ing with glee as it plunged into the
abyss.

The lake was like a fairy-land. Purple lotus flowers surrounded the
boat. Piang dipped his hands into the cool water, and pulled them
up by long slender roots; lily-pads offered their beauties and soon
the banco was a bower of fragrant and brilliant flowers. Playfully
Piang caught at a vine, floating in the wake of an island. The
natural boat led him gently about, twisting and circling back and
forth. He laughed merrily. The islands were too funny! They seemed
almost human in their antics. Some had regular routes, and, like mail
boats touched the same spot again and again, only to be hurried on
as the current caught them. Others with malicious intent strayed in
the path of their more systematic brothers, bumping and jarring them
with obstinate regularity.

The joy of freedom thrilled Piang; the intimacy with nature and its
mysteries stirred within him a desire to know more, feel more, and
he gazed at the distant peak where his fortune awaited him, wondering
if the old hermit, Ganassi, was in reality watching for his coming.

Toward afternoon Piang became conscious of a heavy steam-like
vapor rising from the undergrowth at the edge of the jungle; the
atmosphere grew suddenly sticky and sultry. Almost within a moment
the brilliant sunshine was blotted out, and a gray twilight settled
over the lake. Frightened birds, squawking and screaming, hurried by;
a fawn, drinking at the water's edge, darted off through the jungle. A
slight frown rippled across the water; the breeze chilled Piang. Trees
in the distance seemed to bend nearly double with no apparent cause,
but the rush of wind finally swept the whole valley, and the jungle
shuddered and swayed before it. The storm seemed an animate thing,
seemed to come upon the peacefulness of the lake like an evil genius,
hurling its fury upon nature and her creatures.

Piang had never been alone in a typhoon. In bewilderment he looked
about, wondering where he could find shelter. He watched the birds,
the animals; his boat brought up against something with a thud. An
island had bumped into him, and he realized in dismay what a menace the
pretty toys might become in a typhoon. Struggling with the tempest,
Piang fought past the islands, reached the shore, turned his banco
bottom side up, and crept underneath.

The violent wind began to dash loose objects about, tearing limbs
off trees and hurling them aloft as if they were mere splint