principal preoccupation was to keep them and their armed parties out of my stockade, and to this end I lived in my own bungalow, which was distant from it a matter of a couple of hundred yards. My Chi- nese servants had come to me, a day or two after the arrival of the chiefs, and had mentioned that they understood that there was to be a battle that after- noon. After lunch, therefore, their spokesman re- marked, they proposed, with my leave, to run away and hide themselves in the jungle. That would have meant that each one of them would have had his throat ent; but as they were frightened out of their wits, though not out of their good manners, and I feared that they would try the experiment, I put them into a boat which happened to be going down- river, and so slipped them into safety. Thus I was left alone in my bungalow, save only for Ûmat, and he and I kept watch, turn and turn about, for a matter of several weeks. He cooked ny rice for me, and squatted on the mat beside me while I slept, and whenever a chief and his truculent crew over- flowed into the bungalow, Ûmat sat by fondling his weapons.
At last there came a day when the greatest of all the chiefs had arrived, and presently a message reached me from him saying that he was too ill to come up the hill to see me, and inviting me to visit him in the town. The position was not pleasant. A refusal was out of the question, for laving regard to the characters of the men with whom we were. dealing, any sign of timidity would, I knew, precipi-
