Tales of Unrest | Page 5

gleams
between the lines of those short paragraphs--sunshine and the glitter of
the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent
the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating
perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone
nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre
cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand
watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white
surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs;

and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the
level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel.
There are faces too--faces dark, truculent, and smiling; the frank
audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed and noiseless. They
thronged the narrow length of our schooner's decks with their
ornamented and barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of
checkered sarongs, red turbans, white jackets, embroideries; with the
gleam of scabbards, gold rings, charms, armlets, lance blades, and
jewelled handles of their weapons. They had an independent bearing,
resolute eyes, a restrained manner; and we seem yet to hear their soft
voices 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. He
did not even lift his eyelids. He bowed his head behind his master, and
without stirring held hilt up over his right shoulder a long blade in a
silver scabbard. He was there on duty, but without curiosity, and
seemed weary, not with age, but with the possession of a burdensome
secret of existence. Karain, heavy and proud, had a lofty pose and
breathed calmly. It was our first visit, and we looked about curiously.
The bay was like a bottomless pit of intense light. The circular sheet of
water reflected a luminous sky, and the shores enclosing it made an
opaque ring of earth floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The
hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits
seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their
steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their foot
lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound about
like a dropped thread. Clumps