The absence of pain and hunger was her happiness, and when she felt unhappy she was simply tired, more than usual, after the day's labour.

Then in the hot nights of the south-west monsoon she slept dreamlessly under the bright stars on the platform built outside the house and over the river.

Inside they slept too: Bulangi by the door; his wives further in; the children with their mothers.

She could hear their breathing; Bulangi's sleepy voice; the sharp cry of a child soon hushed with tender words.

And she closed her eyes to the murmur of the water below her, to the whisper of the warm wind above, ignorant of the never-ceasing life of that tropical nature that spoke to her in vain with the thousand faint voices of the near forest, with the breath of tepid wind; in the heavy scents that lingered around her head; in the white wraiths of morning mist that hung over her in the solemn hush of all creation before the dawn.
Such had been her existence before the coming of the brig with the strangers.