Page 92 - Malay sketches

MALAY SKETCHES

I have said there was a ladderless watch-tower
outside the stockade. The police wanted firewood,
they were not allowed to burn the logs forming our
walls, but at the top of the watch-tower there were
also log walls that they were told they could burn.
They were lazy, however, and did not see how they
were going to get up, so they ordered Kasim the
younger to climb up, which he did as he had
climbed the coco-nut tree, and, when once there,
told him to throw down until
they logs they thought
they had enough. I watched that operation, and
the feverish haste with which the man swarmed up
one of the supports, gained the platform of the
tower, and threw down huge logs as though his
life depended or* it, was rather remarkable. I gave
orders that the man's infirmity was not to be used
for this purpose again, but in my absence I know
that when more firewood was wanted Kasim went
up to the watch-tower for it until that supply was
exhausted.
The path from the stockade to the village was in
of the stockade its
sight throughout length, and one
day I noticed Kasim Minor, as he walked leisurely
down this mud embankment, stop every now and
then and behave in a peculiar fashion as though he
were having conversation with the frogs, snakes and
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