hey dwell, for he will surely die
unless the ghosts give speed to his flight. Of all this tribe, I alone
have seen these women, and that when I was a young hunter, many many
moons agone. I and two others, my brothers, when hunting through the
forest, passed beyond the limits of our own woods, following the halting
tracks of a wounded stag. After much walking, and eager following of the
trail, for the camp was hungry lacking meat, we found the stag lying
near a brook, killed by a larger arrow than the bow we carry throws,
and, at the same moment, we heard a loud, threatening cry in a strange
tongue. Then I, looking up, beheld a gigantic form, as of a pale-skinned
woman, breaking through the jungle, some two hundred elbow-lengths away,
and, at the same moment, my elder brother fell pierced by an arrow. I
stayed to see no more, but ran, with all my young blood tingling with
fear, leaving my brothers and the slaughtered stag, tearing through the
thickets of thorn, but never feeling them rend my skin, nor ever stopped
to catch my breath or drink, until, all wounded and breathless, covered
with blood and sweat-like foam, I half fell, half staggered to the camp
of mine own people. Thereafter, for long days, I lay 'twixt life and
death, screaming in fear of the dreadful form I ever fancied was
pursuing me. My brothers never again returned to camp, and I alone am
left to tell the tale.'

The old man ceased his weird story, the fear of what he thought he had
seen still apparently strong upon him. He certainly believed what he
said, as also did every person present, with the exception of my own
sceptical self, and I have often tried to find some reasonable
explanation for the story. I have not succeeded, for, even in the
wildest parts of the Peninsula, the aborigines do not shoot one another
on sight, whatever they may do to bands of marauding Malays, nor do
serious quarrels ever arise between them over the division of a little
fresh meat. Judging by the scared look in his eyes, as he told the
story, the old Semang had felt the fear of imminent death very close at
hand that day long ago in the quiet forests at the back of Gunong Korbu.
His brethren, too, must undoubtedly have been killed by some one or
something, and perhaps the old-world tradition of the Amazons, furnished
to the mind of the survivor the most natural explanation of the
catastrophe.

A dozen years and more have slipped away since I heard this tale, told
in the f