From the low-barred window of Busuk’s home she could look out on the
shimmering, sunlit waters of the Straits of Malacca. The loom on which Busuk’s
mother wove the sarongs for the punghulo and for her sons stood by the side of
the window, and Busuk, from the sling in which she sat on her mother’s side,
could see the fishing praus glide by, and also the big lumber tonkangs, and at
rare intervals one of his Highness’s launches.
Sometimes she blinked her eyes as a vagrant shaft of sunlight straggled down
through the great green and yellow fronds of the cocoanut palms that stood about
the bungalow; sometimes she kept her little black eyes fixed gravely on the
flying shuttle which her mother threw deftly back and forth through the many-
colored threads; but best of all did she love to watch the little gray lizards that
ran about on the palm sides of the house after the flies and moths.
She was soon able to answer the lizards’ call of “gecho, gecho,” and once she
laughed outright when one, in fright of her baby-fingers, dropped its tail and
went wiggling away like a boat without a rudder. But most of the time she
swung and crowed in her wicker cradle under the low rafters.
When Busuk grew older, she was carried every day down the ladder of the house
and put on the warm white sand with the other children. They were all naked,
save for a little chintz bib that was tied to their necks; so it made no difference
how many mudpies they made on the beach nor how wet they got in the tepid
waters of the ocean. They had only to look out carefully for the crocodiles that
glided noiselessly among the mangrove roots.
One day one of Busuk’s playmates was caught in the cruel jaws of a crocodile,
and lost its hand. The men from the village went out into the labyrinth of roots
that stood up above the flood like a huge scaffolding, and caught the man-eater
with ropes of the gamooty palm. They dragged it up the beach and put out its
eyes with red-hot spikes of the hard billion wood.
Although the varnished leaves of the cocoanuts kept almost every ray of sunlight
out of the little village, and though the children could play in the airy spaces
under their own houses, their heads and faces were painted with a paste of flour
and water to keep their tender skins from chafing in the hot, moist air.