Page 117 - Malay sketches

IN THE NOON OF NIGHT

and while I screamed for until
legs, neck, help you
came and rescued me."
Well, after all, there is nothing very strange in
that. A woman of peculiar nervous organisation, a
somnambulist, dreams a dream and walks out into
the of a moonlit Eastern
balmy atmosphere night.
She walks rather far, and has a rude awakening.
That is nothing ; other sleepers have walked further,
and their awakening has been to the life beyond the
grave.
Only this was curious : that while the men sank
deep into the mud at every step, the woman had
never sunk in at all. When found, there was
only
mud on the soles of her feet, and, though she had
walked half a mile across the flat, and her tracks
were visible in the were
plainly moonlight, they all
on the surface, and she had crossed the soft, unstable
mire as easily as though it had been a metalled road.
So the men bore her home, not wondering over-
much, for in this thing they saw the hand of the
Celestial Beings who guided her feet with such
consideration, to abandon her to the ferocious
attentions of the crocodiles.
her and the
The woman herself, husband, police
were satisfied as to the means, but found the end
too hard for their understanding,
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