leafy durian. Following their direction he caught a fragmentary sight of a very large rufous shape high up and he called out 'Do not shoot, Jack.
At the same moment Sadong launched his dart There was a violent movement above, a waving of branches, the tearing of leaves, and a heavy spiked durian shot out of the tree, passing between the Dyaks heads They fled, laughing, to a safe distance, and the orang utang fled in the other direction, swinging from branch to branch, tree to tree, at a surprising pace. Stephen had two glimpses of him, reddish in the odd patches of sun, immensely broad-shouldered and long-armed, and then he was gone.
The Dyaks went to the tree and showed Stephen the empty remnants of fruit and the mias' droppings. 'There was a female here too,' said Sadong, pointing. 'I will see whether they have left anything at all.' He climbed into the tree, called 'Very few, the fiends,' and tossed down four of the ripest.
When the durians were done Stephen took his roll from behind the saddle, slung it over his shoulder and said, 'You must go back at once, brother, or you will be benighted in the forest. I shall have the sun much longer.'
'God help us,' said Jack, gazing up at the steps rising and rising for ever, 'what a climb. Just now I thought I saw someone a quarter of the way up, but either I was mistaken or he has turned the corner.'
'Goodbye, now, Jack. God bless. Dear Dyaks, goodbye.'
One hundred steps hollowed by a hundred generations of pilgrims, each step dreadfully high. Two hundred; already the forest was one vast green sheet spread out. And somewhere there was a full-grown male orang-utang moving about beneath the leaves. 'I should have given five pounds to have had time to see him properly,' he said; and then, remembering his present wealth, 'No. Much more; very much more.' Two hundred and fifty steps, and in a niche on the cliff side of the path the image of some god had been sadly disfigured. Three hundred, where the curve, always left-handed hitherto, became somewhat irregular, turned faster and showed not only a new stretch of country with the river shining silver a great way off but also another traveller far ahead.
A traveller wearing a shabby brown blanket, it seemed; a weary traveller, walking awkwardly, often on all fours where the steps rose steep, often resting. Three hundred and fifty. Stephen tried to remember Pope's lines about the Monument, and the number of the tall bully's steps. Whatever that number, four hundred of these had defeated Muslim zeal, since here, where a projecting spill of lava allowed the path to change direction, turning through a hundred and forty degrees, there stood a shrine untouched by violence, a dim, calm figure, almost effaced by wind and rain, but still conveying serenity and detachment.
The other traveller had rested by the shrine; now they were closer together, not two hundred yards apart, and now with a mingled incredulity and bubbling delight Stephen saw that the traveller was a mias, an orang- utang. The incredulity vanished when he had brought out his little pocket telescope, but the delight was tempered by a fear that the creature had not yet noticed him - that when it did so it would tear away. To be sure, this was no country for a great arboreal ape to make a sudden disappearance, there being nothing but bare lava and a stunted bush or two, but even so he kept his distance, watching the mias intently. He knew nothing of the ape's powers of hearing, sight or scent; and such a chance might never come again in a thousand years.
Up and up they went, still a cable's length apart; but slowly, for the ape was footsore and despondent. As for Stephen, by the sixth-hundred step his calves and thighs were ready to burst, and at each rise now they forced themselves upon his attention. Up and up, up and up until the ridge was no great way off at last. But before they reached it, the path took another turn; and when he too came round the corner he was on top of the ape. She was sitting on a stone, resting her feet. He scarcely knew what to do; it seemed an intrusion. 'God be with you, ape,' he said in Irish, which in his confusion seemed more appropriate. She turned her head and looked him full in the face; her expression was sad, weary, in no way hostile - remote. A falcon passed low overhead. They both watched it out of sight, and then she heaved herself up and went on, Stephen following. He took the most particular notice of her progression, her muscular movements, the paucity of the gluteus maximus, the odd disposition and contraction of the gastrocnemius, and on the other hand the prodigious breadth of shoulder and the very powerful great arms - clearly an animal made for moving among trees.
They were on the ridge at last, the crater's lip, and before going over and down she looked at him again with what he thought a happier, even a friendly look. He stayed for some moments, letting the pain ebb away from his legs and taking in this wholly unexpected scene: a vast bowl, miles and miles across, with a lake in the middle, a much gentler slope down the inside, trees almost to the top - a landscape of mixed forest interspersed with bamboo groves and wide stretches of grass, particularly by the lake. And down, far down on his left, the Kumai temple, a wisp of smoke rising from a building at its side. From where he stood there was only a path leading down, and a faint one at that; no steps were needed on this moderate fall. But the ape had left it; she was already among the low trees, swarming along with vast heaves, scarcely touching the ground and soon not touching it at all. He saw her shabby red-brown coat vanish among the leaves, travelling straight and fast towards the monastery, where someone was beating on a gong.
He arrived himself as dusk was falling. Much of the temple was ruined, but the severe broad front was whole as well as a large hall behind it, a hall from which a thin remote chant could be heard: across this front stretched what for want of the proper term Stephen thought of as a portico, a narthex, and in this narthex a monk in a worn old saffron robe was sitting by a brazier.
He stood up as Stephen emerged from the trees, reaching the open grass before the temple, and came forward to welcome him. 'Will you take a cup of tea?' he asked, proper greetings having been exchanged.
Ordinarily Stephen took no great delight in that insipid wash, but the Thousand Steps had reduced his pride and he accepted most thankfully. As they walked back and mounted the narthex steps (oh so painfully) he observed that the mias was sitting on the other side of the brazier, not indeed on a stool like the monk's but in a kind of tilted basket-work nest.
Her feet had obviously been washed in a basin of warm water and there was blood on the cloth. Nevertheless the monk said, 'Muong, where are your manners?' and the ape rose high enough to bow.
Stephen returned the bow and said, 'Muong and I came up the Thousand Steps together.'
'Did she indeed go so far down as the durians?' asked the monk, shaking his head. 'I had supposed she was only walking on the higher slope for tilac berries. No wonder her poor feet are so torn. She too will be the better for a cup of tea.'
The ape had looked anxiously from face to face during this conversation; but at the word tea her visage brightened, and from the recesses of her basket she drew out a bowl.
While the monk, whose name was Ananda, was making the tea, and while they were all three drinking it, Stephen studied Muong's face; its varieties of expression were difficult to make out, but presently he could distinguish several, particularly the took of deep affection that she often directed towards the monk.
The chanting inside the temple stopped. The gong sounded three times. 'They are about to meditate,' observed Ananda.
