orrid. What a dreadful country this is."

"Get out! I like it."

"But tell me: would that thing have dragged me in?"

"To be sure he would. Why, it's only two days since he pulled a girl
into the water. She'd only gone down to wash a sarong."

"Is it a big one?" asked Ned, after gazing in a horrified way at his
companion.

"Oh yes! a whacker--fifty or sixty feet long."

"Nonsense!"

"Well then, fifteen or twenty. I know it's a big one. One of our men--
Dilloo, I think it was--saw him one day ashore. Look here, old chap,
tell you what. We'll get some of the fellows to lend us a rope with a
loose end, and a hook, and we'll set a night-line for the beggar, and
catch him. What do you say?"

"I should like to, if we stay here."

"Oh, you'll stay here," said the lad, laughing. "Like fishing?"

"Passionately."

"So do I. Caught two dozen yesterday after I met you. I say, you and
your uncle are bird and butterfly cocks, aren't you?"

"My uncle is a naturalist, and I help him," said Ned, rather stiffly,
for this easy-going address from a young Malay, who had evidently passed
all his life among English people, annoyed him. "But I say, what a
knowledge you have of English."

"Oh yes, I know some English," said the lad, laughing.

"And Malay?"

"Oh, pretty tidy. I don't jabber, but I can make the beggars understand
me right enough. What's your name? Murray, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"But the other? Tom--Dick--Harry?"

"Edward."

"Oh, where are you going to, Edward Gray? What is it? That's wrong.
What does old Tennyson say? Hullo! what's the matter?"

"I--that is--" stammered Ned--"some mistake. You speak English so
well."

"Of course I do."

"But what is your name?"

"Frank Braine."

"Then you are not the Tumongong's son?"

"Tumon grandmother's--ha! ha! What a game! Oh, I see now! I forgot
that I was in nigger togs. You took me for one of them."

"Of course I did."

"Well, it's a rum one. Won't father laugh! That's why you were so
cocky at first?"

"Yes, I didn't know you were Mr Braine's son. You are, aren't you?"

"Course I am. Been out here two years now. I was at Marlborough--
school you know--and I'd got the whiffles or something so bad, the
doctor said I should die if I wasn't sent to a warm climate. They sent
a letter to the dad, and it was nine months getting to him. Ma says he
was in a taking till he'd got a despatch sent down to Singapore, to be
dillygraph