The bamboo chicks were all down, and the shutter-doors securely locked from
the inside, but there was a long rattan chair within reach, and I dropped into it
with a sigh of satisfaction, while my guide went out toward the servant-quarters
to arouse the Malay mandor, or head gardener, whom H. B. M.’s Government
trusted with this portion of her East Indian possessions.
As might have been expected, that high functionary was not to be found, and I
was forced to content myself, while my guide went on to a neighboring native
police station to make inquiries. I unbuttoned my stiff kaki shooting-jacket, lit a
manila, which my mouth was too dry to smoke, and gazed up at the ceiling in
silence.
It was stiflingly hot. Even the cicadas in the great jungle tree, that towered a
hundred and fifty feet above the house, were quiet. Every breath I took seemed
to scorch me, and the balls of my eyes ached. The sky had changed to a dull
cartridge color.
A breeze came across the hot, glaring surface of the Straits, and stirred the tops
of a little clump of palms, and died away. It brought with it the smell of rain.
For a moment there was a dead stillness,—not even a lizard clucked on the wall
back of me; then all at once the thermometer dropped down two or three
degrees, and a tearing wind struck the bamboo curtains and stretched them out
straight; the tops of the massive jungle trees bent and creaked; there was a
blinding flash and a roar of thunder, and all distance was lost in darkness and
rain. It was one of the quick, fierce bursts of the southwest monsoon.
I did not move, although wet to the skin.
Presently I could make out three blurred figures fighting their way slowly
against the storm across the compound. One was the guide; the second was the
mandor, naked save for a cotton sarong around his waist; the third was a
stranger.
The trio came up on the veranda—the stranger hanging behind, with an
apologetic droop of his head. He was a white man, in a suit of dirty, ragged
linen. It took but one look to place him. I had seen hundreds of them “on the
beach” in Singapore,—there could be no mistake. “Loafer” was written all over