That evening, in the house that they had been put into at Pohoi, a little Malay boy came to Jean with a green canvas sack; he said that he had been sent by a c******n in Gambang. In the sack were five black cockerels, alive, with their feet tied. Poultry is usually transported in the East alive.
Their arrival put Jean in a difficulty, and she consulted with Mrs. Frith. It was impossible for them to kill, pluck and cook five cockerels without drawing the attention of their guards to what was going on, and the first thing that the guards would ask was, where had the cockerels come from? If Jean had known the answer to that one herself it would have been easier to frame a lie. It would be possible, they thought, to say that they had bought them with money given to them by the Australians, bu
