d Mr. Stein desired him to "ascend," he would have
"reverentially"--(I think he wanted to say respectfully--but devil only
knows)--"reverentially made objects for the safety of properties."
If disregarded, he would have presented "resignation to quit." Twelve
months ago he had made his last voyage there, and though Mr. Cornelius
"propitiated many offertories" to Mr. Rajah Allang and the "principal
populations," on conditions which made the trade "a snare and ashes
in the mouth," yet his ship had been fired upon from the woods by
"irresponsive parties" all the way down the river; which causing his
crew "from exposure to limb to remain silent in hidings," the brigantine
was nearly stranded on a sandbank at the bar, where she "would have
been perishable beyond the act of man." The angry disgust at the
recollection, the pride of his fluency, to which he turned an attentive
ear, struggled for the possession of his broad simple face. He scowled
and beamed at me, and watched with satisfaction the undeniable effect
of his phraseology. Dark frowns ran swiftly over the placid sea, and
the brigantine, with her fore-topsail to the mast and her main-boom
amidships, seemed bewildered amongst the cat's-paws. He told me further,
gnashing his teeth, that the Rajah was a "laughable hyaena" (can't
imagine how he got hold of hyaenas); while somebody else was many
times falser than the "weapons of a crocodile." Keeping one eye on the
movements of his crew forward, he let loose his volubility--comparing
the place to a "cage of beasts made ravenous by long impenitence." I
fancy he meant impunity. He had no intention, he cried, to "exhibit
himself to be made attached purposefully to robbery." The long-drawn
wails, giving the time for the pull of the men catting the anchor,
came to an end, and he lowered his voice. "Plenty too much enough of
Patusan," he concluded, with energy.

'I heard afterwards he had been so indiscreet as to get himself tied up
by the neck with a rattan halter to a post planted in the middle of a
mud-hole before the Rajah's house. He spent the best part of a day and a
whole night in that unwholesome situation, but there is every reason
to believe the thing had been meant as a sort of joke. He brooded for
a while over that horrid memory, I suppose, and then addressed in a
quarrelsome tone the man coming aft to the helm. When he turned to me
again it was to speak judicially, without passion. He would take the
gentleman to th