When they saw him now, staggering a little in the heat, his forehead running with sweat, three Dyak men came out of the shade of their huts and led him inside, where they sat him down on a floor of fresh palm leaves and brought him water in a wooden bowl. The rajah thanked them. He inhaled the cooler air of the hut and the piquant smell of the men’s bodies and felt himself soothed a little. He closed his eyes and had a sudden longing to surrender to sleep in this place, which was far away from Leon and his anger. But he suspected that he might offend the Dyaks by falling asleep the moment he’d crossed their threshold, so to distract himself and stay awake, he reached into the pocket of his robe and brought out a pile of tangled string.

‘Cat’s Cradle?’ he asked.

The men clapped their hands with delight. At the door now, two women stood looking in at the rajah prone on the palm floor and put their hands over their mouths, suppressing laughter. One of the Dyak men snatched the string away from Sir Ralph and, in seconds, had untangled it and fashioned it into the overlapping loops around his fingers needed to begin the game. He held these out to the rajah, who drank more water from the bowl, then began delicately picking at the string to make a first figuration.

The Dyaks laughed. The ‘cradle’ was then passed to another, who contrived something far more complex with it. Sir Ralph stared at this, wondering where he might go with it and the men watched him closely, enjoying his puzzlement. At last he decided to lift two of the loops down and outwards, thinking to undo the last construction and begin again, but it wouldn’t come apart and once again he was struck by the Dyaks’ ingenuity in this simple game. He made a new move, but saw that it could easily be unravelled. The third Dyak beat his own thigh with pleasure as the strings were passed to him. Winning against the ‘Deity’ always seemed to give him vivid pleasure.

When the game was over, Sir Ralph yielded to sleep. As soon as he woke up, he could see that the sun was beginning to set and that he would have to leave quickly if he were to find his way back to his house before dark. But he found that some rice had been put near him and a bowl of arak, and he knew that this hospitality couldn’t be refused. So he yielded to the idea that he might spend the night with the Dyaks. This held only one terror for him – that the tribe would offer him one of their women.

The three men who had welcomed him and with whom he’d played Cat’s Cradle now sat near him, watching him very intently. Then, an elderly woman came in, carrying a bulky parcel wrapped in banana leaves, which she set down before the rajah and the men gestured for him to open it.