st about to undress when I heard a shot quite near. The moment
after, I fired in return, and gave a loud hail; then the high reedy cane
grass on the other side parted, and a man and a woman came out, stared
at me, and then laughed in welcome. They were one Nalik and his wife,
people living in my own village. The man carried a long single-barrelled
German shot-gun, the woman a basket of pigeons. Stepping down the bank,
they waded across and joined me.

"How came ye here?" they asked, as we sat down together to smoke.

I told them, and then learnt that the river ran into the sea through the
mangroves at a spot many miles from the village. Then I asked about the
big pool. Nalik nodded.

"Ay, 'tis deep, very deep, and hath many fish in it. But it is a place
of _jelon_ (haunted) and we always pass to one side. But here where we
now sit is a fine place for fish. And there are many wild pigs in the
forest."

"Let us come here to-morrow. Let us start ere the sun is up, and stay
here and fish and shoot till the day be gone."

"Why not?" said Sivi his wife, puffing her cigarette, "and sleep
here when night comes, for under the banks are many thousand _unkar_
(crayfish), and I and some other women shall catch them by torchlight."

And that was how I began to learn this island river and its ways, so
that now it has become the river ot my dreams.

II

But with the dawn there came disappointment keen and bitter, for in the
night the north-east trade had died away, and now wild, swooping rain
squalls pelted and drenched the island from the westward, following each
other in quick succession, and whipping the smooth water inside the
reef into a blurred and churning sheet of foam, and then roaring away up
through the mountain passes and canyons.

With my gear all ready beside me, I sat on the matted floor of the
hut in which I lived, smoking my pipe and listening to the fury of the
squalls as the force of the wind bent and swayed the thatched roof, and
made the cinnet-tied rafters and girders creak and work to and fro under
the strain. Suddenly the wicker-work door on the lee side was opened,
and Nalik jumped in, dripping with rain, but smiling good-naturedly as
usual.

"_Woa!_" he said, taking his long, straight black hair in his hands and
squeezing out the water, "'tis no day for us."

I ventured an opinion that it might clear off soon. He shook his head as
he held out his brown hand for a stiff tot of Hollands, toss