Free Dangerous Waters by Rosalind Brett

before, but now she was incurious. She saw a low wooden bed covered neatly by a sarong in bright batik, an orderly row of pots and gourds and a grass mat. Over the doorway, just inside the room, hung a bunch of dried leaves and mosses which were intended to repel evil spirits.
    Pete said, “ I ’ ll get your case and some cl ean water. You ’ ll be all right here. ”
    Actually, that was the last time he spoke to her that evening. The case and a pot of water arrived, and later on she was served with a surprisingly good omelette. These people knew nothing about omelettes and she guessed Pete had cooked it himself. She could have put questions about it in sign language to the shy young girl who brought the dish of food, but that might have started some sort of suspicion in the village. Here, they had to believe in the joint permit.
    She applied some calomine lotion, wished she could undress and get into pyjamas. It grew noisy outside and she came into the doorway and watched a feast which was in progress down in the cl earing, about fifty yards away. There was a huge camp-fire with a pig roasting in the flames on a spit. There were pots of rice, yellow lumps of vegetable. The villagers were there in numbers, all wearing sarongs while the women also wore the baju, a tight Malay blouse. Their triangular faces gleamed in the firelight, they laughed and chattered, and one or two of them were encouraged to start the evening ’ s fun even before the feast. They danced and turned somersaults, wrestled and laughed at their own antics.
    Pete sat there. She could see him talking with a venerable village elder and applauding the performers. Someone cut the roast pig and gave him a plateful of meat and a bowl of rice. He ate it as they did, the meat with his fingers, the rice with some wooden implement. Except that when he stood he was half as tall again as most of them he might, in the firelight have been taken for some important member of the village just returned from civilization.
    Dully, Terry turned back into the room and lay on the hard bed. He didn ’ t want her down there with him, probably found it a tremendous relief to know she was tucked away up here, out of his way. Not that Terry blamed him. However you looked at it, he had saved her life this afternoon and she had rewarded him meanly, by suspecting an ordinary friendly gesture. Since then she hadn ’ t been able to meet his glance.
    The noise outside stopped early; Pete ’ s doing, she supposed. She waited, her heart somewhere up near her throat, for him to come into the hut and spread a blanket on the floor. But an hour passed, two hours, and the only sounds were the occasional yapping of the small Malayan dogs, the eternal singing of cicadas and the usual creaking in the walls and the roof of banana leaves. So he had decided not to come into the hut; no doubt it felt good to be free of her for a few hours. Was he sleeping, or perhaps lounging in the already familiar attitude and thinking of the fair woman named Astrid, to whom he was bringing gifts?
    Terry tossed uneasily. She didn ’ t want to think of Pete as a person, still less as a man. And she certainly didn ’ t want to think about his blonde friend. Neither of them really had anything to do with Terry Fremont.
    She had slept for about an hour when the rain roused her. Tumbling, cannonading rain which sounded as if it would never cease. It kept her awake till the thick grey dawn, when she looked out upon a deserted lake which stole up the stilts of the house and threatened to submerge everything that grew less than three feet from the ground.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    THE Malays in that last village in Vinan territory could not have been more charming. When, at about noon, the rain stopped, they waded out and exchanged cheerful greetings with each other, hung their grass mats on the dripping branches and swept their rooms clear of mud and debris beaten down from the roofs. When Pete came to Terry ’ s hut he