opaque ring of earth floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The
hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits

seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their
steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their

foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound
about like a dropped thread. Clumps of fruit-trees marked the

villages; slim palms put their nodding heads together above the low
houses; dried palm-leaf roofs shone afar, like roofs of gold, behind

the dark colonnades of tree-trunks; figures passed vivid and
vanishing; the smoke of fires stood upright above the masses of

flowering bushes; bamboo fences glittered, running away in broken
lines between the fields. A sudden cry on the shore sounded plaintive

in the distance, and ceased abruptly, as if stifled in the downpour of
sunshine. A puff of breeze made a flash of darkness on the smooth

water, touched our faces, and became forgotten. Nothing moved. The sun
blazed down into a shadowless hollow of colours and stillness.

It was the stage where, dressed splendidly for his part, he strutted,
incomparably dignified, made important by the power he had to awaken

an absurdexpectation of something heroic going to take place--a
burst of action or song--upon the vibrating tone of a wonderful

sunshine. He was ornate and disturbing, for one could not imagine what
depth of horrible void such an elaborate front could be worthy to

hide. He was not masked--there was too much life in him, and a mask is
only a lifeless thing; but he presented himself essentially" target="_blank" title="ad.本质上，基本上">essentially as an

actor, as a human being aggressively disguised. His smallest acts
were prepared and unexpected, his speeches grave, his sentences

ominous like hints and complicated like arabesques. He was treated
with a solemn respect accorded in the irreverent West only to the

monarchs of the stage, and he accepted the profoundhomage with a
sustained dignity seen nowhere else but behind the footlights and in

the condensed falseness of some grossly tragic situation. It was
almost impossible to remember who he was--only a petty chief of a

conveniently isolated corner of Mindanao, where we could in
comparative safety break the law against the traffic in firearms and

ammunition with the natives. What would happen should one of the
moribund Spanish gun-boats be suddenly galvanized into a flicker of

active life did not trouble us, once we were inside the bay--so
completely did it appear out of the reach of a meddling world; and

besides, in those days we were imaginative enough to look with a kind
of joyous equanimity on any chance there was of being quietly hanged

somewhere out of the way of diplomatic remonstrance. As to Karain,
nothing could happen to him unless what happens to all--failure and

death; but his quality was to appear clothed in the illusion of
unavoidable success. He seemed too effective, too necessary there,

too much of an essential condition for the existence of his land and
his people, to be destroyed by anything short of an earthquake. He

summed up his race, his country, the elemental force of ardent life,
of tropical nature. He had its luxuriant strength, its fascination;

and, like it, he carried the seed of peril within.
In many successive visits we came to know his stage well--the purple

semicircle of hills, the slim trees leaning over houses, the yellow
sands, the streaming green of ravines. All that had the crude and

blended colouring, the appropriateness almost excessive, the
suspicious immobility of a painted scene; and it enclosed so

perfectly the accomplishedacting of his amazing pretences that the
rest of the world seemed shut out forever from the gorgeous spectacle.

There could be nothing outside. It was as if the earth had gone on
spinning, and had left that crumb of its surface alone in space. He

appeared utterly cut off from everything but the sunshine, and that
even seemed to be made for him alone. Once when asked what was on the

other side of the hills, he said, with a meaning smile, "Friends and
enemies--many enemies; else why should I buy your rifles and powder?"

He was always like this--word-perfect in his part, playing up
faithfully to the mysteries and certitudes of his surroundings.

"Friends and enemies"--nothing else. It was impalpable and vast. The
earth had indeed rolled away from under his land, and he, with his

handful of people, stood surrounded by a silent tumult as of
contending shades. Certainly no sound came from outside. "Friends and

enemies!" He might have added, "and memories," at least as far as he
himself was concerned; but he neglected to make that point then. It

made itself later on, though; but it was after the daily performance--
in the wings, so to speak, and with the lights out. Meantime he filled

the stage with barbarousdignity. Some ten years ago he had led his
people--a scratch lot of wandering Bugis--to the conquest of the bay,

and now in his august care they had forgotten all the past, and had
lost all concern for the future. He gave them wisdom, advice, reward,

punishment, life or death, with the same serenity of attitude and
voice. He understood irrigation and the art of war--the qualities of

weapons and the craft of boat-building. He could conceal his heart;
had more endurance; he could swim longer, and steer a canoe better

than any of his people; he could shoot straighter, and negotiate more
tortuously than any man of his race I knew. He was an adventurer of

the sea, an outcast, a ruler--and my very good friend. I wish him a
quick death in a stand-up fight, a death in sunshine; for he had known

remorse and power, and no man can demand more from life. Day after day
he appeared before us, incomparably faithful to the illusions of the

stage, and at sunset the night descended upon him quickly, like a
falling curtain. The seamed hills became black shadows towering high

upon a clear sky; above them the glittering confusion of stars
resembled a mad turmoil stilled by a gesture; sounds ceased, men

slept, forms vanished--and the reality of the universe alone
remained--a marvellous thing of darkness and glimmers.

II
But it was at night that he talked openly, forgetting the exactions

of his stage. In the daytime there were affairs to be discussed in
state. There were at first between him and me his own splendour, my

shabby suspicions, and the scenic landscape that intruded upon the
reality of our lives by its motionlessfantasy of outline and colour.

His followers thronged round him; above his head the broad blades of
their spears made a spiked halo of iron points, and they hedged him

from humanity by the shimmer of silks, the gleam of weapons, the
excited and respectful hum of eager voices. Before sunset he would

take leave with ceremony, and go off sitting under a red umbrella, and
escorted by a score of boats. All the paddles flashed and struck

together with a mightysplash that reverberated loudly in the
monumental amphitheatre of hills. A broad stream of dazzling foam

trailed behind the flotilla. The canoes appeared very black on the
white hiss of water; turbaned heads swayed back and forth; a multitude

of arms in crimson and yellow rose and fell with one movement; the
spearmen upright in the bows of canoes had variegated sarongs and

gleaming shoulders like bronze statues; the muttered strophes of the
paddlers' song ended periodically in a plaintive shout. They

diminished in the distance; the song ceased; they swarmed on the beach
in the long shadows of the western hills. The sunlight lingered on the

purple crests, and we could see him leading the way to his stockade, a
burly bareheaded figure walking far in advance of a straggling

cortege, and swinging regularly an ebony staff taller than himself.
The darkness deepened fast; torches gleamed fitfully, passing behind

bushes; a long hail or two trailed in the silence of the evening; and
at last the night stretched its smooth veil over the shore, the

lights, and the voices.
Then, just as we were thinking of repose, the watchmen of the

schooner would hail a splash of paddles away in the starlit gloom of
the bay; a voice would respond in cautious tones, and our serang,

putting his head down the open skylight, would inform us without
surprise, "That Rajah, he coming. He here now." Karain appeared

noiselessly in the doorway of the little cabin. He was simplicity
itself then; all in white; muffled about his head; for arms only a

kriss with a plain buffalo-horn handle, which he would politely
conceal within a fold of his sarong before stepping over the

threshold. The old sword-bearer's face, the worn-out and mournful
face so covered with wrinkles that it seemed to look out through the

meshes of a fine dark net, could be seen close above his shoulders.
Karain never moved without that attendant, who stood or squatted close

at his back. He had a dislike of an open space behind him. It was more
than a dislike--it resembled fear, a nervous preoccupation of what

went on where he could not see. This, in view of the evident and
fierce loyalty that surrounded him, was inexplicable. He was there

alone in the midst of devoted men; he was safe from neighbourly
ambushes, from fraternal ambitions; and yet more than one of our

visitors had assured us that their ruler could not bear to be alone.
They said, "Even when he eats and sleeps there is always one on the

watch near him who has strength and weapons." There was indeed
always one near him, though our informants had no conception of that

watcher's strength and weapons, which were both shadowy and terrible.
We knew, but only later on, when we had heard the story. Meantime we

noticed that, even during the most important interviews, Karain would
often give a start, and interrupting his discourse, would sweep his