one of my listeners was at last inclined to show some interest, launched out with
renewed vigour, until my sorely tried companions had, one by one, gone off to
bed, each to his own quarters.
Middleton was staying with me at the time, and he and I sat in silence looking at
the light upon the river, and each thinking his own thoughts. Middleton was the
first to speak.
'That was a curious myth you were telling us, about the Pôlong, the Familiar
Spirits,' he said. 'I have heard of it before from natives, but there is a thing I have
never spoken of, and always swore that I would keep to myself, that I have a
good mind to tell you now, if you will promise not to call me a liar.'
'That is all right,' said I. 'Fire away.'
'Well,' said Middleton, puffing at his pipe, 'you remember Juggins, of course? He
was a naturalist, you know, and he came to stay with me during the close
season[13] last year. He was hunting for bugs and that sort of thing, and he used
to fill my bungalow with all sorts of rotting green stuff, that he brought in from
the jungle. He stopped with me for about ten days, and when he heard that I was
bound for a trip up into the Sâkai country, he said he would come too. I did not
mind much, as he was a decent beggar enough, in spite of his dirty ways, so I
said all right, and we started up together. When we got well up into the Sâkai
country, we had to leave our boats behind at the foot of the rapids, and leg it for
the rest of the time. We had not enough bearers with us to take any food, and we
lived pretty well on what we could get, yams, and tapioca, and Indian corn, and
soft stuff of that sort. It was new to Juggins, and it used to give him awful gripes,
but he stuck to it like a man.
'Well, one evening, when the night was shutting down pretty fast, Juggins and I
got to a fairly large camp of Sâkai in the middle of a clearing, and of course all
the beggars bolted into the jungle when we approached. We went on up to the
largest hut of the lot, and there we found a woman lying by the side of her dead
child. It was as stiff as Herod, though it had not been born more than half an
hour, I should say, and I went up into the house thinking I might be able to do
something for the poor, wretched mother. She did not seem to see it, however,
for she bit and snarled at me like a wounded animal, so I let her be, and Juggins
and I took up our quarters in a smaller hut near by, which seemed fairly new, and
was not so filthy dirty as most Sâkai lairs.
'Presently, when the beggars who had run away found out who it was, they