Tales of Unrest | Page 8

important interviews, Karain
would often give a start, and interrupting his discourse, would sweep
his arm back with a sudden movement, to feel whether the old fellow
was there. The old fellow, impenetrable and weary, was always there.
He shared his food, his repose, and his thoughts; he knew his plans,
guarded his secrets; and, impassive behind his master's agitation,
without stirring the least bit, murmured above his head in a soothing
tone some words difficult to catch.
It was only on board the schooner, when surrounded by white faces, by
unfamiliar sights and sounds, that Karain seemed to forget the strange
obsession that wound like a black thread through the gorgeous pomp of
his public life. At night we treated him in a free and easy manner,
which just stopped short of slapping him on the back, for there are
liberties one must not take with a Malay. He said himself that on such
occasions he was only a private gentleman coming to see other
gentlemen whom he supposed as well born as himself. I fancy that to
the last he believed us to be emissaries of Government, darkly official

persons furthering by our illegal traffic some dark scheme of high
statecraft. Our denials and protestations were unavailing. He only
smiled with discreet politeness and inquired about the Queen. Every
visit began with that inquiry; he was insatiable of details; he was
fascinated by the holder of a sceptre the shadow of which, stretching
from the westward over the earth and over the seas, passed far beyond
his own hand's-breadth of conquered land. He multiplied questions; he
could never know enough of the Monarch of whom he spoke with
wonder and chivalrous respect--with a kind of affectionate awe!
Afterwards, when we had learned that he was the son of a woman who
had many years ago ruled a small Bugis state, we came to suspect that
the memory of his mother (of whom he spoke with enthusiasm)
mingled somehow in his mind with the image he tried to form for
himself of the far-off Queen whom he called Great, Invincible, Pious,
and Fortunate. We had to invent details at last to satisfy his craving
curiosity; and our loyalty must be pardoned, for we tried to make them
fit for his august and resplendent ideal. We talked. The night slipped
over us, over the still schooner, over the sleeping land, and over the
sleepless sea that thundered amongst the reefs outside the bay. His
paddlers, two trustworthy men, slept in the canoe at the foot of our
side-ladder. The old confidant, relieved from duty, dozed on his heels,
with his back against the companion-doorway; and Karain sat squarely
in the ship's wooden armchair, under the slight sway of the cabin lamp,
a cheroot between his dark fingers, and a glass of lemonade before him.
He was amused by the fizz of the thing, but after a sip or two would let
it get flat, and with a courteous wave of his hand ask for a fresh bottle.
He decimated our slender stock; but we did not begrudge it to him, for,
when he began, he talked well. He must have been a great Bugis dandy
in his time, for even then (and when we knew him he was no longer
young) his splendour was spotlessly neat, and he dyed his hair a light
shade of brown. The quiet dignity of his bearing transformed the
dim-lit cuddy of the schooner into an audience-hall. He talked of
inter-island politics with an ironic and melancholy shrewdness. He had
travelled much, suffered not a little, intrigued, fought. He knew native
Courts, European Settlements, the forests, the sea, and, as he said
himself, had spoken in his time to many great men. He liked to talk
with me because I had known some of these men: he seemed to think

that I could understand him, and, with a fine confidence, assumed that I,
at least, could appreciate how much greater he was himself. But he
preferred to talk of his native country--a small Bugis state on the island
of Celebes. I had visited it some time before, and he asked eagerly for
news. As men's names came up in conversation he would say, "We
swam against one another when we were boys"; or, "We hunted the
deer together--he could use the noose and the spear as well as I." Now
and then his big dreamy eyes would roll restlessly; he frowned or
smiled, or he would become pensive, and, staring in silence, would nod
slightly for a time at some regretted vision of the past.
His mother had been the ruler of a small semi-independent state on the
sea-coast at the head of the Gulf of Boni. He spoke of her with pride.
She had been a