LAND AND WATER 
March 23, 1916. 
(Continued fr<tn page 20) 
was coming along the path that led from the Dvak village to 
the waterside. As she drew up to the seated figure, she 
paused, stared, and sprang towards him. 
The next moment, the astonished Houghton found him- 
self dragged by the arm off the log, and standing face to face 
with Chaya. 
Without a word, the girl pointed to the log on which he 
had been seated, and Houghton saw an object that made his 
flesh crawl upon him. 
It was the great scorpion of New (iuinea, by far the most 
monstrous creation of the Tropics. It was almost the size 
of a grown man s hand, almost the colour of the dark wood 
on which it crawled, and as Houghton looked at it, he saw 
the tail with its terrible terminal nippers curl up and then 
flatten out again, and the wholes body of the reptile move 
forward in its steady progress along the path it had chosen 
for itself. 
Had he placed his hand upon it or pressed his leg against 
it, he would have died as surely as though a pistol had been 
fired at his head point blank, for the bite of the great New 
Guinea scorpion not only kills, but kills in a most horrible 
way, and there is no antidote to the poison. 
Houghton at once on the sight of the thing stooped 
down and picked up a piece of stick for the purpose of killing 
it, but again Chaya's hand fell upon his arm, this time 
restraining him. She was pointing at the tropical leaves that 
half covered one end of the log. Something was coming from 
among them. • It was a centipede. A centipede fifteen inches 
in length, ash grey changing to green, and orange where the 
thousand tiny legs moved in hideous vibration, and with such 
rapidity that they shewed only as a narrow band of orange- 
coloured mist. 
Above and around were the tropical leaves ; a bird like 
a puff of sapphire dust flew from the sunUght through the 
gloom of the branches, and over the battle that now ensued 
swung a sagging loop of liana, coloured like an old rope 
except at one point where from it blazed an orchid. 
The centipede attacked. Making use of the inequalities 
of the bark, it covered the distance between itself and the 
enemy in three movements, and with such cunning that the 
scorpion, who had perceived its antagonist from the first, 
seemed undecided and not to know from what point the 
attack was coming. There is nothing on earth more skilled 
in the art of taking cover than the centipede, more astute, 
more furtive. 
Then in a flash, the battle was joined and the centipede 
was running over the back of the scorpion like a narrow ash- 
grey river. The claws of the scorpion sought for it and the 
pincered tail was flung back to seize it, but the river changing 
and shifting eluded all these attempts ; it seemed as though 
the centipede possessed an eye to match every foot. In the 
fury of the fight the combatants tumbled off the log and, 
tangled togetfier, the battle went on amidst the leaves on 
the groimd with a fury that made Houghton almost feel 
ill. 
Chaya, taking the piece of stick from Houghton, pushed 
the leaves aside and disclosed the end of the fight. The 
scorpion was tearing the centipede to pieces with its lobster 
claws, but its victory brought its death. It had been mortally 
stung, the claws flung themselves up once or twice, the tail 
curved backwards for the last time, fell, and even as it fell 
the body of the thing was covered by rushing ants. 
A great butterfly, sea-coloured and luminous, flitted 
across the log, and Houghton turned his eyes to Chaya. She 
was half laughing, the pupils of her dark eyes were dilated as 
if with the excitement of the battle they had just witnessed. 
She seemed the incarnation of the spirit of this land, where 
the flowers burgeoned in a night, where Love and Hate grew 
swift as the convolvulus that grows even as oi e watches it, 
wheie Beauty and Terror walk hand in hand with Destruc- 
tion. 
" Dead," said Chaya. 
" You saved me," said Houghton. 
He took both her hands in his. She had been in his 
thoughts ever since their eyes had met on the day before 
and she knew it. 
Houghton stood out from his companions, not only on 
account of his good looks. He possessed a refinement they 
lacked. He was the only man of his type who, perhaps, had 
ever trod that soil. 
She laughed as he held her hands, laughed, looking i ight 
into his eyes, so that a fierce flame seemed to strike through 
him, filling him w'th the intoxication of light and fire, the 
intoxication that one may fancy to seize the moth before it 
dashes into the lamp. 
Then he released her hands and the spell was taken off 
him, but none the less his fate was sealed. She sat down on 
th2 log and he sat beside her. 
' You come from far away ? " said Chaya, in that 
English which the traders had taught her and which she 
spoke in a curious singing way, with a rising inflection that 
was the last charm of language. 
" Yes, very far," he replied ; '' all the way from Eng- 
land." 
" All the way from England," said she, repeating the 
words as though they did not interest her much, or as though 
they had little meaning tor her. 
" Yes — and I know who you are. You are Chaya. ' 
" How know you thai ? " 
" Wiart, the white man, told me." 
'' Ugh ! " said Chaya. 
Criticism could go no further in conciseness, and Houghton 
looking sideways at his delicious companion, saw that her 
head was tilted slightly back, and it came into his mind for 
the first time that the old expression, " turning up one's 
nose " does not refer to the nose at all, but to the position 
of the head. And whet a lovely head it was that taught 
him the fact, cut surely and sharply as the head upon a cameo, 
with night-black hair drawn backwards and fixed in a single 
knot, without any adornment but its own beauty. 
The arm close to him was bare, and the loosely worn 
robe exposed just a glimpse of her side and the fact that she 
wore the brass corsets used by the Dyak women of some 
tribes ; the hand that still held the stick shewed no sign of 
hard work, small, yet capable-looking, supple and subtle, 
with the finger-nails polished like agate, it fascinated Hough- 
ton. He longed to cla.sp it and hold it. 
Chaya's colour was a new form of beauty in itself, derived 
from the fact that it was the blended colour-beaut\' of two 
races, the European and the Dyak ; but her eyes shewed 
nothing of Europe in their depths, they were the eyes of the 
Saribas woman and filled with the mystery of the forests and 
the sea. 
" You do not like Wiart ? " 
Chaya, instead of replying, sought amidst the leaves with 
the point of the stick, discovered what was left of the centi- 
pede and held it up on the stick end. 
It looked like a string made of faded green paper. 
Siie laughed as she held it up in answer to his question. 
'■ It's about as ugly as him " said Houghton. " Chaya, 
where do you live ? I know it's somewhere close here ; but 
where ? " 
Chaya waved her arm all round, as if to indicate that she 
inhabited the whole forest, a delicate and humorous evasion 
of the question that seemed to hint, "We are getting on very 
well, but not quite so fast as all that." 
Houghton smiled and bit his lip. He wanted nothing 
more but just to sit here beside her. Never in his life agam 
would he feel just the same thrill and intoxication as he 
experienced now, in the first moments of his new existence, 
sitting by this half-mute, half-laughing companion. ■ 
She had dropped the remnants of the centipede and she 
was swinging the stick now, leaning forward as she sat with 
her elbows on her knees and the stick between her fingers. 
She seemed musing on something. 
As she sat like this, two butterflies, desj-erately in love 
with one another, passed flitting one above the other. She 
followed them with her eyes, and as she turned her head to 
watch them vanish in the gloom of the trees, her eyes met 
his and the call in them went straight to his soul. Maddened, 
scarcely knowing what he was doing, he stretched out his arms 
to seize her, but she evaded him like a ghost. Then she was 
gone. 
He stood looking at the swaying leaves where she had 
vanished, swallowed up by the same gloom that had taken the 
butterflies, then his eyes fell to the ground where the stick 
she had held was lying, and the remnants of the scorpion and 
the centipede, whose battle to the death was to form the first 
chapter in one of the strangest love stories of the tropics. 
(To be coni^nued.^ 
Hedgehog straw in spite of its unduly ugly name pro- 
mises to be well liked this year. It is, as can easily be im- 
agined, a particularly rough straw, and a hat made of it wants 
but little additional trimming, a band and tie of narrow 
ribbon being sufficient. Some of the hats are rather attrac- 
tively trimmed with large flower motifs in a straw of contrast- 
ing colour, and are a boon in our uncertain climate. No 
matter how much it may rain they come through triumphant, 
for the colours are fast, and will not run. 
Malted nuts is amongst the excellent preparations by the Inter- 
national Health Association Limited, Watford. It is recommended 
on medical grounds for very many reasons, especially to those who are 
too thin, suffer from neurasthenia and find difficulty in digesting 
starchy food or cow's milk There are no chemical properties in 
Malted Nuts. It is a simple preparation of national products, pre- 
digested, and very carefully prepared for quick and perfect assimilation. 
There is not the least difficulty in preparing it, for all that is necessary 
is to make a paste-like mixture with the help of milk and water, adc^ing 
more of either of the latter till the right consistency is obtained. As 
a hot drink it is excellent before going to bed and as a nerve buildin;, 
food undoubtedly valuable. 
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