o aggressive are the mosquitoes, particularly
during the rains, that, when one invites people in for dinner or
bridge, the servants hand the guests long sacks of netting which are
drawn over the feet and legs, the top being tied about the waist with a
draw-string. Were it not for these mosquito-bags there would be neither
bridge nor table conversation. Everyone would be too busy scratching.

The houses, as I have already mentioned, are raised above the ground on
brick piles or wooden stilts. Though this arrangement serves the
purpose of keeping things which creep and crawl out of the house
itself, the custom of utilizing the open space beneath the house as a
hen-roost offers a standing invitation to the reptiles with which
Borneo abounds. While we were in Sandakan a python invaded the
chicken-house beneath the dwelling of the local magistrate one night
and devoured half a dozen of the judge's imported Leghorns. Gorged to
repletion, the great reptile fell asleep, being discovered by the
servants the next morning. The magistrate put an end to its predatory
career with a shot-gun. It measured slightly over twenty feet from nose
to tail and in circumference was considerably larger than an inflated
fire-hose. Imagine finding such a thing coiled up at the foot of your
cellar-stairs after you had been indulging in home-brew!

One evening a party of us were seated on the verandah of the Planters
Club in Sandakan. The conversation, which had pretty much covered the
world, eventually turned to snakes.

"That reminds me," remarked a constabulary officer who had spent many
years in Malaysia, "of a queer thing that happened in a place where I
was stationed once in the Straits Settlements. It was one of those
deadly dull places--only a handful of white women, no cinema, no race
course, nothing. But the Devil, you know, always finds mischief for
idle hands to do. One day a youngster--a subaltern in the battalion
that was stationed there--returned from a leave spent in England. He
brought back with him a young English girl whom he had married while he
was at home. A slender, willowy thing she was, with great masses of
coppery-red hair and the loveliest pink-and-white complexion. She
quickly adapted herself to the disagreeable features of life in the
tropics--with one exception. The exception was that she could never
overcome her inherent and unreasoning fear of snakes. The mere sight of
one would send her into hysterics.

"One afte