun '11 be gone in half an hour," observed 
 the Captain. " The Sultan's boat will be here 
 by then. Funny thing, it always turns up at 
 sunset— so seemingly the journey upstream 
 must be made through the night. FuU'moon, of 
 course — but I never heard before of any tribe 
 hereabouts that wasn't afraid of the nights. 
 Pulo's contrary to all Archipelago experience, 
 every way." 
 
 " The more reason to investigate. Still, if 
 you're so pessimistic, Captain, and if those 
 
 Consuls weigh upon your mind " Kellock 
 
 took from Captain Sibthorpe's grubby fingers 
 (where it was still clasped) the document which 
 he had recently composed, and at the foot of it 
 he wrote : 
 
 " P. S.— Against Captain Sibthorpe's advice — 
 most disinterestedly offered — I am now going 
 ashore on Pulo. 
 
 "A. D. K." 
 
WHAT LIES WITHIN THE JUNGLE? 23 
 
 Captain Sibthorpe perused this addendum, 
 folded the paper, and thrust it into a pocket- 
 book which he produced from the recesses of 
 his pyjamas. Then he held out his hand. 
 
 "Good-bye," quoth he, dryly. "Sorry to 
 lose you, Mr. Kellock." 
 
 The two men shook hands. Even as they 
 did so there was a sound of plaintive singing 
 across the water, and the plash of paddles. 
 
 "Here they come," said the Captain. 
 
 Kellock, looking landward, saw that a large 
 low boat, rowed by some dozen or more dark- 
 skinned men, had detached itself from the 
 jungle coast and was skimming over the sea 
 towards the Orpheus. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE HALF-CASTE OE GAH-NUNG 
 
 " No luggage ?" asked Captain Sibthorpe. 
 
 " Nothing but this knapsack." Kellock had 
 slung a canvas bag over his shoulder. "Shav- 
 ing tackle, one clean duck suit, and a wad of 
 manuscript poems : that's all I travel with 
 nowadays." 
 
 " Quinine ?" 
 
 " Fever never touches me." 
 
 " Sure you won't borrow my shooter V 
 
 "It's a rule of mine never to carry firearms. 
 I reckon they're a sign of fear. And as I'm not 
 afraid . . . Besides," Kellock added whimsically, 
 " I have a pair of fists," 
 
 The Captain shrugged his shoulders . ' ' Well, 
 the boat's alongside, and the - ladder's been 
 lowered for you. To-day's Monday. I'll be 
 back here with the Orpheus on Sunday next." 
 
 " Right. Sunday. I won't keep you waiting. 
 Au re voir." 
 
 25 
 
26 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Kellook moved to the head of the ladder. 
 At its foot lay the loug, narrow boat — a 
 modified sampan in type — which had come to 
 take him ashore : a not ungraceful craft, faintly 
 reminiscent, in its curved lines and high prow 
 and stern, of a gigantic Venetian gondola. Its 
 rowers did not sit upon benches": they stood 
 upright to manipulate their paddles. Singu- 
 larly frieze-like they looked, the double rank of 
 them, now rigid at their posts ; for each man 
 wore a white tunic, clasped at the waist with a 
 sash, and falling about half-way down the 
 thigh. Arms, and the lower part of the legs, 
 and the feet, were bare : the skin glistened like 
 polished rosewood. Yes, there was no denying 
 that, as Captain Sibthorpe had prophesied, 
 these were " healthy niggers " — and (what was 
 still more surprising), exquisitely clean, both as 
 to their persons and their scanty but sensible 
 attire. If these were fair specimens of the Pulo 
 native, the island must be more sophisticated 
 than its external aspect would lead the casual 
 voyager to suppose. 
 
 In the stern of the sampan one figure was 
 seated — an older man, evidently in command, 
 and different in appearance from his crew. As 
 Kellock descended the ladder, this individual 
 rose to receive him. 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 27 
 
 " Sultan of Pulo he send me," he announced, 
 speaking a pidgin - English. " You from 
 Doctor? You got proof?' The respectful 
 salaam with which he began and ended his 
 sentence contradicted the apparent curtness of 
 its grammatical structure. 
 
 " Yes, I've got the proof all right," said 
 Kellock. 
 
 ".Please show" — this with another salaam. 
 
 KeUock pulled from his pocket the letter 
 which he had brought. The Sultan's repre- 
 sentative glanced only at the envelope's seal, 
 jthen handed it back. 
 
 " True proof," he pronounced. " Give letter 
 to Sultan when come there. Please to enter." 
 He indicated the stern of the boat, where 
 cushions had been arranged to form a comfort- 
 able lounging-place. 
 
 KeUock stepped on board and sat down ; and 
 promptly, at a word of command, the figures of 
 the rowers came to life and the paddles were 
 plunged into the water. With a surprising 
 swiftness the boat darted from under the tail 
 flank of the Orpheus. 
 
 Looking back, Kellock waved a farewell to 
 that uncouth but friendly vessel. Even as he 
 gazed he saw the ladder hauled up and heard 
 the engine-room bell tinkle. The Captain had 
 
28 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 mounted the bridge ; his hand was on the 
 telegraph. Beneath the stern the screw com- 
 menced to revolve, like some hidden monster 
 agonising in the depths which, a moment before, 
 had been so peaceful, furiously threshing the 
 ocean into a rage of bubbles and spume which 
 soiled the sea's purity. The Orpheus had begun 
 to move, a black silhouette against the magnifi- 
 cence of the western heavens. Presently she 
 was naught but a speck athwart the crimson 
 ball of the sun, now poised upon the horizon 
 line. Kellock was still gazing after her when, 
 quite abruptly, a fringe of palms slid into his 
 line of vision and intervened. Only then did he 
 awake from his reverie and become aware that 
 he had entered the mouth of the river. 
 
 With sombre suddenness, as twilight fell, the 
 jungle engulfed the sampan and its rhythmic 
 rowers. The river, at first a hundred yards or 
 more in width, soon narrowed to fifty or less, 
 curving so acutely in its course that the sea was 
 lost to sight as though shut off by a moving 
 screen. This screen was composed of impene- 
 trable vegetation : trees and creepers of every 
 sort grew to the bank's edge, their twisted roots 
 rising straight from the water. There was 
 something terrible, something relentless and 
 insane, in the opulent waste of tree life and 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 29 
 
 of plant life which the mere solidity of such a 
 forest implied. Animal life of a sort could no 
 doubt exist, insect life certainly would teem, 
 bird life might find room for itself ; but vegetable 
 life, in the appalling struggle for light and air, 
 must die, strangled by reason of its own 
 fecundity. And indeed at every turn of the 
 stream Kellock noticed great trees, fallen and 
 rotting, often loaded with the blossoms of the 
 parasites which had slain theni. 
 
 He spoke at last to the man who, crouched 
 at his feet, was directing the rowers. 
 
 "What is the name of this river, eh ?" 
 
 "River name ?" The individual addressed did 
 not conceal the fact that he, had been waiting 
 to be spoken to and was eager to open a 
 conversation. " Biver no name. Just river." 
 
 " It's simply called The River. I see. And 
 is i/he Sultan's place far up the river ?" 
 
 " At top of river, Sultan's place. Mountain 
 there." 
 
 " How long shall we take ?" 
 
 *' AH night, all day^ all night." 
 
 "Hum! Thirty-six hours. Quicker on the 
 return journey, I presume, if the current is fast." 
 
 " Return journey ?" The speaker's eyes 
 fastened themselves on Kellock with a curious 
 expression, " Pownstream very fast go. See !" 
 
so FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 But Kellock had already seen. The steering 
 of the boat, first edging towards one bank and 
 then under the other's shelter — the straining of 
 the rowers whenever they made a crossing — had 
 indicated clearly that the central current was a 
 force to be avoided. Even in the falling dark- 
 ness its swirling eddies were visible, oily but 
 vanishing and re-forming with a speed which 
 showed their strength, 
 
 " Me steer upstream. No steer downstream," 
 his informant added. 
 
 " The current does the job downstream, eh ? 
 Very convenient. I mustn't miss the steamer 
 when I come back." 
 
 Once again Kellock's companion eyed him, 
 and this time his visage was unconcealedly 
 sceptical. It was a rather unpleasant visage, 
 too : craftier, less dignified, than those of the 
 native rowers. This man, it was plain, came of 
 a different stock : his skin was yellowish like 
 that of a Chinaman, his face was seamed and sly, 
 his mouth almost toothless, his cheeks devoid of 
 hair. Kellock experienced an unreasoning sensa- 
 tion less of dislike than of contempt as he 
 examined this guide of his ; but in pursuance of 
 his invariable custom he encouraged the creature 
 to be friendly and to talk. 
 
 He learnt little that was enlightening. As 
 darkness fell and the stars came out — soon to 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 81 
 
 be dimmed by a gorgeous tropic moon — the 
 half-caste chattered, in staccato pidgin, about 
 himself. His name, it transpired, was Saumarez : 
 in the distant past some ancestor of his, a 
 Portuguese, had contracted a misalliance with 
 a woman of heaven knows what local tribe — 
 and this cringing, unsavoury freak was one of 
 the results. But Saumarez was very proud of his 
 European name and of that streak of Western 
 blood which tinged his veins : proud, likewise, 
 of the circumstance that he had not always been 
 in Pulo — he had travelled, had seen Penang 
 and Singapore, and in those cosmopolitan resorts 
 had learnt his smattering of English. 
 
 " Then why did you settle in Pulo ?" Kellock 
 inquired at last. 
 
 Saumarez turned away — it almost seemed as 
 though to hide a smile. " Pulo nice place," he 
 said evasively. " Pulo happy island." 
 
 Kellock, his spirit oppressed by the imminence 
 of the jungle, aU the blacker by reason of the 
 dazzling disc of the moon, which now hung 
 above them like a lamp, could not concur in 
 this statement. " Happy " was the last term 
 which he would have thought of applying to 
 such portions of Pulo as he had, so far, been 
 privileged to see. Rather it seemed as though 
 a curse brooded over the land. 
 
82 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Nevertheless, "Pulo happy," Saumarez re- 
 iterated, and then sighed — a sigh of languid, 
 almost lackadaisical contentment. ' ' Me glad get 
 back." He spoke as though his journey to the 
 sea, to meet the Orpheus, had been, for him, an 
 unwelcome interlude. 
 
 Kellock pursued the topic no further. He 
 relapsed upon his cushions and surveyed the 
 fathomless firmament, allowing himself to be 
 agreeably mesmerised by its immensity and the 
 flawless moon which blazed — " blazed " was the 
 verb he could not resist — in its midst. Pulo, as 
 Captain Sibthorpe had said, was a mystery, and 
 Kellock, for the nonce, was content to leave it 
 at that. The solution of the mystery would 
 come in due course : it was, to be sure, obviously 
 hastening towards him with every stroke of the 
 paddles. 
 
 The wanderings of Alvin Dalroy Kellock, ever 
 since he found freedom, had been an Odyssey ; 
 but this promised perhaps to be the strangest 
 of the many strange adventures which had 
 befallen him. And it had come about with 
 complete unexpectedness. Reposing, half 
 drowsing, upon his cushions, lulled by the 
 movement of the boat, and the occasional songs 
 of its oarsmen, Kellock reviewed the incidents 
 which had led to this journey. 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG S3 
 
 He remembered that, at the moment when 
 he had received Dr. Levaloir's summons, he had 
 been shaving. It was early morning : he stood 
 at the window of his room in the cheap sailors' 
 boarding - house where he had slept, and 
 examined his face in the morsel of broken mirror 
 which was fixed by a nail to the wall. Outside 
 the window lay the noisy streets and mud walls 
 of the city of Gah-nung — one of the greatest 
 seaports of the peninsula. Fate h ad cast Kellock 
 ashore here on the previous afternoon ; fate 
 might guide him thence to-morrow — he did not 
 care : it had been pleasant to feel dry land 
 beneath his feet after months afloat, interesting, 
 also, to explore this little-known but populous 
 hive of industry, where India, China, Burmah, 
 Siam and Malaysia met and intermingled in a 
 multicoloured maze of traffickings. 
 
 Kellock, then, had finished shaving, and, in 
 the broken mirror, inspected the result. He 
 saw, reflected in the glass, a lean, bronzed face 
 *nd limpid blue eyes ; above the eyes a care-free 
 brow ; above the brow a mass of raven-black 
 hair — ^raven-black all but one flowing lock, 
 brushed upward from the forehead, a lock of 
 startlingly silver- white. 
 
 In his college days KeUock had been reckoned 
 the comeliest youngster of his year. Now, 
 
84 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 maturer, he was a man who attracted attention 
 wherever he went. He was tall of stature, and 
 his spareness would have been described as lanky 
 were it not for the lithe ease of all his movements. 
 He walked with a spring, yet not jerkily ; his 
 arms, with muscles like cords, were capable of 
 enormous exertion, yet his hands could be as 
 gentle as a child's. An aquiline, clear-cut 
 profile stamped his nationality ; but the unique 
 feature was the silver plume fronting the other- 
 wise uniformly ebon mass of his hair. 
 
 Kellock apprehended these details not at all 
 as he looked at himself in the mirror. He was 
 unconscious of his own appearance. All that 
 concerned him was to observe whether his shave 
 had been efficiently performed. Satisfied on this 
 point, he had just dried his chin and stropped 
 his razor, when there was a knock at the door. 
 
 The man who entered in response to his call 
 of " Come in I" was, as he afterwards learnt, no 
 less a person than the famous Dr. Levaloir ; but 
 all that Kellock beheld, in the stranger, was a 
 diminutive, elderly, extremely pock-marked half- 
 caste, clad in semirEuropean clothes and, from 
 his hat to his shoes, exhibiting a dusty shabbi- 
 ness which gave the impression that the sole 
 object of his visit must be to borrow money — or, 
 worse still, offer to lend it. 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 35 
 
 "Mr. Kellock?" 
 
 " That is my name." 
 
 " Pardon the intrusion." The little half-caste 
 spoke perfect English, but with a slight burr. 
 " I have come to ask a favour of you — a favour 
 so urgent that I must throw myself upon your 
 mercy without any apologies." 
 
 The opening did not promise well. " Please 
 explain," Kellock said stiflBy. His blue eyes 
 were hard ; but, as they met those of the half- 
 caste, they softened a trifle. For the half-caste's 
 eyes, though unhealthily jaundiced in the whites, 
 red-rimmed and unpleasing, did not flinch before 
 the young American's gaze ; and in their depths, 
 on a sudden, he seemed to detect a strange 
 nobility, pathetic yet courageous. 
 
 " You are a newcomer here, and therefore do 
 not know me. My name is Levaloir. I am a 
 doctor. There are certain diseases, peculiar to 
 the East, the study of which has been my life 
 work. The East, Mr. KeUock, is fuU of sorrows. 
 It is my task to try to alleviate some of those 
 sorrows. I myself am a victim — and God has 
 put it in my heart to pity my fellow- victims. 
 I have come to you because I think you too may 
 share my pity and may be willing to do me 
 and my patients a service — I may say, an in- 
 calculable service." 
 
36 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " Why do you assume that I am capable of 
 pity, and how do you know my name — or, 
 indeed, anything whatever about me ?" 
 
 "Last night," answered Dr. Levaloir, "you 
 found yourself involved in a street quarrel. You 
 knocked a man down — an Arab." 
 
 Kellock assented. " He had maltreated a 
 woman — one of those unfortunates in a sing- 
 song saloon : he insulted her and I knocked him 
 down." 
 
 " I happened to be passing. After you 
 knocked the man down an angry crowd gathered, 
 threatening you. You were apparently un- 
 armed, but you strode through them and they 
 shrank back. It was admirable." 
 
 " It was nothing." 
 
 "It is not nothing to have pity for the 
 oppressed, and to own a heart devoid of fear," 
 said Dr. Levaloir. " I saw you beneath a lamp : 
 I saw your face, your perfect calm, your clear 
 eyes. And it came to me that you were the 
 man for whom I had been searching in vain. I 
 caused inquiries to be made — you were followed 
 — thus I learnt your name and the whereabouts 
 of your lodging. So now I have come to put a 
 proposition before you, Mr. Kellock." 
 
 Thereafter the little half-caste had expounded 
 a singular — and in parts puzzling — proposal. 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 37 
 
 It had occupied a considerable time, and its 
 exposition had not taken place wholly in 
 Kellock's room. For presently, when Kellock's 
 interest had been aroused. Dr. Levaloir had 
 conducted him to his own house — a large 
 building, faced with crumbling stucco, and 
 surrounding a courtyard which was thronged 
 with the saddest congregation of human wreck- 
 age, men, women, and even children, which 
 Kellock had ever seen. These people were the 
 doctor's patients, waiting to consult him ; and 
 as the little half-caste walked through their 
 midst, to reach an inner door (the door of his 
 laboratory), Kellock witnessed a profoundly 
 moving spectacle. The entire crowd uprose and, 
 with bowings and gesticulations and cries which 
 would have been grotesquely funny if they had 
 not been so tragically sincere, blessed the 
 physician as he passed, and prayed him to heal 
 them — exhibiting, at the same time, a harrowing 
 array of wounds, sores, emaciated limbs, and 
 withered hands. 
 
 Dr. Levaloir, closing his laboratory door upon 
 this woeful vision, turned to Kellock. 
 
 " Now you understand," he said. 
 
 Kellock had truly understood — and his 
 shrewd Western mind had grasped a feature of 
 the affair upon which the half-caste had not 
 
S8 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 touched. It was manifest that Dr. Levaloir's 
 healing arts were devoted to the very poor : 
 there was no "money" in that ragged crew in 
 the courtyard. It might be that there were 
 wealthier clients ; but even if so, the doctor 
 plainly upheld the traditions of his profession — 
 and as the specialists of America and Europe 
 give priceless services free to slum hospitals, so 
 he gave his specialism (whatever that might 
 consist of) to the pauper exactly as to the prince. 
 
 Scientific apparatus, microscopes, electric 
 batteries, bacteria culture plates, a steriliser, 
 and so forth, were the ftirnishings of the room 
 into which Kellock had been ushered. Through 
 an inner portal he had a glimpse of another 
 laboratory, where a couple of dayk-skinned be- 
 spectacled young students, apparently Hindus, 
 were earnestly working with chemicals and test- 
 tubes. Dr. Levaloir spoke to them, then closed 
 this inner portal and came back to Kellock. 
 
 " The East is full of sorrows." Mournfully 
 he reiterated the phrase he had used before. 
 " Out there in the courtyard you saw an 
 epitome of one of the chief of those sorrows. 
 Did you remark anything distinctive about 
 that throng, Mr. Kellock ?" 
 
 " They all seemed sad." 
 
 " They have reason to be, poor souls ! ' The 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 39 
 
 sins of the fathers ' — what an awful curse ! I 
 too labour beneath it. You have but to look at 
 me to guess my nation — that is, no nation. I 
 am a half-caste : my father a roving French- 
 man who came East . . . and went away again, 
 leaving me as the memento of a momentary 
 passion. Mr. Kellock, if you had my experience 
 you would only have needed to cast one glance 
 at those people in the courtyard to perceive 
 that they too are all of them . . . mixed breed. 
 
 " Nature forbids, I don't know why, that 
 Europe and Asia should intermarry — or at any 
 rate that certain of their races should inter- 
 marry, especially the Latins and the tribes of 
 this particular corner of the continent. Nature 
 curses the impure blood which results : not 
 always, but nearly always. A febrile, weak 
 type of Eurasian, lower in type than the Indian 
 Eurasian, a prey to unaccountable and hideous 
 diseases — he is the outcome of these evil 
 matings. And yet it should not be so." The 
 doctor was reflective. " There have been 
 startling exceptions, atavistic phenomena. If 
 the best of Europe and the best of Asia could be 
 mated, what a homo sapiens we might behold !" 
 
 He mused. " Alas ! it is not the right kind of 
 white man who elects to mate with an Asiatic 
 woman in this region. You have seen the 
 
40 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 scum who loaf about our ports . They are not fit 
 fathers of a race. Their loves are casual, their 
 blood impure ; spiritually and physically and 
 intellectually they are outcasts, and their 
 offspring doubly outcasts — a mongrel race, 
 
 " Mongrels !" He emphasised the word 
 bitterly. "They die like flies, they breed like 
 flies. And my life is dedicated to them : I am 
 vowed to find out how to save them, to wrest 
 from Nature the secret of their failure, to find 
 its cure, to turn this vast waste of life into a 
 blessing. Meanwhile I study their diseases and 
 alleviate their woes where I can. I am to them 
 a magician, for chance has given me power to 
 exorcise certain of their plagues. But, all the 
 time, I am secretly pursuing a higher aim — 
 not the curing but the prevention of the iUs to 
 which this interbreeding has laid us open. 
 And when I reach my goal, the mating of 
 Europe and Asia may be a thing wonderful and 
 beautiful — the repopulation of the earth with 
 races finer and stronger and less selfish than 
 any which now exist." 
 
 He spoke, for a space, elaborating his thesis. 
 Kellock could not tell whether it was an idle 
 dream or the vision of a seer. But of its 
 singleness of purpose and its nobility there 
 could be no question. And — dream or no dream 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 41 
 
 — the practical side appealed to him: the 
 solid fact that Dr. Levaloir was lifting a load of 
 grief from hosts of precisely those people whom 
 a callous world thinks most contemptible. In 
 the day which followed, Kellock watched the 
 physician at work — admired his tenderness and 
 his skill, and, not once but a score of times, saw 
 him refuse the pittance of money which some 
 grateful patient would have pressed upon his 
 acceptance. 
 
 That evening he slept at the doctor's house, 
 and in the cool of the early dawn which 
 followed he and his host held a consultation. 
 
 " You have told me," Dr. Levaloir said, " that 
 you are untrammelled by any ties. You have 
 told me your philosophy, Mr. Kellock, which is 
 (though you do not know it) an ancient one, 
 and which is summed up in the affirmation, ' I 
 am Free, and I am Unafraid.' Your blood is 
 pure, I see your eyes are clear, I see that you 
 are clean of breed. Only a man who is clean of 
 breed and who resists temptation can achieve 
 for me and for my stricken ones the service we 
 require. There is an errand to be done for us : 
 a certain drug, a priceless drug, to be fetched 
 from a certain place. I myself cannot go — I am 
 not clean of breed and the place is death to 
 such a one as I am. To you it will threaten no 
 
42 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 dangers — if you bear in mind what I have told 
 you, and if you can maintain your pride of race." 
 "You speak in riddles, Doctor." 
 " The riddles will explain themselves, perhaps 
 — perhaps not. It may be that you will re- 
 turn from the island of Pulo without having 
 experienced any of the perils which would 
 entangle a man of less scrupulous life. The 
 Sultan of Pulo, with whom I have an under- 
 standing because I once did him a service, will 
 give you a small leaden flask, containing the 
 precious oil without which both my healing and 
 my physiological experiments must come to a 
 standstill. There the transaction may end. 
 Or ... it may not. Others have failed, others 
 who gave me their promise as you are doing. 
 Nothing, mark you, prevented their return — 
 nothing, but their own weak wills : some 
 unforeseen spot of baseness within their own 
 souls. . . ." 
 
 Thus had Dr. Levaloir spoken ; and thus it 
 had come to pass that Kellock was, at this 
 moment, travelling up this uncharted jungle 
 river beneath the tropic moon. 
 
 Saumarez, guiding the native rowers with an 
 occasional sharp cry of instruction, saw his 
 white-man passenger draw a writing-tablet 
 from his knapsack, and, in the silvery glimmer. 
 
THE HALF-CASTE OF GAH-NUNG 4S 
 
 pencil a few words upon the paper. Kellock, 
 despite the lateness of the hour, felt vividly 
 wakeful, and, as was his wont, was crystallising 
 his thoughts in verse. This was what he 
 wrote : 
 
 "O moonlit and mysterious isle, 
 
 Set in an alien sea, 
 I mock your sphinxlike, silken smile, 
 
 I mock your mystery ! 
 North, South, West, East, the world is mine. 
 
 Its beauties my rich fee ; 
 My senses crave no anodyne : 
 
 I Fear Not— I am Free." 
 
 By the light of the moon he pondered on his 
 little poem with- pursed lips. Then he slowly 
 shook his head. 
 
 " Feeble !" he murmured to himself " Very 
 feeble !" And tearing it up, he allowed the 
 pieces to flutter overboard and be carried away 
 by the stream. 
 
 They fled so swiftly, like pallid petals on the 
 inky surface, that Kellock was astonished. 
 Then he noticed that the rowers were labouring 
 at their paddles. The current had grown even 
 more powerful. 
 
 Kellock watched their toil for a space, then 
 lay back and went to sleep. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY 
 
 At college the old professor of literature, who 
 indulged in a turn for paradoxes, used to say : 
 
 " Few people have sufficient brains to write 
 prose ; but any fool can write poetry." 
 
 Expanding this favourite theme of his he 
 would point out that prose demands precision of 
 thought — the writer must be prepared with 
 something definite to say, or the pitiless 
 exactitude of his sentences will expose him. 
 Whereas " woolly ideas " (his phrase for the 
 emotional) would pass muster if clothed — nay, 
 cloaked and concealed — in rhyme. 
 
 " The practice of versification," he would wind 
 up, " will not only enable you to hide your lack 
 of brains. (That, I grant, is one of its merits.) 
 Its chief merit, the one I commend not jestingly, 
 is that it will teach you to employ your 
 language : it will compel you to cultivate a 
 vocabulary." 
 
 45 
 
46 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Kellock was one of the few students who 
 penetrated the old man's flippancy and found 
 the value of the truth which underlay it. At 
 first merely for the sake of self-discipline, after- 
 wards as a hobby which proved a solace in many 
 a tight corner, he had written verse ever since 
 he left college. No intention of publishing ever 
 entered his head, albeit he classified his poems 
 under a series of titles which might well have 
 been the names of books. There were his 
 Poems of the World's Beauty, Verses of Adven- 
 ture, Sea Songs, Poems of Strange Peoples, 
 Chants of my Freedom, and the two sets of what 
 he dubbed " the merely idiotic," Jingles and 
 Capricious Rhymes. 
 
 It amused him to scribble thus ; and it was 
 this habit which, no doubt, conferred on him 
 his purity of diction in speech. It was charac- 
 teristic of Kellock that he used English a shade 
 fastidiously, and though he could be colloquial 
 in conversation he seldom relapsed into slang. 
 
 While on the journey up the river into the 
 interior of Pulo there were many hours during 
 which, tired of the unvarying vistas of the 
 jungle, he slept. From time to time, especially 
 during the highest heat of the first day, 
 Saumarez called a halt and the rowers were 
 given food and a siesta. Kellock ate with the 
 
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY 47 
 
 rest — their menu consisted of some fruits which 
 were unfamiliar to him. The trip, for alt its 
 monotony, began to develop a charm of its own. 
 It was hypnotic. He was now in no hurry for 
 it to end. The alternate sle^aping and waking, 
 the watching of the rhythmic rosewood-coloured 
 limbs of the paddlers, the delights of catching 
 sight of the iridescent butterflies which occa- 
 sionally hovered over the sampan when it 
 skirted the river-bank — these afforded him a 
 mild yet poignant pleasure. It was this which 
 inspired " Sailing in a Sampan," one of his 
 Capricious Rhymes, which he wrote on the 
 second evening of the trip. 
 
 " Sailing in a sampan, that's the life I love ! 
 Grant, I pray, ye gods, one priceless boon ; 
 Slide me in a sampan through the jungle grove, 
 Meet this traveller with a tropic moon ! 
 
 " Send by day the sunshine soothing me to sleep. 
 Make me drowse so I may deeply dream, 
 While the panting paddlers cause my craft to creep 
 Sinuously up the satin stream." 
 
 " Quite inane, of course," was his verdict as 
 he finished it. " ' Alliteration's artfiil aid ' has 
 lured me too far. Sinuously up the satin stream 
 is — shocking. I'll think of an alternative. ' A 
 Jungle Jingle ' shall be the sub-title ; and I'U 
 dedicate it to the dear old professor as an almost 
 
 4 
 
48 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 faultless demonstration of the truth of his 
 teaching in regard to the ease of verse as 
 compared with prose." 
 
 # # # * * 
 
 In the glittering dawn of the second day> 
 when Kellock awoke from a rather prolonged 
 slumber and sat up, he found that the river 
 was flowing between steep hillsides. These 
 were jungle-clad to their skylines : no cliff's 
 interrupted the lush veil of wooding. But they 
 gave a variety to the scene, and flecks of foam 
 upon the water, and a muffled vibration in the 
 air, indicated the near neighbourhood of rapids 
 or a cascade. 
 
 He had hardly rubbed the sleep from his eyes 
 when the sampan swung round a bend and 
 entered a lagoon-like expansion whose upper 
 neck was closed by the tumbling barrier of a 
 considerable waterfall. Here, for the first time 
 since he had started, Kellock beheld a break in 
 the encircling greenery : a rude pier of stakes 
 beside a shelving shore. Beyond this pier rose 
 a thatched roof, which in a moment revealed 
 itself as that of a boathouse sheltering several 
 sampans similar in design to that in which the 
 journey had been made. One, largei; than the 
 rest, painted in garish colours, furnished with a 
 povered place in its stern, and ornamented with 
 
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY 49 
 
 a gilded prow carved in the likeness of a Buddha, 
 was, he guessed, a State barge of the Sultan. 
 
 Saumarez gave him no opportunity for a 
 closer examination : almost before he had taken 
 in the fact that the river trip was at an end 
 Kellock found himself stepping ashore. The 
 sampan was moored, with its fellows, and at once 
 the party plunged inland, leaving the river as 
 though (what was not unlikely) they were 
 thankful to see the last of it. 
 
 " This way." Saumarez pointed ahead, and 
 Kellock, following him, entered a well-defined 
 path which mounted precipitously through the 
 jungle. The " niggers " — as Captain Sibthorpe 
 had called them— brought up the rear. 
 
 Climbing steadily — it was fortunate that most 
 of the way was shaded by overhead foliage— 
 Kellock realised anew how stifling and yet 
 horribly damp was the atmosphere of the 
 island. The sun seemed to suck an unwholesome 
 moisture from the overladen soil : the trees 
 dripped audibly, as though perspiring; the 
 ground on each side of the path was a morass 
 of fetid oozings. The path itself was firm, it 
 was a pavement of big flat stones, sometimes 
 actually steps, which must have been put in 
 place with enormous labour. Their age 
 appeared great : all were worn smooth and 
 
50 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 many had been fractured, either by the solar 
 heat or by earthquake. Kellock, his curiosity 
 aroused as to their origin, would fain have 
 questioned Saumarez, but he had no breath to 
 spare for talking. The pace was too fast. 
 Moreover, questions could wait. 
 
 He calculated that they must have ascended 
 not less than a couple of thousand feet when a 
 last flight of steps, on a scale so formi4able as 
 to remind him of the pyramid of Cheops in 
 Egypt, brought the party to a ledge bare of 
 trees and backed by a huge archway in the 
 mountain's side. This cave, natural or artificial 
 (a blend of both, in all probscbility) presented a 
 black and yawning mouth, into which the path 
 plunged. 
 
 " Dark piece !" was the muttered comment of 
 Saumarez. His addition, " Soon home now," 
 was more reassuring ; albeit " lu)me " was a 
 noun with an outre inappropriateness, as 
 Kellock reflected, for so weird a spot of the 
 globe. 
 
 The " niggers " ran forward, and produced 
 torches from some nook of the cave's entrance. 
 These were lit, and emitted a smoky illumina- 
 tion, by whose aid Kellock was enabled to 
 proceed. 
 
 It was a biz&rre procession in which he 
 
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY 51 
 
 marched. The torches were poor, their flicker- 
 ings a mere will-o'-the-wisp to follow : each 
 revealed little more than the uplifted arm and 
 the shoulder of the _ man who bore it. The 
 walls of the cave or tunnel, trickling with dew, 
 mirrored the faint flames ; the roof was seldom 
 visible ; and at first the- heat was scarcely to 
 be endured : it could only be compared to an 
 intensified form of the vapour within those 
 glazed and steaming forcing-houses where 
 foreign flowers, in a colder clime, are deluded 
 into making ready their frail blossoms for the 
 market of the luxurious. But soon Kellock 
 detected a change. The walls, he saw, had 
 lost their wet sheen : they were dry. The air 
 was thinner, less steamy. The heat, though 
 stUl terrific, had somehow been purged of its 
 enervating quality. 
 
 He stepped ahead more briskly, noticing that 
 his companions, like himself, had ceased to pant 
 with fatigue. A just perceptible current of 
 air fanned his cheek. It was evident that 
 some exit firom the tunnel could not be far 
 distant. 
 
 Daylight, in fact, now appeared ahead of the 
 travellers. It emanated fi-om an archway 
 similar to the one at which they had entered ; 
 but the archway's semicircular silhouette gave 
 
52 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 not upon the jungle but upon an enclosed place, 
 roofed and bounded by walls with a row of 
 windows in them. 
 
 This enclosure, Kellock was astounded to 
 find when, with Saumarez, he emerged into it, 
 was nothing more nor less than a handsomely- 
 proportioned room or hall, built of stone and 
 likewise paved. Its windows were of Moorish 
 style, more or less in the manner of the 
 Alcazar, but with lace -like lattice- work, in 
 marble or some other white substance, like the 
 famous tracery in the Taj Mahal. Each minute 
 piercing of this tracery was filled with cobalt 
 blue — the sky ; from which it was evident 
 that, outside the building, the ground dropped 
 sharply. 
 
 " We have come," announced Saumarez. 
 " This the Sultan's palace." 
 
 " A most palatial palace too !" Kellock 
 commented. "You take my breath away, 
 Saumarez. Who on earth ever built this, in 
 the heart of an island of an archipelago where 
 mud and wattle are the height of town-planning 
 idealism ?" 
 
 " Very old palace. Very old." Saumarez 
 was vague. " Sultans built. Long ago." 
 
 " An ancestor of the present reigning Sultan, 
 I suppose. It must be a dynasty worth looking 
 
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY 63 
 
 into. Anyhow, when am I to see the Sultan ? 
 Is this his audience-chamber, or what ?" 
 
 " See Sultan soon. Not here- Another 
 room. Come first prepare." 
 
 Kellock followed his guide — the natives had 
 vanished — through a curtained recess, and was 
 presented to a small apartment containing a 
 couch and — greatest surprise of all — a beau- 
 tiful little marble tank of slowly -bubbling 
 water. 
 
 " Bath," said Saumarez, monosyUabically, 
 
 " Just what I want." Kellock was grateful. 
 " No wonder you called Pulo a happy island." 
 
 The queer, sly expression flitted across the 
 half-caste's countenance again. " Pulo bath — " 
 he began. Then, inexplicably, " This not Pulo 
 bath." He moved across the room, into an 
 alcove: "See! Hot here !" 
 
 And behold, dribbling from a pipe into a 
 kind of basin, there was hot water — nearly 
 boiling, as Kellock's inquiring finger quickly 
 told him. 
 
 "Hot water laid on from a hot- water tap I 
 Well, I am at a first-class hotel !" The young 
 American marvelled. 
 
 " Volcano send it," said Saumarez. 
 
 " A volcanic spring ?" 
 
 "Plenty hot springs here. You see later." 
 
64 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 "I must certainly explore. Meanwhile, a 
 wash and a shave " 
 
 Saumarez salaamed and withdrew. 
 
 Kellock instantly did what he had been 
 longing to do, but what, for some occult reason, 
 he had not done as long as the half-caste 
 remained : he went to the window. 
 
 It was, like the ones in the entrance-hall, a 
 cupola-shaped, unglazed aperture fringed with 
 pierced traceries and supported by slender 
 pilasters. At a slight' distance it framed 
 naught but the profoundly blue sky ; arrived 
 at it, and leaning on its sill, Kellock was able 
 to look downwards and examine the landscape 
 beneath. 
 
 A wonderful landscape it was. 
 
 The palace — he now saw that he was not on 
 its ground floor but in a second storey — was 
 built against a cliff which rose above a wide 
 cup in the hills, a nearly circular valley several 
 miles in circumference. No great geological 
 knowledge was required to perceive that the 
 valley was volcanic, might even itself be the 
 crater of an extinct volcano. Except locally, 
 in patches of fairy-like trees and other vegeta- 
 tion totally unlike the ruthless jungle of the 
 island's outer side, the valley was formed of 
 bare jrock, vast slopes and curves of lava, 
 
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY 55 
 
 twisted and undulating in the shapes in which 
 it had once flowed and cooled. 
 
 Far-off promontories looked like ashes : no 
 green thing grew upon them, and they were 
 duUnsurfaced, not reflecting the sun. But the 
 nearer concayities of the great cup, the lava- 
 beds, had a sort of polish upon which the sun 
 beat furiously. This, then, was the cause of 
 the air's dryness. The valley of naked rock, 
 like a heliostat, collected the heat — Kellock 
 could feel, without the aid of any thermometer, 
 that the temperature was fierce — but it was 
 dry, not moist, and the body luxuriated in it 
 instead of being made flaccid. The climate — if 
 this was a fair sample — might with accuracy 
 have been advertised as " bracing." 
 
 Who were the inhabitants of this extraor- 
 dinary retreat? Kellock scanned the scene 
 with intense curiosity for signs of life. 
 
 Close beside the palace, amongst the trees of 
 one of th« rare oases in the lava, there were 
 huts constructed in the usual archipelago style 
 — thatcb and sticks and matting. Brown 
 figures, each clad in its white tunic, moved to 
 and fro : these were obviously the natives of 
 whom, in the boat, he had already encountered 
 an attractive sample. But further off, beneath 
 the shelter of another declivity, there stood an 
 
66 FURTHER EAST THAN ASJA 
 
 edifice less normal — a second palace, in fact : a 
 structure of colossal proportions with scores, 
 hundreds, of window-openings, and flanked at 
 its base by elaborate porches and pavilions. 
 And in front of this second palace, lounging or 
 stroUing, were other and very different figures, 
 clad, truly, in the inevitable tunics, but with 
 arms and lower limbs not rosewood-coloured 
 but — at least,, so it seemed at this distance — 
 white ! 
 
 " Can there be whites here ?" Kellock gasped. 
 " And " — he looked again — " women as well as 
 men ?" 
 
 He gazed for a while, then abandoned the 
 window, opened his knapsack, unfolded his 
 clean duck suit, and prepared to enjoy the 
 bath. 
 
 But there was a frown upon his brow. 
 
 Somehow — unreasoningly — he did not like 
 the look of those pigmy figures in the distance. 
 The rosewood-coloured natives he had admired ; 
 but those, whites ... no, there was something 
 wrong about those whites. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE BATHERS 
 
 A TBAY of fruits, luscious and refreshing, had 
 been brought to Kellock by a native servant, as 
 soon as he had bathed. This meal he had eaten 
 with a good appetite : he had seldom felt more 
 healthily ready for food, more "well" in body 
 and more keen in mind. 
 
 And now the curtains of his room were 
 pushed apart and Saumarez appeared, with the 
 announcement : 
 
 " Sultan ready." 
 
 Kellock followed him. At the other end of 
 the entrance-hall they descended a shallow 
 staircase to the ground floor of the palace. 
 Here was a portal to the outer air — an arch 
 with gates which stood open wide. But 
 Saumarez turned aside and ushered the young 
 American into a room on the left. 
 
 They passed through heavy curtains, and 
 Kellock, who had put on his pith helmet, now 
 
 57 
 
58 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 with some ceremony removed it, baring his 
 head. For it was evident that he was in the 
 presence of the Sultan. 
 
 This potentate was, to be sure, recognisable 
 less by any particular visibility of his person 
 than by the circumstances of his placing. He 
 sat throned, in Eastern fashion, upon a high 
 raised divan — a muffled figure so hooded and 
 enwrapped that only his eyes were to be seen. 
 Around him, at a lower level, stood a motion- 
 less and mute guard of natives — attendants, 
 perhaps, rather than guards, for they were not 
 armed : these, with slightly bowed heads, paid 
 no attention whatever to the entrance of 
 Saumarez and Kellock. 
 
 The latter had already been a little uncertain 
 as to the correct behaviour to be pursued before 
 the ruler of Pulo : he desired to strike an 
 adequate note of deference without obsequious- 
 ness. But Saumarez' attitude gave him the 
 cue. The half-caste merely bowed towards the 
 Sultan and then stepped forward in a manner 
 almost casual. 
 
 Kellock bowed too, and produced from his 
 pocket the letter which he had brought from 
 Dr. Levaloir. This, with another bow, he 
 proffered to the figure on the divan. 
 
 The figure on the divan did not stir, and for 
 
THE BATHERS 5& 
 
 a moment Kellock was left in the incongruous 
 posture of holding at arm's length an envelope 
 which nobody was accepting. Saumarez 
 promptly saved the situation, took the missive 
 from Kellock's hand and laid it on a carved 
 octagonal table which stood beside the Sultan's 
 divan. 
 
 There followed what— to the impetuous 
 American temperament — seemed like an 
 awkward pause. The Sultan had neither 
 stirred nor spoken ; the natives likewise had 
 neither stirred nor spoken — they stood, in the 
 fashion of images, with bowed heads ; Saumarez 
 had uttered no word ; neither, of course, bad 
 Kellock — partly because he did not know 
 whether etiquette would allow of his initiating 
 a conversation, but mainly because he had no 
 acquaintance with the language. The Sultan's 
 eyes — his only visible feature — regarded 
 KeUock with a sustained scrutiny which was 
 disconcerting. Yet KeUock found himself 
 interested in, nay, magnetised by, those eyes. 
 They were large and dark, their shape a perfect 
 oval ; the lids were fringed with ebony lashes 
 and the eyebrows were a pair of faultless arcs, 
 wide apart and classical in their flowing curve. 
 There was something — KeUock sought for an 
 adjective— soajiBthing aristocratic about those 
 
60 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 eyes : their owner was not merely of finer clay 
 than the wretched Saumarez, but also finer than 
 the attendant natives. And his eyes were 
 gravely penetrating : the examination which 
 Kellock felt he was undergoing was an in- 
 telligent one, its verdict would be shrewd. 
 
 At last, when to Kellock the tension had 
 become acute, the mufiled figure on the divan 
 quietly spoke — addressing Saumarez. 
 
 The language was unfamiliar to Kellock, but 
 the voice was low and musical. 
 
 Saumarez interpreted. " Sultan read letter, 
 not now. Later see you. Sultan say : you 
 walk out, see place, conie back." 
 
 And that was all. 
 
 Kellock bowed, and, again conducted by 
 Saumarez, quitted the audience-chamber. As 
 he passed out through the curtains he had a 
 sense of the Sultan's dark, inscrutable, but 
 queerly intelligent orbs boring into the back of 
 his head. 
 
 " The Sultan, I gather, has given me permis- 
 sion to explore," said Kellock, when he and 
 Saumarez arrived at the door of the palace. 
 
 " Go walk," said Saumarez. 
 
 This was exactly what Kellock was eager to 
 do. He had imagined, for some reason undefined, 
 that there would be objections to his investigat- 
 
THE BATHERS 61 
 
 ing the valley ; but, so far from any obstacles 
 being put in his way, Saumarez seemed rather 
 anxious than otherwise that he shovJd see 
 whatever there was to be seen. More surprising 
 still, it at once became apparent that Saumarez 
 had neither any intention of accompanying him 
 nor of providing a guide. 
 
 " Go walk," the half-caste repeated, broadly 
 indicating the outer air. " Me stay, speak with 
 Sultan. You go where like go. You find Pulo 
 happy place." 
 
 With which assurance Kellock was abandoned 
 to his own devices. 
 
 He donned his helmet at once, and passed 
 out between the gates into the glare of the 
 sunshine. 
 
 Yes — ^there were things which he was urgently 
 curious to investigate. But first he must take 
 his bearings, so as to be able to find his way back 
 again. He observed the lie of the land in 
 relation to the point at which he stood, he 
 noticed (by his wrist-watch) the hour, and 
 marked the position of the sun. Then he had 
 a careful look at the faqade of the palace — a 
 much plainer building, more fortress-like, than 
 the other one which he had observed in the dis- 
 tanc3. It bore the marks of antiquity. Cracks 
 were visible here and there on its walls, and the 
 
62 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 pillar of one of its outer porches had fallen. 
 The massiveness of the structure was neverthe- 
 less striking; its back parts were anchored, as 
 it werej in the cliff and merged with the natural 
 rock in an indistinguishable joint. The dry air 
 had left the materials of the edifice uncorroded ; 
 nothing short of a cataclysm could destroy this 
 monumental architecture. 
 
 Kellock turned again, and, treading on a 
 smooth pavement of lava, made for the neigh- 
 bouring oasis of trees. Nestling within their 
 green shade was the native village, but this he 
 traversed rapidly. He could examine it on 
 another occasion. Beyond it, a mile or more 
 round the curve of the valley, was situated the 
 second palace : its denizens, the white folk, were 
 his goal. 
 
 He found some of them sooner than he had 
 expected. 
 
 Leaving the last of the village and coming 
 again on to a sun-scorched expanse of lava, he 
 had seen, at some distance in front of him, a 
 jumble of boulders and scoriae which formed a 
 mound. At its summit there must be a patch 
 of earth, for here a group of palms had taken 
 root. From those palms it was probable that a 
 view could be obtained, and Kellock aimed 
 towards them. 
 
THE BATHERS 63 
 
 Twenty minutes' clamber brought him to the 
 palms, and the vision which burst upon his 
 gaze was unforgettable. 
 
 In a hollow of the hill, almost beneath his 
 feet, lay a small lake. Its waters were of a 
 milky opalescent hue, the sun's rays were 
 reflected and refracted in them as though from 
 the sheen of mother-of-pearl or of silk — silk 
 which changed its colour according to the angle 
 of the folds upon which the light falls : " shot " 
 silk, in the technical designation. The opal- 
 escence shifted and altered and re- coalesced 
 with every slightest disturbance of the water. 
 And the water was being continuously dis- 
 turbed. For the lake was alive with bathers. 
 
 Here, in brief, were the white people — or 
 some of the white people — whom Kellock 
 sought. 
 
 He stared in amazement. Some of the 
 bathers were swimming, others lolling and 
 floating, some came forth from the water and 
 lay down upon a beach of sand. Nearly instan- 
 taneously, Kellock noticed, their tunics — all 
 were clad in the inevitable tunic, whether in 
 the water or not — were dried by the heat of 
 the sun : the tunic which clung round each 
 swimmer as he came dripping from the lake 
 was, a moment later, hanging loosely in its 
 
 5 
 
64 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 usual shape. Never was there such informal, 
 such simple bathing. No dressing or undress- 
 ing, no preparations of any sort . • . the 
 bathers, men and women alike, just went in and 
 out of the lake whenever the fancy took them. 
 
 There was, perhaps, a lethargy in their 
 movements, and, as they strolled about the 
 beach or lounged on the sand, they talked 
 little. Faint sounds of speech rose to Kellock's 
 ears, and now and then there was a burst of 
 quiet laughter. It ought, somehow, to have 
 been a gay scene ; but, somehow, it was not. 
 It held a certain beauty, the observer had to 
 confess. Many of the figures were graceful, 
 and the tunics, leaving arms and legs bare — 
 heads were bare too — had a fine appropriate- 
 ness. But . . . well . . . Kellock came back 
 to this : Who wtre these people ? What were 
 white people here for ? 
 
 He looked about him, and suddenly became 
 aware that he was not alone. Beneath the 
 shadow of a boulder, within a few yards of 
 him, two figures were reposing : the figures of 
 a man and a woman. 
 
 They were both asleep, the woman with her 
 face pillowed on her arms, the man lying face 
 upwards with a hand over his eyes. Hardly 
 had Kellock noticed the couple when the man, 
 
THE BATHERS 65 
 
 with a great sigh of contentment, awoke, and 
 raised himself into a sitting posture. 
 
 " Hallo !" he exclaimed. He looked at 
 KeUock, and the latter, startled as he had been 
 to be addressed in his own language, was stiU 
 more taken aback (he hardly knew why) by the 
 casualness not only of the word but of the tone 
 in which it was uttered. Its utterer was visibly 
 neither very much surprised by the apparition 
 of a stranger nor very much interested. 
 
 " Hallo !" KeUock echoed ; and plunging 
 straight to the point added : " My name's 
 KeUock. I'm an American. Who are you ?" 
 
 " My name's Van Duysen. I'm American 
 too." 
 
 So this was the Van Duysen whom Captain 
 Sibthorpe's friend Carnegie, of the steamship 
 Pearl, had three times taken back from Pulo 
 and lost there on the fourth visit 1 
 
 " I come from Dr. Levaloir," said KeUock. 
 
 "Dr. Levaloir?" Van Duysen ruminated. 
 " Oh yes. I remember him. Lives at Gah- 
 nung." He yawned. "That's how / first 
 came here." 
 
 He made this statement in a listless fashion. 
 His whole air was sluggish. Yet in appearance 
 Van Duysen was not unattractive.^ His features 
 were well formed, and his beard — he wore a 
 
66 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 short beard — was neatly trimmed. His arms 
 and legs were muscular. But their colour was 
 oddly pale — they were not tanned by the sun, 
 as might have been expected. And his eyes 
 did not meet Kellock's with any steadiness : 
 they were clouded and restless, and the mouth 
 was loose. Van Duysen (Kellock felt) had 
 been a handsome man, but was in rapid process 
 of losing his handsomeness and becoming 
 effeminate and flabby. 
 
 " You used to come to Pulo from Gah-nung 
 for Dr. Levaloir, I believe." Kellock tackled 
 the riddle. " Captain Carnegie brought you 
 on the Pearl. Why did you stop here, in the 
 end, instead of going back ?" 
 
 " I suppose I found it better to stop here." 
 Van Duysen was evasive. 
 
 He rose slowly to his feet. " Lovely sight, 
 isn't it ?" He scanned the lake. " Loveliest 
 place on earth, this. Guess you'd better stop 
 too. Never regret it." 
 
 " I've promised to go back." 
 
 " One of these days perhaps you'll find you 
 can't go back. You'll never be sorry. A man 
 can settle here, and never be sorry about any- 
 thing again. No worry. Stupid to worry. 
 Wonderful life." 
 
 His voice tailed into silence. 
 
THE BATHERS 67 
 
 " We're all happy here," he resumed. " I'm 
 going down to the lake now. Great, the lake 
 is. Makes you feel fine. You must try the 
 lake. Come and visit me some time. I live in 
 that place over there. You've seen it ? It's 
 an old palace. ' Suleiman's Pleasure-House ' is 
 the native name for it. The legend is that 
 Solomon buUt it and came here to bathe. 
 Knew a thing or two, this Solomon. Not the 
 Biblical Solomon, I surmise : there are crowds 
 of big-pot Suleimans in the East. Anyhow, he 
 built a top-notch palace. We have rooms in 
 it, Zuaila and I. You must meet Zuaila. Oh, 
 I forgot ; she's here." 
 
 He turned and spoke to the woman, who 
 had continued to slumber undisturbed. 
 
 She awoke at once, and lifting her head 
 turned towards Kellock a face of curious and 
 exotic witchery. 
 
 It was the face of a woman of perhaps thirty 
 years of age. Yet there was a childishness 
 about it, and, when she rose to her feet, there 
 was a childishness also about the slender 
 elegance of her figure. What, however, was 
 so peculiar in her appearance was the hue of 
 her skin. She was abnormally pale, with the 
 pallor of porcelain : her limbs and face were 
 alike in this. The complexion was clear — but 
 
68 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 pale, pale ; the lips, only, shone with such a 
 vivid carmine, in the midst of the white, that 
 Kellock was fantastically reminded of the 
 painted lips of an actress on the stage. 
 Beautiful— yes, this woman whom Van Duysen 
 addressed as Zuaila was beautiful ; eyes, lips, 
 soft cheeks, and the mass of copper hair which 
 was piled on her tiny head — they made a 
 picture of striking attractiveness. And, with 
 it all . . . something wrong. 
 
 " Pretty, isn't she ?" said Van Duysen. " I'm 
 teaching her English." 
 
 Zuaila smiled at Kellock, then put her hand 
 in Van Duysen's. 
 
 " Were going to bathe," said Van Duysen. 
 " Come and see us some time. You'll like the 
 Pleasure - House." 
 
 He and Zuaila, hand in hand, moved down 
 the hill towards the lake. Presently Van 
 Duysen halted, and called back : 
 
 " Think about staying 1 Boom for you too 
 in the Pleasure-House !" 
 
 Then he went on, and in a few minutes 
 Kellock saw him, and the woman, launch them- 
 selves into the lake and slowly swim, side by 
 side, through its opalescent water towards the 
 opposite bank. 
 
 "I think I begin to understand," muttered 
 
THE BATHERS 69 
 
 Kellock, " why, when Carnegie failed to bring 
 back his passenger, the doctor groaned some- 
 thing about ' Lotus Land.' . . . No, I don't 
 like the look of this Van Duysen." 
 
 He stroked his chin thoughtfully. " A case 
 of ' Where every prospect pleases, and only 
 Man is vile,' I fancy. Hallo !" His nostrils 
 expanded. " I seem to recognise that perfume !" 
 
 A faint, sweet odour was rising from the 
 lake — an odour resembling that of some delicate 
 flower, not powerful, but thin and exhilarating. 
 It made Kellock think of violets . . . no, of 
 the artificial perfume which is sold under the 
 trade name of Violet Scent, but, a purely 
 chemical product, has had no genuine connec- 
 tion with the flower it imitates. 
 
 " To bathe in perfumedr waters is the last 
 touch of sybaritism," he commented grimly. 
 " It seems I've struck the fount and origin of 
 the off-shore smell which so offended the taste 
 of the excellent Sibthorpe. Maybe the old 
 chap's instincts weren't far wrong." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SULTAN OF PULO 
 
 " They taught us not at College how to taste the Tree of 
 Knowledge, 
 So we wander, lone and hungry. . . . Let's believe 
 That though, as once in olden times poor Adam's eyes 
 were holden, 
 — Somewhere in every orchard there's an Eve. 
 
 " ' Life's hard on the transgressor,' said our Chemistry 
 Professor, 
 And with spectroscope in hand he bade us note 
 That though we mightn't think it, still, no scientist can 
 blink it, 
 — Somewhere in every sunbeam there's a mote." 
 From " Capricious Rhymes," by Ahin D. Kellock. 
 
 His musings were broken in upon by the voice 
 of Saumarez. The half-caste, who had been 
 sent to fetch Kellock for a second interview 
 with the Sultan, had experienced no difficulty 
 in finding the young American, for the latter 's 
 figure had stood forth clearly on the skyline 
 beside the palms on the crown of the hill. 
 
 71 
 
72 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Saumarez led the way back to the Sultan's 
 palace. En route thither Kellock ventured a 
 few questions : What was the name of the 
 bathing lake ? Why were its waters that un- 
 usual colour ? Who were the bathers ? — but 
 Saumarez was uncommunicative, or else did not 
 understand. 
 
 "Me go bath, too — often — very happy," was 
 his chief admission. "Nice bath. Make feel 
 well." 
 
 At the palace, and once more in the audience- 
 chamber, the only change which Kellock ob- 
 served was that Dr. Levaloir's envelope had 
 been opened, and its letter now lay unfolded 
 upon the octagonal table. But immediately 
 after he entered the attendant native guards 
 were dismissed and retreated through a further 
 door. The Sultan then uttered a few words to 
 Saumarez. 
 
 " Sultan he speak with you alone," the half- 
 caste interpreted. " I go." Suiting the action 
 to the words, he too vanished. 
 
 Kellock was bewildered. How on earth was 
 he to hold converse, lacking an interpreter, 
 with the Sultan? He stared at the hooded 
 figure on the da'is. Its eyes were still the only 
 sign of life visible. These returned his stare, as 
 before. 
 
THE SULTAN OF PULO 73 
 
 And then, suddenly, the Sultan spoke. 
 
 " Do not fear " — the voice was low and 
 gentle as before, but this time it spoke English, 
 and without the slightest trace of a foreign 
 accent — " Do not fear." 
 
 " I don't fear," Kellock answered. " I was 
 only in a dilemma as to how we should talk to 
 each other. You did not let me understand, at 
 our previous interview, that you knew English." 
 
 " I did not know whether I wished to speak 
 with you or not. It might have seemed good 
 to me to give you what you seek and let you go 
 without parley. I wished to look at you, and 
 make up my mind." 
 
 " You had a long look at me," Kellock smiled. 
 
 " I had a long look at you," the Sultan 
 concurred. " Travellers have come here, and I 
 have had a long look at them and not spoken 
 with them — they have merely gone forth and 
 joined those others at Suleiman's Pleasure- 
 House. But you are not like them. To you I 
 wish to speak. To you I wish to reveal myself." 
 
 Kellock, had there not been something oddly 
 serious about this announcement, might have 
 concealed a grin, for the muffled figure on the 
 divan could do with a good deal of " revealing." 
 He had not even seen the Sultan's hands, 
 which were wrapped in his long sleeves: not 
 
74 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 even the mouth, from which issued such admir- 
 able English, was visible. 
 
 "You are to be trusted," the Sultan went 
 on. " You are a man." 
 
 "And you," Kellock ejaculated, "are a 
 woman !" 
 
 For the wrappings of the muffled figure had, 
 with a gesture, been tossed aside : they tumbled 
 loosely on the throne and on the floor in front 
 of it, and from their midst stepped — as Kellock 
 had perceived with a gasp — no " Sultan," but 
 a woman, young and vivid, though dignified 
 and grave- 
 Like all her subjects — if the inhabitants of 
 Pulo were really her subjects — she wore the 
 tunic of the country. Hers only differed from 
 the common pattern in that it was embroidered 
 at the hem with golden stitchings, was girdled 
 at the waist with a golden snake belt, and 
 was fastened at the breast with a gold scarab 
 brooch. But at this first glance Kellock was of 
 small mind to pay attention to the details of her 
 attire. Its wearer was herself too fascinating. 
 Her limbs and face were olive-coloured, 
 smooth and flawless in texture. The fine eyes 
 he had already appreciated ; now, revealed in 
 relation to her other features, and divorced 
 from the masculine attributes with which he 
 
THE SULTAN OF PULO 75 
 
 had mistakenly endowed them, their loveliness 
 was startling. Their colour tended to brown 
 rather than black ; it was, however, not their 
 colour so much as their shape which gave them 
 their character — the suave oval of them, the 
 long lashes, the ebony-black sweep of the wide 
 brows above, the chaste curve of the temples. 
 
 The forehead was broad and low : a straight 
 band of ebony -black hair fringed it. All around 
 the head the hair fell in an aureole to the nape 
 of the neck : there it was cut short, so that it 
 did not quite reach the shoulders. It was 
 glossy, and had a slight ripple ; but its effect 
 was that of a sharply -defined frame to the face. 
 
 The face was not East Indian in type — it 
 approximated to no type with which Kellock 
 was familiar. All he could say of it was that 
 he had never seen anything so elusively beau- 
 tiful before. The mouth was small, the nose 
 straight, the chin voluptuous yet firm. There 
 was a perfect symmetry and proportion about it 
 all which was, in Kellock's experience, unique. 
 And this perfect proportion was not limited to 
 her face : it prevailed throughout her whole 
 body. She had risen from the divan, and, 
 standing at her full height, it was evident that 
 she was exceptionally tall — almost as tall as 
 Kellock himself. This, and her poise, gave an 
 
76 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 effect of slimness to her figure, though its limbs 
 were, in fact, fully rounded and athletically 
 robust. From her ankles to her breast her 
 contours flowed in serene and subtle curves. 
 The curves of her bare arms were beautiful, the 
 curves of the column of her throat were 
 beautiful. AH was beautiful. AU, too — he 
 had thought of the word even when he had 
 only seen her eyes — was aristocratic. 
 
 And this matchless creature was the " Sultan " 
 ofPulo! 
 
 " You are not a Sultan after all !" he blurted. 
 
 " It is our fiction that no woman shall reign," 
 she said. " So when a woman does reign, the 
 priests have to perform ceremonial rites, and 
 thereafter she is understood to be masculine. 
 I inherited the throne from my father, who was 
 Sultan before me. He had no other heir. So 
 now I am Sultan." 
 
 " How comes it that you speak English ?" 
 
 " Why shouldn't I ? I was educated at a 
 mission school on the mainland. Even if I 
 hadn't been sent to school I should have been 
 able to speak English. My father was an 
 Englishman." 
 
 " But you said he was Sultan of Pulo." 
 
 " So he was. It is not the first time that 
 roving Englishmen have become rulers in 
 
THE SULTAN OF PULO TT 
 
 the East. You remember Rajah Brooke of 
 Sarawak ?" 
 
 Another question trembled on Kellock's lips, 
 as his eyes dwelt upon her olive face, but he 
 left it unformulated. 
 
 " Come," she said. " We can talk more at 
 ease in my own apartments." 
 
 She stepped down from the dais, and with 
 swaying, undulating tread — her bare feet 
 falling lightly yet with a firm grip upon the 
 ground — she preceded KeUock from the 
 audience-chamber into what might have been 
 called, in Western parlance, her boudoir. 
 
 It was a lesser, more intimate room. A great 
 metal lantern hung by a chain from its ceiling; 
 faded but ornate rugs carpeted its floor ; a 
 flowering plant stood in a vase close to two 
 cushioned divans against an angle of the wall. 
 But of feminine touches, in the ordinary sense, 
 there were none — no ornaments, no bric-k-brac, 
 no books. She was well-educated, evidently — 
 yet there were no books ! KeUock, mentally 
 taking stock of her room, missed from it books 
 more than anything else. 
 
 She sank on to one of the divans, and 
 indicated the other to KeUock. 
 
 " Sit down, please." 
 
 He did so. 
 
78 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Suddenly her lips parted in a trill of 
 laughter. 
 
 " How solemn we are !" she exclaimed. 
 
 And looking at her Kellock beheld a girlish 
 mischief dancing in her eyes. 
 
 He was to learn later that she could change, 
 thus, in a trice from the woman of rather aloof 
 dignity to the elfish, gay, utterly human girl : 
 that the haughty mouth could shape itself for 
 smiles and that the lips could pout with caprice. 
 But at the instant he was disconcerted. 
 
 Then he too laughed. " I thought a Sultan 
 was rather a solemn aifair, anyway. You see 
 I'm new at Sultans." 
 
 " O White Plume !— I shall call you White 
 Plume — it was the first thing I noticed about 
 you when Saumarez brought you in and you 
 took your hat off and I saw your hair — make 
 no mistake : a Sultan is just the same as any- 
 body else. And this Sultan ... is dying for a 
 talk !" 
 
 Kellock could understand that. No doubt, 
 in her isolation here, she yearned for tidings of 
 the outer world. Perhaps she wished to hear, 
 too, of Dr. Levaloir. 
 
 " Your friend, Dr. Levaloir " he began. 
 
 " I never met him," she interrupted. " It 
 was my father who knew him. My father was 
 
THE SULTAN OF PULO 79 
 
 at Gah-nung once, and was taken ill. He had 
 heard of Dr. Levaloir's fame as a physician and 
 sent for him, but the doctor wouldn't come, 
 though my father, as Sultan of Pulo, offered him 
 a rich fee. So my father was carried in a litter 
 to the doctor's house, and was treated there 
 with the poor people and was cured. And in 
 gratitude he gave Dr. Levaloir the privilege of 
 receiving from Pulo, at intervals, the sacred 
 oil." 
 
 "It's a very valuable drug, I understand. 
 The doctor seems to set great store by it." 
 
 " It is distilled by the priests. A minute 
 flaskful is the result of many months, some- 
 times even years, of distillation : the absolute 
 essence of the waters of the lakes and baths 
 of this valley." 
 
 "I saw people bathing in a lake this 
 morning." Kellock hesitated. "Were they 
 bathing to cure themselves of some sickness 1" 
 
 Her face became serious again. Instead of 
 answering his question, she asked him another. 
 " They looked well enoughr didn't they?" 
 
 " Thej looked well ; and yet ..." 
 
 " And happy 1" she persisted. 
 
 " Happy in a sense. But ... I met a fellow- 
 countryman of mine, Van Duysen. He had 
 been a messenger for Dr. Levaloir. Now why 
 
 6 
 
80 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 had this Van Duysen stayed here inBtead of 
 going back to Gah-nung ?" 
 
 " I know the man you mean. He stayed 
 here, as others have stayed here " — ^her long- 
 lashed lids descended over her eyes — " befiau^ 
 he wanted to stay, I imagine." 
 
 He looked at her, and said, with the frank- 
 ness which was habitual with him : "You are 
 concealing something from me, I think." 
 
 " Pulo is no mystery to those who stay ; 
 they have penetrated its mystery and found 
 happiness." 
 
 " Yet, judging by Van Duysen's appearance, 
 they pay a price." 
 
 " Oh, Van Duysen 1" She shrugged. " He 
 could hardly ... he is infinitely better here 
 than he would have been anywhere else. That 
 kind of man ..." 
 
 " What kind of man V 
 
 " Did you notice tlie palms of his hands, or 
 his finger-nails ?" she said coolly. " It's a long 
 way back, but there must be mixed blood 
 in this American of yours ; negro blood. Did 
 you notice that Saumarez, the man who acts as 
 my Prime Minister, is a half-caste ? Did you 
 see closely any of the other people — :not the 
 ones in the native village ? They're all hali^ 
 castes of one kind or another. The natives of 
 
THE SULTAN OF PULO 81 
 
 the villages of this vajley are pure-bred. All the 
 other inhabitants are in Pulo because — well, 
 because Pulo is the ' happy place ' for such as 
 they. The Opal Baths — they are called the 
 Opal Baths in our language — are life itself to 
 them. If any of those people left here they 
 would die." 
 
 " But Van Duysen left here three times, and 
 didn't die." 
 
 " He hadn't bathed in the Opal water." 
 
 " You mean that on the fourth visit he did 
 bathe and thereafter was unable to leave Pulo. 
 Then the Opal Baths are dangerous ?" 
 
 " Not to thosawho are pure of blood. You, 
 White Plume, could plunge yourself in the 
 Opal wa.ter, and its drug would only refresh 
 you, it could do you no hurt. And with the 
 real inhabitants of Pulo it is the same. The 
 pure-bred native can use the Opal water and — 
 you have seen how fine and strong my people 
 are. But the half-caste " 
 
 " The half-caste ?" 
 
 "If be bathes it gives him life if he is 
 diseased already. If he is not diseased already 
 it stiU gives him life . . . but at a price. 
 Long, long life," she murmured, " but at a 
 price." 
 
 "But " 
 
82 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 She lifted her hand in a gesture of forbiddal. 
 " Another time !" Her mood had altered again. 
 " No more for the present ! Let's talk about 
 something else, White Plume !" 
 
 He obeyed her whim as best he could. But, 
 as he tried, at her request, to tell her something 
 about his life and adventures, at the back of 
 his mind he was preoccupied with other 
 thoughts. And the most intrusive one was 
 this : Did she, nay, could she, risk those Opal 
 waters herself? 
 
 That Exquisite olive skin of hers ^ . . 
 
 The natives were brown, rosewood-coloured . , . 
 
 Her father was an Englishman . . . 
 
 Her mother . . . ? 
 
 He became aware that her attention had 
 wandered. Had she, after all, been so very 
 anxious to hear news of the outer world ? As 
 long as he had talked about himself she had 
 been interested, but he was no great raconteur 
 of his own achievements, and had soon gone on 
 to speak of places and events of less personal 
 import. Whereupon her tense figure had by 
 degrees slackened ; her interjections of en- 
 couragement had become fewer and more 
 perfunctory. It was not exactly that she 
 looked " bored " : simply that her grave aloof- 
 ness had descended on her once more ; her eyes 
 had ceased to sparkle. 
 
THE SULTAN OF PULO 8S 
 
 "But I'm afraid I'm growing tedious," he 
 said. " Perhaps you'd prefer to be alone ? 
 Have I " — he rose — " your permission to with- 
 draw . . . Sultan ? Do I, by the way, address 
 you as Sultan ?" 
 
 " My name," she smiled, " is one which 
 means, in English, ' Queen.' " She too rose, 
 and with one of her charming, girlish gestures, 
 added : "You can call me Queen, if you like. 
 But my father had another name for me. He 
 called me Jewel. And you can call me Jewel 
 if . . . you think it more suitable. White 
 Plume." 
 
 Sometimes she was Queen and at other times 
 she was Jewel, he reflected. 
 
 "The sultry hours of the afternoon have 
 come," she said. "It is time for the siesta. 
 We people of Pulo awake again to enjoy the 
 evening and the moonlight of the night. Go 
 and sleep awhile, White Plume; and after- 
 wards you can learn more — if you wiU — of this 
 happy valley of ours." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 QUEEN — AND GIRL 
 
 Kellock, reclming on the couch in his own 
 apartment, could not sleep. 
 
 The afternoon sun poured into the room 
 through the arched window, projecting a 
 luminous image of the window's shape partly 
 upon the opposite wall and partly upon the 
 floor. A dazzling triangle of this sunshine 
 lay across the tank sunken in the centre of the 
 floor, and penetrated its pellucid water with a 
 myriad vibrating rays. The water of this 
 bath, which bubbled from some concealed 
 orifice, was not opaline — it was ordinary pure 
 spring water. Kellock comprehended now what 
 Saumarez had been driving at when he had 
 remarked that this was not a Pulo bath. It 
 harboured none of that chemical compound which 
 discoloured the lake and caused the exhalation 
 of the perfume of violets : the unnamed drug 
 that rendered Pulo, to Saumarez and Van 
 Duysen and the rest, a place of happiness. 
 
 85 
 
86 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Certain facts seemed to be emerging more or 
 less tangibly from the confusion of hypotheses 
 and conjectures in Kellock's mind. Adding 
 what he had witnessed at the lake to what 
 he had learnt from Jewel (yes, he would call 
 her Jewel) and from Dr. Levaloir, it became 
 evident that the volcanic baths contained some 
 property to which persons of hybrid birth were 
 exceedingly susceptible. The distilled oil from 
 Pulo was, indeed, applied for therapeutic pur- 
 poses by the doctor at Gah-nung. But his 
 employment of it was scientific, and probably 
 cautious : further, some bacteriological prepara- 
 tion was involved in the process. Here, at Pulo, 
 the very attributes which might on the one 
 hand be curative might on the other hand 
 induce disease if recklessly used. 
 
 Van Duysen, for instance. . . . 
 
 To describe Van Duysen as diseased would 
 not be fair. He betrayed no symptom of 
 disease. He was only — decadent. 
 
 Zuaila — was that fairylike creature's charm 
 the charm of health ? No. There was some- 
 thing about Zuaila also that suggested the 
 obscurely decadent. 
 
 In Jewel there was nothing of the sort. 
 KeUock, troubled with doubts concerning her 
 even while they talked together, had — almost 
 
QUEEN— AND GIRL 87 
 
 against his own will : it seemed like sacrilege — 
 covertly sought for any sign in her appearance 
 of the intangible " wrongness " which charac- 
 terised the non-native inhabitants of the valley. 
 But Jewel, to the tips of her almond finger- 
 nails, was wholesome. Her eyes were dimmed 
 with no cloudiness, her limbs were not lax — 
 their every movement was a lilting rapture ; 
 the tones of her voice held no listlessness — their 
 cadence was melodious and sweet. 
 
 Kellock lay back with a sigh. 
 
 How beautiful she was : how ineffably 
 beautiful ! 
 
 In his Poems of the Worlds Beauty there 
 was a sub-section, The Wonder of Women. Not 
 that he had ever been in love, or ever penned a 
 love-lyric. He had not been blind to the 
 beauty of women any more than to the other 
 beauties which made the world and his wander- 
 ings a perpetual joy to his ardent and free 
 spirit. And from time to time, the beauty of 
 a woman's face — perhaps only glimpsed in a 
 crowd — ^had inspired him in much the same way 
 that the beauties of the sky or the sea inspired 
 him. Thus The Wonder of Women was only a 
 small portion of his larger Poems of the World's 
 Beauty — a tjrpical and significant touch of the 
 young American's ascetic and modest simplicity. 
 
88 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 One of the poems in The Wonder of Women 
 was begun during this particular afternoon. 
 He may have finished it — or composed intro- 
 ductory verses as the case may be — at a later 
 date. The fragment which was written as he 
 now rested on his couch ran as follows : 
 
 " Qod made a woman, fair to see, 
 And, with her, God made Minstrelsy : 
 For, when God made her straight and strong, 
 God made a Song. 
 
 " God made her beautiful that we 
 Might learn to praise His potency : 
 For, when God makes a thing so fair, 
 He makes a Prayer. 
 
 "A Prayer, a Song — so should it be 
 For Man from Woman's purity . . . 
 But, when the man's heart holds her dear, 
 God gives him Fear." 
 
 It was only an idea — a random, unseizabl© 
 idea which was floating in Kellock's brain, half 
 apprehended and half held at bay ; but the 
 verses caught at the skirts of it, as it were : in 
 the very act of evolving them on his scribbling- 
 pad he was giving himself a hint of his own 
 peril. For was it not his habit to affirm : " I 
 am Free," I am Unafraid "—-and were not both 
 brave boasts vaguely menaced by the fate which 
 
QUEEN— AND GIRL 89 
 
 seemed to hover in the atmosphere of the 
 happy valley ? 
 
 The conundrums which perplexed him had, 
 at all events, been banished by the act of 
 writing, for, while the sun-rays crept across the 
 floor and up the wall of his room, he slept 
 peacefully. 
 
 He was awakened by a slight sound, the 
 origin of which he failed for the instant to 
 detect; then, more fully aroused, he saw that 
 the tablet on which he had been writing, and 
 which he had wedged under the pUlow of his 
 couch, had inexplicably slipped, with a slight 
 fiop, to the floor. 
 
 Sitting up, he stared at it with some surprise. 
 What could have caused it to fall ? And what 
 — his gaze was traversing the room — what was 
 agitating the waters of the bath? Their 
 surface was swaying to and fro ; a wet patch, 
 at the brink, showed that they had actually 
 splashed over, for an inch or two. And his 
 sun-hat, which he had laid on the floor (no pegs, 
 in such a place, to hang a hat on !) — why was 
 it rocking hither and thither in that absurd 
 fashion ? And the curtains of the door — why 
 were they swinging slightly ? 
 
 " White Plume !" He heard his name 
 called, from outside the curtains. 
 
90 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 "Jewel! Come in!" 
 
 She pushed the curtains aside, and stood 
 before him, smiling. 
 
 "You felt it?" 
 
 " Felt what ?" he asked. 
 
 " The earthquake shock. These small shocks 
 are very frequent here. I forgot to warn you. 
 See how your hat is wobbling !" She was 
 merry. " I came to find out if you were 
 afraid." 
 
 As she paused, her pearly teeth still displayed 
 between her laughing lips, her supple arm 
 uplifted in the attitude of holding the curtains 
 apart, he felt a sudden pang and knew that — 
 yes — he was afraid : only not in the manner she 
 implied. The thought was gone again at once. 
 But his pulse was still beating with an un- 
 wonted irregularity as he sprang up and, 
 answering her smile with a smile of his own, 
 said: 
 
 " Oh, I'm never afraid." 
 
 ' ' Had a good sleep ? You're hungry, I expect. 
 Permit me to invite you to dine with the 
 Sultan of Pulo : to break bread and take salt — 
 only," she rattled on as she led him to her 
 boudoir — " only, to be exact, we Jiaven't either 
 bread or salt; nothing but the fruits which 
 you've already sampled and, I hope, found pala- 
 
QUEEN— AND GIRL 91 
 
 table. They are our speciality, peculiar to thia 
 valley and this climate. Fruitarianism is here 
 not a virtue, but a necessity. We're too lazy 
 to grow anything that needs much cultivation : 
 perhaps that's it. And there are no fauna 
 for us to slay and devour -, besides, no one 
 ever does any killing — we have an uncivilised 
 distaste for death, whether our own or our 
 feUow-creatures' ! The meal which I can offer 
 you will consequently be nourishing rather than 
 ornamental." 
 
 She did not stop in her boudoir : she took 
 him through it and out into an enclosed court- 
 yard where, in a sort of loggia under a canopy 
 supported by slender pillars, two heaps of 
 cushions were placed one on each side of a very 
 low table — its carved legs were barely a foot 
 high — loaded with the fruits to which she had 
 alluded. 
 
 Kellock surveyed the courtyard. It carried 
 his memory back to Spain — one of the many 
 countries he had visited — to the Court of the 
 Myrtles in the Alhambra at Granada. Here 
 there was no myrtle hedge, it was true ; the 
 resemblance was ti:aceable only to two factors : 
 the Mauresque devices of the architecture and 
 the fact that the central, open space of the court 
 was occupied by a deep rectangular marble 
 
92 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 tank — a swimming-bath in size — brimming with 
 clear water. 
 
 Beyond the vista of another colonnaded 
 loggia or cloister a second court was visible. 
 It, too, had its huge oblong bathing-pool of 
 marble. But in this second instance the waters 
 obscured the marble pavement underneath them : 
 they were thickly opaline. Tke first bath, the 
 bath close to whose brink he and Jewel were to 
 partake of their meal of fruits, contained plain 
 water, like the bath in his room. The further 
 bath was Pulo water — silken and scented and 
 ..." wrong." 
 
 " These are the Sultan's Baths," said Jewe^. 
 And answering his unspoken question : " This 
 one, of course, the clear-water one, is the one I 
 myself bathe in. Would you like to bathe here 
 too ?" 
 
 " That would be splendid !" He scanned the 
 superb pool with enthusiasm. The sun had not 
 yet sunk : the eastern wall of the court was 
 ablaze with its light : the motionless waters 
 glowed under the reflection. 
 
 " You swim ?" 
 
 "Yes." He had been a champion swimmer 
 in his schooldays. 
 
 Her eyes sparkled. " I love swimming. 
 We'll swim a race, you and I, White Plume. 
 
QUEEN— AND GIRL 9S 
 
 Let us bathe before the sun goes. Afterwards 
 we can eat." 
 
 Impulsively she ran back into her boudoir, and 
 returned, carrying a tunic: an unembroidered 
 native tunic with a sash girdle. 
 
 " Go and put this on." There was no tracp 
 of embarrassment in her proposal. " It is the 
 Priests' Law of Pule. Everybody must wear 
 the tunic. Besides," she bubbled mirthfully, 
 "you couldn't very well bathe in that nice suit 
 of yours." 
 
 He accejfted her suggestion with a corre- 
 sponding simplicity, ran up to his room, and in 
 a moment was down again, tunic-clad. 
 
 ^It's very becoming." She appraised his 
 new garb demurely. " White Plume, why 
 don't you always wear such a sensible costume ? 
 All the same," she confessed, " I like that suit 
 of yours, and the shoes, and the helmet. There's 
 an appropriateness about them. . . . Never 
 mind. Off we go I I'll race you to the other 
 end !" 
 
 With a gay scamper and a dive she was 
 in the pool, and striking out towards the goal. 
 Kellock followed her like a flash. The water, 
 stUl tepid from the heat of the day, foamed 
 round his shoulders : he flung himself forward 
 resistlessly. Put on his mettle by her challenge, 
 
94 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 he had been seized with a violent desire to 
 do justice to himself in this competition and 
 to win the race. 
 
 But he did not win it. The slight lead 
 which she had obtained by entering the water 
 half a second in front of him was not only not 
 retrieved but was actually increased. She was 
 a peerless swimmer. Although he exerted 
 himself to his utmost he was fully a furlong 
 behind her when she reached the end of the 
 bath. Without a trace of exhaustion she placed 
 her two hands on the marble edge and, in 
 a joyous leap, lifted herself out, dripping. 
 With delight in her face she stood and looked 
 down at him as, abandoning the attempt, he 
 ceased to swim ; she shook her head vigorously, 
 scattering a shower of drops from her glossy 
 hair ; she was like an active young animal, 
 rejoicing in its own heaven-sent healthfulness. 
 
 " You're beaten. White Plume !" she sang out 
 triumphantly. " Oh, I'm proud, proud ! What 
 fun to beat a man swimmer !" And, rising on 
 tip-toe like a laughing statue on the brink of 
 the pool, she dived again and rejoined him. 
 
 A spirit of madcap mischievousness seemed 
 to have invaded her. KeUock found it infectious, 
 and their bathe became a romp.. Gone was 
 Jewel's grave dignity : she was a girl again — 
 
QUEEN— AND GIRL 95 
 
 her pranks, to be sure, were less those of a girl 
 than of some irrepressible, naughty boy on 
 holiday. She splashed Kellock, making the 
 water go into his mouth and eyes : in an instant 
 they were embroiled in a mutual furious splash- 
 ing-match. She veered off, defeated, and 
 springing from the bath flew fleetly along its 
 edge, he after her : then with an unexpected 
 ruse, she had circled round a piUar and, with a 
 push, toppled him into the water. A flying 
 jump, and she was in beside him, and the 
 frantic splashing-battle had recommenced. 
 
 Presently she was inspired to challenge him 
 at diving. They were to dive for pebbles and 
 see who could pick up the most, from the 
 bottom of the bath, without coming to the 
 surface to breathe. She threw in a handful of 
 twenty pebbles : then she and Kellock, poised 
 on the margin, each inhaled and dived. The 
 bath was some seven or eight feet in depth : 
 there was plenty of space in which to manoeuvre. 
 Kellock, steering to and fro beneath the water, 
 his eyes searching the marble pavement for the 
 pebbles, saw Jewel's form, shadowy and waver- 
 ing, sometiuies close to him and sometimes 
 twisting suddenly away. He picked up pebble 
 after pebble ; once he grabbed at a pebble and 
 his hand encountered hers : she had secured 
 
 7 
 
96 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 the prize an instant in front of him. In so 
 doing, her face turned towards him, her eyes 
 met his eyes, through the intervening vitreous 
 film of water. A moment later, with a swerve, 
 she had shot to the surface. 
 
 He was able to retain his breath longer than 
 she. When he at last came up, gasping, and 
 they compared their gains, he had thirteen 
 pebbles and she had seven. 
 
 " Anyhow, between us we got them all," she 
 cried. " Your lungs must be pretty sound, 
 White Plume. Come. We've bathed long 
 enough. The sun will soon have set. Before 
 we lose the light I'll show you another of my 
 favourite amusements. We'll see whether you're 
 as good at games as you are at swimming." 
 
 She darted off, into the wide space of a 
 corner of the court, the water streaming from 
 her limbs and her tunic on to the pavement. 
 Kellock followed. And in a few minutes he 
 found himself engaged in a headlong game, 
 played with a resilient ball and a species of small 
 bat, the ball being hit against the wall in the 
 manner of tennis or rackets. She was marvel- 
 lously skilful in hitting the ball; her movements 
 were lightning-like. He had always been a 
 deft master in such pastimes ; and the tremen- 
 dous pace at which she played was only a 
 
QUEEN— AND GIRL 97 
 
 pleasure to him, andTthe gloriously co-ordinated 
 action of her rapid running and striking of the 
 ball a delight to watch and to emulate. 
 
 The disappearance of the sun brought the 
 game to a close. Panting and flushed with 
 excitement Jewel exclaimed : " That was 
 wonderful ! White Plume, I've never before 
 had anyone to play that game with me, not 
 since my father taught it to me. He used to 
 play, but when he died there was no one left. 
 So I have always played alone. Oh, White 
 Plume, you can't think how I've enjoyed this." 
 
 He had enjoyed it too — incredibly. She was 
 the best of playmates. " It's been fine." He 
 was breathing hard. 
 
 " Warm ?" she laughed. " The exercise has 
 dried us, anyhow. Now for that postponed meal. 
 I'm ravenously hungry, and you ought to be 
 hungry too, White Plume." 
 
 Twilight had fallen. Above the court the sky 
 was velvet, gemmed with stars. The bathing 
 pool, having at last regained its calm after the 
 turmoil of their splashings, lay like an un- 
 tarnished mirror set in an ivory frame — the 
 marble pavement. 
 
 At Jewel's suggestion Kellock carried the 
 table of fruits into her boudoir. Here some 
 unseen servitor had lit the lamp which hung 
 
98 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 from the roof. It shed mellow rays from 
 between the arabesque apertures in its metal- 
 work. Beneath it, Kellock and Jewel, seated 
 on the low cushioned divans, ate the fruits and 
 eagerly discussed details of the swimming and 
 of the game which they had played. These two 
 activities — the swimming and the game — had 
 formed a link between them and introduced a 
 novel factor of comradeship : insensibly they 
 had ceased to be strangers. 
 
 Outside the window of the room the valley 
 had begun to be flooded with a pallid radiance ; 
 and presently, through the filigree lattice-work, 
 the moon became visible. As he watched it 
 slowly and majestically ascending the vault of 
 the sky, Kellock reflected that it was incredible 
 — incredible — that this was the same moon 
 which had looked down upon New York. 
 ***** 
 
 That night, by the light of the said moon — 
 for his own room boasted no lamp — he tried to 
 write another poem. 
 
 But he failed. 
 
 The lithe figure of Jfewel as, boylike and 
 laughing, she had darted ahead of him in their 
 race round the edge of the swimming-bath or 
 splashed uproariously in its waters, came between 
 him and the thoughts which he would fain have 
 
QUEEN— AND GIRL 99 
 
 simplified and concentrated by placing them in 
 words upon the page. Useless to try to banish 
 the vision which rose before his mind's eye ! 
 Better to yield to its enchantment and write 
 another contribution to 7%e Wonder of Women. 
 
 He took his pencil in hand. 
 
 " Playmate " 
 
 He wrote the one word . . . then tore up 
 the sheet of paper and threw it aside. 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 Suleiman's pleasure-house 
 
 At dawn he and Jewel swam again together 
 in the marble pool. 
 
 Its beauty, in the early light, was dreamlike : 
 soon, when the sun rose above the mountain- 
 summit, the courtyard became a chequer-board 
 of glittering white patches between inky 
 shadows. The heat was ferocious, almost in 
 stantaneously. Kellock and his companion 
 emerging from the water, basked on the warm 
 stone of the margin for a few minutes, then 
 retired into the shade to eat. 
 
 She was grave this morning, " More ' Queen ' 
 than ' Jewel,' " as Kellock put it, rallying her 
 on her seriousness. 
 
 "I've been thinking," she said — "wonder- 
 mg 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing !" 
 
 " Tell it to me, anyway." 
 101 
 
102 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " When is it that you're due to start back to 
 Gah-nung?" 
 
 " I have to meet the Orpheus — my steamer — 
 off the river mouth on Sunday. To-day's 
 Thursday. I suppose I must leave here to- 
 morrow night." 
 
 "No, you can go down the river in twelve 
 hours, though it takes thirty-six to come up." 
 
 " Saturday afternoon, then." 
 
 " ' Saturday,' ' Thursday ' ! I haven't heard 
 those names since I was a child at the mission 
 school. The days' names don't trouble us here. 
 The coming of the full moon is all that makes 
 our calendar." She toyed with the fruit which 
 she was eating. " Suppose " She hesi- 
 tated. 
 
 " Well ?" 
 
 She made as thoxigh to speak, then was silent. 
 At last she said : " Dr. Levaloir will send you 
 back, next year, for another flask of the sacred 
 oil" 
 
 " I don't imagine I'll be in this part of the 
 world a year hence. I seldom linger long in 
 one spot. Probably I'll never see Pulo again." 
 He spoke with affected nonchalance, but it was 
 costing him an effort — a greater effort than he 
 could have deemed possible. 
 
 " Never come back ? Oh, don't say that !" 
 
SULEIMAN'S PLEASURE-HOUSE 103 
 
 There was a note of more than regret in her 
 tone : she was distressed, despairing, acutely 
 disappointed. " Don't you like Pulo ?" 
 
 "Perhaps I'm afraid of growing to like it too 
 well," he answered significantly. 
 
 " I thought you said you were never afi^aid 
 of anything," she pouted, with a gleam of 
 mockery. 
 
 He gazed at her. Their eyes met — his limpid 
 hlue eyes and hers with their brown depths 
 beneath the ebony lashes. Deliberately he 
 held her gaze, and said : " When I said I was 
 never afraid, I was a fool." 
 
 Rich colour mantled on her olive cheeks. 
 Her eyes fell. 
 
 "White Plume," she murmured, "if you go 
 away I shall look and long for you to come back." 
 Her voice steadied. " Surely Dr. Levaloir will 
 ask you and you won't refuse. He sent Van 
 Duysen more than once " 
 
 " And you see the result. " Kellock's comment 
 was quiet. 
 
 "That would never happen to you," she 
 cried 
 
 " What would never happen to me ?" he 
 questioned vehemently. " What is the danger 
 in this place ? What is it that has happened 
 to Van Duysen and the rest ?" 
 
104 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 •' Better go and ask them," she retorted, with 
 an impudent, tdrnboyish moue. 
 
 "I will," he vowed. "Van Duysen said I 
 was to come and see him." 
 
 " Don't you think Zuaila pretty ?" she asked, 
 " You saw Zuaila, of course." 
 
 " Pretty — yes ; but horribly pale." 
 
 " They're all pale. It's one of the symptoms. 
 Even the hair bleaches in time— through every 
 shade of red and orange to the lightest yellow, 
 Zuaila's hair was black once, and her skin the 
 colour of cinnamon. Now her hair is copper 
 and her complexion at its best, a sort of 
 porcelain. Van Duysen greatly admired Zuaila, 
 I'm told, when he saw her ; so the priests 
 married them." 
 
 "A happy marriage, I trust !" Kellock per- 
 mitted himself a shade of sarcasm. 
 
 It was lost on her. 
 
 " All marriages are happy here. We have our 
 conventions — but, unlike the conventions of the 
 outside world, they're adhered to by everybody." 
 
 "To put it bluntly, you mean that Van 
 Duysen will not tire of Zuaila and Zuaila will 
 not tire of Van Duysen." 
 
 " Quite impossible. That kind of thing doesn't 
 happen amongst the community who inhabit 
 Suleiman's Pleasure-House." 
 
SULEIMAN'S PLEASURE-HOUSE 105 
 
 " No wonder you were able to persuade Van 
 Duysen to stay." 
 
 " / persuade him ?" She was indignant. " I 
 never spoke to him : I never revealed myself to 
 him at all. I inspected him as I inspected you 
 — then left him free to goor stay as he preferred. 
 He never saw my face or heard my voice. Ah, 
 White Plume !" — she softened — " you don't 
 know how my heart beat with joy when, looking 
 at you, I saw that this was not merely another 
 Van Duysen who had come to Pulo !" 
 
 And it was with obvious emotion that she 
 added : " I did so want a friend !" 
 
 " You must be lonely here." 
 
 But, quite abruptly, her mood had changed. 
 " Lonely ? This is the most perfect place in the 
 
 world, and I'm happy, happy But," she 
 
 coaxed, " I wish you'd come back next time the 
 doctor sends a messenger !" 
 
 " Well, I'll think about it." 
 
 " No, no. Promise ! You must promise me 
 before you leave, and then we'll write the^ 
 promise down on paper, or you'll forget." 
 
 "Forget!" He was aghast. The premoni- 
 tion had begun to weigh upon him that even 
 when he had torn himself from Pulo- he would 
 for ever be tempted by its remembrance. 
 
 " Yea— forget."- She was insistent. " Some 
 
106 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 people don't forget Pulo — Saumarez, for 
 instance, his memory is absolutely unaffected ; 
 but most people . . . well, anyhow, very few 
 people have ever left Pulo, so vety few have 
 had a chance to experience the forgetfulness. 
 Maybe it's only a tradition. They say that 
 when a person settles here he forgets the life 
 he's left, and vice versa." 
 
 " Van Duy sen's memory is certainly impaired. 
 He had the haziest recollection of Dr. Levaloir. 
 But then Van Duysen is, I take it, suffering 
 from the effects of the Opal waters." 
 
 " Enjoying their blessings," she corrected him. 
 " Forgetfulness is no cause for sorrow, but rather 
 a gift to be thankful for. That is Pulo wisdom. 
 But to appreciate it you must stay in Pulo, not 
 go into the toilsome outer world where it is 
 necessary to cultivate the affliction of memory." 
 
 " At all events, I shall not forget — for I shall 
 not bathe in the Opal waters." 
 
 "They will do you no harm," she assured 
 him again. 
 
 He plucked up courage to ask : "Do they 
 do you no harm ?" 
 
 She did not pretend to miss his drift. 
 
 " My ancestry is pure on both sides-^but, as 
 it may not be pure in its intermingling, I take 
 no risks. I do not bathe in the Opal water, 
 
SULEIMAN'S PLEASURE-HOUSE 107 
 
 though my father bathed and drew life from it. 
 I shall not bathe in it, not until " 
 
 She halted. 
 
 " Until ?" 
 
 " Until I have to," she said. 
 
 There was something very sorrowfiil in the 
 depths of her eyes as she resumed : " That 
 won't be for a long time yet, though. Years and 
 years. Unless — at least — first of aU," she stam- 
 mered, " I must find Oh, White Plume, 
 
 don't let's talk about it. I'm happy, happy ! 
 And even when . . . even if the time comes 
 when I must bathe in the Opal waters,, they 
 will give me happiness afresh and new life and 
 ioy ; and Pulo will always be wonderful !" 
 
 " Are you sure ?" he said earnestly. " Jewel 
 — if I can help you in any way, I wish you'd 
 tell me." 
 
 She rose, and stood proudly before him. " I 
 need no help. What do you mean ? Of course 
 I don't need help." 
 
 He too had risen. He bowed. "Forgive 
 me. 
 
 Impulsively she placed her hands in his. " I 
 only want you to promise that you'll come 
 back, \yhite Plume !" 
 
 Her small, woman's hands, lying in his large 
 masculine ones, seemed to plead with him : 
 
108 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 their yearning trustfulness tugged at his heart- 
 strings. 
 
 " I promise !" he vowed. 
 
 Their hands remained clasped for a moment. 
 
 " You've promised !" she whispered. " You've 
 promised that if you ever go away from 
 me " 
 
 " I am going on Saturday," he corrected her. 
 
 " Two more days !" she rippled with a sudden 
 return of gaiety. " Two more days, White 
 Plume ! And perhaps — no, I won't annoy 
 you any more. Now I must leave you, 
 Saumarez will be waiting for me in the audi- 
 ence-chamber, and I must play the r61e of 
 Sultan for a while." Go and see Van Duysen 
 and the Pleasure-House, and satisfy your 
 curiosity — if you can. Then return, and we 
 shall swim again, and play the racket game." 
 
 She was gone. 
 
 Passing to his room, Kellock encountered 
 Saumarez on his way to the audience-chamber. 
 
 The half-caste regarded Kellock's tunic, and 
 his face wrinkled into a smile. 
 
 " You wear Pulo tunic. Good !" 
 
 " I've only put it on for bathing," growled 
 the young American, and five minutes later 
 had changed into his white ducks and put on 
 his solah topee helmet. Certainly he was not 
 
SULEIMAN'S PLEASURE-HOUSE 109 
 
 going to call on Van Duysen wearing the Pulo 
 tunic. 
 
 Odd, how he resented the mere idea of doing 
 so! 
 
 He issued forth into the sunshine, garbed 
 (with an accentuated touch of trim fastidious- 
 ness) as a Westerner. White duck trousers 
 and jacket, soft shirt and tie, leather shoes, 
 pith hat — no, there was no mistaking Alvin 
 Dalroy Kellock for any of the inhabitants of 
 Suleiman's Pleasure-House. 
 
 That abode of dubious bliss he reached in 
 half an hour's walk. 
 
 A closer view of the Pleasure- House revealed 
 the fact that it was in a state of lamentable 
 disrepair. Portions of it were almost in ruins ; 
 elsewhere, great fissures straggled across the 
 walls, indicating the effect of past earthquake 
 shocks. But the inhabitants who occupied its 
 countless suites of chambers did not appear to 
 mind the state of their dwelling-place. And in 
 such a climate there was, perhaps, some excuse 
 for their indolence. 
 
 " Draughts don't matter, I suppose," Kellock 
 reflected grimly. " But if there's any rainy 
 season, the place must leak like a sieve. I'll 
 inquire. No harm in asking questions when 
 you want to find things out. These folks don't 
 
110 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 seem interested in me, but I'm not forbidden to 
 be interested in them." 
 
 He went up to a group of the white people. 
 They were seated, in a pavilion of the Pleasure- 
 House, round one of their number — a woman — 
 who had been playing on a stringed instrument. 
 
 A queer group they made. Kellock, survey- 
 ing them, was intensely conscious of thdr 
 " wrongness " : that inexpressible something 
 which had struck him in Van Duysen and 
 Zuaila. Men and women equally were pallid, in 
 varying degrees : some chalkily white ; some 
 almost livid, as though there were a bluish 
 tinge in their complexions ; some a pure, 
 transparent cream ; some a wan yeUow. And 
 all, like Zuaila, had carmine lips, as though 
 here alone the red blood's pigment had per- 
 sisted. With the women the effect was some- 
 times bizarrely charming. The women were 
 extraordinary. The most ^extraordinary thing 
 about them, to him, was their alikeness — not in 
 features, for every variety of type. Western and 
 Oriental, from a face nearly Grecian to a face 
 flat-nosed and African or piquantly Japanese, 
 seemed to be represented ; and their hair, 
 sometimes worn long, sometimes cut short, was 
 of every conceivable gradation from magenta 
 to flaxen. Their alikeness was in their age. 
 
SULEIMAN'S PLEASURE-HOUSE 111 
 
 They all seemed to be of the same age. They 
 all seemed to be of the age he had assigned 
 to Zuaila — thirty. None looked older, none 
 looked younger, except in moments of anima- 
 tion. None looked middle-aged or elderly, 
 none looked girlish — or not quite. Thirty — a 
 young thirty : that defined them. 
 
 And tunning his attention to the men, 
 Kellock saw that " round about thirty " was 
 their universal age likewise. Only in their 
 case it was not markedly a " young " thirty. 
 It was a passS thirty : a thirty with gulfs 
 between it and twenty-five. 
 
 " Can any of you speak English ?" KeUock 
 introduced himself boldly. 
 
 " I can." 
 
 One of the men had replied, not uncour- 
 teously but with no outward show of animation. 
 
 " My name's Kellock, and I'm an American. 
 You are English, I judge." 
 
 " English ?" He considered. " Maybe I was 
 English. My name's Archer." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Archer, I want to take the 
 liberty to ask you a few questions. Can you 
 spare me a minute or two ?" 
 
 A flicker of amusement passed across Archer's 
 face. " Hours — days — weeks — months — years, 
 if you like. But you'll find you lose your itch 
 
 8 
 
112 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 for questioning after you've settle4 here a 
 bit." 
 
 " 1 don't intend to settle. I'm leaving here 
 the day after to-morrow." 
 
 " Better not," Archer commented. 
 
 " There are one or two things I wanted to 
 know," said Kellock. 
 
 " All the more reason to stay and find out." 
 
 " To begin with " — Kellock persisted — ^ 
 ** where do all you people come from V 
 
 " I can give you a plain answer to that. 
 We've all forgotten." 
 
 Kellock was staggered. " You yourself don't 
 remember England ?" 
 
 " Now you mention it . . . Well, as English 
 is my language I suppose I must have been 
 in England. I seem to know there's a place 
 called England ..." 
 
 "An island." 
 
 " Couldn't be an island. This is an island, 
 and somehow it doesn't seem to-me as though 
 England could be like this. . . ." 
 
 It was hopeless. Kellock took ?inother tack. 
 " Why did you settle here ?" 
 
 "Don't remember — but evidently because I 
 liked it." 
 
 "You don't want to leave ?" 
 
 " Good Lord, no !" 
 
SULEIMAN'S PLEASURE-HOUSE 113 
 
 " Excuse the question, but are you, or any 
 of your friends, suffering from any ailment ?" 
 
 "There's no suffering here, you bet your 
 life." 
 
 " But disease " 
 
 Archer's eyes narrowed. " You can't say as 
 there's any disease if everybody's cured and 
 nobody dies," he mumbled. 
 
 " Nobody dies ?" 
 
 " We don't look like dying, do we ?" 
 
 "The baths keep disease at bay — I take it 
 that that's what you mean, Mr. Archer." 
 
 Archer assented. "They put you in fine 
 fettle. You should try. It's an experience." 
 
 " If they're so strengthening, why is it that 
 you people let your house tumble to bits ? Why 
 not rebuild ?" 
 
 Archer shook his head. 
 
 " Well, look here : forgive my impertinence, 
 but what do you do with yourselves all day 
 long ?" 
 
 " Nothing," said Archer calmly. 
 
 Nothing ! Kellock's vigorous American 
 nature was revolted. How on earth could 
 one pass one's life doing absolutely nothing? 
 How stave off weariness and disillusionment 
 and self- hatred? How contrive to pass the 
 time? 
 
114 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 "We bathe, of course," said Archer, "and 
 eat, and sleep, and sometimes there's some 
 music." 
 
 " Don't you get bored V 
 
 " ' Bored ' is a word I'd forgotten." Archer 
 chuckled faintly. 
 
 Kellock gave it up. 
 
 At that moment he saw Van Duysen and 
 Zuaila approaching, hand in hand, from the 
 direction of the lake. He moved to meet them. 
 Behind him, not a head had been turned to 
 watch him go : during his colloquy with Archer 
 no other person present had listened or other- 
 wise paid the slightest attention. 
 
 Van Duysen gazed at him : recognition 
 dawned slowly in his eyes. 
 
 "You're a man I met somewhere " he 
 
 said. 
 
 " Yesterday. My name's Kellock." 
 
 " Kellock. Yes, I seem to remember. You 
 have come to live in the Pleasure-House ? I 
 am glad." 
 
 " No, I'm only paying a visit." 
 
 " Come to our room. It is cooler there." 
 
 The room which was the habitation of Van 
 Duysen and Zuaila proved to be a vast 
 chamber of marble, with fretted windows, and a 
 ceiling domed in stalactite honeycomb pattern. 
 
SULEIMAN'S PLEASTJRE-HOUSE 115 
 
 Ragged cushions, with frayed tassels, were 
 thrown here and there upon the floor. They 
 were the sole furniture. Absolutely, the room 
 contained nothing else but these unkempt 
 cushions. Yet the effect was neither poverty- 
 stricken nor austere. So august were the 
 proportions of the apartment (what matter if 
 its marble was cracked ?), so gorgeous was the 
 sunshine outside the window apertures and the 
 translucency of the cool shadows within, that 
 the home of Zuaila and Van Duysen wore an air 
 inexpressibly rich. The adjectives "cosy," " con- 
 venient," " luxurious," " comfortable " — all the 
 adjectives applicable to Western homes — sank 
 into paltriness by contrast with the stark 
 splendour of this Oriental mansion. 
 
 Kellock pictured himself living in such a 
 room. . . . 
 
 " Lots of other rooms like this," he heard 
 Van Duysen saying. " You could stay here, 
 and marry — ■r- I'm married. You've seen 
 Zuaila, my wife ? Where's Zuaila ? Oh, there 
 she is, fetching us some cushions. Pretty, isn't 
 she ?" 
 
 Yes, she was pretty. 
 
 She came, carrying the cushions to a nook 
 beside one of the windows, a pale slim figure in 
 the shadowy room. Her brilliantly red lips 
 
116 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 were like rose-petals against the cream of her 
 face. 
 
 Pretty ? She was exquisite ! 
 
 " Better stay here, and marry " Van 
 
 Duysen went on murmuring. 
 
 Kellock shuddered. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 
 
 He learnt nothing during his visit to Van 
 Day sen. 
 
 Van Duysen's vagueness was impenetrable 
 — and his memory (if he could be said to 
 possess any memory) so capricious as to be 
 useless. The questions which Kellock attempted 
 bore no result whatever. He returned to 
 Jewel very little wiser than when he left her. 
 
 She teased him. " You don't look as though 
 your stroll had been a profitable one, White 
 Plume. Why that frown ? Baffled curiosity ?" 
 
 " There's something hateful — hateful — about 
 those people. They're — ^^they're decaying." 
 
 A startled expression appeared on her face. 
 She gazed at him narrowly. " You don't mean 
 
 to say you found out " she began. But at 
 
 his look of surprise her brow cleared. " How 
 absurd you are, White Plume ! ' Decaying ' ? 
 What a horrid word !" 
 
 117 
 
118 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " Van Duy sen's a wreck. And there was a 
 fellow called Archer, an Englishman — ugh !" 
 
 " Come and swim," was her response. 
 
 And, having changed into his tunic, Kellock 
 bathed with her, and dispelled, for the nonce, 
 the evil impressions of the morning. 
 
 Afterwards they invaded his soul again, like 
 a throng of evil ghosts, and voicing a doubt 
 which had begun to arise in his mind, he 
 said : 
 
 " When am I to receive the flask of oil which 
 I came to fetch for Dr. Levaloir ?" 
 
 She hesitated. Then, " Whenever you 
 choose." 
 
 " Why not to-day ?" 
 
 " These base suspicions " — she had seen 
 through his request, and was speaking in a 
 jesting key — " are not very polite. As a snub 
 to them, you shall have the flask of sacred oil 
 now?' 
 
 " Where is it ?" 
 
 " At the temple. We'll go there together." 
 
 Rather imperiously she strode in front of 
 him from the court and to the palace door. 
 
 " Put these on." She gave him a pair of 
 woven sandals, and slipped her own small feet 
 into similar protections. "We have to cross 
 rough ground.'!- 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 119 
 
 " I'd rather change into my ordinary clothes, 
 and wear shoes." 
 
 " You can't enter the temple except in the 
 Pulo tunic. It's the law." 
 
 He conceded the point, on the " "When in 
 Rome do as the Romans " principle, and, having 
 adjusted his sandals, followed her out into the 
 sunshine. 
 
 She preserved a haughty silence as they 
 walked up a gentle slope near the end of the 
 palace. She was, he felt sure, only feigning to 
 be offended at his request, so, taking no notice 
 of her attitude, he began to ply her with 
 questions. 
 
 " Our religion ?" — she answered his first one — 
 " It hasn't got a name. It's a jumble of old 
 faiths and old traditions : Taoism and Buddhism 
 and a dash of Mahomedanism. At the mission 
 school they couldn't make head or tail of what 
 I could tell them of it — and frankly I'm as much 
 muddled as they were." 
 
 "But you've mentioned the 'law.' " 
 
 " The priests' laws are very ancient and very 
 strict. On the other hand they are very simple 
 and wise, and there are very few of them." 
 
 " In what way are they wise ?" 
 
 " They insure the happiness of the people in 
 the valley. The priesthood, you see, is primarily 
 
120 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 a healing priesthood rather than a religious 
 one. This is a tremendously old place of healing, 
 you know. Suleiman's Pleasure-House is a 
 thousand years old at least,, and the temple 
 dates even further back. Look at this staircase. 
 A polish like this isn't produced in a mere 
 century or two." 
 
 They had begun to climb a nobly broad flight 
 of stairs, cut in the igneous rock, and the smooth- 
 ness of their surface, worn by human tread or 
 the effects of weather, or both, was indeed 
 marvellous. Kellock's white tunic, and that of 
 his companion, was reflected mirror- wise in each 
 slab. 
 
 " Multitudes of people must have gone up 
 and down here." Kellock had noticed that each 
 step was hollowed towards its centre. 
 
 "A good many still go up and down, only 
 nobody does anything so crazy on a fine hot day 
 like this, White Plume." 
 
 " They don't bother to go and pray in fine 
 weather ?" 
 
 * ' They don't go to fray in any weather. They 
 only go to bathe." 
 
 " To bathe in the temple ?" 
 
 " It contains the richest Opal pool of all, and 
 the only one which is under cover. When we 
 have a storm, and rain falls, the Opal lakes of 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 121 
 
 the valley are diluted. Everybody takes refuge 
 in the temple, partly for shelter but mainly to 
 bathe. The people from the Pleasure-House 
 must bathe, or But here we are." 
 
 At the top of the flight of steps, on a plateau, 
 a magnificent mosque came into view— magnifi- 
 cent in size rather than in ornamentation, for 
 externally it was devoid of embellishment, devoid 
 even of window-apertures. Its walls were 
 fortress-like, its dome a mountain of un wrinkled 
 plaster. To Kellock perhaps its most remark- 
 able feature was that it was the only building 
 which he had seen here in perfect repair. It 
 was in an immaculate state of preservation. 
 
 Two solid metal gates, oddly reminiscent of 
 the doors of a safety- vault in a bank, stood 
 wide open to mark its one entrance. Within, 
 in comparison with the glare outside, the dark- 
 ness was profound. But presently his eyes 
 accustomed themselves to the change, and he 
 began to see that the temple was not so im- 
 penetrably black as he had supposed. 
 
 He became aware that the vast circular in- 
 terior was illuminated, at a point remote from 
 the door, by a constellation of feeble lamps, 
 which hung in front of an altar. Above the 
 altar a carved image brooded — a dimly-defined 
 Buddha, or some such idol, very black, but 
 
122 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 holding in one of its hands, rested upon its vast 
 knee, a diminutive figure clearly intended to 
 represent a man — a white man. The Buddha's 
 visage was benevolent : it gazed down in pitying 
 fashion on the relatively infantile man which it 
 nursed. 
 
 Jewel had paused, a few yards within the 
 door, and Kellock now heard her speaking. She 
 had put her mouth close to his ear — not because 
 she wished to whisper, but because, as he now 
 learnt with startling eifect, the echo induced by 
 the acoustics of this enormous semi-globular en- 
 closure was so loud and so confusing that it was 
 hardly possible to distinguish words in the noise 
 which resulted from any speech whatsoever. 
 
 " That's the symbol of the healing properties 
 of the place." She pointed at the Buddha. 
 
 By listening closely he could hear her, but her 
 voice, which she had not subdued below its 
 ordinary pitch, echoed and rumbled and re- 
 echoed, and seemed to boom and shout and 
 repeat itself from every quarter of the dome. 
 
 " What a weird row !" he gasped ; and 
 promptly, as though mocking him, the sentence 
 became magnified into an orchestra trumpeting 
 an insane din of discords from invisible brass 
 instruments in the air around his head. 
 
 He saw that Jewel was laughing at him. 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 123 
 
 Her laughter, mingling in the uproar created by 
 the echoes of his exclamation, became an eldritch 
 scream, somewhere up above him in the im- 
 penetrable depths of the roof. He put his 
 fingers in his ears. It was intolerable — uncanny 
 — hideous. 
 
 She stifled her amusement, and signed to him 
 to take his fingers from his ears. Putting her 
 hand in his she led him to the wall, to a place 
 close to the door, where a little diamond-shaped 
 tablet, let into the wall and flush with it, stood 
 at rather less than his own height from the 
 ground. Here she indicated that she wished 
 him to remain. Then she quitted him and 
 darted off into the shadows in the direction of 
 the Buddha. 
 
 He watched her white-clad form flit to what 
 seemed, in the deceptive light, an enormous 
 distance. She became tiny, like a Tanagra 
 figurine. Then he saw her stop and stand still 
 at the furthest limit of the temple. 
 
 " White Plume !" A delicious, clear, musical 
 voice called from close behind him. 
 
 He swung sharply round. 
 
 There was nobody there. 
 
 " White Plume ! Listen at the tablet. White 
 Plume !" 
 
 Then he understood. 
 
124 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 It was the old phenomenon of the so-called 
 Whispering Gallery, He had met it in St. Paul's 
 in London, he had been rather contemptuous of 
 it in the celebrated Sala de Los Secretos ; but 
 there was no doubt that while modern builders 
 fumble empirically with the problem of acoustics, 
 the Orientals long ago mastered some mathe- 
 matical or geometrical formulae which enabled 
 them to construct the " whispering gallery " 
 not by a chance but of deliberate intention. 
 And it looked as though this Pulo temple was 
 a case in point. That tablet, and its placing, 
 had an air of design, like the not unsimilar 
 angle-stones in the Sala de Los Secretos. The 
 voice, impinging on the tablet, travelled up the 
 terrific hollow of the elliptical roof and descended 
 on the other side : it did not disperse itself, but 
 arrived, unbroken and lucid, at a certain spot 
 at the opposite end of the temple — not just any 
 spot, but one particular spot, where, no doubt, 
 a corresponding tablet was inserted in the wall. 
 At this second tablet Jewel had stationed her- 
 self to " telephone " to him. 
 
 "I am listening. Jewel!" It was curious 
 how intimate was the effect of this strange 
 mode of converse in the semi-darkness : as 
 though speaker and listener, invisible to each 
 other (for each must face the wall), were intensely 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 125 
 
 near, almost touching, and profoundly alone 
 and safe from eavesdroppers. 
 
 " It is impossible to talk, within the temple, 
 except by means of these whispering- tablets," 
 her voice was telling him. " Can you hear me, 
 White Plume?" 
 
 " I hear you, Jewel." 
 
 " That is well. Our voices were made to 
 sound singly by the echo." 
 
 " I hated to hear your voice sound ugly," he 
 said. 
 
 "You looked horrified, White Plume!" she 
 laughed. " And 1 — I was pleased." 
 
 " Pleased to make that disgusting noise ?" 
 
 "No, pleased that you were horrified," she 
 confessed. " White Plume !" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " If there are any questions you wish to ask 
 me about the temple, ask them now. Other- 
 wise you'll have to wait till we go outside 
 again. I don't want to make you angry by 
 speaking to yoti while we are away from the 
 whispering-tablets. But now that you've come 
 here you may as well see the whole of the 
 inside of the temple, and the Opal pool." 
 
 " Where is the Opal pool ?" 
 
 " You will see it as soon as you come over 
 here. When we have finished talking, come 
 
126 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 over and join me here, and then we shall find 
 a priest to fetch the flask of sacred oil." 
 
 " I haven't seen any priests yet." 
 
 " They will be here presently. There is 
 a place behind the altar where they live, and 
 a passage into the mountain-side to the cavern 
 where the sacred oil is distilled." 
 
 " How do you mean — distilled? Have the 
 priests some chemical process ?" 
 
 " No ; the Opal water's source is there. It 
 comes very hot from the mountain — boUing. 
 There is some volcanic action : the steam con- 
 denses — I don't understand how. The distilling 
 is natural, and always going on, night and day 
 for ever. The priests collect the result in special 
 vessels. They show no one their method. All 
 you will see is the flask which they give you." 
 
 " It won't be too big to carry away, I hope." 
 
 " Oh no, it's very small, only it is made of 
 lead, so weighs heavily for its size. . . . White 
 Plume 1" 
 
 " Yes ?" 
 
 ' 'Are you determined to get the flask to-day?" 
 
 " Don't you wish me to have it ?" 
 
 There was no response for a moment ; then 
 he heard her again. "You shall have it. I 
 have given you my promise. But, White 
 Plume " 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 127 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Do not forget that you have given me your 
 promise : your promise to come back to Pulo. 
 White Plume — I'd like to hear you say it to 
 me now, once more. Will you, White Plume ?" 
 
 " I promise you, Jewel, that I shall return 
 to Pulo." 
 
 "White Plume, you have made me very 
 happy !" Her voice thrilled from the impassive 
 tablet. " Come, now ; come and join me over, 
 here." 
 
 He abandoned the tablet and moved across 
 the vast pavement of the mosque towards her. 
 
 As he did so he had a fleeting impression 
 that someone had peered round the corner 
 of the door at him, and that the someone was 
 Saumarez. 
 
 Had Saumarez followed them to the temple ? 
 If so, why ? 
 
 He stopped and stared at the door. No one 
 was visible. The half-caste, if he had been 
 there, had sneaked out of sight again. The 
 two solid metal gates, the lintel above them 
 and the threshold below, framed a vertical 
 oblong of sunshine so dazzling, compared with 
 the gloom within, that the eye could hardly 
 endure to contemplate it. 
 
 Kellock turned his back upon it, blinking 
 
 9 
 
128 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 from the sheer pain on the retina, and continued 
 towards Jewel. 
 
 She stood motionlessly by her' tablet, watch- 
 ing his approach with a fixed regard. Nearing 
 her he became cognisant of a strange light, 
 a light other than that of the altar lamps, 
 which pervaded this portion of the temple. 
 
 It emq,nated not from above but from below : 
 its sheen came, apparently, from a space in the 
 pavement. 
 
 In a moment he recognised its origin. 
 
 Before the altar and its brooding Buddha an 
 irregular-shaped gap, fifteen or twenty yards 
 at its widest, occurred in the pavement. This 
 gap marked the presence of a miniature lagoon, 
 contained in the natural rock of the plateau : a 
 pool with small bays and capes : a greatly 
 reduced version of the lake near the Suleiman 
 Pleasure- House. And this temple pool was 
 abrim with a similar water— Opal water. 
 But, being in semi-darkness, its surface had a 
 nacreous hue : it was fluorescent : it gave forth 
 a greenish glow. Faint fumes rose from it, or 
 rather a kind of luminous fog. The water 
 reflected nothing : the brooding Buddha was 
 not mirrored in it, nor were the lamp-flames. 
 Opalescence permeated the pool and made it 
 opaque ; and the light which transpired from 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 129 
 
 it resembled the play of summer lightning beyond 
 the horizon line, or the strange flickerings in 
 that electrician's toy, a vacuum-tube. 
 
 This, then, was the bath of healing. He 
 gazed at it. It was perfectly still — a waxen 
 sheet of untranslucent liquid. Its appearance 
 repelled him* The green glow was . . . nasty. 
 He moved on, and joined Jewel. 
 
 She pointed to the altar. Two figures had 
 appeared there, evidently priests. 
 
 They were old men — the only old men whom 
 Kellock had seen in Pulo. Their hair and 
 beards were long and grizzled ; they wore 
 tunics ; their limbs might once have been rose- 
 wood-coloured, but were now a wrinkled and 
 sallow brown. 
 
 Both old men made a formal obeisance to 
 Jewel as she and Kellock approached them : 
 a curtsy rather than a salaam. Jewel acknow- 
 ledged it with a gesture, slight yet dignified — 
 " Queen " for the moment, and in regal fashion 
 aloof, with an aloofness which struck Kellock 
 as quaintly felicitous, yet, in some poignant 
 way, pathetic. 
 
 Three or four other old men appeared from 
 behind the idol, one of them, the oldest of all, 
 carrying in his hands a small object which 
 Kellock took to be the flask of sacred oil. 
 
180 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Whether any ritual was involved in its presen- 
 tation to him, he did not know. Having 
 walked forward with Jewel he awaited the next 
 move passively. 
 
 It was this passivity, this complete unpre- 
 paredness for any danger, which caused him to 
 fail to draw any adverse conclusions from the 
 fact that one of the priests had edged across to 
 the side of the mosque, to the wall-tablet at 
 which Jewel had stood, and was speaking and 
 listening against it. Kellock merely noticed 
 this, and as a simple matter of curiosity — it 
 was amusing to watch this primitive telephone 
 in operation — turned round and peered across 
 the temple to the tablet at the far end. Sure 
 enough, just within the door, and one side of 
 him illuminated by the reflected sunshine from 
 outside, a man was speaking at the tablet — a 
 stunted, cringing, whitish man, a gesticulating 
 little creature — Saumarez. 
 
 So Saumarez had been lurking in their track. 
 Queer ! What could he and the old priest be 
 talking about so eagerly and furtively ? Their 
 silent gestures — for no sound reached him — 
 struck Kellock as comical, and he was on the 
 point of turning round again to draw Jewel's 
 attention to them when suddenly the priest at 
 the tablet made a signal to the priests at the 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 131 
 
 altar. Simultaneously Kellock saw Saumarez, 
 a dwarfish gnome in the distance, dash to the 
 doors and close them. 
 
 Their clang was like thunder : its echoes 
 resembled the explosion of giant pieces of 
 artillery. The concussion was deafening. Kel- 
 lock was almost stunned. And before he could 
 collect his wits he felt himself seized from 
 behind, and pinioned by several pairs of sinewy 
 arms. The priests had attacked him. 
 
 His first sensation was one of profound 
 amazement. There was something almost 
 ridiculous, to a man of his great physical 
 strength and utter fearlessness, in the spectacle 
 of these feeble old men pouncing on him, as 
 practical jokers might pounce on a child in the 
 dark to give it a fright. He stood stark still, for 
 an instant, from sheer contemptuous surprise. 
 Then resentment and anger surged up in 
 him. 
 
 He whirled round, flinging off his assailants, 
 and hitting right and left. 
 
 But they were not to be got rid of so easily 
 as he had assumed. Moreover there were 
 reinforcements. A score of grey-beards were 
 now clawing and clutching at him, and no 
 sooner had those in front been dealt with than 
 he was tackled from behind. And, all the 
 
132 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 time, they seemed to be pushing him backwards 
 from the Buddha. 
 
 Backwards — ^he understood at last ! — they 
 were bearing him backwards in the direction 
 of the Opal pool ! 
 
 " Jewel !" he called. 
 
 But his cry was only a jangle of meaningless 
 resonances. 
 
 He looked around him as he fought — and 
 saw her at once. 
 
 She had shrunk back, with clasped hands, 
 against the altar. Helpless, fascinated, she 
 watched the mSl^e with staring eyes, exultant 
 when his fist dealt one of its smashing blows, 
 anguished when the clutching priests overbore 
 him for a moment and he yielded his foothold. 
 He saw her lips move, but, if she had made any 
 sound, it had only added itself to the futile 
 echoes which continued to reverberate in the 
 dome above their head, the echoes — pantings 
 and the shuffling of feet and cries of pain — of 
 their struggle towards the brim of the pool. 
 
 For there was no doubt about it : the pool was 
 coming nearer. Kellock had made his assailants 
 pay heavUy — but they were winning. Already 
 the Opal waters shone almost beneath his feet. 
 
 A great fury gave him strength. Like a 
 wounded lion surrounded by jackals, he put 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 183 
 
 forth the whole of his superb muscular physique 
 to defeat the forces which beset him. On the 
 very edge of the pool he made a stand, his 
 fists working like battering-rams. And the 
 victory would have been his . . . but, snake- 
 like, Saumarez, who had suddenly appeared, 
 wriggled along the pool's ledge, stretched out 
 a wizened paw, and seizing Kellock's foot, with 
 a jerk threw him backwards off his balance. 
 
 Kellock tottered, clutched at space, had a fleet- 
 ing vision of Jewel — her mouth open in a scream 
 — and then the waters closed above him. . . . 
 
 The sensation was extraordinary. He had 
 never before felt anything remotely resembling 
 it. The contact, upon his skin, oi the Opal 
 liquid was sleek and caressing and warm; it 
 might have been some bland oil, only that it 
 had no greasiness. Pungently penetrating his 
 whole frame (for he had involuntarily swallowed 
 some of the water, and some had gushed up his 
 nostrils), the perfume of violets invaded his 
 senses — his sense of smell, his sense of taste, and 
 even, inexplicably, his sense of touch. Yet 
 there was no narcotic or anaesthetic effect : on 
 the contrary he was stimulated, sharpened, 
 clarified. So far from being confused, when he 
 rose to the surface he was perfectly calm. He 
 knew, with complete confidence, that he could 
 
134 FURTHER ;EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 not drown. He knew, strangely, that his 
 assailants had not meant him to drown. Their 
 intention — he glimpsed it — had been quite 
 otherwise. Moreover — this too was revealed 
 to him — their plot against him had failed : if 
 his guess were correct. 
 
 With a perverse satisfaction, as he drew 
 breath, he said to himself : 
 
 " I may look a fool, floundering in this stuff, 
 but I have the laugh of those fellows all the 
 same. I've positively enjoyed my plunge !" 
 
 Quite placidly he swam to the edge of the 
 pool. He was in no hurry. The water bore 
 him on its bosom with a kindly ease : its 
 specific gravity, he perceived, must be higher 
 than that of spring water, higher even than 
 that of the salt ocean. Like most tourists 
 Kellock had, when in Palestine, tried the 
 experiment of a dip in the Dead Sea : this Opal 
 lake was not of so great a density as the brine 
 of the Dead Sea, but the support it gave him 
 was somewhat similar. He was almost sorry 
 to bring to a close so agreeable an experience. 
 
 The water streamed from him phosphores- 
 cently as he took hold of the bank and heaved 
 himself out. Its violet fragrance was delectable. 
 Kellock looked about him. The priests — it was, 
 oddly, what he expected — had disappeared ; 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 135 
 
 Saumarez likewise. Where was Jewell At 
 once he caught sight of her, speeding across, in the 
 dim light, towards the door ; he saw her franti- 
 cally struggling with its bolt. She flung it open, 
 then, turning, wildly beckoned to him to come. 
 
 He shook his head, obdurately. No, he 
 wasn't going to beat a retreat — not yet. He 
 signalled to her to go to the whispering-tablet. 
 
 She understood him. 
 
 He on his part went to the other tablet : it 
 was close to the point at which he had emerged 
 from the lake. 
 
 " White Plume ! White Plume ! Come !" 
 Her voice quivered forth beside him. 
 
 " There's nothing more to be afraid of," he 
 replied. 
 
 " No, no 1 Nothing to be afraid of. White 
 Plume ! But I'm longing to see — " she faltered 
 — " I want to see you out in the light again." 
 
 " Well, I'm not coming : not until I've been 
 given that flask." 
 
 " Go and take it. It is on the altar. No 
 one will hinder you." 
 
 " I'd like to see them try !" he said grimly. 
 
 But, in some strange way, he had no feeling 
 of revenge. That preposterous crew of dotards 
 seemed, now, only contemptible. He nursed no 
 animosity against them : he did not even want 
 
1S6 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 their apology — inappositely stilted word ! — if 
 they proffered it. 
 
 " Hasten, White Plume !" Jewel urged him. 
 
 He did not hasten : it was beneath his dignity 
 to hasten. He walked rather more slowly than 
 his wont. At the altar, lo, the flask lay by the 
 Buddha's foot : a queer flattish bottle, very 
 heavy for its size, as Jewel had said. He 
 picked it up, turned from the Buddha, and 
 without a backward glance completed the 
 journey from the altar to the temple door. 
 
 Jewel was awaiting him with unconcealed 
 anxiety. 
 
 " Quick, quick !" she gasped. 
 
 " What's the hurry ? Those lunatics aren't 
 going to have another whack at me. I reckon 
 some of the poor old chaps are binding up their 
 wounds and wishing they'd let me alone." 
 
 " That's not it. Quick, White Plume, I want 
 
 to see " She dragged him forth into the 
 
 sunshine. 
 
 " Put down the flask !" 
 
 He laid it on the step of the temple. 
 
 She took his two hands in hers, and, turning 
 their backs upwards, examined them and his 
 bare forearms with feverish fascination. 
 
 " The little hairs upon the wrist " — sha 
 murmured — " they always show ; and you 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 137 
 
 have very fine, silky hairs on your wrists, White 
 
 Plume — they would show it at once " 
 
 She gave a relieved sigh, let his hands fall, and 
 looked up at him. Her eyes were full of tears. 
 " Jewel ! You're crying !" 
 " Crying for happiness, White Plume !" 
 " What did you expect to find on my hands ?" 
 " No, no ! I didn't expect. But I might have 
 been wrong about you. White Plume, you 
 looked so splendid and your eyes were so clear 
 that I was sure the Opal water could not touch 
 you. And yet, when I saw what the priests 
 were doing, I had an awful fear that there 
 might be something in you I hadn't seen : 
 perhaps the Opal water would find it out, and 
 you would be like the rest of those who bathe. 
 And it came to me that I didn't want you to be 
 tested, I didn't want to find out the truth ; 
 I just wanted to believe in you without any test. 
 But I couldn't stir, I was helpless with shame 
 and terror. Now — now I'm glad, glad ! Those 
 hairs on your hands — oh, what brawny hands 
 you have, White Plume ! — would have changed 
 colour : the Opal water would have bleached 
 them instantaneously, for they are much finer 
 than the hairs of the head. But they're un- 
 changed : they're black and silky as they were 
 before !" 
 
138 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 "My certificate," he said ironically, "of not 
 being a half-caste ?" 
 
 " Of being free from many other taints as 
 well as that," she responded gravely. 
 
 " Anyhow, I now know why I was lured up 
 to the temple." His comment was dry. 
 
 " White Plume !" She was hurt. "I never 
 dreamt of such a thing ! Saumarez had said — 
 he talked a lot yesterday and this morning 
 
 about — about " She flushed. Her olive face 
 
 was burning. "I hadn't any idea that he meant 
 to be so wicked." 
 
 " Oh, it was wicked, was it, to throw me into 
 the Opal water ? Then you admit that to some 
 people the Opal water is harmful. Now, 1 don't 
 mind betting this isn't the first time that those 
 priests have received one of Dr. Levaloir's 
 messengers like that. How about Van Duysen 
 and Archer and those others ? You make a 
 mystery of this Opal water, Jewel, but I suspect 
 that it causes that torpor and forgetfulness 
 which I've noticed in the whites at the Pleasure- 
 House. So when a stranger comes, the priests 
 dope him with a douche of the stuff, and he 
 forgets all about his errand and stays in this 
 so-called Happy Valley." 
 
 She hung her head. "It may be. I never 
 before came to the temple with a messenger 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 139 
 
 from Dr. Levaloir. I knew that sometimes the 
 messenger stayed and sometimes he went away. 
 So, if your guess is true, some of the messengers 
 went through the Opal water scathlessly, like 
 yourself, White Plume." 
 
 " Van Duysen made three journeys and stuck 
 here on the fourth." 
 
 "The drug works slowly with some people, 
 though its bleaching effect is instantaneous." 
 
 " But why do the priests want anybody to be 
 numbed like that, and as a result settle here 
 from sheer laziness ?" 
 
 "They don't want it," was her surprising 
 reply. 
 
 " What do they throw them in the water for, 
 then ?" 
 
 "They're looking for someone who's not 
 affected," she explained. " They want to find 
 a pure-blooded man. It's a test. The test has 
 failed, not succeeded, when the victim shows the 
 effects of the water and surrenders to the 
 temptation to stay. The priests don't object to 
 him staying : he will be happy like the rest. 
 But that was not what they sought. They 
 sought one whom the waters could not touch." 
 
 " Still I don't see what /on" 
 
 " Him they might want to stay," she said in 
 a low voice. 
 
140 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " Not a very nice manner of inducing him to 
 do so, I reckon. They haven't given me a 
 particularly genial impression of their hospi- 
 tality. Do you mean to tell me, Jewel, that 
 those old lunatics will now have the audacity 
 to try to prevent me leaving Pulo ?" 
 
 " They will try nothing of the sort — not 
 without my sanction," she asseverated firmly, 
 " Those others, who have gone from Pulo, went 
 because I signified that I had no desire for them 
 to be prevented from going. It was not my 
 wish that they should remain. So it was with 
 Van Duysen : it may be that he was never 
 thrown into the pool at all (for I said, as soon 
 as 1 had seen him at the first interview, that he 
 was not pleasing to me) : it may be that only 
 on his fourth visit he was tempted to bathe in 
 the^ lake, and its waters found him out and gave 
 him forgetfulnessi A» for you, White Plume — 
 you shall go. But • . ." 
 
 She lifted an eager, pleading face to his. 
 " You have promised me to come back !" 
 
 " I have promised. Jewel. Although " — he 
 added — >*' if I thought that the trick which was 
 played on me in the temple was your doing, I'd 
 have regarded myself as absolved from keeping 
 my promise." 
 
 " White Plume, I had nothing, nothing to do 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 141 
 
 with it," she moaned. " Oh, believe me, White 
 Plume! It was hateful ! I hated Saumarez " 
 
 " Saumarez was the schemer ? You seem sure 
 of that. What interest could Saumarez have 
 in discovering the effect of the Opal water 
 on me ?" 
 
 " Saumarez is a very faithful servant to me," 
 she muttered shamefecedly. " He has tried to 
 persuade me before. He was overjoyed when he 
 saw that I had revealed myself to you — but he 
 wanted to test you ; he is very careful — very 
 faithful to me——" 
 
 " A queer way of showing his faithfulness !" 
 Kellock was still unenlightened as to the 
 motives which had brought about this fentastic 
 episode. 
 
 " When I tell him you have promised to come 
 back," she said^ " he will be pleased ; and I shall 
 command him not to urge you to stay." 
 
 "He certainly won't produce the slightest 
 effect on me if he does urge me to stay. He can 
 urge as much as he likes. What beats me is why 
 he should do anything of the sort." 
 
 " White Plume, you are wrathful. Forgive 
 the foolishness of an old man who has served me 
 and my father before me. It is because you are 
 simple and honourable and have no vanity that 
 you do not divine his plan. A futile plan, 
 
142 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 maybe! Why should I not tell it to you?" 
 Her eyes met his with beseeching candour. 
 " Saumarez, every time Dr. Levaloir has sent a 
 messenger here, has thought only of one possi- 
 bility — that perhaps the newcomer might be of 
 pure breed, perhaps a man not unsimilar in type 
 to my father. Saumarez worshipped my father, 
 and now cherishes one ambition, which cannot 
 be satisfied from the native population here, 
 nor, of course, from the half-castes or from any- 
 body tainted or drugged with the Opal water. 
 White Plume, you will not mock me, will you, 
 if I am frank with you ? Saumarez seeks a man 
 of pure blood because he seeks a mate for me !" 
 
 It had dawned on Kellock already, even while 
 she spoke. His tanned face took on a deeper 
 hue, He gazed at her, standing before him, 
 winsome and maidenly, in the tropic splendour 
 of the sunshine. A mate for her ? 
 
 With an effort he tore his eyes away. They 
 roved the valley : he viewed its arid tracts of 
 lava, its embankments of cinders, and its oases 
 of verdure. Yes, it was a wonderful retreat from 
 the world, a place of dreams, where no weariness 
 could intrude. And she was its queen — a queen 
 for whom it was now time to find a consort. 
 
 He drew a deep breath. 
 
 "Thank you, Jewel: thank you for telling 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 143 
 
 me. It was very sweet of you to tell me." 
 His throat had a lump in it. " Let us return 
 to the palace." 
 
 He picked up the flask, and together they 
 went down the temple steps. 
 
 But when they reached the bottom Kellock 
 halted. 
 
 "I want you to tell me something else, Jewel," 
 he said. " If you were frightened when you saw 
 me fall into the Opal water was it because, if I 
 had been susceptible to it, it might have brought 
 about, in me, some definite disease ? Those 
 bleached white people — what is it that they're 
 suffering from ?" 
 
 "I' am concealing nothing from you now, 
 White Plume. The Opal water both cures and 
 causes the disease. It keeps alive, and makes 
 happy, those who have already got the disease ; 
 in others, impure blooded, it gradually starts 
 the disease while yet preventing it from killing. 
 Yes, they are diseased, all of them, yet death is 
 kept at bay ; they never even grow older. All 
 arrive at the same apparent age and then seem 
 to remain there, for years and years. It is the 
 miracle of Pulo. Do you know that some pf 
 the whites at the palace were there before my 
 father came ! Zuaila was there then, and that 
 is fifty — sixty — seventy years ago." 
 
 10 
 
144 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " She looks thirty !" 
 
 " She will not alter — till the end comes." 
 
 " They die in the end, of course." 
 
 "Quite suddenly. There is no illness. 
 Instantaneous death, that is all. The priests 
 come and remove the victim, and soon all is 
 forgotten and all are happy again." 
 
 " I hardly think Van Duysen will be happy 
 if Zuaila dies." 
 
 " The priests would find another wife for him. 
 He would forget Zuaila. If he dies first, another 
 husband will be found for her. He is not the 
 only husband she has had. There are many 
 marriages here, and all are contented," 
 
 " But " — the idea had occurred to him for the 
 first time — " there are no children." 
 
 She shook her head. ' ' Those who bathe in the 
 Opal waters are not given children. Earlier in 
 the history of the valley it was not so ; but now 
 the disease has intensified, and these marriages 
 are for ever unfruitful. Zuaila will never bear a 
 child, nor will any of the other women." 
 
 " I saw babies in the native village." 
 
 " And you saw that the brown skins there are 
 untouched with the pallor. Theyare pure bred, 
 they do not bleach if they bathe. Yet if one of 
 the men of my village is tempted and weds one 
 of the women of the Pleasure- House, he must 
 
TREACHERY IN THE TEMPLE 145 
 
 go and dwell there, for he too is soon diseased 
 like her. He may be happy, happy ; but ever 
 afterwards he must bathe in the Opal water ; and 
 shortly he will be white. Beginning with the 
 fine hairs on his hands — then mottled spots of 
 white on his body — that is how it comes ; and 
 at last he is evenly white all over. The mottled 
 patches are unbeautiful : this is why it is an 
 offence against the law to take off the tunic — the 
 signs of the disease must not be looked upon." 
 
 " And the disease is f 
 
 " It is a strange form of " — she faced him—" of 
 leprosy." 
 
 " Those people at the Pleasure-House are 
 lepei's f" he gasped. 
 
 " They're lepers," she said. " Now, White 
 Plume, you know the secret of the Valley of 
 Forgetfulness." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 BETEOTHAL 
 
 Kellock sat on the edge of the couch in his 
 room, his head in his hands, and pondered the 
 information which Jewel had given him. 
 
 She had talked, on their way back to the 
 palace, with a novel frankness. Not that she 
 really knew much about the scientific side 
 of the phenomena of the valley. To an 
 inquiring mind like Kellock's her apparent 
 acceptance of the Opal waters and the obscure 
 maladies connected with them, her lack of 
 disgust or even of interest, was remarkable. But 
 the little that she did know she had been willing 
 freely to impart, and the confidence in him 
 which this outspokenness implied was at once 
 disarming and pleasant. He and she had come 
 nearer each other, during their return from the 
 temple : of this he was keenly aware. 
 
 He ought, now, to have been indulging in 
 his siesta, but he was in no mood for repose. 
 
 147 
 
148 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 The thought of those lepers at the Pleasure- 
 House haunted him. The abominable meaning- 
 lessness of their lives, as he had first judged it, 
 sank into insignificance beside the tragedy of 
 their fate. And there was something, to his 
 courageous temperament, doubly detestable in 
 the circumstance that they themselves were 
 ignorant of this tragedy — nay, welcomed it and 
 regarded it as a boon. Some subtle damage was 
 inflicted, it appeared, on the tissues of the brain 
 by the drug in the Opal water ; the memory 
 ceased to function, and for the remainder of 
 his life the victim's faculties were limited to a 
 mere vague physical enjoyment, which concerned 
 itself neither with the past nor the future. 
 
 Their lives, too, were of fabulous duration. 
 The disease progressed with inordinate slow- 
 ness : having reached a certain point it could 
 hardly be said to progress at all. Something 
 like a century might elapse, and no outward 
 change manifest itself And then one day 
 some thinned cell-wall must break down and a 
 vital organ be reached — whereupon (as Jewel 
 said) the priests came and carried away the 
 corpse, and the round of dreamy egotism was 
 renewed by the survivors. Of course the leper 
 community was dying out, but at a very 
 gradual pace. It occasionally gained a recruit 
 
BETROTHAL 149 
 
 either from the native villagea or from beyond 
 the seas. But it was sterile : it failed to 
 reproduce itself. . . . Which was something 
 to be thankful for. 
 
 The temple priests, Kellock had learnt, were 
 a monastic brotherhood. They survived to a 
 great age — all of them were older even than 
 the oldest leper — by reason of their use, by 
 injection, of the distilled Opal oil. It did not 
 prevent them growing old, it merely retarded 
 the process abnormally. They were not 
 diseased, nor were their memories impaired. 
 Saumarez, similarly, was for some reason un- 
 affected, or almost unaffected, by the Opal 
 water. He absorbed its joys without its curse ; 
 neither his fibrous, tough body nor his cunning 
 brain seemed to be deteriorating. He had 
 lived in the Valley long before Jewel could 
 remember, and, ever since she had been a chUd, 
 he had looked the same. He had been married, 
 more than once, to a woman of the Pleasure- 
 House, and each time he had survived his wife. 
 
 The Valley marriages were monogamous, for 
 the number of men and of women was always 
 approximately equal. Matrimonial difficulties 
 never cropped up, jealousy was unknown. 
 Like other troubles, these are dependent on 
 memory. The sapping of memory, the absence 
 
150 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 of any need for the struggle to exist, and the 
 illusion of well-being constantly renewed by the 
 baths, made life at the Pleasure-House an 
 affair— Kellock saw — of a simplicity almost im- 
 possible for the outsider to grasp. To envisage 
 the mentality of one of these lepers, to enter, 
 by an exercise of the imagination, into his point 
 of view, was beyond his powers. That they 
 thought themselves enviable he had perceived. 
 No worries, no troubles, no preoccupations, no 
 anxieties, no risks, no rivalry, no covetousness, 
 no hates, no fears, no wealth, no poverty, no 
 social inequalities, no past, no future, no loss of 
 youth, no creeping-on of old age — it was 
 Elysium indeed : little wonder that its inhabi- 
 tants could not understand why anyone should 
 be so foolish as to refuse to join them. Kellock's 
 heart was filled with pity for that butterfly 
 throng. 
 
 He wished, wished intensely, that Jewel 
 were not in such near contact with these 
 creatures and did not take the facts of the 
 valley so lightly. She didn't care ! This was 
 what was so disconcerting. The Happy Valley 
 was not only happy to the lotus eaters at the 
 Pleasure-House, it was happy to her too : she 
 too saw no further than its confines : she too 
 was content. What a life I . She was whole- 
 
BETROTHAL 151 
 
 some, athletic, active, joyous, serene, intelligent, 
 gallant and debonaire , . • yet, what a life I 
 
 And this was the life which Saumarez 
 wished him to share with her. . . . 
 
 Kellock, as was his habit when perplexed, 
 
 tackled a sheet of paper with his pencil. This 
 
 was the result : 
 
 " I am ashamed of fear, and yet I know 
 That life unfraught with danger is not life ; 
 I am ashamed of sin, yet would not go 
 Untroubled through a world in which no strife 
 Ai'ose within me from temptation's guile. 
 Sorrow? Pain? Death? — These, these make life 
 worth while !" 
 
 But the verse did not help him. It was with 
 a sigh of indecision that he pushed the page 
 away amongst his bundle of poems and once 
 more endeavoured to concentrate on the 
 problem which, ever since he had first beheld 
 Jewel — ^yes, he admitted it at last — had begun 
 more and more to torment his every waking 
 hour. 
 
 What of Jewel? 
 
 He thought of the farewell he must take 
 to-morrow. He saw her, standing, looking at 
 him with reproachful eyes : a gracious, wistful 
 figure, pleading with him not - to leave her. 
 He knew, knew that she was his, if he would 
 but stay. 
 
152 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " I've promised to come back," he said aloud. 
 
 But when would he come back ? 
 
 Of course he could come back as soon as he 
 had been to Gah-nung. 
 
 He might even hand over the flask to 
 Captain Sibthorpe and come back straight 
 away. . . . 
 
 " Alvin Dalroy Kellock 1" He spoke aloud 
 again. " You don't mean to tell me you're 
 thinking of staying ?" 
 
 But that, exactly, was what (he knew in his 
 inmost soul) he was thinking of. 
 
 He rose, and looked about him. The sun 
 was in the west, the time had come for him 
 to rejoin Jewel, to swim, to play the racket 
 game, and then, in the moonlight, to eat the 
 meal of fruits. He searched for the tunic 
 which he must put on for the bathing — and sud- 
 denly realised that he was wearing it : he had 
 never taken it off ; he had forgotten, utterly, to 
 make his usual prompt change into Western 
 attire. 
 
 An omen ? 
 
 It gave him pause. 
 
 Was it so easy to sink into the customs of 
 this place ? 
 
 He was vexed. 
 
 He went down to Jewel's apartments. She 
 
BETROTHAL 153 
 
 was ready for him, blithely avid for a swimming 
 contest. 
 
 " White Plume, I've been waiting !" She 
 seemed to pulsate with the ardour of youth and 
 health. 
 
 "Jewel," he said, "I want to ask you some- 
 thing : something serious. Suppose — suppose 
 I oiFered to take you away from Pulo " 
 
 "I'll never, never leave Pulo." She was 
 positive. 
 
 " Why shouldn't you 1" 
 
 " Partly because I love it, and partly. White 
 Plume, because I must remain within reach of 
 the Opal water in case " 
 
 He groaned. 
 
 " Only in case, White Plume I It's not a bit 
 likely, really. Still, some day, you never 
 
 know Don't look so sickened, White 
 
 Plume. The chances are thousands to one 
 against my needing the Opal water." 
 
 "Then why not risk the chance, and come 
 away ?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "I ask you, Jewel," he said quietly, "to 
 come away — with me." 
 
 Still she shook her head. 
 
 He saw that she was weeping. 
 
 "I can't, I can't go, White Plume," she sobbed. 
 
164 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 , The sight of her tears was intolerable. His 
 fortitude melted. She looked so pathetic, so 
 solitary, so forlorn, so appealing and lovely. 
 He stepped forward, with outstretched arms. 
 
 She flung herself on his breast. 
 
 " White Plume ! White Plume!" she sobbed. 
 " Stay with me, White Plume !" 
 
 He felt her trembling body against his, her 
 arms were twined round his neck. He held her 
 to him. 
 
 "White Plume . . ." he heard her muffled 
 voice pleading ..." don't you love me. White 
 Plume ?" 
 
 He put his hand on the glossy-black head of 
 hair, and gently upturned her face to his. He 
 bent, and his lips met hers. 
 
 " Yes, I love you, Jewel !" 
 
 Her quivering mouth lay against his mouth, 
 seemed to cling, as though fearing to lose the 
 full perfection of the kiss. She, woman-like, 
 yielded to his strength; he, the man, surrendered 
 to her soft warmth and weakness. The intoxi- 
 cation of her beauty penetrated him : it was 
 summed up in the ecstasy of this caress. 
 
 " Jewel !" He whispered her name. 
 
 " White Plume !" she responded. 
 
 It was their betrothal. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EARTHQUAKE 
 
 They had had a tiff. 
 
 Jewel had said that the priests should marry 
 them when Kellock came back — she had not 
 again pressed him to stay — and Kellock had said 
 that the priests might just as well marry them 
 right away, before he left on the morrow. 
 
 This she would not hear of. 
 
 " Not till you come back, White Plume ! 
 Come as quickly as you like — the sooner you 
 return the better I shall be pleased." She 
 flushed adorably. 
 
 " If it's a case of ' the sooner the better,' why 
 not note?" he cried, catching her hands and 
 drawing the flushed cheek to his. 
 
 " Ah, what haste, White Plume, my dearest !" 
 There was a new tenderness in her tone. " And 
 three mornings ago we had not met ! We 
 hardly knew each other. Why are you so 
 impatient, my lover ?" 
 
 155 
 
156 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " Because I love you, Jewel !" 
 
 " Then a little waiting " — she was mischievous 
 — " will be good discipline for you." 
 
 All his arguments were in vain. She was 
 adamant. He was to go to Gah-nung and 
 return : he might be as quick about it as he 
 chose ; but not until he had gone and returned 
 would she become his bride. 
 
 Strange ! For, at first, there was no mistaking 
 that she had wanted him to stay. 
 
 He could do nothing against her determina- 
 tion — nothing but hold her in his arms and 
 vow that his absence would be a short one. 
 
 " Afterwards — you'll be Sultan of Pulo," she 
 said. 
 
 He did not care. He would have accepted the 
 position of Nizam of the North Pole — with those 
 eyes looking up at him. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Kellock had never before written a love-poem. 
 And the one which he wrote that night was 
 stilted — fantastically inadequate to the emotions 
 which surged within him. Nevertheless he 
 preserved it, as a memento of a great experi- 
 ence : its very inadequacy had, for him, a kind 
 of meaning, though it was with a wry smile 
 that he read it by the moon's light and gauged 
 its feebleness and prim formality. 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE WT 
 
 " "Words !" he railed scornfully. And then : 
 " The old professor was right — a thousand times 
 right. Verses are the safety-valve for the 
 inexpressible." 
 
 This was Kellock's effort, inscribed in his 
 usual neat pencilling : 
 
 " There is a land where reigns a queen — a queen of queens, 
 apart — 
 A land where no one else has been. The land is called 
 my heart. 
 
 "Eule the land, queen; make it thine own, thy sove- 
 reignty to sway — 
 Issue commands, for thine alone it hastens to obey. 
 
 " In thy realm all things ill are banned, and here is 
 naught unclean — 
 So I may make this lucky land be worthy of its queen." 
 
 On the morrow he bathed with her as the sun 
 was rising: they splashed and scrambled and 
 played at tag in the water, as boy and girl ; 
 and then, floating clasped in each other's arms, 
 their laughing lips exchanged kisses. Tbed 
 of the swimming-pool, they basked upon the 
 marble, and ate the luscious fruits, sharing each 
 fruit as lovers. 
 
 Kellock said : "I cannot write a poem, but it 
 looks as though I could live one !" 
 
 Jpwel did not comprehend his parable ; but 
 her smile told bim that she was content. Her 
 
158 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 teetk bit into a juicy fruit. Tomboyishly im- 
 pudent, she profiered it to him with her mouth : 
 their lips met as he accepted the gift. 
 
 " How hungry I am !" she exulted. " Oh, 
 White Plume, how hungry i^am !" 
 
 " We are hungry — for each other's love," he 
 said. 
 
 But they talked little — for their eyes spoke 
 all the messages which needed utterance ; and 
 kisses were the adequate and beautiful business 
 of their lips. 
 
 Never had she seemed so lovely. The staring 
 whiteness of the sunlit marble was a gorgeous 
 foil for the olive tone of her limbs and face, the 
 magnificence of this Oriental courtyard a match- 
 less stage for the drama of their courtship. 
 The air, which at dawn had been sharply cool, 
 now held the languor of extreme heat : there 
 was something somnolent in its quality, 
 something oppressive yet delightful. The 
 bathing pool was still, like molten glass in a 
 crucible. Nature seemed to swoon beneath 
 the silent onslaught of the globe of fire which 
 hurled its warmth from the cobalt firmament. 
 
 And then, as he lay, at Jewel's feet and gazed 
 up into her eyes, Kellock beheld the shadows 
 fade from her face and the background of marble 
 wajl go grey. 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 169 
 
 So utterly unexpected was the effect that, 
 for the instant, he could not attribute it to any 
 normal occurrence; it was uncanny, super- 
 natural. But her exclamation, as she glanced 
 up at the sky, enlightened him. 
 
 " A cloud !" 
 
 He followed her gaze. 
 
 Ominous, like a miracle evolved by some evil 
 magician, a huge circular cloud, with edges as 
 clear-cut as those of a balloon, had, unnoticed, 
 glided from behind the mountain ; and now its 
 slate-coloured mass had intervened between 
 Pulo and the sun. 
 
 "Rain!" Jewel cried. 
 
 Kellock was sufficiently familiar with the 
 tropics to know what that meant. If rain were 
 threatening it would be rain indeed, no mere 
 shower, but a devastation. 
 
 " It is only a small cloud." She surveyed it 
 critically. " The rain will not last more than a 
 
 few hours. But while it does last " She 
 
 shivered. ' ' White Plume, where shall we shelter, 
 you and I ?" 
 
 They had both risen. He found that she 
 was trembling as she clung to him — as though 
 asking for his protection against danger. 
 
 "What is there to fear?" he said. "The 
 storm cannot touch us, here in the palace." 
 
 11 
 
160 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " You must help me, my lover, to be unafraid. 
 The thunder will sound and the lightning will 
 flash and the earth rock — and then I am 
 frightened, frightened." 
 
 " The earth rock ?" 
 
 "Nearly always there is an earthquake when 
 that cloud appears. If it is a big earthquake, 
 the walls crack. Sometimes a pillar or a piece 
 of roof falls down. We all take shelter in the 
 temple." 
 
 "An earthquake might shake down the 
 temple too." 
 
 " It never does. Perhaps because the temple 
 is round in shape, or built in some special way, 
 there is never even a crack in it, however much 
 it is shaken. There is perfect safety in the 
 temple. But last time, when I thought I would 
 be brave, and stayed here alone in the palace, 
 a piece of wall tumbled near me ; it might 
 have crushed me." 
 
 Kellock pictured it, and in a flash knew what 
 fear was. That tumbling waU — Jewel, his Jewel, 
 a bruised and bleeding form pinned beneath the 
 d6bri& — he, to whom fear was a stranger, 
 plumbed fear's most painful depths : fear not for 
 himself but for his loved one. 
 
 " White Plume — will you go with me to the 
 temple ?" 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 161 
 
 He consented. 
 
 Already there were mutterings of thunder. 
 The whole arch of heaven was overcast. 
 
 Hand in hand they ran fleetly across the 
 intervening ground to the great stairway. 
 Here the spectacle was extraordinary : the 
 whole vista of grandiose steps, sombre and for- 
 bidding in the sunless atmosphere, was dotted 
 with fugitives from the Pleasure- House, toiling 
 upwards to their retreat : ivory -limbed men 
 and women jostling towards the shelter above, 
 not exactly frightened, but with an apathetic, 
 one - idea'd expression of countenance, like 
 drowsy, driven sheep following each other 
 to a fresh pasture, trekking from no motive 
 of foresight, but in a blind instinct for needed 
 nourishment. None paid any attention to the 
 presence of Jewel and Kellock. 
 
 Within the mosque the hubbub was hideous. 
 The lepers, vacantly insensitive to the noise 
 they made and to the futility of speech in such 
 a sounding-chamber, filled the whole temple 
 with chatterings and foolish laughter ; some 
 pairs strolled about, talking to each other 
 though it was obvious they could not hear ; 
 others sat in parties upon the pavement, or 
 dozed against the walls ; others hastened to the 
 little Opal lake and bathed in its flickering 
 
162 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 waters, brooded over by the impassive Buddha. 
 The man called Archer was lounging on its 
 edge, with the woman whom Kellock had 
 noticed playing the stringed instrument in the 
 pavilion — a strangely exotic creature with 
 oblique, Chinese eyes and doll-like feet. Van 
 Duysen and Zuaila he had not yet caught sight 
 of ; and none of the priests were to be seen. 
 
 A procession of them, however, now issued 
 from behind the Buddha, and with tapers on 
 the end of poles began tolight additional lamps. 
 These lamps, suspended from the invisible ceiling 
 by gigantically long chains, hung at intervals 
 all round the mosque. On his previous visit 
 Kellock had seen only the lamps in front of the 
 altar, and the temple had consequently appeared 
 dark. When the lamp-lighters had finished 
 their task the entire floor of the temple was 
 tolerably well lit : only up above, in the depths 
 of the dome — the birthplace of a myriad 
 clamouring echoes — the blackness remained 
 impenetrable. 
 
 He and Jewel, having at first been carried 
 with the tide of refugees towards the neighbour- 
 hood of the Opal lakelet, by mutual consent 
 had found their way back, presently, to the 
 door, and now, hand in hand, gazed forth across 
 the valley. The rain had commenced, at first 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 163 
 
 lightly enough, so that the outline of the oppo- 
 site hills remained ; then more thickly ; at last 
 with such fierceness that the landscape was 
 blotted out and the spectators stared at a wall 
 of descending spears of water. The din of its 
 impact upon the earth was terrific, but louder 
 still was the clap of thunder which suddenly 
 burst overhead ; and instantly, almost simul- 
 taneously, the spears of water shuddered into 
 dazzling brilliance, each resembling an electric 
 filament white-hot — a. flash of lightning the 
 liljie of which Kellock had never seen in any 
 hemisphere. 
 
 Involuntarily he pulled Jewel back, as though 
 from some peril, and even as he did so he felt 
 the ground tremble. The first shock of the 
 expected earthquake had occurred. With it, 
 a blast of wind — a side-eddy from the simoon 
 which must be raging in the upper strata of the 
 atmosphere — whistled in through the door, 
 carrying a gush of the rain, which splashed on 
 the temple pavement Uke a breaking ocean 
 wave. A second later, two of the old priests, 
 who had been hastening forward for the purpose, 
 swung back and bolted the metal gates, and 
 closed with them the door, shutting out the 
 tempest utterly. 
 
 It was a relief — yet Kellock, unreasoningly, 
 
16i FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 felt that he would have preferred to have that 
 door left open : he did not like to be imprisoned 
 in this nightmare trap, with its echoes above 
 and its spectral crew of diseased folk beneath. 
 He would rather have stood up to the invasion 
 of the clean wind and rain than wander to and 
 fro in this immense crepuscular cavern of 
 horrors. How long was this captivity going to 
 last? How soon would it be before the sun 
 came out and he and Jewel were able to return 
 to the palace to enjoy their last hours together 
 before he must depart to meet the Orpheus? 
 (How remote Captain Sibthorpe and the 
 Orpheus seemed now ! Was it conceivable 
 that in less than twenty- four hours he would 
 be snoozing in a ship's bunk, with ordinary 
 sheets and blankets, listening to the thump- 
 thump headache in the engine-room ?) . . . 
 Suppose the storm persisted so long that he 
 couldn't get away in time ? He'd have to go, 
 storm or no storm. But it would be hard indeed 
 if he and Jewel were to be baulked of the full 
 sweetness of their au revoir ; if they had to part 
 in this revolting tomb instead of in sunshine 
 outside. 
 
 Her hand tightened on his. The pavement 
 had swayed. Now it was still again. The 
 second earthquake' tremor had passed. 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 165 
 
 A beastly place ! Kellock loathed it. The 
 la;mps, disturbed by the earthquake shock, were 
 swinging, each as a metronome. The effect was 
 curiously sickening : while each small flame 
 made its pendulum journey back and forth, weird 
 shadows on the floor did likewise, only in the 
 reverse direction. Queer sounds came from the 
 groups of lepers, who were now mostly lying or 
 crouching on the ground : Kellock thought at 
 first that these were sounds of alarm, then per- 
 ceived that they were laughter — the lepers, like 
 children, were enjoying the see-saw of the lights 
 and shadows and had only found cause for facile 
 mirth in the heave of the pavement. Their 
 laughter, caught up into the roof, echoed like 
 the squabbling of monkeys in a forest : then 
 was drowned in the half-muffled detonation of 
 another thunder-clap outside the dome. 
 
 Kellock could have spoken to Jewel by means 
 of the whispering-tablet, but that would have 
 involved their temporary separation, and he was 
 loath to part from her even for a moment. They 
 could have penetrated the echoes' confusion by 
 shouting at each other, mouth to ear ; but 
 somehow that idea too was repellent — it had 
 an unseemliness, as between lovers. And the 
 publicity of this place — he detested it, albeit 
 he and she were not only unnoticed, but moved. 
 
166 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 despite the crowd, in a spiritual solitude created 
 by themselves. They were intensely alone, to- 
 gether. They were on a plane in which these 
 other people simply did not exist — they were in 
 a fourth dimension, apart. Sometimes their 
 eyes met. Sometimes their hands exchanged a 
 gentle pressure. It was enough. 
 
 Ugh! 
 
 Again the pavement had heaved. Quite dis- 
 tinctly the wave was visible, traversing it from 
 the door to the altar, and, on its journey, 
 knocking sideways two or three of the lepers 
 who had risen to approach the pool. They 
 sprawled flat, and rolled over, laughing doltishly 
 as they bumped against each other ; and the 
 onlooking lepers laughed also. 
 
 Kellock, though he had been braced against 
 the wall, staggered, and Jewel nearly fell. His 
 arm was round her instantly. She regained her 
 balance, and leant against him for support. He 
 could feel her heart beating, but her expression, 
 as she looked up at him, was a wordless message : 
 " I am unafraid with you, White Plume !" 
 
 Outside, the thunder rolled its myriad war- 
 drums, and in the momentary pauses there was 
 heard the furious tattoo of the rain. 
 
 " Bad quake. Not safe .'" 
 
 A little voice suddenly spoke intoKellock's ear. 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 167 
 
 Unwittingly he had taken up his position 
 against the whispering-tablet, and Saumarez, 
 whom he had already noticed at the far end of 
 the mosque, was telephoning to him. 
 
 " Do you know of any safer place ?" he 
 addressed the tablet promptly. 
 
 " Outside" was the voice's reply. 
 
 "That's all very well, but we'd be drowned." 
 
 " Me speak Sultan, please." 
 
 He signed to Jewel to take his place at the 
 tablet. From the movement of her lips he saw 
 that she had at once begun a rapid conversation 
 in the native language. 
 
 Holding her tightly by one wrist he propped 
 himself against the wall again, in preparation 
 for another shock. Hardly had he done so 
 when, with a nauseating roll, the entire temple 
 seemed literally to rise and descend as though 
 it had breasted a mid- Atlantic billow. It was 
 only by a stupendous effort that Kellock retained 
 his foothold and prevented Jewel from being 
 thrown down. He looked about him, and saw 
 that the lamps were swinging madly : even as 
 he watched he saw two of them clash together, 
 shattering each other and spilling their burning 
 oil upon the floor — where it ran harmlessly into 
 puddles of weak flame. 
 
 The fact that this accident had happened was 
 
168 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 of dread significance. Hitherto these lamp 
 pendulums had all beat the same time, they 
 synchronised both in beat and in the direction 
 of their swing. And now they were describing 
 diverse arcs, each a law unto itself. Therefore 
 the roof from which they depended must be 
 undergoing more than one "pull": it must be 
 stressed in several diflFerent paths simultane- 
 ously, disintegrating its own internal substance. 
 No longer would its semi-globular shape be a 
 guarantee of security. The most perfect curve 
 contrived by man could not for long resist shocks 
 which wrenched it from more than one point of 
 the compass at one and the- same time. 
 
 Saumarez was right. The temple had ceased 
 to be safe. Better to battle through the floods 
 outside than stay here to be buried beneath a 
 falling roof. 
 
 Kellock tugged at Jewel's wrist. She yielded. 
 He dragged her towards the door. 
 
 With frantic haste he seized its one great bolt 
 and slid it back, then pushed at the twin metal 
 gates. 
 
 They would not move. 
 
 They were stuck fast, and a glance showed 
 him the cause. The two stonework sides were 
 no longer parallel. The earthquake had skewed 
 the waU of the temple and its safe-like doors 
 were jammed irremediably. 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 169 
 
 He threw himself upon them, he placed his 
 shoulders against the cold metal plates and 
 shoved with the utmost capacity of his strength. 
 He knew it was vain. No one man could shift 
 those gates : a score of men would not avail. 
 Levers and jacks and scaffoldings — he had a 
 distracted vision of the paraphernalia which 
 would be required before those bent hinges 
 would revolve once more and the temple door 
 again admit the light of day. 
 
 Sweat poured from his haggard face. He was 
 baffled. The polished metal of the door mocked 
 him by its immobility ; his onslaught had left 
 not even a scratch upon that impregnable sur- 
 face. He and Jewel could no more get out 
 through this door than they could dig their 
 way, with their fingers, through the stonework 
 of the temple wall itself. 
 
 He felt Jewel pull him. 
 
 It was plain that she had perceived the 
 situation's hopelessness. She ran back to the 
 whispering tablet. Kellock followed. 
 
 She renewed her telephonic consultation 
 with Saumarez. 
 
 Kellock awaited its outcome with impatience. 
 He was itching to take action, to be doing 
 something, he knew not what. The danger in 
 this place was now obvious. Ordinary earth- 
 
170 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 tremors the mosque might withstand, but this 
 time its architecture had failed. If the giganti- 
 cally substantial pylons of the door had been 
 twisted out of the vertical, the walls around 
 them must have been twisted too, and if the 
 walls had been twisted, the roof might at any 
 instant be deprived of some essential support 
 and come smashing to the pavement. 
 
 He gazed up into the resonant depths of 
 blackness overhead, those depths from which, 
 at the next shock, death might avalanche down 
 upon his loved one and himself. Impossible to 
 penetrate that fathomless shadowland in the 
 dome ! 
 
 And yet — what was that ? 
 
 A minute silver thread zig-zagged across the 
 darkness. 
 
 The roof had cracked. 
 
 An astounding result was immediately pro- 
 duced within the temple. 
 
 From a babel of reverberating discords the 
 air suddenly sank to silence . . . no, not 
 silence : the ear, deceived by the relief, had 
 thought it silence ... it was a silence broken 
 by normal, separated sounds— the sound of the 
 thunder and of the rain, and of a human voice. 
 
 Jhe voice was Jewel's. 
 
 " White Plume ! • What has happened ? 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 171 
 
 There is no echo in the temple. And the voice 
 of Saumarez, which was speaking to me from 
 the tablet, was cut short with a jerk." 
 
 "The roof has cracked. No more trick 
 acoustics, here now, with the circle broken." 
 
 " Saumarez says we can escape if we go behind 
 the Buddha into the priests' quarters. It is 
 forbidden — but he says we are to go in spite of 
 the Law. He will guide us." 
 
 " Never mind the Law. This is a matter of 
 life and death." He was already hurrying her 
 across the pavement. 
 
 It seemed miles to the other side of the 
 mosque, and in the middle of their rush they 
 were sent reeling by another undulation. It 
 was accompanied by a frantic dance of the 
 lamps and a rending noise in the roof. 
 
 The crack had widened. Rain was lashing 
 through it, in a veil of drops. With a puif 
 of steam one of the lamps went out, extinguished 
 by this falling water. 
 
 Kellock did not pause. By a miracle, neither 
 he nor Jewel had fallen. He hurried her on to 
 the point where Saumarez was awaiting them. 
 
 The half-caste was wringing his hands in 
 despair. 
 
 "Temple fall ! ^11 lost!" he gabbled. Personal 
 fear did not seem to enter into his emotions : 
 
172 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 he mourned only the danger to the Holy Shrine 
 of Pulo. 
 
 Indeed, instead of leading them without 
 delay to a place of safety, he lingered — when 
 he had taken them to a postern near the side 
 of the Buddha— and exasperatingly gazed back. 
 
 " No more Opal water when roof fall !" His 
 face was grief-stricken. 
 
 " Priests pray. No good," he added. 
 
 The whole corps of priests were, in fact, now 
 ranged at the altar engaged in some kind 
 of intercession. They were intent in their 
 devotions, their solemnity a singular contrast 
 to the demeanour of the lepers. These latter, 
 their faculty both of memory and of foresight 
 completely in abeyance, continued to remain in 
 a state of placid indifference to what was 
 happening. Some had had to shift their posi- 
 tion owing to the influx of rain, others had 
 been bruised by falls ; but one and all they still 
 vaguely simpered or chatted or bathed in the 
 lakelet.* Their frivolity, their unconsciousness, 
 was at once ghastly and grotesque. Their 
 carelessness was the tragic carelessness of baby- 
 hood — or senility. 
 
 To Kellock there was something of this same 
 carelessness in the insane pause which Saumarez 
 was making, and he was about to drag the 
 
THE EARTHQUAKE 173 
 
 little half-caste away, when the final appalling 
 catastrophe occurred. 
 
 With the suddenness of a cataclysm an earth- 
 quake shock of enormously increased vehemence 
 struck the temple. The whole edifice vibrated. 
 Kellock had once been battened under hatches 
 in a ship, which, struck by a typhoon, lost its 
 rudder. The sensation was like that. . . . 
 
 Jewel shrieked. ... 
 
 The Buddha nodded forward . . . righted 
 itself . . . nodded again. Its giant bulk was 
 toppling ... a fissure appeared at its base, 
 then clove upward and crosswise from one 
 of its vast feet to the knee of the other leg, 
 with a tearing sound . . . the Buddha, with 
 its eternally brooding expression, nodded still 
 further . . . faltered . . . appeared to be 
 almost sentiently straining to keep upright 
 . . . and then, with an ear-splitting crash, 
 uprooted itself from its foundations and fell, 
 face downwards, upon its worshippers and upon 
 the Opal pool. 
 
 The temple was charged with clouds of dust 
 and flying fragments : a huge spurt of milky 
 water leapt, in prismatic spray, from the lakelet, 
 and filled the air with the penetrating perfume 
 of violets. And, from beneath the immense 
 mound of wreckage on the temple pavement, 
 
174 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 there meandered thin red streams : the blood 
 of the great idol's victims. 
 
 Daylight simultaneously illuminated the 
 scene, and a burst of wind brought with it the 
 rain's fierce deluge. The roof of the mosque 
 yawned wide. Jagged lumps of its masonry 
 fell, with the noise of bomb-shells. ... 
 
 Kellock felt himself hauled through the priests' 
 postern, and stumbled along a dimly-lit passage 
 with Jewel and Saumarez. 
 
 Behind him, in an indescribable uproar, the 
 entire temple had collapsed. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 BACK TO THE PALACE 
 
 They crouched, the three of them, in a rocky 
 chamber ■ in the mountain-side : one of a number 
 of cells which composed the habitation of the 
 priests. Immediately behind the temple, and 
 linked with it by the corridor through which 
 Saumarez had guided Kellock and Jewel in the 
 nick of time, a kind of subterranean monastery 
 had been created, its catacombs penetrating into 
 the bowels of the hill. The tunnelling was in 
 part artificial and in part comprised natural 
 caves. 
 
 Kellock would have voted for a sortie at once 
 into daylight, rain or no rain, earthquake or no 
 earthquake ; but Saumarez, whose nerve seemed 
 momentarily shattered, would not budge. The 
 tiny wick which floated in a bowl of oil on a 
 shelf in the corner of the cell gave suflBeient light 
 to reveal the half-caste's state of deinoralisation. 
 
 175 12 
 
176 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 His face was the colour of paper, his teeth 
 chattered, fits of ague shook his frame. 
 
 " Temple gone I" he kept moaning. " Pulo 
 no more good !" 
 
 And again : " Opal water gone ! We die !" 
 
 For an hour or more there was no arousing 
 him from this slough of grief Outside, muffled 
 by reason of the length and convolutions of the 
 rock gallery up which the trio had fled, the 
 sound of the rain was still to be heard ; and 
 still at intervals the mountain shuddered with a 
 shock of earthquake. Jewel, talking to Kellock 
 in awed tones, told him that never before had 
 such an earthquake been experienced upon the 
 island, though there had been some tale of 
 ancient prophecies to the effect that in this 
 fashion Pulo would be destroyed. 
 
 " I'm glad I was with you when it happened," 
 Kellock said fervently. " Now you'll have to 
 come away with me." 
 
 She made no response. 
 
 But his last words penetrated to the conscious- 
 ness of Saumarez. 
 
 "Yes. Come away." The dazed expression 
 began to fade from his face. " Leave Pulo." 
 
 " That's it," said Kellock. " Keep your wits 
 about you, Saumarez. We can fight through 
 th© rain to the palace — if the palace is still 
 
BACK TO THE PALACE 177 
 
 standing — get through the tunnel and down to 
 the river, and so to the sea. You'll end your 
 days at Gah-nung, my friend, much more happily 
 than at Pulo." 
 
 " Pulo no more happy !" assented Saumarez. 
 As though the necessity to be philosophical had 
 dawned on him, he led the way from the priests' 
 cell. 
 
 But instead of turning to the left, in what 
 Kellock knew to be the direction of the 
 monastery's entrance, he swung round to the 
 right, as if to burrow still more deeply into 
 the mountain. 
 
 Kellock objected promptly. " We want to 
 get out, not to go further in. The sooner we're 
 off, the better our chance of reaching Gah-nung." 
 
 " Gah-nung no good, not if no Opal water." 
 The half-caste was mournfully obstinate. 
 
 " What does he mean ?" Kellock asked 
 Jewel. 
 
 She spoke to Saumarez in the native language : 
 they held a rapid colloquy. 
 
 " He says," she interpreted, " that if we are 
 to go to Gah-nung we must take with us a flask 
 of the Opal oil." 
 
 " But I have got a flask already. It is in my 
 room at the palace." 
 
 "He says he knows there is another flask. 
 
178 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 perhaps only partly full, at the place where the' 
 oil is distilled, deep in the mountain. He wants 
 to go and save it, so that we may take it 
 with us." 
 
 " Nonsense. We mustn't delay." 
 
 " He won't go without it." 
 
 "Then we'll go without hvm." 
 
 " We cannot do that." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because he knows the way out of these 
 caves. We should get lost." 
 
 "I could find my way out perfectly easily. 
 We've only to follow the sound of the rain till 
 we reach the door." 
 
 " Ah, White Plume, you do not know what 
 our rain here is like ! Nothing can live in it. 
 We should be beaten to the earth, drowned. 
 No, there are underground tracks wandering 
 everywhere inside this hill, and one of them 
 leads to the palace. 1 have never gone through 
 it — no one has used it since my father's time 
 — no one but Saumarez, who sometimes has 
 had secret business with the priests. He can 
 guide us." 
 
 Kellock chafed. 
 
 Jewel spoke to Saumarez, and the half-caste 
 replied with feverish vehemence. 
 
 " He says," she explained, " that the last flask 
 
BACK TO THE PALACE 179 
 
 of sacred oil must be rescued lest another earth- 
 quake shock breaks up this cave and closes the 
 entrance." 
 
 " In which case we may be closed up inside 
 it !" he cried. " Every time the earth trembles 
 I've thought of that possibility ! Jewel, you and 
 I don't want to die just yet. There's a wonder- 
 ful life for us ahead, if we can reach Gah-nung." 
 
 " Saumarez, you see, can't live without the 
 Opal drug : that's why he wants all of it that he 
 can lay hands on. Also " — she stammered — " do 
 not forget, White Plume, that I may need it 
 too, some day." 
 
 The half-caste, his bleared eyes flitting from 
 Jewel to Kellock, had followed the trend of 
 their argument. He spoke again, rapidly, 
 despairingly. 
 
 " He says he will guide us to the palace," 
 said Jewel, " and then come back alone and 
 fetch the oil. The condition is that we are 
 to promise to wait for his return. If he fails 
 to return we are to go on to the river without 
 im. 
 
 Kellock had perforce to be content with this 
 bargain. He signified his agreement, and the 
 party started at once, Saumarez carrying one 
 of the priests' lamps to assist them. 
 
 Of that weird journey in the dungeons and 
 
180 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 alleyways of the mountain-side Kellock retained 
 few distinct impressions. It was like a bewil- 
 dering tour through the workings of an 
 abandoned coal-mine : turns to the right, turns 
 to the left, scrambles up and down slippery 
 gradients, and occasional wormings on hands 
 and knees through holes in which his broad 
 shoulders almost stuck. Certainly without 
 Saumarez the path would have been impossible 
 to find. How the half-caste retained its maze- 
 like complexities in his head was a mystery. 
 One thing was evident : he had traversed the 
 route frequently — on what errands Kellock 
 could not guess. 
 
 At a bend of the passage they came abruptly 
 on daylight. 
 
 It entered through a round, funnel-shaped but 
 horizontal orifice in the hillside. 
 
 " Go see," muttered Saumarez, and hastened 
 towards it. 
 
 Arrived at the mouth of the orifice he shook 
 his head. " Not go out here." 
 
 Kellock, standing at his side and gazing 
 forth, was compelled to concur. Egress was 
 out of the question. The rain was still falling 
 like a solid waterfall ; anyone who stepped 
 forth into it would immediately be swirled 
 down the steep declivity of ashes which spread 
 
BACK TO THE PALACE 181 
 
 in a precipitous fan of blackness below the 
 cave's orifice. This, it was clear, had once 
 been one of the lesser vent-holes of the volcano : 
 the embankment of ashes told its tale. Even 
 in fine weather it might have been dangerous 
 to try to walk down or across those treacherous 
 ashes. To dislodge a portion of them would 
 loosen the whole mass and send them in a 
 grimy cascade down on to the lava-bed which 
 lay naked in the valley-bottom below. The 
 force of the rain itself was shifting them : it 
 alternately glued their myriad atoms together 
 and split them into coagulated lumps, which 
 slid ponderously out of sight into the gulf. 
 
 " Not go out there," Saumarez repeated, and 
 turned back into the cave. 
 
 There was another route, Jewel explained for 
 him, which led under cover the whole way to 
 an alternative exit actually within the palace. 
 
 This, after ten minutes more of scrambling 
 and creeping, was reached, and the party 
 issued through a concealed door into a raised 
 alcove behind the dais of the audience-chamber 
 itself. 
 
 The palace, Kellock was thankful to learn, 
 still stood, more or less intact, but the audience- 
 chamber, on which they now looked down, was 
 a scene of dismal disarray. The floor was 
 
182 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 flooded, either owing to the entrance of rain 
 through a gaping breach in the wall, or to an 
 overflow from Jewel's swimming-bath in the 
 neighbouring courtyard. Upon the begrimed 
 surface of the inundation floated the cushions 
 and embroidered coverings of the Sultan's 
 throne, together with the inlaid octagonal 
 table. These objects were not motionless, they 
 slowly revolved, flotsam in a leisurely mael- 
 strom ; for the water had a current : it was 
 escaping through the curtained entrance-portal, 
 lapping over the step, aild descending in a 
 miniature spillway torrent on the further side. 
 
 " It's a case of wading," pronounced Kellock. 
 " The water's not more than a couple of feet 
 deep. We must get through, then up the 
 stairs. I have to go to my room to fetch the 
 flask of oil ; after that we'll take shelter in the 
 tunnel which leads through the mountain to 
 the river." 
 
 Saumarez broke in, with a hurried gabble of 
 speech. 
 
 Jewel interpreted. " He is going back now. 
 He is convinced that there will be another and 
 bigger earthquake, bringing true the prophecy 
 about the final destruction of Pulo, and he is 
 determined to get the last flask of oil. We are 
 to wait for him in the tunnels — and save our- 
 
BACK TO THE PALACE 183 
 
 selves without him if he has not reappeared in 
 two hours. You are to time him by your 
 watch." 
 
 Two hours I Kellock was loath to wait two 
 hours. Still 
 
 He looked at his wrist- watch, " Very well." 
 
 Saumarez vanished. 
 
 Kellock had to confess that it argued not a 
 little courage on the part of the half-caste to 
 tackle the complications of those mountain 
 grottos again, with the risk of being entombed 
 at the next tremor : it was the courage of 
 desperation — a desperation inexplicable. 
 
 " White Plume 1" Jewel's hand was on his 
 arm. 
 
 " Jewel ?" 
 
 " I want " — she indicated the disorder of the 
 room, above which they stood upon the dais — 
 "I want to weep 1" 
 
 There was a poignant simplicity in her naive 
 statement of the sorrow she felt at this defile- 
 ment of her beautiful home. 
 
 He took her in his arms. " No time for 
 weeping yet, Jewel," he said sadly. "I'm 
 longing to .get you away. Suppose Saumarez 
 is right, and there is another earthquake 
 coming ?" 
 
 She acquiesced wearily " But it breaks my 
 
184 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 heart to see my palace all horrible. . . . Let 
 us go." And she prepared to step down off 
 the dais into the slowly-swirling water which 
 covered the floor below. 
 
 Kellock prevented her. " Why should you 
 wade through that filthy stuff 1 I'm going to 
 carry you." 
 
 A faint smile broke the melancholy upon her 
 face. " You don't know how heavy I am, 
 White Plume!" 
 
 It was delightful to see even this small 
 return of her ordinary spirits. He smiled back 
 at her. 
 
 " Put your arms round my neck," he ordered 
 her. " That's right. Now interlace your fingers 
 tightly." He bent down, slid one arm around 
 her waist and the other beneath the back of 
 her knees, and in a moment she was reposing 
 like a child cradled against his heart, 
 
 "Feather-weight !" he mocked, and bent and 
 kissed her. 
 
 She relaxed. Breathing a sigh of content, 
 she closed her eyes. 
 
 He stepped down from the dais, and, with 
 this precious burden in his clasp, cautiously 
 waded through the lapping waters. They rose 
 to the hem of his tunic, no more. Jewel could 
 have waded safely eaiougb, but to carry her 
 
BACK TO THE PALACE 185 
 
 was a task he would not have missed. He 
 could have wished that the distance to be 
 traversed was a longer one. The warm embrace 
 of her hands round his neck, the yieldingness 
 of her pliant body in his arms, were a joy 
 unspeakable. Reaching the door of the 
 audience-chamber, and pushing through its 
 curtains, he stepped forth on to comparative 
 dryness. But — no — he wouldn't put her down. 
 For the mere delight of it he carried her up 
 the staircase. 
 
 At the top she opened her eyes. " How 
 strong you are, my White Plume !" 
 
 Their lips met again. 
 
 She slipped from his arms, and stood beside 
 him. Then she gave a cry of excitement. 
 
 "Look, look!" She ran to one of the 
 windows. 
 
 Several of the piercings in the window's lace- 
 like filigree (now terribly damaged by the 
 earthquake) were filled with the familiar blue 
 enamel — how long it seemed since Kellock had 
 last beheld it ! — the sapphire of patches of 
 cloudless sky. 
 
 The rain had ceased. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 INTERLUDE 
 
 Kellock stood beside Jewel at the window. 
 And it was as he stood thus that the first lines 
 occurred to him of his poem, Trustfulness. 
 
 " In my arms I bore you, Beloved, and you lay 
 As though, asleep upon my breast, 
 A child at rest. 
 
 " Long shall that memory, Beloved, with me stay — 
 That moment when you let me see 
 You trusted me. 
 " For, trusting me, you stole. Beloved, quite away 
 From out my heart all cause for tears. 
 All Fear of fears." 
 
 Tranquil the valley lay outspread beneath 
 the palace. Above, the clouds were shredding, 
 borne upon the wings of a here unfelt and 
 inaudible gale. 
 
 The cessation of the rain's intolerable drum- 
 ming had caused, by contrast, a deathlike 
 silence. The sun, shining forth anew, revealed, 
 
 187 
 
188 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 indeed, a deathlike spectacle. For, though the 
 valley was tranquil, it was the tranquillity of 
 desolation. Everywhere, in every slightest 
 hollow, were pools of mud ; streaks of mud 
 stained the hills ; mud had silted into all the 
 oases of greenery, where most of the fruit-trees 
 were prone and battered. Cataracts of muddy 
 water foamed over every precipice ; a muddy 
 ocean circulated sullenly round the ruins of the 
 distant Pleasure-House — one wing of which, 
 however, remained intact, a forlorn and jagged- 
 edged monument of irrecoverable glories. 
 
 Smoky trails of mist began to fill the air, 
 exhaling from the sodden ground. The return 
 of the sun, its fierce heat unabated, had started 
 the process of evaporation : the moisture was 
 being drawn to the skies from which it had 
 descended. 
 
 " Nothing can have lived through that 
 storm," Kellock said. "Jewel, what of your 
 villagers ?" 
 
 "All the huts in the villages will have fallen 
 to pieces. They're easily rebuilt." She was 
 inattentive. " The natives hide in holes in the 
 ground whenever there is rain." 
 
 He was surprised at her indifference. 
 " But " 
 
 She had turned to him. " White Plume, I 
 
INTERLUDE 189 
 
 can't bear to see my beautiful Pulo all befouled, 
 like this." Her cheeks were tear-stained. 
 "And yet — and yet — it breaks my heart to 
 leave it. I don't want to go away, White 
 Plume !" 
 
 " Perhaps you'll return, some day." 
 
 " If I once leave Pulo I shall never come 
 again." She was fatalistic. 
 
 " In Gah-nung -" 
 
 " In Gah-nung I shall die," she said with 
 conviction. 
 
 " That is only a foolish f^ncy, Jewel. My 
 dear one, there are years of happiness ahead 
 of us. You and I will be far happier in some 
 place where I can work for you, as a man 
 should work for his bride." 
 
 "I wonder whether I shall ever be your 
 bride?" she murmured thoughtfully. "Some- 
 thiiig tells me " 
 
 She gazed at him, with mournful eyes. " I 
 love you so. White Plume !" she said. 
 
 "If you love me you will come with me, 
 Jewel. Trust yourself to me." 
 
 " I will trust myself to you, White Plume." 
 
 She took his hands. Lifting them, she pressed 
 them to her lips. " I trust you, my lord." 
 
 He flushed hotly. 
 
 She did not give him time to speak. 
 
190 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " Now," she said, with forced gaiety, " I must 
 make my preparations." 
 
 " Preparations ?" 
 
 " You would not have me go out into the 
 great world garbed like this?" she laughed, 
 surveying her tunic and her bare limbs. " White 
 Plume, I am a woman — and dress matters to 
 me as to all women. Besides . . . you would 
 be ashamed." She blushed. 
 
 " Have you got European clothes ?" He was 
 secretly dismayed. 
 
 She pulled a quaint grimace. " I had -to 
 wear European clothes at the mission school : 
 a blouse and a skirt . . . horrid ! And corsets 
 . . . mer 
 
 He shuddered. 
 
 " And stockings ! . . . No, my lover, I would 
 not show myself to you in that guise. Re- 
 member, I am Sultan of Pulo. I have no finery ; 
 but when the Sultan 1;ravels . . ." Her eyes 
 danced. "Wait and see ! My wardrobe is kept 
 in coffers in an upper chamber : the rain wUl 
 not have reached it. Go ; put on your suit 
 of white, the suit I like so much. White Plume ; 
 pack your knapsack — do not forget the flask 
 of sacred oil ; then meet me here." 
 
 He went to his room. It had been almost 
 unaffected by the earthquake. Only the little 
 
INTERLUDE 191 
 
 bath in the floor was muddy : the source of its 
 supply had been invaded by the rain. Steam 
 issued from the alcove ; the " hot- water tap," 
 as he had dubbed it, was hissing and guggling 
 ominously. It was evident that this volcanic 
 spring was in a state of violent ebullition. Its 
 condition was a warning of the seismic upheavals 
 which might — if Saumarez and his prophecy 
 were correct — at any minute recur. So peace- 
 ful now was the whole palace that it was- 
 difficult to realise that an earthquake had 
 passed and that another could come. Whether 
 another was coming or not, Kellock was deter- 
 mined to get Jewel away from the island as 
 expeditiously as possible. It was galling to 
 have to delay even two hours. 
 
 He looked at his watch. Half an hour had 
 already gone. 
 
 He changed his clothes quickly. Curious 
 how satisfying was the return to his duck suit, 
 his shoes, socks, and hat ! He packed his 
 knapsack, placing the leaden flask in the bottom 
 of it, then slung it on his back. 
 
 "White Plume!" It was Jewel's voice 
 speaking to him from behind the door curtains 
 as she had once spoken before. 
 
 " Jewel ! I am ready !" 
 
 She thrust the curtain aside. 
 
 13 
 
192 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 It was a transformation indeed. 
 
 She was still in white, but her garment 
 
 "I know what you're thinking, White 
 Plume," she trilled. " Trousers r 
 
 She wore, in fact, trousers — baggy, softly- 
 fashioned things which came to her ankles, and 
 were there caught in immediately above a pair 
 of sandal-like shoes with turned-up, pointed 
 toes. The upper part of her dress was a tunic 
 which — except that it boasted sleeves — was not 
 unsimilar to the one she had discarded. It 
 was fastened round the waist by the golden 
 snake belt ; the gold scarab brooch pinned 
 it together at the throat. Upon her head 
 she wore a white turban, with a veil 
 hanging from the front of it and covering her 
 face : through its diaphanous mesh her olive 
 complexion was dimly visible, and the glint of 
 her dusky eyes. 
 
 " Aren't they prefft/ trousers, White Plume V 
 she asked, with mock anxiety. 
 
 He could not but enter into her mood. 
 " What I dont like is the veil." 
 
 She threw back the veil. 
 
 " That was a very nice speech. White 
 Plume !" She put up her lips to be kissed. 
 
 Then : *' Have you seen these ?" She drew 
 
INTERLUDE 193 
 
 his attention to a rope of pearls which hung 
 round her neck. 
 
 He fingered them. " A magnificent necklace, 
 Jewel. It must be worth a fortune." 
 
 " The only treasure I possess," she told him. 
 " Perhaps some day we'll have to — what do 
 you call it ?" she bubbled — " pawn it." 
 
 " Not as long as I've got a pair of arms to 
 earn our living." 
 
 She pouted waywardly. " I don't think I 
 shall like the big world where people have to 
 earn their living." 
 
 "It's the worth-while world, all the same," 
 he assured her. 
 
 "Well"— she conceded— "if White Plume 
 is happy there, I shall be happy too." 
 
 But presently a dark thought clouded her 
 gaiety. " Yet I'm afraid, afraid, White Plume." 
 
 " Afraid— what of?" 
 
 " Afraid " — she came back to her old dread — 
 " afraid to leave the Opal water - . . in case . . ." 
 
 He sealed her mouth with a kiss of re- 
 assurance. 
 
 But she would not be comforted. 
 
 And suddenly she broke out r " White Plume, 
 I will go with you to the river : Saumarez and 
 I will sail down the river with you to the sea. 
 
194 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 By that time, if there has been no further 
 earthquake, I — I shall want to return. Yes ; 
 you will leave on the steamer, and I shall come 
 back to the Happy Valley with Saumarez 
 When you have been to Gah-nung " 
 
 Her plan was broken in upon by a sudden 
 rumble. The room quivered. 
 
 Another series of earthquake shocks had 
 commenced. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 VIALS OF WBATH 
 
 The earthquake which finally devastated the 
 island of the Happy Yalley was one of the most 
 terrible known in the annals of the Archipelago. 
 
 Yet its development was singularly gradual. 
 It was an afiair not of minutes but of hours. 
 
 Kellock and Jewel, sheltering in the mouth 
 of the tunnel which was their sole road to 
 freedom, experienced, during their promised wait 
 for Saumarez, long intervals when the tremors 
 appeared to have totally ceased. While these 
 intervals lasted, hope rose afresh : it was 
 impossible to believe that danger threatened. 
 And then, with hideous rumblings, the mountain 
 would once more be shaken to its foundations, 
 and the row of windows- in the entrance-hall of 
 the palace, at which they gazed from the surer 
 foundation of their retreat, would tilt and heave, 
 the thin tracery of the lace- work snapping, and 
 
 195 
 
196 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 clattering inwards to the floor in morsels of 
 debris. 
 
 It was a long-drawn ordeal of anxiety for 
 Kellock. Having given his promise to the half- 
 caste, he felt bound in honour to wait until the 
 two hours had elapsed. But his determination 
 was torn by the presence of Jewel. That she 
 should be endangered by this delay 
 
 Of course she might go on ahead, through the 
 tunnel . . . 
 
 He shrank from proposing such a plan. He 
 did not want to lose sight of her. 
 
 And when, after a nerve-racking sway and 
 surge, he suggested to her that she should flee 
 while he kept watch for Saumarez, she would 
 not hear of it. 
 
 "I stay with my Lord White Plume," was 
 her firm decision. 
 
 In spite of his incertitude, he was thankful — 
 and proud. 
 
 He looked at his watch. " Less than an 
 hour, now." 
 
 Less than an hour ! He was acutely 
 conscious of the fact that even " less than an 
 hour" might make aU the diflerence between 
 life and death for himself and (a more piercing 
 thought) for the woman he loved. 
 
 Here, in the arched entrance to the tunnel, 
 
VIALS OF WRATH 197 
 
 with solid rock beneath their feet and above 
 their heads, they were admittedly safer than 
 out in the palace. It, like the temple, had 
 withstood many seismic assaults of the past ; 
 and, like the temple, might prove, to-day, a 
 grave for anyone who trusted to its shelter. 
 That final scene in the temple . . . Kellock 
 felt that if he allowed himself to dwell on its 
 ghastliness it would break his fortitude. At 
 all costs he must retain his presence of mind. 
 He would need every ounce of his coolness if he 
 and Jewel were to live to see another dawn. 
 She was dependent on him absolutely. The 
 thought braced him. 
 
 They stood, he and she, just within the mouth 
 of the tunnel. It opened into that handsome 
 upper room of the palace which, to him, was 
 the latter's entrance-hall : the hall whose aspect 
 had so astonished him when it had burst on his 
 view at his arrival. The aspect of the hall, as 
 he now gazed forth at it, was not much altered, 
 except for the particles of broken lattice-work 
 spattered upon the floor. The windows framed, 
 in their chipped and splintered apertures, a 
 cerulean blue : the sun poured through them 
 dazzlingly. Only, now and then, they danced a 
 hideous jig . . . the sunshine patches and the 
 intervening shadows swam sickeningly . . . 
 
198 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 and another of the earthquake fiend's huge 
 agonies had come and gone. 
 
 Of course, as he had observed on the occasion 
 of his first walk in the valley, the palace was 
 erected with great firmness against the mountain- 
 side : its back was welded to the cliff. The 
 building might hold. After all, a portion even 
 of the comparatively flimsy Pleasure- House had 
 contrived, somehow, to remain standing. . . . 
 
 A thick pillar of smoke became visible through 
 one of the windows, rising perpendicularly 
 athwart the distant background of blue. 
 
 " Something on fire ?" he queried. It seemed 
 impossible that anything could burn after such 
 a drenching. 
 
 " A volcano," said Jewel : " one of the 
 volcanoes amongst the hills on the other side of 
 the valley." 
 
 He could not resist the temptation to make 
 a hurried sortie to a window. 
 
 She was right. The smoke, which mounted 
 in a vertical column but was already spreading 
 umbrella-wise over the blue, was emitted from 
 one of the skyline peaks. He observed it with 
 relief: it was conceivable that the seismic 
 pressure had found a valve, and would lessen 
 accordingly. A volcano in eruption may be a 
 far less dangerous neighbour than a volcano 
 
VIALS OF WRATH 199 
 
 which, so to speak, is trying to erupt but failing. 
 As long as it^'was Only so distant a volcano — six 
 or seven miles oiF, at a guess 
 
 Then he saw that this was not the only pillar 
 of smoke. From a mound adjacent to the 
 Pleasure-House a second pillar was ascending, 
 oily and livid. And almost immediately he 
 caught sight of a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. 
 All round the circuit of the vaUey the labouring 
 hills were giving birth to these cyclopean 
 spectres of black, like genii emerging fi:om hell 
 and joining hands to shut out the light of heaven. 
 
 The sun dimmed, became a ball of red, 
 disappeared. A darkness as of approaching 
 night began to thicken over Pulo. Kellock, 
 with the sunshine gone, perceived that the 
 columns of smoke which he had thought to be 
 black were illuminated by an orange glow, 
 which pulsated like the reflection from a 
 locomotive's furnace. 
 
 An ominous rumble and tremor sent him 
 back from the window to rejoin Jewel. 
 
 " It looks as though the second part of the 
 entertainment were about to commence," he 
 said, with feigned flippancy; ''and it may be 
 more spectacular than the flrst. I wish 
 Saumarez would hurry up. Only half an hour 
 left now. But if the stuff in these volcanoes 
 
200 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 boils over . . . I've seen a volcano in action, and 
 it's a fine sight — if you're a very, very long way 
 off. These volcanoes are a trifle too near for 
 my taste. But this darkness will be a nuisance. 
 No romantic moon for our voyage down the 
 river, I'm afraid. We'll have an exciting trip." 
 
 He continued to talk, lightly, not only to 
 keep up Jewel's spirits but also his own. She 
 had slid her arm through his as though to 
 signify that she claimed his support. But she 
 was not trembling ; she seemed singularly un- 
 dismayed. When she had said, "I stay with 
 my Lord White Plume," she summed up the 
 faith she reposed in him, a faith which banished 
 fear. 
 
 Ten more minutes passed. Outside the win- 
 dows the smoke-laden sky was illuminated by 
 flashes of crimson ; each flash was accompanied 
 by a sonorous boom, as though a far-off cannon 
 had been discharged. The simile was close, for 
 now, from time to time, blazing fragments of 
 scoriae shot towards the zenith like shells, visible 
 for an instant as they traversed a window-gap. 
 The most distant of the volcanoes was at last in 
 active eruption. 
 
 The earth shook continuously. A monstrous 
 cleft appeared in the wall of the palace : Jewel 
 and Kellock could descry a section of the valley 
 
VIALS OF WRATH 201 
 
 through it. Something like a golden serpent 
 was wriggling down the opposite hillside 
 towards the region of the Pleasure-House. It 
 was a runnel of molten lava. 
 
 A strong smell of sulphur began to permeate 
 the air. Kellock remembered chemistry lectures 
 at college, and the " rotten egg " trick with 
 sulphuretted hydrogen. " Stinks " had been 
 funny then : they were less funny now. 
 
 He examined his wrist-watch. There was 
 sufficient light to discern its face. Its hands 
 had crawled. There were still fifteen minutes 
 to go. 
 
 Fifteen interminable minutes I Kellock could 
 hardly endure the prospect. 
 
 But before the first sixty of those nine 
 hundred fateful seconds had elapsed, he had 
 other things to think about. 
 
 The now incessant earth-tremors suddenly 
 gathered themselves together into one gigantic 
 fury of conflicting waves, which appeared to 
 rush together and collide, their focus-point 
 being the palace. Its thick walls tore, right 
 and left, like so much parchment ; the rents 
 ran hither and thither in slanting fissures ; 
 portions of the roof came crunching down ; the 
 walls bulged outward, swung for a moment, and 
 then fell in a sliding, dusty wreck. Jewel and 
 
802 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Kellock, in the tunnel's archway, instead of 
 looking forth into the entrance-hall, saw naught 
 but gaping space : they gazed out across a 
 tangle of ruins on to the open valley. 
 
 " White Plume 1 My palace I" She gave 
 one moan. 
 
 Nothing remained of her home but a few 
 heaps of rubbish. 
 
 She burst into tears. 
 
 Endeavouring, as best he might, to soothe 
 her, Kellock, though grieving for her loss, was 
 profoundly thankful that they themselves had 
 not been engulfed. The mountain had been 
 shaken frightfully — it was stiU shaking ; but 
 its great bulk was no mere artificial fabric like 
 the palace : the tunnel's vault held firm ; not 
 so much as a speck of its rock had been 
 dislodged. Here they were safe. For how 
 long? How long would their road to the 
 outer world remain traversable ? 
 
 " If Saumarez meant to come out through 
 
 that door into the audience-chamber " he 
 
 began. 
 
 It was obvious that there was now no such 
 place as the audience-chamber. The half-caste, 
 as likely as not, was buried in the downfall. 
 
 And then, suddenly, he saw Saumarez. 
 
 The little man was on the mountain-side, at 
 
VIALS OF WRATH 208 
 
 a distance of three or four hundred paces, in 
 the direction of the temple. He had emerged, 
 like a frightened rabbit, from a small round 
 hole — that same funnel orifice to which he and 
 his two companions had come but a short time 
 ago and, from which they had spied forth upon 
 the fan-shaped declivity of ashes. Down and 
 across this landslide of ashes he was running 
 and striding, his feet sinking at each step into 
 the unstable mass, so that it tobogganed with 
 him, and for every yard he jumped he was 
 carried twenty yards onwards. Five hundred 
 feet below, at the side of what had once been 
 Jewel's palace, the slope of ashes ceased and a 
 flat space of bare lava intervened. Towards 
 this area of comparative safety Saumarez was 
 aiming, in a long diagonal. 
 
 Again and again the ashes almost engulfed 
 him. He sank up to his knees ; sometimes, 
 sinking to his middle, he held aloft, as though 
 to protect it from damage, a small object : 
 evidently the second flask of sacred oil. A 
 myriad minute cinders were dislodged every 
 time he moved. But he did not pause ; he 
 ploughed forward down the treacherous black 
 quicksand without an instant's rest to draw 
 breath. 
 
 It was a strange drama, Kellock, unable to 
 
204 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 help, watched it with morbid excitement. The 
 twilight which hung over the valley was luridly- 
 lit up. with flashes. The entire ring of volcanoes 
 were now vomiting forth flames and scorise and 
 streams of red-hot lava. The earth-tremors 
 had, for the moment, died away ; but the air 
 was full of the roar of continuous explosions. 
 Armageddon might have been in progress — an 
 armageddon of unthinkably grandiose field- 
 pieces. Overhead, the pall of smoke suddenly 
 turned to blood-colour. Every object within 
 sight was sufiused by it ; even the few remain- 
 ing green trees looked red. A fresh and larger 
 overflow of liquefied mineral matter had spilt 
 from some new vent, and was Viscidly finding 
 its way down the crater's side. 
 
 " If it were not so cruel," Kellock heard 
 Jewel's voice whisper, " it would be very 
 beautiful," 
 
 It was true. The spectacle, but for its dread 
 significance, would have been sublime. 
 
 " Poor Saumarez !" she added. " My old 
 friend and faithful servant! I don't like to 
 look on while he struggles for life. . . . Ah !" 
 
 The half-caste had disappeared. 
 
 "Within but a few steps of the lower edge of 
 the ash-slide, his doom had overtaken him. 
 The great embankment of loose ashes, disturbed 
 
VIALS OF WRATH 205 
 
 by his progress, had started to move . . . faster 
 . . . faster . . . rolling over upon itself and 
 gaining in impetus. Its victim, carried forward, 
 was an atom in a cataract. He sank to his 
 knees, he sank to his waist, he sank to his 
 chest. The ashes whirled him onward. The 
 onlookers saw him fling his hands upward and 
 vanish. 
 
 Thousands of tons of ashes, still damp and 
 sodden from the rain, surged down on to the 
 lava-bed at the base of the embankment, and 
 there piled themselves. 
 
 Somewhere beneath that huge black mound 
 lay the body of Saumarez the half-breed. 
 
 But, just before the momentum of the ash- 
 slide had interred him in its awful sepulchre, 
 something small and flat and oblong had 
 escaped from his uplifted hand — the precious 
 flask, the flask for which he had lain down his 
 life. And this flask, flung ahead by his dying 
 gesture, had landed obliquely^ on the lava-bed 
 and skated across its smooth surface almost to 
 the ruins of the palace itself There it lay, far 
 beyond the point where the last fringe of the 
 ashes had come to rest, a memento of its owner's 
 desperate rashness. 
 
 Jewel seemed petrified. She uttered no 
 word. One great sob shook her. 
 
206 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 It was no time for speech. Kellock's sole 
 thought was to get away as quickly as possible. 
 To attempt to exhume Saumarez was useless ; 
 even if those countless tons of slag and clinker 
 could be removed, it would be wasted labour : 
 the half-caste must have been crushed to death 
 instantaneously. There was therefore now no 
 object in delaying. 
 
 " The third member of our party will never 
 leave Pulo," he said quietly. " Come, Jewel. 
 Let us be off at once." 
 
 To his astonishment she hung back. 
 
 " White Plume, I'm frightened to stay ; but 
 I'm more frightened to go." 
 
 " Then leave it to me. Trust me. Jewel, that 
 it is the wisest thing. Take my hand. I will 
 lead you." 
 
 She still lingered. " The earthquake may 
 pass, White Plume " 
 
 " Even if it does pass, the place is devas- 
 tated." 
 
 " But the Opal lake near the Pleasure-House 
 will still' " 
 
 " What!" He was astounded that she 
 should have come back again to this obsession 
 of the Opal water. 
 
 " At Gah-nung I shall die, White Plume. 
 Here there is long life for jne, even if I have no 
 
VIALS OF WRATH 207 
 
 palace to live in. When the time comes for me 
 to need the Opal water " 
 
 " Jewel !" he groaned. " How can you talk 
 like that ! Y6u're unstrung, hysterical. Why 
 do you dwell on this fate which you think is 
 hanging over you ? It's pure imagination." 
 
 She shook her head. " I am of mixed parent- 
 age. Some escape the curse, but most fall 
 beneath it, and then their only salvation is the 
 healing water." 
 
 He had an inspiration. " Suppose, years 
 hence — if ever anything does go wrong with 
 you : suppose you're taken ill " — he could not 
 bring himself to name the dread plague — 
 " Dr. Levaloir will cure you. I can promise 
 you that he can and will do that, even if only 
 in gratitude to your father for the supply of 
 sacred oil, and to me for bringing the last 
 flask." 
 
 " The last flask !" His words riveted her 
 attention. " The last flask ! White Plume" — 
 she pointed down to the lava-bed beyond the 
 ruins below them — " the last flask lies there." 
 
 " Broken, probably," he said. 
 
 " The flasks are lead. They cannot break. 
 White Plume, you must go down and bring for 
 me that last flask. It contains . . . life. The 
 other flask, the one you have already got, 
 
 14 
 
208 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 belongs to Dr. Levaloir. That one belongs now 
 to us : it is yours and mine, our precious 
 security against the future. Bring it, bring it. 
 White Plume, and I will go with you wherever 
 you wish." 
 
 There was nothing for it but to obey her 
 whim. 
 
 He surveyed the ruins. Yes — he could 
 scramble down. There was no great risk 
 involved, except in so far as any delay was in 
 itself a risk. But for her insistence he would 
 never have dreamt of descending to fetch 
 that second flask, however great its value. The 
 mountains were now flowing with lava ; several 
 of the streams were so close to the palace that 
 their heat could be felt. The odour of smoke 
 and sulphur already made breathing difficult. 
 Still — if she so obstinately wished him to go 
 
 He turned to her. 
 
 " I'm going, Jewel. But — it's not impossible 
 — something may happen even on that short 
 trip. Those lava-streams are uncomfortably 
 near. In case I make a slip, in case I don't 
 come back " He took her in his arms. 
 
 She clung to him in a passion of remorse and 
 love. " I wouldn't send you if it wasn't that we 
 must have that last flask," she w;ept. 
 
 They kissed. 
 
VIALS OF WRATH 209 
 
 He tore himself free from her embrace, and 
 began, very cautiously, to lower himself down 
 the jagged walls of the palace ruin. 
 
 She watched him, with parted lips, tears 
 streaming down her face. 
 
 But she did not call him back. 
 
 Once, only, she screamed in terror. He had 
 slipped, and a knotted accumulation of masonry 
 had crumbled down alongside of him. He was 
 up again at once, and edging himself gingerly 
 onward beneath the flickering light from the 
 lava-streaked hillsides and the blood-hued sky. 
 His agile muscularity, the poise and firmness of 
 his athletic limbs, stood him in good stead. 
 
 Now he was at the bottom of the ruin. The 
 flask lay at his feet. He picked it up. Jewel 
 was right. It had sustained no damage. 
 
 He thrust it into his pocket, wiped the sweat 
 from his brow, and prepared to ascend again- 
 He was perspiring, not because of the exertion 
 nor by reason of fear, but because of the scald- 
 ing blasts of heat from the nearest of the lava- 
 streams. Its foremost rivulet, ruby red and 
 advancing with a strange bellying motion, like 
 some curdled rope of fire, had almost reached the 
 remains of the palace. The fumes from it were 
 suffocating. But its approach was slower than 
 his retreat. Gasping and coughing, he climbed 
 
210 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 from point to point of the ruins. In less time 
 than it had taken him to go down he was up 
 again in the arched mouth of the tunnel. 
 
 " White Plume, you are brave !" His reward 
 was the admiration in Jewel's eyes. " I will 
 go now with my lord to the ends of the earth." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE FLIGHT 
 
 The tunnel trip was perforce slow. There was 
 no light whatever. Kellock had to conduct 
 Jewel by feeling his way with his hand along 
 the wall ; only a cautious pace was practicable. 
 The invisible wall, dry to the touch, at last began 
 to feel dewy. He knew then that they were 
 nearing the exit — were nearing that other and 
 moister climate which characterised the external 
 aspect of the mountain slope. 
 
 They emerged at last on the ledge at the top 
 of the pyramid-like steps. 
 
 Here there was a little more light than he had 
 dared to hope for. The smoke-pall, which had 
 been opaque over the basin of the Happy Valley, 
 was not yet spread so thickly on that part 
 of the sky which was now above the travellers' 
 heads. No sun was visible, but the dusk 
 in which they moved was the dusk of a London 
 
 211 
 
212 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " pea-soup " winter afternoon rather than — 
 as heretofore — the blackness of night. 
 
 But, though the illumination was wintry, 
 the atmosphere was not. Its heat was terrible 
 — damp and enervating. Jewel panted audibly 
 as Kellock helped her down from step to step of 
 the mammoth staircase. 
 
 " I can't breathe, White Plume !" she gasped. 
 " I'd forgotten that the outer world was like 
 this." 
 
 " It isn't," he assured her, smiling. " Wait 
 till you taste the sea-breezes !" 
 
 Her answering smile was wan. 
 
 The jungle which hedged in the stone path- 
 way still dripped and oozed unwholesomely, as 
 when Kellock had first traversed it. Jewel 
 leaned heavily upon his arm. All the lyric 
 grace and lUt seemed to have gone from her 
 body. She looked tired- — and it came to Kellock 
 that never once, not even after her swimming 
 or the racket game, had he ever seen her 
 display the smallest kind of physical tiredness. 
 This abrupt plunge into moist heat had sapped 
 her vigour with disconcerting rapidity. 
 
 " Why do I feel all funny and weak ?" she 
 demanded. " I never remember wavering about 
 like this before." 
 
 He explained to her, with solicitude, that 
 
THE FLIGHT 213 
 
 the symptoms which so surprised her were quite 
 natural ones. 
 
 " But you're as strong as ever, White Plume !" 
 He was not, really ; but he let her think he 
 was. It would never do to confess to the fatigue 
 which was invading him : he could not afford 
 to give way to it until they were secure on 
 board the Orpheus. How he longed to behold 
 that ugly old Orpheus and to see once more 
 Captain Sibthorpe's ruffianly unshaven counten- 
 ance and its eternal cheroot ! 
 
 Long before they came in sight of the river, 
 Kellock had realised, by the roar which rever- 
 berated from it, that it was in flood. The 
 lagoon where the boathouse had stood was a 
 turgid lake, many feet above its former level 
 and daubed with bubbles and clots of dirt- 
 stained froth. Its waters were mud-coloured, 
 but, oddly, were smeared here and there with 
 patches of milky opalescence. Through some 
 subterranean channel the river no doubt came 
 from the Happy Valley, and was therefore 
 augmented by contributions from the Pleasure- 
 House lake and the other Opal water sources. 
 These, their confines burst by the earthquake, or 
 overflowing after the rain, were the origin of 
 those strange silken scourings, which, in the 
 dusk, glimmered with a faint and eerie radiance. 
 
214 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 Kellock's chief concern, however, was with the 
 boathouse. An exclamation of dismay escaped 
 his lips when he saw that neither its thatched 
 roof nor the pier of stakes was visible. Both 
 had been carried away by the spate — and, with 
 them, the sampans. 
 
 No. One sampan remained — ^the largest and 
 heaviest : the carved and painted vessel which 
 he had recognised as the Sultan's state barge. 
 Grotesquely tilted, the Buddha - head prow 
 crowned drunkenly with garlands of flowering 
 creepers, it had somehow enmeshed itself in the 
 branches of an overhanging tree, and there 
 lolled, in a semi-swamped condition, the stream 
 tugging vainly at its moorings. 
 
 " We shall travel in style after all," chuckled 
 Kellock. " Your own boat is the only one which 
 has been civil enough to await its mistress." 
 He set to work to disentangle it. 
 
 The tree-branches broke fairly easily, but the 
 creepers were as tough as steel. For more than 
 an hour he wrestled with them, in the almost 
 unendurable heat. Jewel could give him no 
 help. She had sunk down, a little distance up 
 the path ; her eyes watched him stonily : she 
 appeared to have reached the limit of her 
 strength. Once indeed she called to him : "It 
 is no use, White Plume ! Why fight so. savagely ? 
 
THE. FLIGHT 216 
 
 The godSi are against us ; they do not wish us 
 to leave Pulo. Let us return to what is left of 
 the Happy Valley where, eveniif there is danger, 
 we can at least breathe." 
 
 He would not listen to her — though, with all 
 his powers ebbing, it was a temptation to do so. 
 The gods were against him, against his taking 
 Jewel away, against his promised return to 
 Gah-nung. It would be easier to give in, to 
 retreat, with her, to abandon the lure of the 
 outer world 
 
 He wouldn't give in. He set his teeth. He 
 wouldn't give in. 
 
 And presently the barge was free. 
 
 It floated, though half awash with water. 
 With his arms in an absurdly affectionate 
 embrace of the prow which formed the Buddha- 
 head's neck he coaxed and edged it round the 
 bank to the cleared space where the boathouse 
 had been. To bale out the roomy craft would 
 take an eternity. His only implement, now he 
 came to think of it, was his hat. Useless ! 
 With a last tremendous effort he hauled the 
 big sampan up the beach and heaved it over 
 on its side to drain. The water gushed from 
 it, leaving it empty. Soon, Kellock knew, the 
 heat would dry its interior. While it was 
 drying he would rest. He must rest. 
 
216 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 He went and. lay down, exhausted, beside 
 Jewel. She took his head upon her knees. 
 
 " The white plume !" she whispered, smooth- 
 ing his silver lock from his brow with her 
 fingers. " How strong you have been for me 
 to-day, my lord." 
 
 She added in an undertone, " And I can never 
 repay you !" 
 
 " You can repay me by being brave and 
 beautiful, Queen." 
 
 " Suppose I were not beautiful ?" she sighed. 
 "You will be beautiful always in my sight, 
 
 White Plume ; but I — I may change " Her 
 
 voice wavered and fell. 
 
 The darkness was deepening. His watch told 
 him that the sun should still be above the 
 horizon, but the smoke-pall had thickened. Its 
 canopy was refulgent with meteoric flickerings. 
 
 He roused himself " Time to embark," 
 
 She pressed a kiss upon his forehead. "I am 
 ready. White Plume." 
 
 He slid the sampan into the water. One of 
 its paddles had survived the flood. With this 
 he armed himself. 
 
 Jewel stepped on board. Kellock followed 
 her, and pushed off. 
 
 A minute later he realised that the paddle 
 was useless. 
 
THE FLIGHT 217 
 
 The current of the river seized the sampan as 
 it might have seized a twig, and whirled it sea- 
 ward through the aisles of the tropic jungle. 
 Steering was impossible ; the- paddle's strokes 
 influenced their headlong course not an atom. 
 Sometimes stern first, sometimes sideways, 
 sometimes bow first, the boat was borne upon 
 the resistless flood, in dizzy spirals and wild 
 swoops, like a cork on the Niagara rapids. 
 
 Kellock, unable even to maintain a standing 
 posture, threw down his paddle, and, creeping 
 to the stern of the boat, joined Jewel. He 
 collapsed beside her. Dimly he could discern 
 her in the darkness. Her eyes were shut. She 
 opened them for a moment. Her hand wearily 
 sought his. 
 
 " White Plume !" He heard her breathe his 
 name. Her eyelids drooped again. 
 
 Their hands exchanged a faint pressure. 
 
 It was almost as though they were bidding 
 each other farewell. 
 
 An overwhelming sense of fatigue had gripped 
 Kellock. His limbs ached intolerably. He was 
 faint and overtaxed with the burden of the 
 heat. Lying in utter lassitude he gazed forth 
 at the sky, which palpitated with safiron and 
 purple ; it circled maddeningly with the boat's 
 gyrations. Sometimes the jungle loomed beside 
 
218 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 him ; sometimes the sampan rolled in the trough 
 of the current and he had a glimpse of the 
 swarthy river itself, and its striae of pallid 
 opalescence. His eyes throbbed. He closed 
 them. 
 
 With a promptitude which would have seemed 
 to him incredible had he been aware of it, he 
 was asleep. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 renunciation 
 
 " White Plume !" 
 
 His senses began to return to him, as though 
 from the profound depths of a voluptuous 
 Nirvana. 
 
 " Awaken, my Lord White Plume !" 
 
 Consciousness came. 
 
 " White Plume !" 
 
 It was Jewel's voice. 
 
 " Jewel !" He was wide awake. He saw her, 
 and — oh, beatific vision ! — he saw the sun. 
 
 Day had dawned. 
 
 He sat up. 
 
 The sampan floated upon the level ocean, with 
 a placid steadiness which was a delicious contrast 
 to its headlong twirlings of last night. What 
 wild adventures and escapes it had experienced 
 during the night Kellock knew not : his long 
 sleep had spared him those horrors. That the 
 craft in which he and Jewel had been thus 
 
 219 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 miraculously conveyed to their goal had run 
 some strange gauntlets in its coastward career 
 was plain : there must have been more than 
 one collision, judging by the deep scores and 
 scratches on its paint. And some obstacle— 
 presumably an overhanging branch or tree-root 
 — had taken toll of its prow : the Buddha-head 
 was gone, smashed off at the neck. No matter ! 
 The boat still rode the waters bravely. And 
 its passengers were unharmed. 
 
 Kellock stretched himself luxuriously. His 
 sleep had given him back his strength. He 
 breathed anew. The sun's rays were a benison. 
 
 "Jewel, it's good to be alive!" 
 
 "It is good to be alive, my Lord White 
 Plume," she assented. 
 
 Something in her tone struck his attention. 
 " You are still tired. Hungry too, of course." 
 He kissed her. "My Jewel shall breakfast 
 on chocolate. It's the best I can do for 
 her." 
 
 Two tablets of chocolate were in his knapsack. 
 He produced them. " This'U keep us going till 
 the excellent Sibthorpe comes to our rescue." 
 
 While he ate, he surveyed the horizon. 
 Seawards there was nothing visible but the 
 vast floor of greenish-blue. The water in the 
 immediate neighbourhood ot the sampan was 
 
RENUNCIATION 221 
 
 muddy ; but this discoloration was local ; 
 further off the sea displayed its usual pure 
 tints. Following the discoloration's path the 
 eye was led to the island, which lay at a mile's 
 distance. A huge outpour of tawny smoke 
 billowed from the hiUs in the island's centre ; 
 wind must be driving it, for it did not spread, 
 it streamed away to the south so rapidly and 
 ceaselessly that it gave the observer the quaint 
 illusion that the land was in motion, steaming 
 vigorously across the sea. The sun, still low — 
 for the dawn had only just come — was not quite 
 over the island : it was thus not obscured by the 
 smoke. 
 
 " The volcanoes are still at it, I see," KeUock 
 observed. 
 
 " Before dawn, when it was dark, the smoke 
 looked aU copper-coloured," said Jewel. " And 
 burning stuff was thrown up into the air. 
 Once I saw lava overflow the hilltop into the 
 jungle on this side." 
 
 " You've not slept ?" 
 
 " I slept a little," she said wearily, " I awoke 
 long before you did, White Plume. It was 
 awful. The boat rushed and tossed — everything 
 spun round us — I was terrified. Then when 
 at last we came out into this blessed peace I 
 lay and watched the fires of the volcano — and 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 knew I was watching the destruction of my 
 beautiful Pulo." 
 
 He encircled her with his arm ; but he knew 
 that it was impossible for him to condole with 
 her in her great grief. 
 
 " Anyhow," he said, " we're safe, you and I, 
 Jewel, Let's look forward to the happiness in 
 store instead of backward at the sorrow of loss." 
 
 She buried her face on his shoulder. " If 
 only I could do that, White Plume ; if only I 
 could do that !" 
 
 "You can.'' He fondled her. "My dear 
 
 one, do you think I don't realise ? I want 
 
 to share your grief, and help you to bear it. 
 That's what I'm for. But I want to share 
 happiness also. You and I are going to be very, 
 very happy. Jewel. You and I together " 
 
 She clutched his arm. "I can't bear it, 
 White Plume ! I loved you so !" 
 
 "And you still love me, don't you?" He 
 patted her head. It was evident that she was 
 spent ; he must humour her and comfort her 
 as one would comfort a child. 
 
 "If we had been going to live in the 
 Happy Valley " she gulped. 
 
 The Happy Valley ! He mused at his re- 
 collections of the Happy Valley. Suppose there 
 had been no earthquake ; suppose, after his 
 
RENUNCIATION 223 
 
 trip to Gah-nung, he had returned to the Happy 
 Yalley and become (incongruous thought!) Sultan 
 of Pulo ? Suppose he and Jewel had lived 
 together, bride and bridegroom, in that en- 
 chanted palace of hers, basking in the sunshine, 
 bathing, playing the racket game, roaming the 
 hills. . . . 
 
 How long would it have been, for him, the 
 "Happy" VaUey? 
 
 Of course he could have tried to institute 
 reforms. . . . 
 
 He smiled at the very word. 
 
 No ; happiness would only have been possible 
 in the Happy Valley if he had surrendered to 
 its bondage. Lotus Land is not Lotus Land 
 for one who tries to inhabit it and retain his 
 conscience. The natives of Pulo no doubt 
 managed to compromise, somehow : they were 
 the workers, the slothful sybarites of the 
 Pleasure-House were the drones. Between the 
 two came Jewel. . . . 
 
 It would have been marvellously peaceful 
 and sweet, the life with Jewel in the Happy 
 Valley ! No more anxieties, no more strife. . . . 
 
 He was thankful, now, that circumstances 
 had forced them to flee. Yes, he admitted that 
 he had been tempted. Looking back, he was 
 ashamed at his own weakness. For, after all, 
 
 15 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 had he not already received sufficient warning ? 
 Had he not already once known the slavery of 
 a life too free from struggle ? In those long- 
 ago days in New York, when he was rich, he 
 had imagined himself happy. He had no work 
 to do ; other men toiled to maintain him in 
 idleness. Everything desirable was his : he 
 and his fellow-drones moved in an easy circle of 
 delights : like the Pulo lepers they adhered to 
 certain facile conventions and hid what was 
 ugly — forgot it, ignored it. The life which 
 had offered itself to him in the Happy Valley 
 had only been another version of the life which 
 riches once gave him ; and it had the same 
 drawback — it was slavery. 
 
 And Jewel herself was one of the slaves. 
 
 Thank God he had been able to rescue^ her ! 
 Kellock knew that, for her, the first pangs of 
 freedom would hurt : he himself had been hurt, 
 at first, when his millions were taken from him. 
 He must be very gentle with her. His love 
 must soften her pain : he must make it, to her, 
 something infinitely more precious than what 
 she had lost. He must be wise, wise — wise for 
 the two of them. He gazed across her bowed 
 head at the sea, which typified, for him, the 
 escape into a wider, more strenuous world, and 
 vowed to win her to a freedom as fine as the 
 
RENUNCIATION 225 
 
 freedom which was his own ideal and to which 
 (he now saw) the lure of her beauty had almost 
 made him false. 
 
 Strange that she should be so sad ! Surely 
 the wonder of the sea and the dawn might have 
 revivified her ? 
 
 "Jewel 1" he said, "why are you weeping?" 
 
 " I am not weeping, my Lord White Plume. 
 My heart is too heavy for tears." She roused 
 herself. Her bosom heaved, but her eyes 
 were dry. 
 
 " Our love for each other " he began. 
 
 " White Plume, had we lived in the Happy 
 Valley, you and I, our love might still have 
 
 compensated for — for " she faltered. "I 
 
 could have won you " 
 
 " You have won me, my Queen !" 
 
 " I could have won you to the ways of Pulo. 
 My love for you was so great that it blinded 
 me to the wickedness of what I was doing. It 
 was all a dream— it vould have become more 
 and more a dream — in the end we should have 
 dreamt the same dream as the dwellers in the 
 Pleasure-House, and known the same happiness. 
 To that I should have won my White Plume." 
 
 " And now /have won you to a different life, 
 Jewel." 
 
 She was not listening. 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 " All the time in my soul I knew that it was 
 a wickedness, and that in enticing White 
 Plume to be my mate I was dragging him 
 down. White Plume, I am no mate for you. 
 Do you think I don't know ? When I was at 
 the mission school I had a glimpse of what is 
 called civilisation, and looking back I know 
 that I have relapsed into savagery. No, don't 
 ' speak ! I am a savage, not a woman of your 
 kind. I learned to read, and now I never read 
 a book or care for knowledge. Pulo took hold 
 of me — the sunshine and the ease. You 
 wondered — I saw it in your eyes— that I cared 
 for naught beyond the confines of Pulo. You 
 wondered that I did not pity the lepers, that 
 their fate did not interest me, that I even 
 expected, myself, to sink to their level. I saw 
 the shocked look in your face when I spoke 
 indifferently of what would become of the 
 villagers in the rain and the earthquake. . . ^ 
 But the reason is simple. I am a savage. And 
 I should have won you to savagery." 
 
 " Jewel !" he cried. 
 
 " All I have said is true," she persisted. 
 
 "Even if it is true, I mean to win you to a 
 life which in time you will infinitely prefer to 
 the life of Pulo. Jewel, if we love each other, 
 that's our guarantee for the future. I care 
 
RENUNCIATION 227 
 
 nothing for the artificial barriers between 
 ' civilisation ' and ' savagery.' The two are 
 often the same thing. When you are my 
 bride " 
 
 " I shall never be your bride." 
 
 " Why do you say that ?" A cold fear shot 
 through him. 
 
 " White Plume," she said, " do you remember 
 that at first I wanted you to stay : then, when 
 I had gained your love, I said I would not 
 marry you until you had been to Gah-nung ? 
 That was partly because, loving you, I wished 
 you to keep your word to Dr. Levaloir. (Before 
 I had gained your love I was selfish and did 
 not care whether you kept your word or broke 
 it.) But it was also partly because I had begun 
 to have a suspicion^ — I- had begun to fear — I 
 wanted to put off time, to make sure." 
 
 " To make sure of what ?" 
 
 " I told you that a day might come when I 
 should need the Opal water. I thought that it 
 would be a long time in coming. Instead, White 
 Plume, it has come already." 
 
 He gazed at her, aghast. 
 
 " The curse is upon me. I learnt this quite 
 suddenly, White Plume, yesterday. You and 
 I had descended to the river. I felt very weak, 
 I did not know why. I rested ; you worked 
 
228 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 at the sampan. While you were working it 
 occurred to me that my necklace of pearls was 
 not safe ; it was hanging down the front of my 
 tunic ; I should put it inside. I unfastened 
 the brooch and put the necklace inside the 
 tunic ; and I saw." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Afterwards, in the night, while you slept, 
 I dipped my hand over the side of the sampan 
 into a patch of Opal water, to test " 
 
 She pushed her sleeve up her arm, and held 
 it out for his inspection. 
 
 He took her hand in his. Bending over it 
 he scented the faint sweet odour of violets . . . 
 a perfume which would always have poignant 
 memories for him. 
 
 Upon the rounded forearm there were 
 delicate pencillings of the finest down ; and 
 Kellock saw that the minute hairs which 
 formed this down were bleached and pale. 
 
 "You shouldn't have done it. Jewel," he 
 gasped. "I — I don't believe this means any- 
 thing at all. The Opal water evidently has 
 some qualities we don't understand -" 
 
 She was standing, facing him. Her face was 
 grave, the exquisite eyes very tender, the lovely 
 mouth curved in a faint, a pitying smile — as 
 though she grieved for him rather than for 
 herself. 
 
RENUNCIATION 229 
 
 " I can never be your mate, White Plume, 
 my dear, dear White Plume. See, I will show 
 you what I discovered while I waited by the 
 river." 
 
 She drew herself up, proud and straight — a 
 queenly yet tragic figure. 
 
 *' I will show you what no one but myself has 
 seen before." She unfastened the scarab brooch 
 at her throat. The tunic fell back, revealing the 
 firm young breasts, across which hung the rope of 
 pearls. And upon the olive curve of one of the 
 breasts, like a coin, there was a circular patch — 
 white — white as snow. 
 
 " Now you have seen, White Plume !" 
 
 She stood facing the sun, the sea and sky a 
 background for her gracious, exotic beauty. 
 Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes gazed 
 into unseen distances. 
 
 " TTiis," she raised one hand and pointed at 
 her bosom, " is why I can never be your mate. 
 White Plume. Soon I shall be as white as 
 the dwellers at the Pleasure-House. I shall 
 become like ZuaUa ; and you, were you to wed 
 me, would become like Yan Duysen or Archer. 
 Only — without the Opal water we should die ; 
 without it I shall die. . . . White Plume, when 
 I showed you this I bade you farewell." 
 
 She had made her renunciation. 
 
280 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 With unfaltering fingers she drew together 
 the folds of her tunic and re-fastened them by 
 means of the golden scarab brooch. 
 
 And then . . . Kellock had her in his arms. 
 
 " Jewel, my Jewel, I won't give you up ! 
 I'm going to take you to Gah-nung, and Dr. 
 Levaloir will save you. Perhaps you're wrong; 
 perhaps it isn't — isn't " — he stumbled — " isn't 
 so conclusive as you think. Science is wonder- 
 ful now, you know. Even if you're right about 
 the Opal water — we've got those two flasks. 
 I'm thankful you made me fetch the second one. 
 The oil must be immensely stronger than the 
 water. Dr. Levaloir wiU advise us : he'll find 
 a way out. Jewel, you're mine, and I won't let 
 you go !" 
 
 She was passive. She let him kiss her. She 
 let him pour out his assurances and his plans for 
 the future. But still, in her gaze, there was only 
 tenderness and pity ; and her sole words were : 
 
 "I am sorry for my White Plume. Poor 
 White Plume — ^you are punished for your love 
 of me !" 
 
 As though in fitting commentary upon her 
 sadness, a strange breeze n;ioaned past. Little 
 waves began to lap drearily against the sides of 
 the sampan. The light faded. 
 
 Kellock, looking up, saw that the horizon 
 
RENUNCIATION 281 
 
 line was like a black wire, strung taut between 
 a grey ocean below and a metallic firmament 
 above. Over tbe island the smoke paU had 
 swelled, become enormous. It was rolling 
 wildly, buffeted in every direction. For a 
 moment the sun could be discerned behind it — 
 a ray less orb,' red and bleared. Then it was 
 blotted out. A great darkness engulfed the 
 world. 
 
 A chill wind shrieked across the sea. 
 
 He felt Jewel cower before it. 
 
 " White Plume !" She clutched him. 
 
 " I am here, my dear one. Cling close to 
 me!" ~ 
 
 " You will be with me to the end," he heard 
 her say. " That will be happiness for me, my 
 Lord White Plume." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 Looking back upon the hours which ensued, 
 Kellock was never able to form, in his own 
 mind, a connected story : all he could recollect 
 was a general impression of confusion, terror, 
 darkness and noise. 
 
 The darkness, to be sure, was never complete ; 
 it was irradiated not only by lightning, but 
 also by the fickle fires of the volcano. The 
 mountain group in the centre of the island, 
 from being a congeries of vent-holes, had fused 
 into one crater. This crater, which had been 
 the Happy Valley, was a-brim with lava. 
 Kellock, in the occasional glimpses which he 
 could catch through the storm and spray, 
 beheld amazing overflows of this lava : an 
 incarnadined slime of destruction which perco- 
 lated down the jungle-clad slopes, not setting 
 fire to the trees — they were too saturated with 
 
234 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 dampness to burn — but simply consuming them, 
 in holocausts of steam. 
 
 A fresh series of earthquake shocks accom- 
 panied this eruption. Their shore effects were 
 invisible at this distance ; but their influence on 
 the sea was only too evident. Each shock could 
 he felt, almost as though some submarine monster 
 had delivered a vicious thump on the keel of 
 the sampan; and immediately afber each thump 
 the sampan gyrated on an unseen vortex, 
 as though at the ocean's bottom a huge escape- 
 pipe had been unplugged and had set in motion 
 a whirlpool suck of the waters. Down the 
 interior of the whirlpool's glassy cone the 
 sampan shot, dancing ; then the suction ceased 
 as abruptly as it began and for the moment 
 there was peace. Never for long. A hun- 
 dred times, a thousand times, came the flash 
 from the island, the thump, the giddy vertigo 
 of the whirlpool — and then the breathing- 
 space. 
 
 There was also the wind — a wind sometimes 
 icy cold, sometimes hot as though from a furnace 
 — which blew now from one quarter and now 
 from another : a wild, insensate wind which first 
 made the sea choppy and then battered it into 
 a waste of curded foam. The wind seemed 
 to have a spite against the sampan, seemed 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 determined to capsize it. Kellock, crouching 
 with Jewel for shelter from the spray, could 
 feel the sampan being wrenched as though 
 the gale's fingers strained to tilt it over as 
 he himself had yesterday tilted it on the river- 
 bank to drain ; in the darkness there was the 
 abominable illusion, each time the sampan 
 heeled, that a giant was pushing and twisting 
 it, taking a grip upon the jagged spike of 
 broken wood which marked where the Buddha- 
 head had been. In the boiling fury of the 
 tornado the sampan seemed a toy : its passengers 
 were tiny, microscopic, by contrast with the 
 immensity of the forces in whose midst they 
 were helpless. 
 
 The noise was deafening. The whistle of the 
 blizzard, the splashing of the sea, the rumble of 
 the eruption on the island and the clangour 
 of continuous thunder overhead, united in an 
 uproar whose effects stunned the senses already 
 bewildered by the gyrations of the boat. 
 Kellock and Jewel could not hear each other 
 speak ; both were probably too overwhelmed 
 even to think ; they clung together ; a pressure 
 of the hands was their only signal, to show 
 that they were still alive and still cognisant of 
 each other's presence. 
 
 How long this torture of the storm lasted, it 
 
236 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 was impossible to say. Minutes were like 
 hours, hours like weeks. But the end came at 
 last. What was the cause of the final catas- 
 trophe Kellock did not, tiU afterwards, learn. 
 The boat had almost upset so many times that, 
 when it did upset, the wave which toppled over 
 its gunwale seemed to him to be much as 
 other waves — only a trifle larger. But this 
 was a wave not as other waves : it was, in 
 fact, the stupendous tidal wave which swept 
 that portion of the archipelago at the moment 
 when the island of the Happy Yalley finally 
 ceased to exist and was swallowed up in the 
 ocean. 
 
 This tidal wave — "A wall of water, not sloping 
 but vertical, and fifty feet high if it was an 
 inch, I give you my blessed word," as Captain 
 Sibthorpe (who saw it from, the bridge of the 
 Orpheus) afterwards said — treated the sampan 
 perhaps more considerately than it might have 
 treated a larger and less buoyant craft. It 
 merely overturned it and buried its passengers 
 beneath a mountain of liquid which made their 
 drowning a certainty. The tidal wave then hurled 
 itself onward, at the pace of an express train, 
 passed across the site of Pulo, did its utmost 
 to annihilate some two hundred other islands to 
 the northward, and eventually, diminishing in 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 
 
 volume, dispersed itself in cyclones which were 
 considered severe in places as far off as Luzon, 
 Bangkok, and even the remote fairylands of 
 Melanesia and Polynesia. Crops were ruined, 
 fishing-nets lost, homes given over to starvation 
 here and there over half a hemisphere, because 
 the Happy Valley had gone down, a cauldron of 
 boiling lava, into the ocean-bed from which 
 it had originated, and the seas and the winds 
 had rushed in to fill the vacuum. 
 
 Of this at the time Kellock knew nothing. 
 All he knew was that he and Jewel were 
 drowning — and he was determined that, if they 
 drowned, they should drown together. In that 
 supreme moment they were as one : her body, 
 gripped in his arms, was pressed to his as in 
 a vice ; all his long-garnered strength was 
 concentrated on the sole fixed idea, " / mvist 
 not let her go." The myriad cross-currents of 
 the undersea confusion prized at his arms like 
 levers to wrench them asunder, the weight of 
 water strangled him so that his lungs were 
 bursting, hideous forces dragged him downward 
 when he tried to struggle surfacewards. An 
 eternity passed. He must breathe, he must 
 breathe. His mouth opened, and filled with 
 water. He choked, choked — writhed in agony. 
 Feebly, more feebly, his limbs moved, still with 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 vain instinct trying to push him onwards, 
 through these vile depths, to the air. He must 
 breathe, he mu^t 
 
 His struggles slackened. Lights danced 
 before his eyes. He was failing, failing. Now 
 came strange dreams, dreams of the world's 
 beauty, dreams of the past, dreams of . . . 
 Jewel. 
 
 He and she were standing together in the 
 marble courtyard beneath the sunshine, and she 
 was smiling at him. Oh, enchantment of that 
 smile, enchantment of her glorious eyes, 
 enchantment of her tall figure, straight and 
 flexible as a young sapling, delicate in its 
 comeliness, lyric in its grace and in the olive 
 beauty of its limbs ! . . . 
 
 Jewel ! 
 
 Unconsciousness overwhelmed him ; his 
 dreams dispersed ; his mind became a blank. 
 
 But he still held her to his breast, in a grip 
 of iron. 
 
 # * * * * 
 
 And then he knew that he had kissed her, 
 and that her unresponsive lips tasted saltly : 
 they were wet with brine. 
 
 Considering this phase of his dream he became 
 aware that he was no longer dreaming ; that 
 he was breathing, and, with vague efforts, was 
 
OUT OF THE DEPTHS 2S9 
 
 supporting himself and his burden in the waves. 
 He opened his eyes. Daylight ! Greyish 
 daylight— but still, daylight. The smoke pall 
 was driven away before the gale, leaving only a 
 heaven of angry, scudding rack. 
 
 God, how we^ry he was ! 
 
 What a night it had been . . . mountains of 
 water beating him down . . . and Something 
 dragging at him, too. . . . 
 
 The leaden flasks of Opal oil ! 
 
 Of course : they had been the weight which, 
 so frenziedly, had seemed to tug at him : he 
 could still feel them, one in his knapsack, 
 the other in his jacket pocket : small things, 
 but abominably heavy. It was their leaden 
 dead-weight which had nearly made all the 
 difference, nearly drowned him and Jewel 
 also. . . . 
 
 Jewel : where was Jewel ? 
 
 In his arms, of course : he had just kissed her. 
 
 A salt kiss. . . . 
 
 With a sudden effort of concentration he 
 pulled himself together. . . . 
 
 Yes, Jewel was in his arms, an inert body, 
 with flaccid limbs, turning a numb face upwards 
 towards him. Her eyes were closed. 
 
 He and she, when they had enjoyed that 
 diving-match of theirs in the Pulo bath, had 
 
 16 
 
240 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 learBtt that her- power of remaining beneath 
 water was less than his. . . . 
 
 He gazed at her now and knew. . . . 
 
 Jewel . . . his betrothed ... the woman 
 of perfect beauty . . . girl and queen in one 
 . . . Jewel was dead. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 FBEE AND UNAE^AID 
 
 " If I hadn't sighted that there sampan, 
 bottom-upwards, I should never have thought 
 to steer any nearer," said Captain Sibthorpe. 
 " Miles and miles away it was from where the 
 island had been. The sea wasn't running so 
 high, neither. So I reckoned as how I'd have 
 a last look around before I sheered off and 
 shaped a course for Gah-nung. And after a 
 bit of cruising up and down, there you were." 
 
 " Exactly. There I was." Kellock, reclining 
 on the poop in pyjamas (his duck suit had been 
 taken over by the steward to be washed and 
 dried and ironed in the galley) listened without 
 any great interest to the Captain's narrative. 
 
 " I could hardly believe my eyes, Mr. Kellock. 
 The island itself had gone — bust — wallop : 
 naturally I thought that was the end of every- 
 body on it. Then there was the hurricane, and 
 the tidal wave. Even the old Orpheus got a 
 
 241 
 
242 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 bit of a knocking about, I can tell you. And 
 yet, there you were, floating in the trough of the 
 
 S6£l. • • • 
 
 " We lowered a boat. I steered her myself. 
 When we came nearer we saw as how you was 
 hardly conscious." 
 
 "I wasn't. I don't remember being taken 
 aboard, Captain." 
 
 " But now what I'm curious about is this," 
 pursued Captain Sibthorpe. "I could have 
 sworn you were supporting another man. Just 
 as we came up, he slipped from your arms, and 
 sank. To sink like that, he must have been 
 dead, drowned hours before. How you managed 
 to keep him up I don't know. It was a rare 
 marvel that you had saved yourself, let alone 
 tried to save another chap. . . . Queer you don't 
 remember anything now. I suppose it was 
 one of the niggers who had rowed you down 
 the river." 
 
 " I expect that was it." Kellock sighed. " I 
 expect that was it." 
 
 He remembered quite clearly how Jewel's 
 body, heavy as a stone, had slid from his grasp 
 and gone down, down, down to its tomb in the 
 depths. 
 
 And with it had gone a dream. . . . 
 
 With a grief-dulled heart he looked back 
 
FREE AND UNAFRAID 
 
 across the vistas of that halcyon adventure 
 and began to estimate it in its true perspective. 
 
 A dream — yes, even its most solid realities 
 had truly the characteristics of a dream : their 
 fairest promises had been but an illusion. A 
 lure and an illusion ! He had been tempted 
 at the very moment when he had felt most 
 boastfully free and unafraid. And he had been 
 false to his motto. 
 
 He saw it all now. 
 
 Jewel's dead form, descending through 
 fathomless abysses of ocean, symbolised the 
 disappearance of his dream — and his return to 
 reality, to the cruelty and nobleness of facts, to 
 the struggle for existence, to the clean and 
 clear-eyed life of courageous adventure and 
 austere conflict with circumstance. 
 
 He had nearly become a slave. 
 
 Now, albeit grief- stricken, he might in 
 humbleness become, once more, a Man. 
 
 Figuring out, as best he might, some phil- 
 osophy wherewith to face the future, he hit 
 upon a refrain which formed part of one of the 
 very few minor-key poems in his collection. 
 One of the verses already shaped itself : 
 
 " How swift the vision fades I 
 Realities are made of sterner stuff, 
 Dreams once, but dreams come true ; 
 
Mi FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 The making them come true is Life enough. 
 
 J)own sleep's long avenue 
 The golden ghosts of fantasy may stream 
 
 And vanish in the glades : 
 I wake, and when it can be but a dream, 
 
 How swift the vision fades !" 
 
 Which reflections, of course, he did not impart 
 to the wholly materialistic Captain Sibthorpe. 
 That good friend, with kindliness beaming from 
 his plump and unshorn countenance,, was per- 
 haps a little disconcerted at his passenger's 
 lack of communicativeness. But Kellock, he 
 evidently concluded, was still weak from his 
 ordeal in the waves, and must not be pressed 
 to talk. The Captain, for all his outward 
 grossness, could be tactful : he knew when to 
 hold his peace. And something in the young 
 American, with his blue eyes and muscular frame, 
 appealed to the shrewd old British' skipper. 
 He had grown fond of Kellock, and Kellock 
 had reciprocally grown fond of him. The two, 
 in silence rather than in speech, had come to 
 trust each other : masculine spirits, each. 
 
 So Kellock — though, as the days passed, he 
 launched on some generalised descriptions of the 
 island — told the Captain nothing about Jewel. 
 That history should be locked for ever in his 
 heart, his treasure and his sad memory : no one 
 
FREE AND UNAFRAID 24-5 
 
 should share it. The Captain might wonder 
 whose was the figure which his arms had 
 clasped in that storm-racked ocean . . . "a 
 nigger," of course ... So let it be ! 
 Nor was Dr. Levaloir told. 
 When Kellock presented himself in Gah-nung, 
 trimly attired as heretofore, save for a borrowed 
 cap (his helmet. was afloat, sailing the archipelago 
 he knew not whither), the doctor stared. 
 " You !" he gasped. 
 "I have fetched the object for which you 
 
 sent me " 
 
 "A cruiser brought news that Pulo had been 
 engulfed by an earthquake ... I never 
 expected to see you again, Mr. Kellock." 
 " Here I am, anyhow." 
 " The flask— you've brought the flask ?" 
 "I have." 
 
 "You have kept your promise!" The doctor 
 spoke with profound emotion. "Mr. Kellock, 
 I ask the honour of shaking hands with 
 you." 
 
 They shook hands — the young American a 
 trifle shamefacedly. If Dr. Levaloir only knew 
 
 ! His withered little hand trembled in 
 
 Kellock's rather touchingly. 
 
 " Come." He led the way into the laboratory, 
 shutting its door upon the throng of sick folk 
 
246 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 who, as of yore, awaited the ministrations of the 
 Healer of Sorrows. 
 
 " It is impossible," he said, " to offer you an 
 adequate reward." 
 
 "I don't want any reward." 
 
 " The so-called sacred oil is not merely 
 essential to my experiments, it is enormously 
 valuable in itself : it has an actual money value, 
 I mean. This last flask may perhaps suffice to 
 complete the investigations I have in hand. 
 When I heard that the island had been 
 swallowed up I thought that a lifetime's work 
 was lost ; I despaired. To you, Mr. Kellock, 
 the world owes an inconceivable debt." 
 
 " What is this sacred oil, anyway ?" Kellock 
 had unfastened his knapsack and produced from 
 it the leaden flask. "You know, Doctor, I 
 saw a good deal at Pulo that was mighty mysti- 
 fying — the lepers, the Opal water baths, the 
 temple, the old palaces. Apparently the baths 
 have — I should say had, for they're gone now — 
 what superstitious people would call miraculous 
 powers." 
 
 " But we are not superstitious, and this is 
 not an age of miracles," assented Dr. Levaloir. 
 " Just so. The ancient civilisation which es- 
 tablished itself in Pulo, and which hedged itself 
 about with all kinds of priestly absurdities, 
 
FREE AND UNAFRAID 247 
 
 merely anticipated a twentieth-century dis- 
 covery. I myself, when I chanced to make a 
 friend of the Sultan of Pulo, and bargained with 
 him for a regular supply of the Pulo sacred oil, 
 did not know what it was : I had only heard 
 legends of its virtues. When I analysed it and 
 found what it contained, Mr. Kellock, I had to 
 fight a moment of temptation ; for I might have 
 settled down as a rich man and lived in luxury 
 for the rest of my life. Then I thought of the 
 good I could do ; and, well, the r^st you 
 know." 
 
 " What did it contain ?" 
 
 "Radium," said the doctor. 
 
 He paused. " Radium," he repeated. " This 
 flask is probably worth, at ma^et rates, some 
 millions of dollars. The Opal baths of which 
 you speak — and which a person like myself 
 simply dare not approach : their effect on the 
 brain tissues might be deadly — evidently con- 
 tain, if not radium, at any rate radio-active 
 compounds of great intensity. But in the oil, 
 distilled by the priests, radium itself is present 
 — radium, the most precious element on the 
 face of the globe. I don't say that those 
 priests forestalled Madame Curie ; but certainly 
 centuries ago the properties of radium had been 
 discovered — if utterly misapplied — by the un- 
 
248 FURTHER EAST THAN A«IA 
 
 known sybarites who built the palaces in the 
 Happy Valley. 
 
 " Radio-active springs occur elsewhere, in 
 Europe as well as Asia, but the Pulo ones were 
 unique. Some mysterious mineral putrefaction 
 must have been going on in the bowels of that 
 volcanic mountain, and the Opal waters were — 
 were the * matter,' so to speak, the pus of that 
 subterranean wound. To the ancients its effects 
 were magic. Chemists have taught us other- 
 wise . . . Yet who shall say what is magic and 
 what is not ?" 
 
 Kellock was thoughtful. " This last flask 
 will carry you through your labours ?" 
 
 "I think so." 
 
 " Sure ? — because, as a matter of fact, it isn't 
 the last. I brought another." And he drew 
 the second flask from his pocket and placed it 
 on the table. 
 
 "Another flask!" Dr. Levaloir seemed 
 unable to believe his eyes. " And you're 
 offering it to me ?" 
 
 " Certainly. It nearly cost me my life. 
 Perhaps it will save others' lives." 
 
 " The first flask, by the terms of our agree- 
 ment, belongs to me, Mr. Kellock. This one is 
 yours. You are a young man ; your career is 
 before you, and you could do much with money. 
 
FREE AND UNAFRAID 249 
 
 Take this flask to Europe or America and sell it 
 — I will give you the names of buyers — and you 
 will be wealthy for life. I would buy it myself, 
 but I do not own a thousandth part of its fair 
 price." 
 
 " It is yours." Kellock could afford to smile 
 at the prospects of wealth which Dr. Levaloir 
 held out to him. That temptation was no 
 temptation now, after the lesson he had learnt. 
 
 " You mean it, Mr. Kellock ?" 
 
 " I mean it. Money is no use to me. Besides, 
 this second flask is not mine. It belonged to 
 someone . . . who is dead : a woman. I give 
 it to you as a memorial of her, that in her 
 death she may bring life to others." 
 
 Dr. Levaloir was silent for a space. " There 
 is a woman in the life of nearly every man, Mr. 
 Kellock," he said quietly, " and — were you to 
 probe men's hearts — it is generally a woman who 
 is dead. A parable ! Perhaps you are too young 
 to understand it. 
 
 " When I chose you to go to Pulo I knew, of 
 course, that you were unmarried ; your clear 
 eyes told me more than that : they told me that 
 you were celibate. There is no change in them 
 now. Mr. Kellock, the world lies before you ; 
 some day you will find a fit helpmate amongst 
 your own peoples, and you willbe glad that no 
 
250 FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 mirage of false love, no snare of passion, caught 
 your feet as they walked through the beautiful 
 East. ( 
 
 " The East is full of sorrows. . . . 
 
 "I take this second flask of sacred oil, Mr. 
 Kellock. To you it is a memorial of the woman 
 of whom you spoke ; to me it is the gift from 
 a Westerner for the East." 
 
 They talked for a while, the doctor telling of 
 his plans and again and again pouring forth his 
 gratitude to the young American and urging on 
 him the acceptance of some reward. Surely he 
 needed, at the very least, some ready cash 1- — 
 and the doctor produced, and pressed upon him, 
 a leather bag of gold pieces. 
 
 Kellock shook his head. But at last, when he 
 rose to go, he said : 
 
 " Well, I'll take a couple of these after all ;" 
 and he picked up two of the gold pieces, which 
 had rolled from the bag's mouth, and put them 
 in his pocket. "I need some clothes — more 
 particularly a new hat i^ place of this cap, which 
 Sibthorpe has had to lend me. I'm going with 
 the Orpheus to Yokohama : the ^ship's accounts 
 are in a muddle and I'm to put them straight for 
 Captain Sibthorpe on the voyage. It is a 
 comfortable method of working my passage. 
 
FREE AND UNAFRAID 251 
 
 Japan is on the way to America. I have a 
 fancy to see my native country again." 
 
 And he bade the doctor farewell. 
 
 As he issued forth into the thronged court- 
 yard and passed through the piteous infirm 
 people to whom the Opal oil might bring hfe, 
 he felt that his adventure — nay, even the pain 
 at his heart for the loss of Jewel — had not been 
 in vain. 
 
 " The East is full of sorrows." The phrase 
 recurred to him, with melancholy significance. 
 
 At the gate, in the full glare of the sunshine 
 — for there was no room left in the crowded 
 shadow of the courtyard — a woman cowered, 
 waiting for the doctor. There was a baby in 
 her arms. 
 
 Something in her pose, something in the 
 carriage of her head or the curve, of her dark- 
 skinned arm, reminded Kellock of Jewel. 
 
 He halted, and looked at her. 
 
 The face which she turned up to him was 
 not like Jewel's. It was young — the face of a 
 mere girl — but it was not beautiful. The eyes 
 were large and haunting, their expression 
 terrible in its anguish and anxiety. 
 
 Silently she removed the poor rag which 
 covered her baby. 
 
FURTHER EAST THAN ASIA 
 
 And Kellock, looking down on the little 
 creature, recognised its fell disease : recognised, 
 too, that it was a white man's child. 
 
 He might have had just such a child as that. 
 
 Kellock fumbled in his pocket, and with a 
 muttered word slipped into the woman's hand 
 his two gold pieces. 
 
 Then he walked forth into the city of 
 Gah-nung. 
 
 And as he strode down its tortuous streets 
 towards the harbour he felt that a burden 
 had been lifted from his soul. His clear eyes 
 faced the world unflinchingly. 
 
 " I am Free," he affirmed, " and I am 
 Unafraid." 
 
 BJLLUra AMD sons, LTD., fJUNTISS, GnlLDFOBD, EHOLAKD 
 
A War Book which is still "Topical." 
 
 OBSERVATIONS OF AN 
 ORDERLY 
 
 28. 6d. net (cheap edition Is. 9d. net.) 
 
 By WARD MUIR (Author of "Further East than Asia"). 
 
 Every soldier who, wounded or sick, has been a patient 
 in a military hospital, every R.A.M.(2. orderly or doctor, 
 every nurse and V.A.D., will intensely enjoy this book and 
 will want to keep it as a souvenir. Here are intimate 
 pictures of a life which, though strenuous and sometimes 
 pathetic at the time, we should be sorry to forget. Private 
 (afterwards Corporal) Ward Muir washed dishes, cleaned 
 floors, attended operations, carried stretchers, and saw every 
 branch of the activities of a great English war-hospital. 
 He writes, frankly, as a humorist ; but he is a realist too, 
 and the fun never rings false. Thousands of hospital 
 workers and patients, and thousands of their friends, have 
 enthusiastically read and recommended this book, not only 
 because of its truth to facts, but because of its sustained 
 amusingness. 
 
 Some extracts from the host of laudatory reviews which greeted 
 " Observations of an Orderly." 
 
 "Brilliant." — Sfkere. "That literary pearl beyond price, a cheerful 
 book." — Weekly Dispatch. " Tender and liumorous." — Evening News. 
 "Entertaining papers." — Manchester Guardian. "Vivid sketches." 
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 thetic touch with a whole human portrait gfallery." — Graphic. 
 
 " Any who may imagine that a hospital orderly in England has a ' cushy 
 job ' will be disabused by Mr. Ward Muir's cheerful account of what must be 
 as trying and exhausting a life as it is useful. Over washing-up, laundry 
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 and women are acute." -^Times. 
 
 " A delightful volume. . . . Has invested a humdrum routine with a charm 
 and interest which will outlive the war.*' — Globe. 
 
 " We warmly commend the book to the attention of our readers, for it is as 
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 " Deserves its name, being full of genuine observations. Vou might think 
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 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co., Ltd.