g like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson
amongst the tree-tops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding
face.

'Tamb' Itam tells me that on that evening the aspect of the heavens was
angry and frightful. I may well believe it, for I know that on that very
day a cyclone passed within sixty miles of the coast, though there was
hardly more than a languid stir of air in the place.

'Suddenly Tamb' Itam saw Jim catch her arms, trying to unclasp her
hands. She hung on them with her head fallen back; her hair touched the
ground. "Come here!" his master called, and Tamb' Itam helped to ease
her down. It was difficult to separate her fingers. Jim, bending
over her, looked earnestly upon her face, and all at once ran to the
landing-stage. Tamb' Itam followed him, but turning his head, he saw
that she had struggled up to her feet. She ran after them a few steps,
then fell down heavily on her knees. "Tuan! Tuan!" called Tamb' Itam,
"look back;" but Jim was already in a canoe, standing up paddle in hand.
He did not look back. Tamb' Itam had just time to scramble in after
him when the canoe floated clear. The girl was then on her knees, with
clasped hands, at the water-gate. She remained thus for a time in
a supplicating attitude before she sprang up. "You are false!" she
screamed out after Jim. "Forgive me," he cried. "Never! Never!" she
called back.

'Tamb' Itam took the paddle from Jim's hands, it being unseemly that he
should sit while his lord paddled. When they reached the other shore his
master forbade him to come any farther; but Tamb' Itam did follow him at
a distance, walking up the slope to Doramin's campong.

'It was beginning to grow dark. Torches twinkled here and there. Those
they met seemed awestruck, and stood aside hastily to let Jim pass. The
wailing of women came from above. The courtyard was full of armed Bugis
with their followers, and of Patusan people.

'I do not know what this gathering really meant. Were these preparations
for war, or for vengeance, or to repulse a threatened invasion? Many
days elapsed before the people had ceased to look out, quaking, for
the return of the white men with long beards and in rags, whose exact
relation to their own white man they could never understand. Even for
those simple minds poor Jim remains under a cloud.

'Doramin, alone! immense and desolate, sat in his arm-chair with the
pair of flintlock pistols on his knees, faced by a armed throng. When