naked savages and—they shivered and scratched their bodies restlessly. The trilling of the thrushes, and the morning chorus raised by the other birds, came to their ears, mingled with the whooping of troops of anthropoid apes, but this joyous music held no inspiration for the Sâkai. The extraordinary dampness of the air during the first hours after daybreak, in these remote jungle places of the Peninsula, chills men to the marrow and is appallingly depressing. Moreover, the Sâkai are very sensitive to cold, and it is when dawn has roused them and the fierce heat of the day has not yet broken through the mists to cheer them, that their thin courage and vitality are at the lowest ebb.
"Listen to me, you Sâkai," cried Kûlop in a loud and wrathful voice; and at the word those of his hearers who were standing erect made haste to assume a humble squatting posture, and the shiverings occasioned by the cold were increased by tremblings born of fear.
If there be one thing that the jungle-folk dislike more than another, it is to be called "Sâkai" to their faces, and they are never so addressed by a Malay unless he wishes to bully them. The word, which has long ago lost its original meaning, signifies a slave, or some say, a dog; but by the aborigines it is regarded as the most offensive epithet in the Malayan vocabulary. In their own tongue they speak of themselves as sĕn-oi—which means a "man"—as opposed to gob, which signifies "foreigner"; for even the Sâkai has some vestiges of pride, if you know
