Traitors … Ah Pak knew a hard time was coming, a time of questing for traitors, and sudden execution. It was always thus when Policy changed, the weak ones lost heart, the recruits be came disgruntled; the unsteady ones skulked out, to surrender …

Ah Low, who could never count the subscription money correctly, had surrendered in a fit of temper and hunger, angry to be called stupid and laughed at; angry and bewildered because food was less than ever before. Shouldering his rifle one morning he had gone, through the jungle, through the dense abandoned clearings with their devious hidden footpaths, crossing a derelict rubber plantation and tracts of pineapple fields, to stand at last on the edge of the tarmac road where the motor cars whizzed past like frightened rabbits. He stopped a passenger bus by levelling his gun at the driver.

The driver screeched the bus to a stop, and stayed paralysed, blue with terror, while Ah Low clambered on, glared round him and found suddenly the front bench empty, all the passengers sitting at the back, their eyes not upon him but looking above his head, or gazing with intense interest through the windows, or at their hands … Afterwards, when questioned, not one of the passengers could remember seeing Ah Low get into the bus, not one but looked deeply astonished to hear that such a thing had occurred. The driver was told by Ah Low to drive to the next police station, and there Ah Low climbed down.

But things miscarried for Ah Low. The Malay mata-matas at the station seized him, and claimed that they had caught him hiding, and, there being insufficient evidence of his will to surrender, Ah Low was hanged. Meanwhile his comrades abandoned camp when his departure was noticed, for fear he might bring the Security troops, to buy his life with theirs. And after Ah Low’s hanging there were no more surrenders from the 10th Regiment.

There was the day Chan Ah Pak picked up a piece of paper at the edge of a clearing overgrown with dense bush, and found it a propaganda leaflet, with a photograph of two comrades who had surrendered, and the call to come out, bringing his gun …

Bringing his gun … Ah Pak tore the pamphlet savagely, carefully buried the fragments in leafmould. He would never surrender. Yet the mere fact that he had found the pamphlet troubled him and made him suspicious of himself for a day or so. That afternoon he was more conscious than ever of Sen, his quiet eyes which seemed to see everything. He shovelled his tapioca mixed with coarse rice into his mouth, then belched loyally, heartily. Comrade Chan Ah Pak was not afraid of traitors.