d sat upright
on the edge of her couch, this being the only article of furniture
in the room.

As the old lady could not speak Spanish, she leered at us pleasantly
from where she lay, occasionally muttering something in her native
tongue, that might have been a tribute to our charms of mind or person,
but which sounded more like an incantation. I felt she was a veritable
witch, and at any moment expected to find myself changed into some
animal or other under the baleful light of her eyes. If she had said,
"Rumpelstilzchen, rumpelstilzchen," or any other cabalistic thing
the witches in our fairy tales used to say, I should not have been
surprised; and I tried to smile as pleasantly as I knew how, for
fear she would think me bad tempered, and so change my every word
into frogs and toads, instead of diamonds and rubies.

After a particularly scintillating burst of silence the Sultana
offered me some _buyo_, or betel-nut, to chew, and on my refusing it,
placidly put a large hunk into her own mouth, and chewed it until the
red juice stained her lips as if she were suffering from a hemorrhage.

The dais on which she lounged was as large as a small room, and was
raised about three feet from the ground, it being covered with pillows
and hand-woven mats of straw and bamboo. Around this thronelike couch
were grouped her slaves and attendants, all armed with _barongs_
and _krises_ stuck into their wide sash belts, and attired in
many-coloured garments that gave one the impression, both from fit
and odour, of being on terms of long and close acquaintance with their
wearers. The inevitable naked, brown babies staggered around the room,
their little stomachs, in many instances, being swelled frightfully
from a diet of too much rice and fish.

When the Sultana wanted privacy a drapery of red and white stuff,
hung from the ceiling, could be let down, but otherwise she was
constantly in the presence of her slaves and retainers, having the
alternative of being smothered to death in privacy or bored to death
in plenty of fresh air. We were told the Sultana was a power in the
State and a diplomatist of no mean order, but it was hard to believe
this in the royal presence, unwashed and unlovely as it was. Still,
I remember seeing in a Philadelphia paper that some American living
in Sulu had described the Sultana as being "an agreeable, refined,
and charming Oriental diplomat." Her personality was quoted as most
attractive, "uniting a ra