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The roof and sides of the house were of attap. This is made from the long, arrow-like leaves of the nipah palm. Unlike its brother palms the cocoa, the sago, the gamooty, and the areca the nipah is short, and more like a giant cactus in growth. Its leaves are stripped off by the natives, then bent over a bamboo rod and sewed together with fibres of the same palm.
"Anak!" he said slowly, drawing closer to her side. "Anak, I will be a true husband to you. You shall be my only wife " He paused, expecting some response, but she only gazed stolidly up at the smoke-begrimed attap of the roof. "Anak " he repeated, and then a shudder passed through him, and his eyes lit up with a wild, frenzied gleam,
"Yes, Pete," replied the subaltern in a voice that he hardly knew as his own; and rising clear of the bushes, he made his way to where he could dimly make out the figure of Minnie kneeling beneath the attap roof. "Minnie," he whispered, "our men are fighting to defend the station, and our place is there. Tell the Malay to get the boat across to a spot where you will be safe. Don't ask me to stay.
There was no more sleep for us that night, and the next day our roof was again taken to pieces, and we came to the conclusion that the fault was a want of slope enough in the roof for mats, although it would be sufficient for the usual attap thatch.
I could hear them singing as they crossed the compound and struck into the jungle road: "Oh, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, go away'; But it's 'Thank you, Mister Atkins, when the band begins to play, The band begins to " A peal of thunder that shook the bungalow from its attap roof to its nebong pillars drowned the melody and drove me inside. In the Malayan Jungle
The heat is so great that it is wonderful that one can walk about in the sunshine; but the nights, though the mercury does not fall below 80 degrees, are cool and refreshing, and the air and soil are both dry, though a hundred inches of rain fall in the year. These wooden bungalows are hot, for the attap roofs have no lining, but they are also airy.
But this inclination to stay was always checked by the major, who kept on bringing his companion back to the commonplace by uttering the one word, "Dinner!" and this sufficed. Attap, thatching made of the leaves of a palm the nipah.
Standing with his toes well wedged into the side, the would-be fugitive raised one arm and began feeling about in the mats above him, and chuckled. "Why, it's just nonsense," he said. "Talk about escaping. Why, one has got nothing to do but shove these up a little way and creep through. Then the attap will all fall back again, and no one will see as the place has been disturbed.
In the centre of the plantation we found a huge wedge-shaped attap house for drying pepper, and there we rested. Our tiffin baskets were six miles away in the dray, and sending after them was out of the question. So we foraged for eatables. Cocoanuts were easily obtained from trees all about, and a little whiskey mixed with its milk made a very refreshing drink.
Their houses are mostly composed of attap, or nipa grass, on a bamboo framework fixed on and supported by several strong wooden posts, generally the trunks of trees, sunk deep enough in the ground to render them capable of resisting the violent gales of wind common over all the islands during particular months of the year.
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