Page 165 - Malay sketches

BER-HANTU

through the clouds across the white pillars of the
verandah, we thought we might have the good
fortune to see this harbinger of doom.
We walked out on to the moonlit and the
terrace,
beauty of the night was so intense that one felt it as
through a new sense.
The hill on which the house stood was cut into
a series of and the of these, a wide
terraces, highest
lawn of velvety grass, was surrounded by tall graceful
coco-nut trees, not close together but each standing
alone with its leaves delineated
spiky clearly against
the sky.
Overhead a moon shedding that wonderful soft
light only seen in the East, where atmosphere,
and the
foliage, all surroundings seem specially
designed to make the ascendancy of the Queen of
Night superbly beautiful.
The exquisite feathery fronds of the bamboo,
bending in graceful curves, with each leaf clearly
defined against a background of grey-blue sky ; a
dozen varieties of from the coco-nut
palms, lofty
and the to the thick of
stately jagary clumps bertam,
like of
gigantic ferns ; picturesque groups flowering
trees and shrubs on terrace after terrace, carry the
eye down to the shimmering gleam of the wide
river on which the moonlight falls lovingly, throwing
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