which the earnest ape was shedding about him in a
shower--all with the gesture of conjuring.

Tunstal sat down hard. He succeeded in lighting one of the cigarettes.
Exquisite. He gulped the glass of liquor. Delicious....

"I seem," said Tunstal, mopping his brow--"I seem to have landed as per
invoice."

And yet these portents were valid enough too, as Nivin could have told
him--the customary welcome at Lol Raman's. For even among the byways a
resort must have its features, though it boast no cafe chantant and hang
no battery of conscientious nudes. In the warm, clammy evenings when the
fog crept up from the river marshes it was nothing unusual for Lol
Raman--whoever or whatever he might be--to entertain as many as a dozen
patrons in his garden on the hill. They gathered about his tables and
admired his pet orang-utan, they smoked his cigarettes and more
particularly they fortified themselves with his private stock, which was
arrack. A very potent safeguard against the seasonal fever is arrack,
being country spirit of a golden tint and undisciplined taste. But Lol
Raman's owned a private recipe, and hither came the initiated--traders,
wanderers, officials of the island government, officers of passing
tramps. Here they came, and here they often remained until their friends
bore them away again, thoroughly safeguarded to the point of
petrifaction.

Nivin might have explained these matters, but he had omitted so to do,
and Tunstal's was the sheer delight of discovery.

"_Stengah_," he observed, reaching for the bottle. "_Manti dooloo!_"

The waxen gentleman looked a trifle more intelligent than an eggplant.
Evidently his island Malay was not up to the classical standard. Tunstal
tried him in fragmentary Dutch to the same effect and with the same
result.

"Damn it--I say I want more and never mind taking that bottle away!"

The manikin's face opened.

"Oh, sure. Three dolla' hap'."

On being paid in Singapore silver he vanished into space once more while
Tunstal philosophized.

"Too bad about the simple native that has no use for a tourist!"

The garden had fallen to a drowsy hush. Within its four walls only the
great red ape stayed to do the honors, and he had subsided, applying
himself seriously now to the cigarette industry. He sat cross-legged,
workmanlike, with a bobbing of his ugly head and a ridiculous curling
tongue above the delicate task. Selecting a leaf of the natural weed and
adding a pinch for f