38 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



and knees. The heat in the open scrub was terrific. 

 The tangled vegetation we were crawling through 

 afforded our spines and necks no protection from the 

 sun, and the air was bound a prisoner by the giant 

 grass and bushes that throttled one another. Waves 

 of heat were rising from the sweltering ground in 

 quivering lines, and more than half we breathed 

 there was steam : this filled the throat, but, though 

 they hammered against our ribs, could not fill the 

 lungs. The perspiration dripped from every pore of 

 the body, but the mouth and tongue were clogged 

 with drought, and salt with moisture from our lips ; 

 and worse than anything else was the drumming of 

 the nearly bursting blood-vessels behind our ears 

 and temples. Time after time I was deceived into 

 thinking that I heard the rhinoceros move. 



At last we reached the edge of the forest in safety, 

 and threw ourselves down in utter exhaustion. We 

 lay there gasping until the other men came up with 

 us, and then found that the help we had expected 

 from them had failed us. They produced sandwiches, 

 cigarettes, my small flask of neat whisky, but for 

 some extraordinary reason had forgotten the bottle 

 of cold tea. I could not touch the whisky, and 

 without something to drink it was impossible to eat 

 or smoke. The only thing to do was to go on. On, 

 on, and on therefore we pushed, without finding a 

 drop of water to alleviate our thirst and to enable 

 us to touch the mockery of refreshment we carried. 

 There was not a sign of the big beast that led the 

 way, except the three round dents that marked his 

 toes, and occasionally in softer ground the impression 



