ntioned in the guide books, and from the beautiful,
desolate islands came out sampans and junks, with the lonely figure of
a white man sitting despondent among the naked rowers, eager to get
his letters from home. It was his only eagerness, but very dull and
listless at that. At night, the islands loomed large and mysterious in
the darkness, while now and then a single ray of light from some light
house, gleaming from some lost, mysterious island of the southern
seas, beamed with a curious constancy. There were dangerous rocks,
sunken reefs. And always the soft wind blew, the soft, enervating wind
of the Tropics.

On the fore part of the little steamer, that wound its way with
infinite care, slowly, among the sunken rocks, the shoals and
sandbars, sat a company of fifty men. Natives, such as you might see
back there in the jungle, or harnessed to the needs of civilization,
bearing the white man in rickshaws along the red streets of the little
town. These, however, were native troops--the rickshaw runner used in
another way. They were handcuffed together, sitting in pairs on the
main deck. In the soft, moist wind, they eat rice together, with their
free hands, out of the same bowl. Very dirty little prisoners, clad in
khaki, disarmed, chained together in pairs. A canvas was stretched
over that part of the deck, which sheltered them from the glaring sun,
and prevented the odour of them from rising to the bridge, a little
way above, where stood the Captain in yellow crepe pyjamas. For they
were dirty, handcuffed together like that, unexercised, unwashed. They
would be put ashore in three days, however, to work on the roads,
government roads. Notoriously good roads, the colony has too. Their
offense? Grave enough. With the European world at war, this colony,
like those of all the other nations, had called upon its native
troops. The native troops had been loyal, had responded, had
volunteered to go when told they must. Proof of that? Forty thousand
of them at the moment helping in this devastating war. It was a good
record--it spoke well----

Only this handful had refused. Refused absolutely, flagrantly defiant.
Just this little group, out of all the thousands. So they were being
sent off somewhere, handcuffed, to make roads. Prisoners for three
years to make roads, useless roads that led nowhere. Good roads,
excellent, for traffic that never was. Some said they were the
soldiers who had been forced to kill their brothers