A wonderful being, called Tunku Ismael, was left to guard the Fort and me. He was a Serip, a descendant of the Prophet; he was thin and taller than most Malays, and had beautiful ascetic features, dark piercing eyes, and a hooked nose. He was always dressed in white, and wore the white skull cap that followers of the Prophet often wear, instead of the more cumbrous turban. This charming old gentleman and I were friends, for I always met him during my many visits to Simanggang. Mr. Maxwell’s little dog, called Fury, a half-breed Yorkshire terrier, a valiant little creature, old and toothless, brave as a lion and helpless as a mouse, was also left in the Fort, and an old Malay, called Sunok, bent double with age, appointed himself my bodyguard. He slept at my door, and accompanied me in my daily walks round the Malay village and through plantations of sugar-cane and fruit orchards that lay around this settlement. Of course, Ima was with me, and she sent to the village for an old lady of her acquaintance, whose name was Dalima (meaning pomegranate), to come and help her wait on me. My days went by as regularly as clockwork. I got up at 5.30 a.m., sat on the terrace outside the Fort to watch the sunrise, and with Sunok went round and round the paths and through sugar-cane plantations, etc. Then I came in to bathe, have a cup of tea, and receive the Malay women of the place. After this I had my solitary breakfast, served by one of our Malay servants, who had been left behind to attend on me. From 12 to 2 I had my siesta, then more visits from the natives until 5, when it was cool enough to go out again with Sunok until 6.30--the hour of sunset more or less all the year round. Then, after a hasty meal spent in fighting with mosquitoes which fell in clouds on to my food, I made a hurried exit inside my mosquito curtains to escape from these pests. Here, as elsewhere, the rats were numerous. They almost nightly stole the wick of my night-light from out the tumbler of cocoa-nut oil. They ran away with the candles placed on chairs by my bedside, and were to be seen in companies scurrying in and out of the guns placed in the port-holes of my bedroom. Sometimes, as I was preparing for the night, the rats would sit upon the guns, their heads on one side, and brush their whiskers, as though they were taking stock of my toilet. Fury used to lie at my feet, inside the mosquito curtains, and it required all my persuasion to prevent him from sallying forth on the warpath against the rats, some of which were almost as big as himself. I dreaded the poor little animal meeting some horrible fate in an encounter with these formidable visitors. The rats, attracted by the candles and cocoa-nut oil, came in such numbers after a few days, that I asked Ima and Dalima to put their mattresses in my room and keep me company during the night. When first this measure was broached to Dalima, she said, “I quite understand your being frightened, because the enemy