My first news of the war came at 4.15 on the morning of the 8th, when the telephone shook me from my sleep. A young lieutenant of the Perak Volunteers was speaking from Sitiawan Aerodrome. "The balloon's gone up," said he, "and I propose to take over the Field for Defence." His news, half-expected though it was, made me realise fully, for the first time, the responsibilities of my position. I dressed, not quite sure why I did it. But I couldn't in all fairness get into my bed again whilst the war was all nice and new, and thousands of other fellows were at work already. I decided that I ought to attend muster of my coolies, and was relieved to find that none of the overseers or men knew the ominous news.

I attended muster every morning after that, coming back to shave and eat at 5.30 or 6 a.m. I was anxious to maintain close contact with all my men, as the slightest scare would panic the lot of them. And everything went well for ten days.

My precious Civil Defence Scheme was put into force, and I was able to operate a rota for shifts which had taken me many nights at home to devise, nights spent in arranging provision for times of prayer for the Mohammedans, different times for the meals of Tamils, Malays, and Chinese, and one whole day per week free. Equal shares of day and night shifts had to be given to every man. Oh, yes, I was very proud of that rota. Strangely enough, even that worked for ten days too.

We had to rush to finish off military works and shelters, main roads that were under repair, and other jobs which might hinder the military. A steady stream of traffic headed north towards Grik, and guns and troops rumbled along the road between Ipoh and Taiping. The rest of the evacuees came in from Kedah.

After dinner on the evening of the 11th of December, feeling the need for a change and a little Company, I went to the Club. I entered the lounge, expecting to see two or three members reading the magazines, but the room was crowded. A number of Press war correspondents were discussing the turn of events with the District Officer, and telling of their experiences. A gloomy trio of middle-aged men were standing beneath a heavily shaded lamp, talking in low voices. A nursing sister and a teacher were sitting on a divan, and they hailed me as I made my way towards them.

"What about a dance?" I suggested, and turned to the radiogram. There was no reply, and I looked at the District Officer, but he had not heard me.

"Anything wrong?" I inquired.

Dick Prior, one of the middle-aged trio, replied :

"Haven't you heard?" be asked; "they've sunk the Prince of Wales and Repulse ."

I remember the cold sensation to my face as the blood left my cheeks, to be followed almost instantly by a burning flush which seemed to dry my very eyes. I looked at the crowd, all talking in low voices in the dimly-lit room, as if a corpse were laid in state near by. A faint exclamation was all my mouth could utter at the moment; I lit a cigarette, and, feeling strangely weary, sought a chair.

"What do you think will happen now?" asked one of the girls nervously.

"Happen?" I echoed; "what do you mean?"

"Well, they were the only big ships we had here," she replied. "The Japs can land anywhere now."

I laughed, reassured her, and said that the war was only three days old. Anything could happen.

With a rueful smile I looked again at the sorry figures in the room. This was not my idea of the change and the company I should have had when I came down to the Club. I tried to enter into normal conversation but there was no response

At last I could stand it no longer. I went to the radiogram and selected a record. The quickstep sounded artificial and empty in that atmosphere, but one of the girls laughed at the impertinence of it, and her friend started talking.

"I say, let's dance," I suggested in an undertone, and my partner rose unwillingly. Dancing was difficult owing to the darkened room and the groups of men on the floor, but we navigated the route fairly successfully and felt much better for the effort.

The record stopped, and I changed it for a waltz. I raised inquiring eyebrows to my partner standing near by, but she seemed dubious.

"Do you think we ought to dance?" she queried, "when the news is so bad?

"Of course we should," I laughed. "Heavens! What can we do about it?"

But as we were making a circuit of a gloomy group one of the men spoke up, with a voice full of emotion, loud above the sound of the music.

"My God, how you can dance on an occasion like this defeats me."

The other girl snapped off the radiogram. All eyes turned on the speaker and me. I felt the colour rise, and I forgot that I was a mere boy compared to the others present. I told them that we in England had lost the Courageous, the Royal Oak, the Empress of Britain, and scores of others; we had lost France, suffered Dunkirk, had nothing every day but bad news, bad news, and more bad news, for two years. And on the third day of the war here, we were losing heart.

When I had finished I was breathless and hot, and I crossed to the radiogram and put on a record.

"Please, please dance," I urged my partner, and she agreed. As we moved around the room I sorted my thoughts, ignoring the others there, and my emotion left me. I discovered that my partner was looking at me, so I conjured a smile, and she smiled back at me.

"They deserved it," she whispered, and I felt better.

We put on record after record, and old Dick Prior offered me a cigar. Another man asked the second girl to dance, and a young married couple came into the Club and joined us. The atmosphere brightened a little, and we went home about midnight in better spirits.

On the following Saturday a Brewster Buffalo made a forced landing and the twenty-year-old pilot, an Australian named O'Mara, was my guest for the night. He had been sent to Penang to engage the Japanese who were bombing the island, and he claimed four machines before he ran into a large escort of fighters. With admirable frankness he told me that he had lost his head, and the aircraft turned over. When he righted her he made for his base in Ipoh, but lost his direction and made the landing. Early next morning a small gang of coolies was very proud to clear away the goal posts from the Polo Ground where he had sat down, and a large crowd watched him take off as the morning mists evaporated under the rising sun. That was the only aircraft I saw over Kuala Kangsar.

Horsley returned from Sitiawan Aerodrome for a night's rest in his own bed. He was very low in spirits and inclined to pessimism.

"What do you think of it, bo'?" he asked me.

"Oh, you can't tell yet," I replied. "They've walked through Thailand, but we have troops on the Thai border."

He seemed to reflect a little, and did not continue the discussion; it was true; the fight was but a week old. Perhaps the situation would be stabilized. Certainly troops were passing constantly through the town and up the Grik Road.

Horsley stayed in Kuala Kangsar for two or three days only, for at three o'clock one morning my telephone rang, and I jumped out of bed to answer its shrill summons. The State Engineer was on the other end.

"Bailey, can you tell me if Horsley's at home?" he asked.

"Yes: can't you make him hear?"

"No; he must be a hell of a sound sleeper, for I've been ringing for half an hour. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to dress and go along there."

I took the message. We were to evacuate all vehicles of every description from the coast to a village thirty miles inland.

As I walked round to Horsley's quarters in the cold night air the significance of the order took shape in the flurry of thoughts and fears which occupied my mind. The coastal area of our district included Lumut and Sitiawan, and a single road was the only means of communication with the rest of the country. To remove all cars, vans, lorries, motorcycles, etc., was to isolate the whole coastal region. No food, fuel, services could reach the coastal towns by road unless carried on foot for thirty miles. The towns, villages, and estates would be sterilised.

I reached the house and hammered on the glass-panelled door with my closed fists. After a few moments I could hear footsteps pattering downstairs, and my chief opened the door.

"Good God, I thought the noise was machine-guns," Horsley grumbled. He looked weary, and I felt sorry to have to disturb his much-needed sleep.

"Sorry, but the State Engineer said I'd to waken you and give you this message." I passed on the instruction; Horsley gasped, and a low exclamation of dismay came involuntarily from his lips.

"I can't do it," he said at last; "they can't realise what it means."

He invited me in, and we discussed the drastic steps he had been told to take. He decided to ring the State Engineer again to make sure that the order was understood.

There was no mistake. Every vehicle that might be used as transport was to be deployed to a position outside the limit of the coastal area. No vehicle was to be allowed to return.

"I'll do it, but it means disaster," he said.

Horsley left on the following morning for Sitiawan, leaving me once more to run the District whilst he carried out his terrible task.

On the 14th December Robert Partridge came to see me. He had been given half an hour's notice to clear out of his home in Grik, owing to the rapid advance of the Japanese, and had left as he was, not even bringing a change of clothes. In his anxiety to do his duty he had used up his precious half-hour in seeking his labour force. All had ran into the jungle, leaving a young sub-overseer only. These two boys reported to me for instructions. Partridge was heartbroken, and I knew the reason why; he had lost his savings, his few possessions, and would not be able to marry. I was too upset to say much to him, but I gave him three lorries and told him to go as far up the Grik Road as the Military would allow, pick up the remnants of the Labour Force and settle them in the Coolie Lines nearer Kuala Kangsar. On the next day I sent up a heavy lorry filled with rice, and wages for a few of the men who had missed payment at pay-day. The lorry never returned.

Horsley rang up from Sitiawan Aerodrome to ask for all the gelignite I could give him from the Store. He had received instructions to blow up the aerodrome and its defences - including the work he had been doing but a few days before.

My men in Kuala Kangsar were calm, and when a party of engineers under Major Wakeham met me on 15th December I was thankful that I could rely on them.

Major Wakeham had instructions to prepare the bridges of my District for demolition. These included the Iskandar Bridge, built in 1929, a big job of arched girder construction, crossing the River Perak, Victoria Railway Bridge, which was an equally large bridge half a mile upstream, and the Blanja Pontoon Bridge, crossing the same wide river by means of floating steel cylinder pontoons on the Batu-Gajah-Taiping loop road. He had a handful of Asiatic Volunteers, and no materials except explosives. We fixed up shifts to ensure twenty-four-hour working of both labour and lorries, and then began the most intensive rush I have so far experienced. They wanted timber and nails, wire, buckets, string, electric batteries, cable, petrol, lorries and coolies, an office, God knows what. Wakeham would ring up in his casual way and ask in his quiet voice for something, which probably I could have got in a few days in peace time if he had signed a requisition, but which he wanted in an hour without requsition or even money. I just had to get it, and there was no argument. I threw caution to the winds, walked into a sawmill one day and took it over, as well as the wood which I had to have cut down, and hoped that soon I should have some money with which to pay. Petrol was issued from the jealously-guarded pump in the workshop yard, and I had one anxious day when we had about twenty gallons left to fill up probably twenty lorries, and the supply lorry which I had ordered without order or funds was held up by an air raid in Ipoh. But it came, and that was the only occasion when I should have had courage to admit that I nearly fainted with sheer relief. Then at last Colonel Lloyd, Wakeham's superior officer, gave me one thousand dollars hard cash, and on the next day ten thousand dollars followed it. The chief clerk, a Tamil of the Special Grade Clerical Service, and as full of routine and red tape as any Government Officer, recited General Orders to me, according to which I was only allowed two hundred dollars in the safe at any time. I knew the rules, but he didn't see my point, so that he refused to hold the key to the second lock. I had to keep both keys, and I had visions of a gang breaking into the wooden P.W.D. Office and removing the money. I worked out how long it would take me to pay back should it be lost.

The Chinese shopkeepers in the town shut their doors, and my coolies ran out of rice. Almost every time I inspected a job one or more of the men asked me to get them this staple food. At all events these faithful, splendid little Tamils must be kept at the demolitions until they were completed. I was at my wits' end as to how to provide the rice, and so decided to ask the District Officer to help me.

The D.O., still his cheery self, heard my story with sympathy and reassured me in his fatherly, kindly way. After making a number of calls on the telephone he finally informed me that I could send a lorry to pick up four bags of rice.

In the afternoon the small lorry reported at the P.W.D. Office. Four bags filled the back, and there, mounting guard over them, looking very important, was the foolish, weakly, shambling lorry cleaner, Zakariah.

I got in beside the driver and we went along to the main coolie lines near the workshop. I told Zakariah to call the coolies, and he scuttered off in his flapping plimsoles, holding his long sarong at knee-height, and shouting summonses as he passed down the lines.

The inhabitants of Kuala Sangsar witnessed the unusual sight of a young European sitting on a sack of rice on the back of a lorry, filling coolies' bags and hats and newspapers with rice carefully measured with a chapuk measure to make it spin out, and Zakariah fussing round, trimming the ranks, calling for silence, pushing the coolies forward one by one to receive their rations. He, Zakariah, was an important man that day, for was not the tuan sitting in his lorry?

The Engineers received instructions to blow up or immobilise Cinderoh Dam, and one morning I had to go up the Grik Road to the 50th mile to see the Captain of the small unit sent for that purpose. The Japs had already come down to within a mile of Lenggong, and a Japanese reconnaissance plane flew overhead without opposition to see what we were doing. Mercifully we were well covered by rubber and jungle trees. The Engineers had had no sleep for four days, and had been living on pomeloes, a large fruit like a grape-fruit. That morning they had caught a stray goat and were going to have a feast.

Well, we finished the job, and Wakeham had high praise for the coolies who had worked like slaves to do it. On the 18th of December the Public Works Department, Kuala Kangsar, having stripped itself bare of materials and completed the preparation for the destruction of its best engineering works, packed up shop and ceased to exist. My own work finished at seven o'clock in the evening and I returned home.

I had barely had dinner when an architect from Taiping P.W.D. came up the drive in his Riley. He was exhausted, hungry, nerve-wracked, and he asked to be put up for the night. With him were his sais and boy, who had to be fed and accommodated. They had got out of Taiping in a convoy, and although I did not then fully appreciate the strain and difficulty of such a journey, I was to realise it in the near future. I had little food in the house, for my Taiping suppliers had not delivered that week, and local shops were mostly closed. However, I had plenty of drink in stock, and we scratched a meal together.

At nine o'clock we had another guest; he was an engineer from Kedah who had brought a convoy of six lorries from Taiping. They had been machine gunned, the lorries had been giving trouble, and the whole inner tube and tyre on a back wheel of his own car had been torn to shreds. His immediate wish was for a beer and a cigarette. The meal we gave him was very nondescript indeed, and when I discovered that he had a Chinese girl in his car who also required food and a pallet, I was at my wits' end.

Ah Chang, who had sent his wife and children into the forest, was showing signs of distress. For four days my own irregularity at mealtimes, my midnight calls, the unexpected extra guests for a hasty meal or drink or bath, and the great tension, had been having their effect on him. Now his face was drawn and very pale, and he gave a despairing gesture at each new order or tax on his ability. But he never let me down. He fed and slept the Asiatics in the servants' quarters and scraped food together for us; he rigged up beds and kept us going with everything we desired, until at midnight he just had to give in. Before he went to bed I looked in at his kitchen. He and Hussein, my sais, had just about one pound of rice left - they had been giving it to the others. That was too much for me. I remembered that I had left part of one bag of rice at the workshop after distribution, and I decided to let them have it.

I rang up the workshop, and my heart swelled at the sound of Brawn's voice, for he had been at work since seven that morning. My orders were for him to refuel, grease round, tune up and test the six Taiping lorries at once, unload all redundant supplies, and load up with all valuable materials from ths workshop. He had also to find a tyre and tube for the damaged car. The lorries and car would be leaving at six o'clock on the following morning. I expected protests, for admittedly my orders were unreasonable, but Brawn replied: "Very good, sir; I shall stay on the job until it's done". I felt proud, triumphantly proud, as I hung up the receiver, for loyalty such as that was far beyond a man's duty, and had been won by me for myself alone.

I had mentioned the rice to Brawn, and he came round with it strapped on the carrier of his old Ford Eight. We divided it between the servants, and Brawn and I had a very warm chat behind the house. He asked for permission to evacuate as soon as his job was done, and I gave it on condition that he made contact with the nearest P.W.D. Office for duties. This he promised.

I was to have other callers that night. Shortly after Brawn left, Robert Partridge and a young Indian draughtsman named Nathaniel asked to speak to me. I was unaccountably unwilling to see them; possibly because Partridge had confided so much in me in the past, and no man enjoys the sight of a friend on the verge of tears; or perhaps because I knew that they were coming to me for advice, which I felt I was too young and immature to give. However, they were my men, as well as my friends, and it was my duty to help them.

Both men, even younger than I, were in a pitiful state of emotion. They asked for instructions, as they said that the Office Staff had gone, and most of the Labour force and overseers with them This was a blow to me, for there had been no signs of panic in the town that day. I asked Partridge what he intended to do, knowing the answer before he gave it. Of course he wanted to go to Malacca, where he could look after the girl he had hoped to marry. Nathaniel wanted to strike southwards too, for his parents were there.

In the ordinary way I had no powers to allow them to leave the District, but their work was finished. I gave them my permission, on condition that they reported to the first P.W.D. Office possible. They took my hands. Our farewell may have been unusual, but it was quite excusable. Asiatics are very emotional, and Partridge was half Asiatic, and his experiences had told heavily on his powers of resistance. When they left, I wondered how many more of my staff would be coming to me to tax my mind and heart.

I rang the office, which I had left that day working smoothly on my rota. A Chinese clerk replied. This surprised me, as he had been on duty since 8 a m. that day, and Heaven knows what time it was then. One or two in the morning, I think.

"What's wrong, Mr. Tok Seng?" I queried.

"I don't know, sir" - a trifle excitedly I thought - "but nobody has been to relieve Maniam and me today. Is anything serious happening, sir? The whole town's in a panic."

"As far as I know everything is in order," I replied, for the Argyll and Sutherlands had been holding the Japanese for three days on the Grik Road; a detachment had come into Kuala Kangsar two days earlier for a rest, and was most optimistic on the situation, in spite of the absence of further reinforcements.

"Well, please, sir, may we go home, for we haven't slept for twenty hours, and we are afraid to go to sleep with the office open."

I told them to go home, and come back late on the next day, open the office, and await my arrival.

Surely I could have some sleep now: my eyes were leaden and smarting; I felt empty, weak, bereft of everything.

The telephone rang again; it was Major Wakeham.

"It just occurred to me that perhaps you haven't had time to find out the position up north because of the busy time you've had," he hinted cautiously, for the Fifth Column was never so thriving as amongst the Asiatics.

"No, I thought everything was OK.," I replied.

"Not so good," Wakeham said. "Have you made any arrangements for yourself?"

It had never occurred to me. Life had been such a hurly-burly, my work and the worries of my men, the evacuees, the increasing demands of the engineers, all these things had so occupied me that I had had no time to stop and think of my own position. Now where do I stand, I thought; what do I do next?

Wakeham supplied the answer. "You'd better make your own arrangements, for it may mean an hour, or three hours, or a day."

"Thanks for thinking about me," I said, for he had his own job to do.

"Not at all - we've taken your time, and it's the least I could do for you."

It was no good trying anything then. The house was a total black-out, and I was almost asleep on my feet. I went to bed, and the engineer from Kedah slept on the hardwood floor in the lounge, across the front door, with his rifle by his side.

No more than two hours later we were awake, and had some tea and fruit - there was nothing else in the house - and I started to pack my trunks. I was able to pack one cabin trunk to capacity and one small attache case full of papers and letters. The rest had to be stuffed into the remaining space in the car. Thank God I bought a big car, I thought, for I was able to take every bit of clothing, my two wireless sets, my books, and even my cutlery in the boot, the whole of the back seat, and the front, leaving just enough room for myself to drive. I only left my furniture, pots and pans, pictures and curtains, glassware, and the empty trunks and tin-lined cases.

I was filling my car when Horsley came in from Sitiawan. He was a physical wreck, and I forgot myself when I saw his plight. He told me that he had been wearing the same clothes for three days - a terrible thing in the heat and dust of the tropics - and that he had had little or no sleep. I asked him how he had fared, and for the first time I saw in his face what were obviously signs of emotion.

"The Chinese down there are arming themselves with bamboo spears," he said, "and they think we're running away. One man came to me as I was blowing up petrol pumps, and asked: 'Does this mean that our protectors are deserting us?' I couldn't look him in the face."

I passed on Wakeham's friendly warning, and my chief went home to gather his things. He wasted no time, and took very little. I don't know how many thousand dollars' worth of goods he left behind, but they were the accumulations of seventeen years in Malaya.

It was then that I began to see Horsley for the man he really was.

Later in the morning the State Engineer and others came through from Taiping, and we were discussing the next move when a small deputation of members of my staff came to my quarters. They were clerks and overseers on monthly pay, and wanted their pay up to date, and permission to evacuate. I heard the full story from them; the chief clerk, the most respected man in Kuala Kangsar, had taken fright and fled to the forests. Chelliah, the man of authority, the trouble-maker, had run away also. Other responsible Asiatic staff had caught the breath of panic, and had disappeared. The coolies could do nothing, their bosses had gone and they were left without a soul to advise or lead them. Some had stayed in the coolie lines, but the majority had run away like so many sheep. I was to see many more examples of this wholesale panic before the year was out.

Only the faithful and most loyal had remained to take further orders. It opened my eyes to see who they were. There was Ramasamy, a weedy Tamil who had been in trouble many times for theft, and had been in danger of dismissal on several occasions. There was Muttiah, the biggest crook of a storekeeper you could ever wish to meet. A young lad whose name I forget, a clerk in the Building branch, was blubbering in a pitiful way. I was heartened to see that the men I had trusted had stayed on: for, in addition to Brawn, Partridge, and Nathaniel, there was Phoon Tok Seng, the correspondence clerk, Inche Yun bin Ismail, financial clerk, and the diminutive Tamil Christian, Victor, my Building overseer. The State Engineer paid them as much as he could out of the limited amount of cash which he had brought from Head Office, and went on his way with the others to Ipoh. Horsley and I were to report to him there when we were ordered by the military to leave Kuala Kangsar.

We walked down the hill to the office, and Maniam helped us to remove or destroy all the secret plans and papers. Horsley took the money and more important documents from the safe. The store below had very little left of value to the engineers. but later in the day we were able to hand over quantities of tyres and tubes, picks and changkols, and a large stock of gelignite and fuse.

After a scratch lunch we went to the workshop to see if there was anything more we could save. An old lorry was standing in the yard, and we thought that if we could get a driver perhaps we could get the lorry and a load of spares and tools to Ipoh. We filled the petrol tank, and were searching for a can to fill with water when a figure appeared from the shadows of the timber-shed and pattered clumsily towards us, his rubber-shod feet making a slithering sound on the gritty yard.

" Tabek, tuan," said Zakariah, "this is hard, very difficult."

I asked him what he was doing in the workshop yard. They had taken his lorry, he said, and he wanted to stay and help us.

We let him fill the radiator with water, and then carried piston rings, connecting-rods, springs, and other spares to the lorry, filling baskets and stacking them as they were in the back. Zakariah helped us to load the tools and parts, and I began to wonder at this man s energy nd enthusiasm in the face of the circumstances. We could not pay him - officially - for his services, as the P.W.D. had ceased to exist. And I knew, by the coolie's whole attitude on that day, that he was not seeking payment.

The lorry was soon filled, and Horsley and I discussed the possibility of getting a driver.

"Let's try the military," Horsley suggested, and we went to an Indian Army camp near by to beg for a driver.

A young Indian officer agreed to let us have a driver on condition that he would be given the lorry. That was what we wanted, of course: to give the vehicle to somebody who could use it. It was agreed that the driver should take the load to Ipoh, then report to an Indian Army camp there to await the arrival of the troops who were shortly to evacuate from Kuala Kangsar.

Half an hour later a tall, smiling Sikh reported to us. He was to drive the lorry to Ipoh, he informed us in faltering English. But he did not know the way to Ipoh, and the afternoon was almost evening. Could someone accompany him?

Neither Horsley nor I could go on the lorry, for we were under orders to remain in Kuala Kangsar until officially evacuated.

We tried to explain the route to the driver, but, though he listened with a pleasant smile, nodding his head at points in the narrative, he confounded us at the end by assuring us that he did not understand.

" Tuan."

We had forgotten Zakariah. He stood in the backround, but his timid voice drew our attention. He touched his songkok respectfully, then resumed his knuckle-cracking, weaving his long fingers in and out, crunching the bones like so many dry sticks.

" Tuan, I can go with the lorry.''

He stood there, clasping and unclasping nervous hands, his whole bearing giving the impression that he was begging a favour.

I explained that if he went he would not be brought back and might not be able to return even on foot. He understood. He must also have understood that there would be no P.W.D., no tuan, when - or if - he returned, nobody to pay him or find him food. This would certainly be his last job for us.

I hope he got through, and I hope he was able to return to his home. We never heard of the lorry again. And, save for this account of Zakariah's devotion to service, his deed would be forgotten.

The workshop was handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the R.I.A.O.C., who wished to repair Bren-gun carriers and lorries. As darkness fell, two thoroughly disheartened P.W D. officers returned home, without a job, a single follower, or even a lorry or pick and shovel to testify to the work they had done, to the care and energy they had put into the following of their profession.

In the meantime the military had occupied many quarters in the town and had taken over the hospital. Horsley and I had paid off our servants, and the painful memory of that parting will never pass. We went to live in quarters occupied by Perry - a Drainage and Irrigation engineer - and the three of us slept side by side on two mattresses laid on the floor. Meals were served by Perry's one remaining servant, an old Tamil gardener.

I never realised before what fun you could have in the midst of trouble, provided the company was right. We had very little more than rice and bully beef to eat; but we had tea and whisky-and-sodas and plenty to smoke. Perry had a very amusing voice, deep, with a sort of a crack now and then, and we discovered that when he addressed his old kebun in Malay, the cheerful little Tamil replied in exactly the same voice. Horsley and I went to bed early on the first night, and we heard Perry talking to the servant. We both noted the remarkable similarity of tone and inflection, so much so that we could not decide which man was speaking. Horsley chuckled, and I caught the germ: within five minutes we were roaring with laughter, and Perry was still talking away, oblivious of the entertainment he was providing. We let him into the secret when he returned, and he entered into a conspiracy with us. He spoke to the old man on every possible excuse, and it was as if his echo replied. The atmosphere of light-hearted goodwill was wonderful, as if Nature had thought quickly of a remedy for our depression, and had dispensed one out of the few materials available.

On the following morning, the 20th December, Horsley and I, having no work to go to, decided on a walk. We went to the post office and collected the mail. Most of the P.W.D. letters were to Asiatic staff, and one was for Partridge - from Malacca. I could not trace any of my former staff, but I kept the letters, hoping to meet one of them later. As we walked aimlessly around the town, looking at the shuttered shops and the idle crowds, we were aware of unrest, and a murmur arose along the street, increasing in intensity. People began to run, and soon we saw that everybody was moving towards the railway station. Out of idle curiosity we followed the crowd, and on arrival at the station we saw what was probably the whole of the population of the town mobbing around the platform and approach roads, pushing, swaying, in a sea of sound which was growing louder and louder like an uncontrollable mad thing.

The crowd was hungry.