hed to
settle the business off-hand, but his people were too much for him.
He had not Jim's racial prestige and the reputation of invincible,
supernatural power. He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of
unfailing truth and of unfailing victory. Beloved, trusted, and
admired as he was, he was still one of _them_, while Jim was one of
us. Moreover, the white man, a tower of strength in himself, was
invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be killed. Those unexpressed
thoughts guided the opinions of the chief men of the town, who elected
to assemble in Jim's fort for deliberation upon the emergency, as if
expecting to find wisdom and courage in the dwelling of the absent white
man. The shooting of Brown's ruffians was so far good, or lucky, that
there had been half-a-dozen casualties amongst the defenders. The
wounded were lying on the verandah tended by their women-folk. The women
and children from the lower part of the town had been sent into the
fort at the first alarm. There Jewel was in command, very efficient and
high-spirited, obeyed by Jim's "own people," who, quitting in a body
their little settlement under the stockade, had gone in to form the
garrison. The refugees crowded round her; and through the whole affair,
to the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordinary martial ardour.
It was to her that Dain Waris had gone at once at the first intelligence
of danger, for you must know that Jim was the only one in Patusan who
possessed a store of gunpowder. Stein, with whom he had kept up intimate
relations by letters, had obtained from the Dutch Government a special
authorisation to export five hundred kegs of it to Patusan. The
powder-magazine was a small hut of rough logs covered entirely with
earth, and in Jim's absence the girl had the key. In the council, held
at eleven o'clock in the evening in Jim's dining-room, she backed up
Waris's advice for immediate and vigorous action. I am told that she
stood up by the side of Jim's empty chair at the head of the long table
and made a warlike impassioned speech, which for the moment extorted
murmurs of approbation from the assembled headmen. Old Doramin, who had
not showed himself outside his own gate for more than a year, had been
brought across with great difficulty. He was, of course, the chief man
there. The temper of the council was very unforgiving, and the old man's
word would have been decisive; but it is my opinion that, well aware of
his son's fiery cou