A Writer's Notebook (58 page)

Toward evening a flight of egrets flew down the river, flying low, and scattered. They were like a ripple of white notes, sweet and pure and springlike, which an unseen hand drew forth, like a divine arpeggio, from an unseen harp.

S. A boy of eighteen who has just come out. A rather good-looking youth, with blue eyes and curly chestnut hair that grows thickly on his neck. He is trying to grow a moustache. He has a charming smile with him. He is ingenuous and
naïf
. He has the enthusiasm of youth and the mannerisms of a cavalry officer.

The mangrove swamp. Along the coast and at the mouth of the river grow mangroves and nipah. The nipah is a long-leafed dwarf palm, like those palms which in old pictures you see carried on Palm Sunday. They grow at the water's edge, reclaiming the soil, and when they have made fresh, fruitful earth they die down and the jungle takes their place. They are the pioneers preparing the country for the traders and the motley crowd of humanity that come after them.

The Sarawak River. The mouth is very broad. On each side are mangrove and nipah washed by the water and behind the dense green of the jungle, and in the distance, darkly silhouetted against the blue sky, the rugged outline of a mountain. You have no sense of gloom, of being shut in, but of space and
freedom. The green glitters in the sunshine and the sky is blithe and cheerful. You seem to enter upon a friendly, fertile land.

A blue sky, not pale with the languor of great heat, nor violent like the skies of Italy, but as though Prussian blue were mixed with milk; and like little sailing boats on the sea white clouds, shining in the sun, pass leisurely.

A room. The walls were of unstained wood and on them hung photogravures of Academy pictures, Dyak shields, parangs and huge straw hats with a symmetrical decoration in gay colours. Long cane chairs. Pieces of Brunei brass ware. Orchids in a vase. The table was covered with a dingy Dyak cloth. On a rough wooden shelf were cheap editions of novels and old travel books in battered leather. In one corner a shelf crowded with bottles. Rattan matting on the floor.

The room opened on to a veranda. It was only a few feet from the river, and from the bazaar on the opposite bank you heard the beating of a gong for some Chinese festivity.

The chik-chak. It is a small brown lizard which gives the sound from which it gains its name. You can hardly believe that so loud a noise can come from so small a throat. You hear it at night, a curiously human sound that breaks upon the silence suddenly, and there is something derisive about it. You might think it was chuckling with amusement at the white men who come and go and leave all things as they were.

In the early morning the colours are brilliant, yet tender, and then as the day wears on they grow tired and pale. They
are then only the various tones of the heat. It is like a Chinese melody, in the minor key, which exacerbates the nerves by its monotony. The ear awaits a resolution which never comes.

The prisoners are engaged in public works, and you see them, under the guardianship of a Sikh, on the roads, taking their work not too hardly, and those in chains, because they have previously escaped, are to all appearances not much inconvenienced by them.

The jungle. There is no sign of a pathway and the ground is thickly strewn with decaying leaves. The trees grow dense, trees with enormous leaves and trees with the feathery foliage of the acacia, coconut trees and the areca palm with its long, straight white stem, bamboos and wild sago like huge bunches of ostrich feathers. Here and there, white and naked, is the skeleton of a dead tree; and its whiteness against all the green is startling. Here and there, rival kings of the forest, tall trees, with profuse and heavy foliage, soar above the common level of the jungle.

Then there are the parasites, great tufts of green leaf growing in the fork of a tree, flowering creepers that cover a tree like a bridal veil; sometimes they wind a sheath of splendour round the tall trunks and throw long arms of flowers from branch to branch.

In the early day all this green is blithe and exhilarating. There is nothing sombre or oppressive in it, but in the passionate wildness of all that growth a strange excitement. It has the daring abandon of the maenad rioting along in the train of the god.