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decided to reconstruct the shelter. One Sunday he moved all the boxes out of it and laid a framework of bamboo on the ground to ensure a proper circulation of air. Over this he put a heavy tarpaulin taken from the estate compound, and then rearranged the boxes on top of it. Another tarpaulin went over the boxes and was lashed down firmly with wire rope. A third tarpaulin he incorporated in the roof. He also repaired the screens.
    Thereafter, he only went to the place once a month to make sure that all was in order. He would have gone more often if he could have trusted himself; but, rather to his surprise, he had found patience easier to cultivate than discretion.
    In spite of his initial resolution, it had proved hard not to make an inventory of what was in the shelter and keep it in his tin trunk. He knew that such a document was premature and pointless. He knew that, if through some mischance, Mr. Wright happened to see it and ask questions, his lies would be unconvincing. Yet, the temptation had persisted. There had also been an insane desire to confide in Sumitra, to bask in her admiration and flattery, and bind her future more securely to his. He knew that she would certainly tell her mother, who would tell the father, who worked in the bank at Bukit Amphu and was a notorious chatterbox; but that temptation, too, had continued to haunt him.
    During the second year he had other troubles. His mother died; and two of the cases resting on the lower tarpaulin were attacked by termites. Fortunately, he noticed the fact in good time and was able to minimise the damage. The ammunition boxes were metal and, having given them a thick coat of bitumen paint, he moved them to the bottom of the stack. The damaged boxes he repaired with strips of teak; and sprayed all the wood containers with a powerful solution of benzine hexachloride.
    The second year went by; and the third. General Templer's policy of winning the co-operation and goodwill of the people of Malaya, and enlisting them in the fight against the terrorists, began to succeed; and, as success snowballed into victory, curfews were lifted and road blocks removed. Areas free of terrorists were declared 'white', and restrictions on unescorted civil transport movements cancelled.
    The day that the province in which he worked was declared 'white', Girija wrote to England for a new bus body catalogue. The following Sunday, he went to the shelter and spent two of the happiest hours of his life, making an inventory.
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    WHEN THE rubber estates in the Pangkalan district had latex for shipment, they generally notified the Anglo-Malay Transport Company at the port of Kuala Pangkalan. The company would then send their trucks to collect the latex, store it temporarily in their godowns, and finally, when instructions came through from Singapore, ship it out in one of their big motor junks.
    The founder, manager and sole proprietor of this useful enterprise was a Chinese, Mr. Tan Siow Mong.
    Mr. Tan had been educated at a mission school in Macao, and spoke Hokkien and Portuguese as well as Cantonese, Malay and English. His father had owned a fishing junk, and had divided his working years between snapper fishing and carrying cargoes of rattan up the coast to Hong Kong. When he died, in the early thirties, Mr. Tan and his two brothers had taken over the junk and turned to the more lucrative business of opium smuggling. They had been caught, in the end, by a British gunboat, and their junk had been impounded. By that time, they had had a substantial sum of money saved and could accept the forfeiture of the junk with equanimity. However, a family council had considered it advisable for the Tans to leave the China Coast for a while, and seek their fortunes elsewhere. One brother had gone to Singapore, another to Manila. Tan Siow Mong, the eldest, had taken his mother to Kuala Pangkalan. There, with his share of the family capital, he had started to deal in copra and lend