“But of course it was not all right; and after two days spent with this dismal secret between us, and Aoodya all the while play-acting at her old tricks of love for me and the babe—­as if, God knows, I doubted they, and not the horror, were her real self—­I could stand it no longer, but did what I ought to have done before; sought out my master and made a clean breast of it.

“I could see that it took the old man between wind and water.  When I had done he sat for some time pulling his beard and eyeing me once or twice rather queerly, as I thought.

“‘My friend,’ said he at last, ’I suppose you will be suspecting me; yet I give you my word—­and the Hadji Hamid is no liar—­that if Aoodya is a Berbalang, or a daughter of Berbalangs, the same was unknown to me when I married you.’

“‘I’ll believe that,’ I answered; ’the more by token that I never suspected you.’

“’She had no known father, which (as you know) is held a disgrace among us; so much a disgrace that she grew up without suitors in spite of her looks and my favour.  Therefore I seized my chance of giving her a husband, and in that I am not guiltless towards you; but of anything worse I was ignorant, and for proof I am going to help you if I can.’  He frowned to himself, still tugging at his beard.  ’Her mother was of good family, on this side of the island.  Therefore she cannot be pure Berbalang, and most likely the Berbalangs have no more than a fetch upon her’—­he used a word new to me, but ‘fetch’ I took to be the meaning of it.  ’If so, we must go to them and persuade them to take it off.  They owe me something; for though, as we value peace and quiet, Hassan and I leave them alone in their own dirty village and ask no tax nor homage, we could make things uncomfortable if we chose.  Yes, yes,’ said he, ’I think it can be done; but it will be dangerous.  You are wearing your cocoanut pearl, of course?’

“I told him that I had given it up to the baby.

“He nodded.  ’Yes, that was well done; but you must borrow it for the day.  Run and fetch it at once; we have a long walk before us.’

“So I ran back, and without telling Aoodya, who was washing her linen behind the house, slipped the pearl off the child’s neck and returned to Hamid.  I found him, with two spears in his hand, waiting for me.  He gave me one, and forth we set.

“The Berbalangs’ village stands on a sort of table-land in the hills which rise all the way to Mount Tebulian, near the centre of the island.  After the first two miles I found myself in strange country, and Hamid kept silence and signed to me to do the same.  In this way we sweated up the slopes until, a little after noon, we reached a pass, and saw the roofs of the village over the edge of a broad step, as it were, half a mile above us.  Here we sat down, and Hamid, drawing a couple of limes from his pocket, explained that I must on no account taste any food the Berbalangs set before us unless I first sprinkled it with lime juice.  It might look like curried fish, but would, as likely as not, be human flesh disguised, the taste of which would destroy my soul and convert me into a Berbalang; a touch of the lime juice would turn such food back to its proper shape and show me what I was being asked to eat.