now a broad pool of water, with
here and there a tuft of rank rushes showing above the surface, Kria and
his child each took a rod and began patiently angling for the little
fish. The sun crept lower and lower down the western sky, till its
slanting rays painted the surface of the pool to the crimson hue of
blood. The clouds were dyed with a thousand gorgeous tints, and the soft
light of the sunset hour mellowed all the land. Kria had seen the same
sight many a hundred times before, and he looked on it with the utter
indifference to the beauties of nature, which is one of the least
attractive characteristics of Malays. If the reddened pool at his feet
suggested anything to him, it was only that the day was waning, and that
it was time to be wending his way homeward.

He began to gather up his fishing tackle, while his son, squatting on
the ground, passed a rattan cord through the fishes' gills to their
mouths, so that the take might be carried with greater ease. While they
were so engaged, a slight rustle in the high grass behind them caused
both father and son to start and look round. Not a breath of wind was
blowing, but, none the less, a few feet away from them, the tops of the
grass moved slightly, as though the stalks were brushed against by the
passage of some wild animal.

'Hasten, little one,' said Kria, uneasily; 'it is a tiger.'

But, as he spoke the words, the grass was parted by human hands, and
Kria found himself looking into the wild and angry eyes of Ku-ish, the
Porcupine, along the length of an ancient gun barrel. He had time to
note the rust upon the dulled metal, the fantastic shape of the clumsy
sight, and the blue tatoo marks on the nose and forehead of his enemy.
All these things he saw mechanically, in an instant of time, but before
he had moved hand or foot the world seemed to break in fragments around
him, to the sound of a furious deafening explosion, and he lay dead upon
the sward with his skull shattered to atoms, and the bloody, mucous
strings of brain flecking the fresh green grass.

At the sight, Kria's son fled screaming along the edge of the pool, but
Ku-ish's blood was up, and he started in pursuit. The child threw
himself down in the long grass, and, raising his little arms above his
cowering head, shrieked for mercy in his pure shrill treble voice.
Ku-ish, for answer, plunged his spear again and again through the little
writhing body, and, at the second blow, the expression of horr