The natives were brown, thick-lipped folk, all
with rings in their ears and dead, brown eyes; they were almost naked,
with just a strip of cotton cloth or plaited leaves round the middle,
and the women had also a short petticoat of cotton stuff to cover them.
All the children went about stark naked night and day, with great big
prominent bellies simply glistening with oil.
"The women are too fat," said Glahn.
And I too thought the women were too fat. Perhaps it was not Glahn at
all, but myself, who thought so first; but I will not dispute his
claim--I am willing to give him the credit. As a matter of fact, not all
the women were ugly, though their faces were fat and swollen. I had met
a girl in the village, a young half-Tamil with long hair and snow-white
teeth; she was the prettiest of them all. I came upon her one evening at
the edge of a rice field. She lay flat on her face in the high grass,
kicking her legs in the air. She could talk to me, and we did talk, too,
as long as I pleased. Glahn sat that evening in the middle of our
village outside a hut with two other girls, very young--not more than
ten years old, perhaps. He sat there talking nonsense to them, and
drinking rice beer; that was the sort of thing he liked.
A couple of days later, we went out shooting.
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