erbalangs, named with
such awe, to be pirates or marauders from Tawi-Tawi or some neighbouring
island, and the first hint that reached me of anything worse was a
wailing sound which grew as we ran, and overhauled us, until the air was
filled with roaring, so that I swung round to defend myself, yet could
see nothing. To my surprise a man who had been running beside me
dropped on the sand, pulled a sigh of relief, and began to mop his
face--and this in the very worst of the racket. 'They are gone by,' he
shouted; 'the worse the noise the farther off they are. They have taken
their fill to-day on poor old Kotali.'

"Suddenly the noise ceased altogether, and we picked up courage to
return and bury the body. We had a basket of limes on the raft, and
these were fetched and the juice squeezed over the grave; but no one
seemed inclined to answer the questions I put about these Berbalangs.
It seemed that unless they were close at hand there was ill-luck even in
mentioning them, and I walked back to the village in a good deal of
perplexity.

"I should tell you, sir, that by this time I was the father of a fine
boy; and that Aoodya doted on him. When she was not feeding him or
calling on me to admire his perfections, from the cleverness of his
smile to the beautiful shape of his toes, he lay and slept, or kicked in
a basket slung on a long bamboo fastened across the rafters, Aoodya
would give the basket a pull, and this set it bobbing up and down on the
spring of the bamboo for minutes at a time.

"Now when I reached home with my string of fish, I walked round to the
back of the house to clean them before going in. This took me past the
window of our room, and glancing inside--the window was unglazed, you
understand--I saw Aoodya standing before the cradle and talking, quick
and angry, with a man posted in the doorway opening on the verandah.

"I was not jealous. The thought never entered my head. But I dropped
my fish and whipped round to the doorway in time to catch him as he
turned to go, having heard my footstep belike.

"'Who the something-or-other are you?' I asked. 'And what's your
business in my private house?'

"The man--a yellow-faced fellow, but young in figure--muttered something
in a gibberish new to me, and made as if excusing himself. It gave me
an ugly start to see that his eyes were yellow too, with long slits for
pupils; but I saw too that he was afraid of me, and being in a towering
rage myself