It was almost midnight. “I ask your leave to go, Rajah Ranee,” my Malay companion said. “I hope you will sleep well.” She walked away in the moonlight to her home in the village below, and I went to bed and dreamed about the Haji and his moonshine, whilst the talking trees outside told their secrets to the stars. FOOTNOTES: [10] An idea entertained by some Sarawak Malays that the blood of those who lead holy lives is white instead of red. CHAPTER XXII One of my places of predilection in the country is called Lundu. It differs from most of the other settlements in Sarawak by the fact that a good deal of agriculture goes on in the neighbourhood, and that the country is flat near the Government Bungalow. We embarked for this place in the _Aline_, and although the water is shallow on the bar we managed to time our arrival at high tide, when the nine feet necessary to float our yacht enabled us to steer our way comfortably into the river, the banks of which are sandy at the mouth. Groves of talking trees grew close to the sea, and tufts of coarse grass were dotted over the sands. As we proceeded farther the soil became muddy and nipa palm forests appeared. We could see the mountain of Poe, three thousand feet in height, towering inland. It is one of the frontiers between the Dutch country and Sarawak, so that the Rajah and the Dutch Government each possess half of this mountain. It is not so precipitous as is Santubong, and has forest trees growing thickly right up to the top. Fishing stakes were stretched across some of the sandbanks at the mouth, but not a living soul was to be seen on the sea-shore. We steamed through a broad morass, crossed in every direction by little streams travelling down to the main river. Farther on we noticed, about twenty or thirty yards from the banks, a tree full of yellow blossoms, like a flaming torch in the green gloom of the jungle. No one could tell me what these blossoms were, and I was deeply disappointed at our inability to reach the tree and obtain some of its branches, which might as yet be unknown to science. It would have taken our sailors many hours to hew their way to it, so we contented ourselves with looking through opera glasses, across a jungle of vegetation, at the gorgeous blossoms, although that did not help us to discover what the tree was.[11] A little farther on were huts built near the river, and we could see men sitting on the rungs of ladders leading from their open doors to the water.