MALAY SKETCHES
our way through or take one of the enemy's boats on the down-stream side of the stakes.
We could hardly realise the truth when we found ourselves at the lower end of the village without having encountered any obstruction. The barrier never existed in fact—only in the imagina tion of Haji Ali, or, more probably, the Maharaja Lela had intended to make it, but the Malay habits of laziness and procrastination defeated his plan.
Just as I was thinking a very sincere thanksgiving, the bow of the boat suddenly ran on the shore and stuck there fast. We were so close to the bank that this happened without the slightest warning. For an instant the steersman had given the rudder a wrong turn, and we were stranded. To my dismay, I saw on the high bank, exactly over us, a large fire with eight or ten men round it. I seized the shot-gun, Mahmud had a rifle, and we knelt with fingers on trigger covering two of the figures that were distinct enough in spite of the mist, for we were hardly ten feet distant from them.
Two of our men with poles were making super-human efforts to push off the boat, when a man on the bank called out, "Whose boat is that?" One of our men replied, "Haji Mat Yassin's," having seen his boat at Blanja. "Where are you from?"
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