threats. Matara said, 'Now they have left our land their
lives are mind. I shall follow and strike--and, alone, pay the price of
blood.' A great wind was sweeping towards the setting sun over the empty
river. I cried, 'By your side I will go!' He lowered his head in sign of
assent. It was his destiny. The sun had set, and the trees swayed their
boughs with a great noise above our heads.

"On the third night we two left our land together in a trading prau.

"The sea met us--the sea, wide, pathless, and without voice. A sailing
prau leaves no track. We went south. The moon was full; and, looking up,
we said to one another, 'When the next moon shines as this one, we shall
return and they will be dead.' It was fifteen years ago. Many moons have
grown full and withered and I have not seen my land since. We sailed
south; we overtook many praus; we examined the creeks and the bays; we
saw the end of our coast, of our island--a steep cape over a disturbed
strait, where drift the shadows of shipwrecked praus and drowned men
clamour in the night. The wide sea was all round us now. We saw a great
mountain burning in the midst of water; we saw thousands of islets
scattered like bits of iron fired from a big gun; we saw a long coast of
mountain and lowlands stretching away in sunshine from west to east.
It was Java. We said, 'They are there; their time is near, and we shall
return or die cleansed from dishonour.'

"We landed. Is there anything good in that country? The paths run
straight and hard and dusty. Stone campongs, full of white faces, are
surrounded by fertile fields, but every man you meet is a slave. The
rulers live under the edge of a foreign sword. We ascended mountains,
we traversed valleys; at sunset we entered villages. We asked everyone,
'Have you seen such a white man?' Some stared; others laughed; women
gave us food, sometimes, with fear and respect, as though we had been
distracted by the visitation of God; but some did not understand our
language, and some cursed us, or, yawning, asked with contempt the
reason of our quest. Once, as we were going away, an old man called
after us, 'Desist!'

"We went on. Concealing our weapons, we stood humbly aside before the
horsemen on the road; we bowed low in the courtyards of chiefs who were
no better than slaves. We lost ourselves in the fields, in the jungle;
and one night, in a tangled forest, we came upon a place where crumbling
old walls had fallen amongst the tree