“I was very glad to see your campfire. My Malay guide, an exceptionally good man, was lost. Is the river here the Sungei Buloh?”
“No,” said Norrie, “you’ve taken the wrong turning. The Buloh is five miles down stream. What are you making for?”
“Mount Berching. I shall cross the divide into Perak about there. My name, by the way, is Parsell.”
Norrie, astonished, had taken his pipe out of his mouth, and had held it away for an intent inspection of their visitor. Now he put his pipe beside him and leaned forward, with his hands clasped.
“Parsell the ethnologist, the author of the Mon-Khmer Influence in Southeastern Asia?”
The veteran gnome looked quite pleased.
“You know my name, then? Curious, curious!”
Norrie was clearly perplexed. He sang out for the Chinaman, and gave him some instructions. He stroked his nose. He looked with wariness at Colet, as if for a cue.
“No need to ask you, sir, what you are doing here. Didn’t you mention Gunong Berching?”
“I am making for that point.”
To Colet it was plain that if Norrie had addressed him in the matter of that mountain, it would have been in a few choice words to demolish a folly.
“Do you think you can manage it, Mr. Parsell?”
“Of course I can; why not? That is part of my plan.”
“A good plan. But here, what with the want of food, and the floods and fevers, we have to alter our plans occasionally. It is rough going to Berching, and I should fancy that beyond it the going would be worse. Hardly anything is known about it.”
“Very likely, very likely.” Mr. Parsell spoke with decision, and a hint of asperity. He was unwell and a little crabbed. Nor did he promise to be the kind of man who would listen at any time to the warnings of common sense, not when he was mounted on his hobby.
Norrie, tactfully, tried to draw from him confessions about his supplies, his guide, his men, and the time he had estimated would be necessary for the journey. But these to Mr. Parsell were only negligible details, of small account compared with the pursuit of truth. He was vague about them; he himself was barely concerned. The Chinaman came to them with dishes, Norrie polished his pipe thoughtfully, and Mr. Parsell addressed himself to food in an attitude of abstraction which allowed him but fitfully to acknowledge the nearness of nourishment. Indeed he would pause with entire detachment, fork held loaded and upright but forgotten, to seek, with the cool and disarming inconsequence of a barrister who knew his case, a betrayal of their own notions of the natives they had met. Had they seen any Sekais or Semangs?
Norrie humoured him. More than once Mr. Parsell sat round to look at Norrie squarely and with the unaffected curiosity of a pundit who is surprised by a suspicion that a layman may be not so ignorant as in fairness could be assumed. Yet, when the subject was not his own, he was, despite his bald head, a ragged and helpless infant one would have been prompted to nurse and cherish, if one had known but the way to hold it. The lifted appeal of his fearless but innocent blue eyes moved the paternal instinct in a man. It was not safe for him to be about.
Then, with talk and food, his nervous energy flagged; would they excuse him? He thought he would rest. He would have to make an early start in the morning. Norrie led him to the hammock, which would be easier for his bad shoulder than the floor, and tended him as carefully as though their guest were a wilful but royal orphan. When Mr. Parsell was out of the way, Norrie stood, for a time, staring into the night; then he turned to Colet with a wry smile.
“We shall have to stop this,” he whispered. “There’s enough hantus here.”
XXXIII
Mr. Parsell did not make an early start. He found their Malays and the situation of the camp too attractive. The awe of the Malays for this eager and energetic little man, who mystified them with his ease among their secrets, was manifest; no doubt they thought he was mad, and the favoured of God. He knew things which were hidden even from Tuan Norrie, and wizards should be carefully reconciled. Norrie watched the play about the hut of his men with amused concern.
“Colet, he knows more about those fellows than they know themselves. He has scared them. He isn’t aware of it, but he could order them to heel like dogs. I wish I could.”
“You’ve heard of the old boy before, Norrie?”
“But naturally. Who hasn’t? I knew his work before I could play dominoes. And we meet him here at last. That’s how the surprises are sorted for us.”
“What about this journey of his? Can it be done?”
“Yes. Almost anything can be done, by the right people. What do you think?”
“That he won’t go far.”
“No, he won’t. Not if I can stop it. We can’t afford to lose men like Parsell.”
“You won’t stop that man.”
“Then he will die. You or I might manage that traverse, with any luck, but Parsell—it would be as reasonable to expect a kitten with a brick to come home after being dropped in the river. He’d never be heard of again.”
“You won’t stop him.”
“You don’t think he can be frightened into going back
