BĔR-HANTU
through the clouds across the white pillars of the verandah, we thought we might have the good fortune to see this harbinger of doom.
We walked out on to the moonlit terrace, and the beauty of the night was so intense that one felt it as through a new sense.
The hill on which the house stood was cut into a series of terraces, and the highest of these, a wide lawn of velvety grass, was surrounded by tall graceful coco-nut trees, not close together but each standing alone with its spiky leaves clearly delineated against the sky.
Overhead a moon shedding that wonderful soft light only seen in the East, where atmosphere, foliage, and all the surroundings seem specially designed to make the ascendancy of the Queen of Night superbly beautiful.
The exquisite feathery fronds of the bamboo, bending in graceful curves, with each leaf clearly defined against a background of grey-blue sky; a dozen varieties of palms, from the lofty coco-nut and the stately jagary to the thick clumps of berlam, like gigantic ferns; picturesque groups of flowering trees and shrubs on terrace after terrace, carry the eye down to the shimmering gleam of the wide
river, on which the moonlight falls lovingly, throwing
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