leading past the bazaar, the model market, fashioned, with
improvements, like the one at home. They came by the red street
leading past the Botanical Garden, the gardens where at the close of
scorching days the women of the white man, ghastly white, used to
drive before sunset, to breathe a little after the stifling day. They
came along the quais, where the white man's ships found harbour.
Altogether, creeping in on many roads, coming in their fours and
fives, they made about three hundred. And they were in revolt, if you
please, against the representatives of the most refined civilization
of the western world! Just three hundred, no more. Not a ripple of it,
apparently, spread backwards to the jungle, to the millions inland, in
the forests.

What happened? Oh, it was all over in an hour! The Lieutenant heard
them coming--his orderly ran in with the word--and he was out in an
instant with eight men. Eight soldiers armed with rifles. It was quite
amusing. And opposed to them, that mob, in their peaked hats, in their
loin cloths or their sarongs, bare to waist as usual. Poor fools!
Fancy--not a gun among them! They thought they were invisible! The
geomancer had told them that, and they believed him. Carried at their
head a flag, some outlandish, homemade thing, with unknown characters
upon it. Well, it was all over in a moment--those eight men armed with
guns saw to that. Short work--thirty wounded, fourteen killed. The
rest scattered, but before the day was out they had them--had them in
two hours, for a fact. All disarmed, and the Lieutenant had their
weapons. Come to see them at his bungalow, if we'd time? Interesting
lot of trophies, most unique collection. Quite unequalled. Homemade
spears, forged and hammered, stuck on bamboo poles. Homemade swords,
good blades, too, for all their crudeness. Must have taken months to
make them, fashioned slyly, on the quiet. Killing weapons, meant to
kill. Swords like the Crusaders, only cased in bamboo scabbards.
Funny lot--come to see them if we'd time. Nothing like it, a unique
collection. And the flag--red cotton flag, all blood stained, with
some device in corner, just barbaric. Poor fools! Flag pathetic?
Pathetic? Heavens, no!

Well, they stamped it out very thoroughly, at four o'clock that
afternoon. It finished at the race course, for there is always a race
course where the white man rules. Word went round, as it always goes
round in times like this, and just before sunset