es speaking of battles,
travels, and escapes; boasting with composure, joking quietly; sometimes
in well-bred murmurs extolling their own valour, our generosity;
or celebrating with loyal enthusiasm the virtues of their ruler. We
remember the faces, the eyes, the voices, we see again the gleam of silk
and metal; the murmuring stir of that crowd, brilliant, festive, and
martial; and we seem to feel the touch of friendly brown hands that,
after one short grasp, return to rest on a chased hilt. They were
Karain's people--a devoted following. Their movements hung on his lips;
they read their thoughts in his eyes; he murmured to them nonchalantly
of life and death, and they accepted his words humbly, like gifts of
fate. They were all free men, and when speaking to him said, "Your
slave." On his passage voices died out as though he had walked guarded
by silence; awed whispers followed him. They called him their war-chief.
He was the ruler of three villages on a narrow plain; the master of
an insignificant foothold on the earth--of a conquered foothold that,
shaped like a young moon, lay ignored between the hills and the sea.

From the deck of our schooner, anchored in the middle of the bay, he
indicated by a theatrical sweep of his arm along the jagged outline
of the hills the whole of his domain; and the ample movement seemed to
drive back its limits, augmenting it suddenly into something so immense
and vague that for a moment it appeared to be bounded only by the sky.
And really, looking at that place, landlocked from the sea and shut off
from the land by the precipitous slopes of mountains, it was difficult
to believe in the existence of any neighbourhood. It was still,
complete, unknown, and full of a life that went on stealthily with a
troubling effect of solitude; of a life that seemed unaccountably empty
of anything that would stir the thought, touch the heart, give a hint of
the ominous sequence of days. It appeared to us a land without memories,
regrets, and hopes; a land where nothing could survive the coming of the
night, and where each sunrise, like a dazzling act of special creation,
was disconnected from the eve and the morrow.

Karain swept his hand over it. "All mine!" He struck the deck with his
long staff; the gold head flashed like a falling star; very close behind
him a silent old fellow in a richly embroidered black jacket alone of
all the Malays around did not follow the masterful gesture with a look.
H