After a short journey, we encamped for the night on a gravel bank, still within sound of the cataract’s roar. On our way, we paddled by a jagged rock, about twenty feet high, standing in the middle of the stream. Salleh pointed it out to me, and told me that Kling (a hero of Dyak mythology) had with one blow from his biliong (axe) cut its top in two. On the gravel bed a hut of fresh pale green palm fronds had been run up for me to sleep and bathe in. It was very comfortable, with a bamboo bench, some three feet wide, resting against its leaf walls for me to sleep on. Salleh had hung ferns, flowers, and leafy branches on its walls, and had strewn the floor with sweet-smelling leaves. A large expanse of shingle lay all round the hut, and our two boats were tethered to the shore just below. Camp-fires were soon lit here and there for the crew to boil their evening meal of rice. It was nearly full moon; the water rippled over its gravelly bed and moved the sedges in the river with a musical sound. Some palms in the neighbourhood rustled as though a shower of rain were falling, and the millions of leaves of the forest trees, covering the hills and valleys, gave back to the air in perfumed mists the heat that had beaten on them during the day. After dinner, rugs were spread on the pebbles for us to sit on. Our friends, the Dyak and Tanjong chiefs, were invited to join us and have their coffee and cigarettes with us. The moon appeared above the trees; mists began to rise, and in the forest near by we heard the little black and white owl crying for the moon. The Sarawak people call it Pung-Gok, and the sound of its two notes, musical and tender, made us feel happy and yet sad. This was the moment for our Dyak and Tanjong friends to tell us some of their legends. “How about the flood?” said Mr. Bampfylde to Salleh. (I think Mr. Bampfylde knew what was to come.) “Oh yes,” replied Salleh, “I know all about the flood. It is a true story and I will tell it you. “When the world was very old and the people very wicked, the heart of the great god Patara grew sick in heaven. He sent two dragons, man and wife, to the earth, which were so large that they could hook their tails in heaven and hang their heads to the earth. They ate up the paddy all over the world, so that many of the people died of starvation, and after doing all this evil, they hoisted themselves back into heaven by their tails. At that time there were seven Rajahs in the world,--Rajahs Sinddit, Niuka, Nugu, Amban, Kagjup, Lubah, and Umbar. Rajah Sinddit, the eldest, said to his brothers, ‘We must kill these two dragons, for never in all these years have I been so hungry.’ The brothers inquired how he suggested killing these monsters. ‘With arrows poisoned with upas,’ he said, and they commenced making preparations so as to be in readiness for the dragons’ next visit.