My Cot Was Most
Comfortable, But I Failed To Sleep.
The forest was full of quaint, busy
noises, broken in upon occasionally by the hoot of the "spectre bird,"
and the long, low, plaintive cry of some animal.
All the white residents in the Malacca Settlements have been greatly
excited about a tragedy which has just occurred at the Dindings, off
this coast, in which Mr. Lloyd, the British superintendent, was
horribly murdered by the Chinese; his wife, and Mrs. Innes, who was on
a visit to her, narrowly escaping the same fate. Lying awake I could
not help thinking of this, and of the ease with which the Resident
could be overpowered and murdered by any of our followers who might
have a grudge against him, when, as I thought, the door behind my head
from the back ladder was burst open, and my cot and I came down on the
floor at the head, the simple fact being, that the head-rope, not
having been properly secured, gave way with a run. An hour afterward
the foot-ropes gave way, and I was deposited on the floor altogether,
and was soon covered with small ants.
Early in the morning the apes began to call to each other with a
plaintive "Hoo-houey," and in the gray dawn I saw an iguana fully four
feet long glide silently down the trunk of a tree, the branches of
which were loaded with epiphytes. Captain Shaw asked the imaum of one
of the mosques of Malacca about alligator's eggs a few days ago, and
his reply was, that the young that went down to the sea became
alligators, and those which came up the rivers became iguanas.
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