When the threshing commences, the services of the ever useful buffalo are once more demanded. A threshing floor is first prepared. A piece of ground is cleared, and then covered with a plaster made of soil, cow-dung, and water. After a few days this pasty mixture sets into a hard, firm coating. A tall, straight bamboo is erected in the centre of the floor, and a few good heads of rice are fastened at the top for the birds to eat. A roughly carved figure of a man, jokingly christened "the grandfather," is added by way of decoration. Two buffaloes are used, which are yoked side by side. The inner one is loosely fastened on the inside to the central pole, and on the outside to his fellow-worker, while both are guided by a half-naked man or boy, who runs round and round behind the animals, holding on to the tail of the outer one. The threshing takes place on moonlight nights, and rarely does the moon shine on a more interesting or curious scene. The buffaloes pace on in their monotonous round, regardless of their screaming driver or of his vigorous jerking of their hindmost appendages. In the heaps of straw tumble all the merry, laughing urchins of the neighbourhood. The air resounds with the sounds of music, fiddles and tom-toms, dulcimers and drums. Joke and song pass from mouth to mouth. Here glows the red end of a cigarette; there a shiny brown back glistens in the moonlight. The large meek eyes of the animals stare through the gloom. Cocoa-nut oil lanterns vie with the ruddy flames of the fitful bonfires in lending more light to the scene, but rarely do more than tinge their own dark smoke a tawny hue. Fire-flies light up the deep shadows under the long drooping leaves of the palms, or mirror their own pale light in the bits of shiny straw that flutter in the evening breeze. Through all these varied shades of semi-darkness come laughter and song, the cry of the driver, the creaking of the pole, the firm, steady footfall of the patient beasts, the chirping of crickets, the croaking of frogs, and a million other sounds that tell of life and motion in the late hours of a tropical night. [Illustration: PLOUGHING A RICE-FIELD.]