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naked boy was standing between two of the huts, flying a green beetle on a piece of thread like a kite.
He yelled at the sight of the Europeans, whereat more children appeared from nowhere. The old
Burman guided the canoe to a jetty made of a single palm-trunk laid in the mud–it was covered with
barnacles and so gave foothold–and sprang out and helped Elizabeth ashore. The others followed
with the bags and cartridges, and Flo, as she always did on these occasions, fell into the mud and
sank as deep as the shoulder. A skinny old gentleman wearing a magenta paso, with a mole on his
cheek from which four yard-long grey hairs sprouted, came forward shikoing and cuffing the heads of
the children who had gathered round the jetty.
‘The village headman,’ Flory said.
The old man led the way to his house, walking ahead with an extraordinary crouching gait, like a
letter L upside down–the result of rheumatism combined with the constant shikoing needed in a minor
Government official. A mob of children marched rapidly after the Europeans, and more and more
dogs, all yapping and causing Flo to shrink against Flory’s heels. In the doorway of every hut clusters
of moon-like, rustic faces gaped at the ‘Ingaleikma’. The village was darkish under the shade of
broad leaves. In the rains the creek would flood, turning the lower parts of the village into a squalid
wooden Venice where the villagers stepped from their front doors into their canoes.
The headman’s house was a little bigger than the others, and it had a corrugated iron roof, which, in
spite of the intolerable din it made during the rains, was the pride of the headman’s life. He had
forgone the building of a pagoda, and appreciably lessened his chances of Nirvana, to pay for it. He
hastened up the steps and gently kicked in the ribs a youth who was lying asleep on the veranda. Then
he turned and shikoed again to the Europeans, asking them to come inside.
‘Shall we go in?’ Flory said. ‘I expect we shall have to wait half an hour.’
‘Couldn’t you tell him to bring some chairs out on the veranda?’ Elizabeth said. After her
experience in Li Yeik’s house she had privately decided that she would never go inside a native house
again, if she could help it.
There was a fuss inside the house, and the headman, the youth and some women dragged forth two
chairs decorated in an extraordinary manner with red hibiscus flowers, and also some begonias
growing in kerosene tins. It was evident that a sort of double throne had been prepared within for the
Europeans. When Elizabeth had sat down the headman reappeared with a teapot, a bunch of very
long, bright green bananas, and six coal-black cheroots. But when he had poured her out a cup of tea
Elizabeth shook her head, for the tea looked, if possible, worse even than Li Yeik’s.
The headman looked abashed and rubbed his nose. He turned to Flory and asked him whether the
young thakinma would like some milk in her tea. He had heard that Europeans drank milk in their tea.
The villagers should, if it were desired, catch a cow and milk it. However, Elizabeth still refused the
tea; but she was thirsty, and she asked Flory to send for one of the bottles of soda-water that Ko S’la
had brought in his bag. Seeing this, the headman retired, feeling guiltily that his preparations had been
insufficient, and left the veranda to the Europeans.
Elizabeth was still nursing her gun on her knees, while Flory leaned against the veranda rail
pretending to smoke one of the headman’s cheroots. Elizabeth was pining for the shooting to begin.
She plied Flory with innumerable questions.