our tippy craft, and were off.

We slipped down the river, aided by the tide, and in a few minutes
were far away from the last house, the last gleam of light, and
the least sound of human life. Save for the soft dip of oars, not a
sound broke the night. Yet it was not silence so much as the sense of
deep respiration, as if the earth slept and sent up an invocation to
the watching heavens. The banks were thickly weeded at the water's
edge with nipa, and behind that were knolls of bamboo with here
and there a gnarled and tortured tree shape silhouetted against the
faint sky. Occasionally we came to a convention of fireflies in that
tree which they so much affect, the name of which is unknown to me,
but which in size and outline resembles a wild cherry. Millions of
them starred its branches, and in the surrounding gloom it winked
and sparkled like a fairy Christmas tree.

We talked little, and were content to drink in the silence and the
strangeness, till by and by the wind fell cooler and we knew the dawn
was at hand. It seemed to come suddenly, bursting out of the east in
a white glare, without the pearly tints and soft gray lights that
mark our northern day births. Then the white glare changed to red,
to a crimson glow that painted the world with its glory, and dying,
left little nebulous masses floating in the azure, tinted with pink,
gold, and purple.

With the first touch of light we turned out of the main river,
which was now a broad estuary as it neared the sea, and fled down a
water lane not over fifteen or twenty feet wide, absolutely walled
with impenetrable nipa growths. From this we emerged just as the day
played its last spectacular effects, and found ourselves in a deep
oval indentation, glassy as an inland lake, whose bosom caught the
changing cloud tints like a mirror, and whose deep cool green borders
were alive with myriads of delighted birds, skimming, chattering,
calling. Half a mile away, at its farther end, the surf leaped frothily
over a bar, and beyond that the open sea tumbled and flashed in the
first sun-rays. It was idyllic--and on our left a mere stone's throw,
it seemed, behind the embowering forest, the mountain of our quest
thrust a treeless, grassy shoulder into the blue.

Mr. L----, however, warned us that our way was still long and
circuitous. We crossed the lagoon and went wandering off down a green,
silent waterway which rejoiced in the appellation of "kut-i-kut" and
proved itself