, "You--shall--hear--of--me." Of
me, or from me, I don't know which. I think it must have been of me. My
eyes were too dazzled by the glitter of the sea below his feet to see
him clearly; I am fated never to see him clearly; but I can assure you
no man could have appeared less "in the similitude of a corpse," as that
half-caste croaker had put it. I could see the little wretch's face,
the shape and colour of a ripe pumpkin, poked out somewhere under Jim's
elbow. He, too, raised his arm as if for a downward thrust. Absit omen!'

CHAPTER 24

'The coast of Patusan (I saw it nearly two years afterwards) is straight
and sombre, and faces a misty ocean. Red trails are seen like cataracts
of rust streaming under the dark-green foliage of bushes and creepers
clothing the low cliffs. Swampy plains open out at the mouth of rivers,
with a view of jagged blue peaks beyond the vast forests. In the offing
a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes, stand out in the everlasting
sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall breached by the sea.

'There is a village of fisher-folk at the mouth of the Batu Kring branch
of the estuary. The river, which had been closed so long, was open then,
and Stein's little schooner, in which I had my passage, worked her
way up in three tides without being exposed to a fusillade from
"irresponsive parties." Such a state of affairs belonged already to
ancient history, if I could believe the elderly headman of the fishing
village, who came on board to act as a sort of pilot. He talked to me
(the second white man he had ever seen) with confidence, and most of his
talk was about the first white man he had ever seen. He called him Tuan
Jim, and the tone of his references was made remarkable by a strange
mixture of familiarity and awe. They, in the village, were under that
lord's special protection, which showed that Jim bore no grudge. If
he had warned me that I would hear of him it was perfectly true. I was
hearing of him. There was already a story that the tide had turned
two hours before its time to help him on his journey up the river. The
talkative old man himself had steered the canoe and had marvelled at the
phenomenon. Moreover, all the glory was in his family. His son and his
son-in-law had paddled; but they were only youths without experience,
who did not notice the speed of the canoe till he pointed out to them
the amazing fact.

'Jim's coming to that fishing village was a blessing; but to the