once carried high on slaves' shoulders
amongst the people, with
uncovered face, and I had heard all men say that her beauty was
extreme, silencing the reason and ravishing the heart of the
beholders. The people were dismayed; Matara's face was blackened with
that
disgrace, for she knew she had been promised to another man.
Matara went to the Dutchman's house, and said, 'Give her up to
die--she is the daughter of chiefs.' The white man refused and shut
himself up, while his servants kept guard night and day with loaded
guns. Matara raged. My brother called a council. But the Dutch ships
were near, and watched our coast
greedily. My brother said, 'If he
dies now our land will pay for his blood. Leave him alone till we grow
stronger and the ships are gone.' Matara was wise; he waited and
watched. But the white man feared for her life and went away.
"He left his house, his plantations, and his goods! He
departed, armed
and menacing, and left all--for her! She had ravished his heart! From
my
stockade I saw him put out to sea in a big boat. Matara and I
watched him from the fighting
platform behind the
pointed stakes. He
sat cross-legged, with his gun in his hands, on the roof at the stern
of his prau. The
barrel of his rifle glinted aslant before his big red
face. The broad river was stretched under him--level, smooth, shining,
like a plain of silver; and his prau, looking very short and black
from the shore, glided along the silver plain and over into the blue
of the sea.
"Thrice Matara,
standing by my side, called aloud her name with grief
and imprecations. He stirred my heart. It leaped three times; and
three times with the eyes of my mind I saw in the gloom within the
enclosed space of the prau a woman with streaming hair going away from
her land and her people. I was angry--and sorry. Why? And then I also
cried out insults and threats. Matara said, 'Now they have left our
land their lives are mind. I shall follow and strike--and, alone, pay
the price of blood.' A great wind was
sweeping towards the
setting sun
over the empty river. I cried, 'By your side I will go!' He lowered
his head in sign of
assent. It was his
destiny. The sun had set, and
the trees swayed their boughs with a great noise above our heads.
"On the third night we two left our land together in a trading prau.
"The sea met us--the sea, wide, pathless, and without voice. A
sailing prau leaves no track. We went south. The moon was full; and,
looking up, we said to one another, 'When the next moon shines as this
one, we shall return and they will be dead.' It was fifteen years ago.
Many moons have grown full and withered and I have not seen my land
since. We sailed south; we
overtook many praus; we examined the creeks
and the bays; we saw the end of our coast, of our island--a steep
cape over a disturbed
strait, where drift the shadows of shipwrecked
praus and drowned men clamour in the night. The wide sea was all round
us now. We saw a great mountain burning in the midst of water; we saw
thousands of islets scattered like bits of iron fired from a big gun;
we saw a long coast of mountain and lowlands stretching away in
sunshine from west to east. It was Java. We said, 'They are there;
their time is near, and we shall return or die
cleansed from
dishonour.'
"We landed. Is there anything good in that country? The paths run
straight and hard and dusty. Stone campongs, full of white faces, are
surrounded by
fertile fields, but every man you meet is a slave. The
rulers live under the edge of a foreign sword. We ascended
mountains, we traversed valleys; at
sunset we entered villages. We
asked
everyone, 'Have you seen such a white man?' Some stared; others
laughed; women gave us food, sometimes, with fear and respect, as
though we had been distracted by the
visitation of God; but some did
not understand our language, and some cursed us, or, yawning, asked
with
contempt the reason of our quest. Once, as we were going away, an
old man called after us, 'Desist!'
"We went on. Concealing our weapons, we stood
humbly aside before the
horsemen on the road; we bowed low in the courtyards of chiefs who
were no better than slaves. We lost ourselves in the fields, in the
jungle; and one night, in a tangled forest, we came upon a place where
crumbling old walls had fallen
amongst the trees, and where strange
stone idols--carved images of devils with many arms and legs, with
snakes twined round their bodies, with twenty heads and
holding a
hundred swords--seemed to live and
threaten in the light of our camp
fire. Nothing dismayed us. And on the road, by every fire, in
resting-places, we always talked of her and of him. Their time was
near. We spoke of nothing else. No! not of
hunger,
thirst,
weariness,
and faltering hearts. No! we spoke of him and her! Of her! And we
thought of them--of her! Matara brooded by the fire. I sat and thought
and thought, till suddenly I could see again the image of a woman,
beautiful, and young, and great and proud, and tender, going away from
her land and her people. Matara said, 'When we find them we shall kill
her first to
cleanse the dishonour--then the man must die.' I would
say, 'It shall be so; it is your vengeance.' He stared long at me with
his big
sunken eyes.
"We came back to the coast. Our feet were bleeding, our bodies thin.
We slept in rags under the shadow of stone enclosures; we prowled,
soiled and lean, about the gateways of white men's courtyards. Their
hairy dogs barked at us, and their servants shouted from afar,
'Begone!' Low-born wretches, that keep watch over the streets of stone
campongs, asked us who we were. We lied, we cringed, we smiled with
hate in our hearts, and we kept looking here, looking there for
them--for the white man with hair like flame, and for her, for the
woman who had broken faith, and
therefore must die. We looked. At last
in every woman's face I thought I could see hers. We ran
swiftly. No!
Sometimes Matara would
whisper, 'Here is the man,' and we waited,
crouching. He came near. It was not the man--those Dutchmen are all
alike. We suffered the
anguish of
deception. In my sleep I saw her
face, and was both
joyful and sorry. . . . Why? . . . I seemed to hear
a
whisper near me. I turned
swiftly. She was not there! And as we
trudged
wearily from stone city to stone city I seemed to hear a light
footstep near me. A time came when I heard it always, and I was glad.
I thought, walking dizzy and weary in
sunshine on the hard paths of
white men I thought, She is there--with us! . . . Matara was sombre.
We were often hungry.
"We sold the carved sheaths of our krisses--the ivory sheaths with
golden ferules. We sold the jewelled hilts. But we kept the
blades--for them. The blades that never touch but kill--we kept the
blades for her. . . . Why? She was always by our side. . . . We
starved. We begged. We left Java at last.
"We went West, we went East. We saw many lands, crowds of strange
faces, men that live in trees and men who eat their old people. We cut
rattans in the forest for a
handful of rice, and for a living swept
the decks of big ships and heard curses heaped upon our heads. We
toiled in villages; we wandered upon the seas with the Bajow people,
who have no country. We fought for pay; we hired ourselves to work for
Goram men, and were cheated; and under the orders of rough white faces
we dived for pearls in
barren bays, dotted with black rocks, upon a
coast of sand and
desolation. And everywhere we watched, we listened,
we asked. We asked traders, robbers, white men. We heard jeers,
mockery, threats--words of wonder and words of
contempt. We never
knew rest; we never thought of home, for our work was not done. A year
passed, then another. I ceased to count the number of nights, of
moons, of years. I watched over Matara. He had my last
handful of
rice; if there was water enough for one he drank it; I covered him up
when he shivered with cold; and when the hot
sickness came upon him I
sat
sleepless through many nights and fanned his face. He was a fierce
man, and my friend. He spoke of her with fury in the
daytime, with
sorrow in the dark; he remembered her in health, in
sickness. I said
nothing; but I saw her every day--always! At first I saw only her
head, as of a woman walking in the low mist on a river bank. Then she
sat by our fire. I saw her! I looked at her! She had tender eyes and a
ravishing face. I murmured to her in the night. Matara said sleepily
sometimes, 'To whom are you talking? Who is there?' I answered
quickly, 'No one' . . . It was a lie! She never left me. She shared
the
warmth of our fire, she sat on my couch of leaves, she swam on the
sea to follow me. . . . I saw her! . . . I tell you I saw her long
black hair spread behind her upon the
moonlit water as she struck out
with bare arms by the side of a swift prau. She was beautiful, she was
faithful, and in the silence of foreign countries she spoke to me very
low in the language of my people. No one saw her; no one heard her;
she was mine only! In
daylight she moved with a swaying walk before me
upon the weary paths; her figure was straight and
flexible like the
stem of a
slender tree; the heels of her feet were round and polished
like shells of eggs; with her round arm she made signs. At night she
looked into my face. And she was sad! Her eyes were tender and
frightened; her voice soft and pleading. Once I murmured to her, 'You
shall not die,' and she smiled . . . ever after she smiled! . . . She
gave me courage to bear
weariness and hardships. Those were times of
pain, and she soothed me. We wandered patient in our search. We knew
deception, false hopes; we knew
captivity,
sickness,
thirst, misery,
despair . . . . Enough! We found them! . . ."
He cried out the last words and paused. His face was impassive, and he
kept still like a man in a
trance. Hollis sat up quickly, and spread
his elbows on the table. Jackson made a brusque
movement, and
accidentally touched the
guitar. A
plaintive resonance filled the
cabin with confused vibrations and died out slowly. Then Karain began
to speak again. The restrained
fierceness of his tone seemed to rise
like a voice from outside, like a thing unspoken but heard; it filled
the cabin and enveloped in its
intense and deadened murmur the
motionless figure in the chair.
"We were on our way to Atjeh, where there was war; but the
vessel ran
on a sandbank, and we had to land in Delli. We had earned a little
money, and had bought a gun from some Selangore traders; only one gun,
which was fired by the spark of a stone; Matara carried it. We landed.
Many white men lived there, planting
tobacco on conquered plains, and
Matara . . . But no matter. He saw him! . . . The Dutchman! . . . At
last! . . . We crept and watched. Two nights and a day we watched. He
had a house--a big house in a
clearing in the midst of his fields;
flowers and bushes grew around; there were narrow paths of yellow
earth between the cut grass, and thick hedges to keep people out.
The third night we came armed, and lay behind a hedge.
"A heavy dew seemed to soak through our flesh and made our very
entrails cold. The grass, the twigs, the leaves, covered with drops of
water, were gray in the
moonlight. Matara, curled up in the grass,
shivered in his sleep. My teeth rattled in my head so loud that I was
afraid the noise would wake up all the land. Afar, the watchmen of
white men's houses struck
wooden clappers and hooted in the darkness.
And, as every night, I saw her by my side. She smiled no more! . . .
The fire of
anguish burned in my breast, and she
whispered to me with
compassion, with pity, softly--as women will; she soothed the pain of
my mind; she bent her face over me--the face of a woman who ravishes
the hearts and silences the reason of men. She was all mine, and no
one could see her--no one of living mankind! Stars shone through her
bosom, through her floating hair. I was
overcome with regret, with
tenderness, with sorrow. Matara slept . . . Had I slept? Matara was
shaking me by the shoulder, and the fire of the sun was drying the
grass, the bushes, the leaves. It was day. Shreds of white mist hung
between the branches of trees.
"Was it night or day? I saw nothing again till I heard Matara breathe
quickly where he lay, and then outside the house I saw her. I saw them
both. They had come out. She sat on a bench under the wall, and twigs
laden with flowers crept high above her head, hung over her hair. She
had a box on her lap, and gazed into it, counting the increase of her
pearls. The Dutchman stood by looking on; he smiled down at her; his
white teeth flashed; the hair on his lip was like two twisted flames.
He was big and fat, and
joyous, and without fear. Matara tipped
fresh priming from the hollow of his palm, scraped the flint with his
thumb-nail, and gave the gun to me. To me! I took it . . . O fate!
"He
whispered into my ear, lying on his
stomach, 'I shall creep close
and then amok . . . let her die by my hand. You take aim at the fat
swine there. Let him see me strike my shame off the face of the
earth--and then . . . you are my friend--kill with a sure shot.' I
said nothing; there was no air in my chest--there was no air in the
world. Matara had gone suddenly from my side. The grass nodded. Then a
bush rustled. She lifted her head.