free wandering amidst
beautiful, tropical trees and vines heavy with luscious fruits--there
would be no drinking from running streams in pleasant, sunlit
clearings. Ouk knew the jungle, and as the alternative was
civilization, he chose civilization which he did not yet know.
Therefore he freely offered himself one evening, coming from his
native village attired in a gay sarong, a peaked hat, and nothing
more. He entered a camp, where he found himself in company with other
volunteers, pressed into the service of civilization by the same
pressure that had so appealed to himself. There were several hundred
of them in this camp, all learning the ways of Europe, and learning
with difficulty and pain. The most painful thing, perhaps, were the
coarse leather shoes they were obliged to wear. Ouk's feet had been
accustomed to being bare--clad, on extreme occasions, with pliant
straw sandals. He garbed them now, according to instructions, in hard,
coarse leather shoes, furnished by those in authority, which they told
him would do much to protect his sensitive feet against the cold of a
French winter. Ouk had no ideas as to the rigours of a French winter,
but the heavy shoes were exceedingly painful. In exchange for his gay
sarong, they gave him a thick, ill fitting suit of khaki flannel, in
which he smothered, but this, they likewise explained to him, would do
much to protect him from the inclemency of French weather. Thus wound
up and bound up, and suffering mightily in the garb of European
civilization, Ouk gave himself up to learn how to protect it. The
alternative to this decision, being as we have said, an alternative
that he could not bring himself to face.

Three months of training being accomplished, Ouk and his companions
were by that time fitted to go forth for the protection of great
ideals. They were the humble defenders of these ideals, and from time
to time the newspapers spoke in glowing terms, of their sentimental,
clamorous wish to defend them. Even in these remote, unknown regions,
somewhere between the Equator and ten degrees North latitude,
volunteers were pressing forward to uphold the high traditions of
their masters. Ouk and his companions knew nothing of these sonorous,
ringing phrases in the papers. They knew only of the alternative, the
jungle. Time came and the day came when they were all ushered forth
from their training camp, packed into a big junk, and released into
the stormy tossings of the harbo