Page:Malay Sketches.pdf/119

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IN THE NOON OF NIGHT

legs, and neck, while I screamed for help until you came and rescued me.”

Well, after all, there is nothing very strange in that. A woman of peculiar nervous organisation, a somnambulist, dreams a dream and walks out into the balmy atmosphere of a moonlit Eastern night. She walks rather far, and has a rude awakening. That is nothing ; other sleepers have walked further, and their awakening has been to the life beyond the grave.

Only this was curious: that while the men sank deep into the mud at every step, the woman had never sunk in at all, When found, there was only mud on the soles of her feet, and, though she had walked half a mile across the flat, and her tracks were plainly visible in the moonlight, they were all on the surface, and she had crossed the soft, unstable mire as easily as though it had been a metalled road.

So the men bore her home, not wondering overmuch, for in this thing they saw the hand of the Celestial Beings who guided her feet with such consideration, to abandon her to the ferocious attentions of the crocodiles.

The woman herself, her husband, and the police were satisfied as to the means, but found the end too hard for their understanding.

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