med simply to rush up, and in five
minutes from a world of black shadows and no colours it turned to a
world of green and blue and yellow. The houses were all like ours, built
on legs with thatched roofs, and there were great shady mango trees and
plantains growing beside them. The dogs were everywhere, and the people
were squatting in the sun to warm their backs. We ate more rice and
drank more coco-nut milk, and then we shook hands all round and thanked
the people, and went away with the boy to guide us. His name was Moung
Ohn (Mr. Coco-Nut) he told us. We made him write down his own and his
sisters' names on a piece of paper in Burmese on the ship afterwards, so
that we could always keep them.

It was quite a long way, as he had said, but it was so beautiful we
wanted to dance and jump all the time. Moung Ohn scolded off the beastly
pariah dogs and led us out of the hole in the great stockade and through
a grove of palms. He pointed to two different sorts, one was the usual
kind, feathery, and coco-nuts grew on that. He pointed to himself and
grinned, but we didn't understand till afterwards that his name was
"Coco-Nut." The other sort of palm had leaves like the great fans people
sometimes have in drawing-rooms, at least Joyce said they were. A man
was walking down the long, straight stem of one, and I could see, as
Moung Ohn had said, that his legs were tattooed too. He just walked
down. He had a band round his waist and round the tree, so he leaned
against it and pressed the soles of his feet against the tree. I longed
to try, but Joyce was wanting to get back to her mother. When the man
came down he had a little iron pot filled with juice, and he offered it
to me to drink, but when I looked in and saw dead flies and insects by
the dozen I declined politely. He had hung up other little pots on the
tree near the stalks of the great leaves in which he had cut gashes, so
the juice dripped out into them. I found out this makes a strong drink
called toddy.

We passed over rice fields, where many of the people were at work
already, and then, after going a good distance, we got on to the road,
but it was not the same part where we were the day before. I'm beginning
now not to be quite so sure that my direction was right after all, but
don't say so before Joyce.

Just then we heard a most awful noise like a hundred demons groaning and
shrieking together.

"Nats!" exclaimed Joyce, standing stockstill. Moung Ohn laughed