glided from behind the protecting pile, and came
close up to my legs.

"Tuan," he whimpered, "Baboo see many faces behind trees. Baboo 'fraid
for Tuan,--Tuan great and good,--save Baboo from tiger,--Baboo break
up all glass bottles--old bottles--Tuan no want old bottle--Baboo
and Aboo Din, the father, put them on deck so when Orang Kayah's men
come out of jungle and drop from trees on deck they cut their feet
on glass. Baboo is through talking,--Tuan no whip Baboo!"

There was the pathetic little quaver in his voice that I knew so well.

"But they were monkeys, Baboo, not pirates."

Baboo shrugged his brown shoulders and kept his eyes on my feet.

"Allah is good!" he muttered.

Allah was good; they might have been pirates.

The snarl of the tiger was growing more insistent and near. I gave
the order, and the boat backed out into mid-stream.

As the sun was reducing the gloom of the sylvan tunnel to a translucent
twilight, we floated down the swift current toward the ocean.

I had given up all hope of finding the shipwrecked men, and decided
to ask the government to send a gunboat to demand their release.

As the bow of the launch passed the wreck of the Bunker Hill and
responded to the long even swell of the Pacific, Baboo beckoned
sheepishly to Aboo Din, and together they swept all trace of his
adventure into the green waters.

Among the souvenirs of my sojourn in Golden Chersonese is a bit
of amber-colored glass bearing the world-renowned name of a London
brewer. There is a dark stain on one side of it that came from the
hairy foot of one of Baboo's "pirates."

HOW WE PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE

In the Straits of Malacca

Two hours' steam south from Singapore, out into the famous Straits of
Malacca, or one day's steam north from the equator, stands Raffles's
Lighthouse. Sir Stamford Raffles, the man from whom it took its name,
rests in Westminster Abbey, and a heroic-sized bronze statue of him
graces the centre of the beautiful ocean esplanade of Singapore,
the city he founded.

It was on the rocky island on which stands this light, that we--the
mistress and I--played Robinson Crusoe, or, to be nearer the truth,
Swiss Family Robinson.

It was hard to imagine, I confess, that the beautiful steam launch
that brought us was a wreck; that our half-dozen Chinese servants were
members of the family; that the ton of impedimenta was the flotsam of
the sea; that the Eurasian keeper and his attendants