i68 TROPIC DAYS 



the jungle, and the blacks had refrained from following 

 him. Nodding gaily and jabbering volubly, but with 

 mutual intelligibility, hosts and guests paced along a 

 narrow track, each of the latter personally and firmly 

 conducted by two of his newly found and most attentive 

 friends. Others of the tribe, "like frightful fiends, 

 did close beside them tread" ; and while the escorts lured 

 the yellow men with comforting pantomime, the frightful 

 fiends fell on them suddenly with great wooden swords, 

 killing them off-hand and on the very verge of the camp. 



Willingly hurrying to the place of execution, the 

 murdered men had saved the calculating blacks the 

 trouble of carrying their carcasses. 



Then four went back for the nervous escapee. He 

 was safe, for the tracks were as obvious to them as a 

 plough furrow to a European. Crouching beside a 

 fallen, decaying tree, where bird's-nest ferns grew out- 

 rageously gross, they found him; and they jeered. 

 He screamed and shouted in unknown tongue, while 

 the brisk, stubby hair of his head stood on end. (My 

 friend's hair-brush was alluded to in graphic illustration.) 

 They struck him down, and, smashing in his head and 

 seizing arms and legs, jogged back to the camp. 



And the festival lasted many days, though plenty 

 made gluttons of them all. 



The forgotten dead were Javanese deserters from 

 a sugar-plantation; for the tragedy happened long ago, 

 when labour was being drawn from Java and other 

 oversupplied countries. Desertions were not uncom- 

 mon, for the sanguine men of the equator endure with 

 less philosophy than others that sickness of the heart 

 which comes from love of one's native land when absent 

 from it. 



From Java's seething millions were the nostalgic 

 three ever missed ? 



