MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE

Ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed
with light,
When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear,
Comes a breathing hard behind thee, _snuffle-snuffle_ through
the night--
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!
On thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go;
In the empty mocking thicket plunge the spear;
But thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left
thy cheek--
It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!

RUDYARD KIPLING'S _Song of the Little Hunter._

We had been sitting late in the verandah of my bungalow of Kuala Lipis,
which overlooks the long and narrow reach, formed by the combined waters
of the Lipis and the Jelai. The moon had risen some hours earlier, and
the river ran white between the dark banks of jungle which seemed to
fence it in on all sides. The ill-kept garden, with the tennis-ground,
that never got beyond the stage of being dug up, and the rank grass
behind the bamboo fence, were flooded with the soft light, every
tattered detail of its ugliness showing as clearly as though it was
noon. The night was very still, and the soft, scented air blew coolly
round our faces.

I had been holding forth, to the handful of men who had been dining with
me, on Malay beliefs and superstitions, while they manfully stifled
their yawns. When a man has a smattering knowledge of anything, which is
not usually known to his neighbours, it is a temptation to lecture on
the subject, and, looking back, I fear that I had been on the rostrum
during the best part of that evening. I had told them of the _Penangal_,
that horrible wraith of a woman who has died in child-birth, and who
comes to torment small children, in the guise of a fearful face and
bust, with many feet of bloody trailing entrails flying in her wake; of
that weird little white animal the _Mati-anak_, that makes beast noises
round the graves of children; and of the familiar spirits that men raise
up from the corpses of babes who have never seen the light, the tips of
whose tongues they bite off and swallow, after the child has been
brought back to life by magic agencies. It was at this point that young
Middleton began to cock up his ears, and I, finding that one of my
listeners was at last inclined to show some interest, launched out with
renewed vigour, until my sorely tried companions ha