CEYLON COCOA ESTATE 117 



parts of the Estate he feared the children had 

 strayed and lost their way, and when benighted 

 would probably get frightened and lie down in 

 the jungle and perhaps, it being monsoon time, 

 get seriously ill from exposure. Added to this, 

 Cheetahs have been killed here as well as other 

 wild animals, so it was imperatively necessary 

 that the children should be found before 

 darkness set in. He took the precaution to send 

 messengers to the neighbouring villages and 

 even to the nearest railway station, lest they 

 might have been decoyed away by someone 

 anxious to get extra child labour. When these 

 steps had been taken, Rob and the majority 

 of the men hastened to search the Estate. They 

 returned about seven o'clock to snatch a 

 hurried meal and to fetch every available 

 lantern and then continued the search, looking 

 behind every rock and into every patch of 

 jungle, but with no result, excepting that the 

 baskets the children were using were found on 

 an outlying grass field, far away from where 

 they were said to have been at work. 



The search was continued more or less all 

 night — the fathers and mothers meanwhile had 

 worked themselves into a frantic state of 

 hysterical grief — the women throwing them- 

 selves on the ground shrieking, and the men 

 exercising scarcely more self-control. When 

 morning broke the father of one of the girls 



