of his right hand.
After hearing all he had to say he dismissed Tamb' Itam to have food
and rest. Orders for the return in the afternoon were given immediately.
Afterwards Dain Waris lay down again, open-eyed, while his personal
attendants were preparing his food at the fire, by which Tamb' Itam also
sat talking to the men who lounged up to hear the latest intelligence
from the town. The sun was eating up the mist. A good watch was kept
upon the reach of the main stream where the boat of the whites was
expected to appear every moment.

'It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the world which, after
twenty years of contemptuous and reckless bullying, refused him the
tribute of a common robber's success. It was an act of cold-blooded
ferocity, and it consoled him on his deathbed like a memory of an
indomitable defiance. Stealthily he landed his men on the other side
of the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them across. After a
short but quite silent scuffle, Cornelius, who had tried to slink away
at the moment of landing, resigned himself to show the way where the
undergrowth was most sparse. Brown held both his skinny hands together
behind his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then impelled
him forward with a fierce push. Cornelius remained as mute as a fish,
abject but faithful to his purpose, whose accomplishment loomed before
him dimly. At the edge of the patch of forest Brown's men spread
themselves out in cover and waited. The camp was plain from end to end
before their eyes, and no one looked their way. Nobody even dreamed that
the white men could have any knowledge of the narrow channel at the back
of the island. When he judged the moment come, Brown yelled, "Let them
have it," and fourteen shots rang out like one.

'Tamb' Itam told me the surprise was so great that, except for those who
fell dead or wounded, not a soul of them moved for quite an appreciable
time after the first discharge. Then a man screamed, and after that
scream a great yell of amazement and fear went up from all the throats.
A blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along
the shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water. Some few jumped
into the river then, but most of them did so only after the last
discharge. Three times Brown's men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only
one in view, cursing and yelling, "Aim low! aim low!"

'Tamb' Itam says that, as for him, he understood at the first v