the time
came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts. With grim
impatience of plunder he wished himself to be talking with the man now.
The land already seemed to be his to tear to pieces, squeeze, and throw
away. Meantime Kassim had to be fooled for the sake of food first--and
for a second string. But the principal thing was to get something to eat
from day to day. Besides, he was not averse to begin fighting on that
Rajah's account, and teach a lesson to those people who had received him
with shots. The lust of battle was upon him.

'I am sorry that I can't give you this part of the story, which of
course I have mainly from Brown, in Brown's own words. There was in the
broken, violent speech of that man, unveiling before me his thoughts
with the very hand of Death upon his throat, an undisguised ruthlessness
of purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, and a
blind belief in the righteousness of his will against all mankind,
something of that feeling which could induce the leader of a horde of
wandering cut-throats to call himself proudly the Scourge of God.
No doubt the natural senseless ferocity which is the basis of such
a character was exasperated by failure, ill-luck, and the recent
privations, as well as by the desperate position in which he found
himself; but what was most remarkable of all was this, that while he
planned treacherous alliances, had already settled in his own mind the
fate of the white man, and intrigued in an overbearing, offhand manner
with Kassim, one could perceive that what he had really desired, almost
in spite of himself, was to play havoc with that jungle town which had
defied him, to see it strewn over with corpses and enveloped in flames.
Listening to his pitiless, panting voice, I could imagine how he must
have looked at it from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder
and rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned aspect,
though as a matter of fact every house concealed a few armed men on the
alert. Suddenly beyond the stretch of waste ground, interspersed with
small patches of low dense bush, excavations, heaps of rubbish, with
trodden paths between, a man, solitary and looking very small, strolled
out into the deserted opening of the street between the shut-up, dark,
lifeless buildings at the end. Perhaps one of the inhabitants, who had
fled to the other bank of the river, coming back for some object of
domestic use. Evidently he