nd the great house. A man armed with a long
fowling-piece saluted him at the entry; and once inside he pointed from
the house to his own breast, as much as to say, 'I am the Chief, and
this is mine.' I saluted him humbly.

"A verandah ran around the four sides of the house, with a trench
between it and the fortified wall. A plank bridge led across the trench
to the verandah steps, where my master--or, to call him by his right
name, Hadji Hamid--halted again and clapped his hands. A couple of
young Malay women, dressed like those I had passed in the street, ran
out in answer, and were ordered to bring me food. While it was
preparing I rested on a low chair, blinking at the sunlight on the
fortified wall. It had been pierced, on the side of the house, for
eleven guns, but six of the embrasures were empty, and of the five
pieces standing no two were alike in size, age, or manufacture, and the
best seemed to be a nine-pounder, strapped to its carriage with rope.
Hadji Hamid saw what I was looking at, and chuckled to himself solemnly.
All through the meal--which began with a mess of rice and chopped fowl
and ended with bananas--he sat beside me, chewing betel, touching this
thing and that, naming it in his language and making me repeat the words
after him. He smiled at every mistake, but never lost his patience;
indeed it was clear that my quickness delighted him, and I did my best,
wondering all the while what he meant to do with me.

"Well, to be short, sir, he intended to keep me. I believe he would
have done it for the sake of the cornet; but before I had finished
eating, up stepped a sentry escorting a man with my bombardon under his
arm. I had left it, as you know, in the boat, and had heard no order
given; but the boat I never saw again, and here was my bombardon.
Hadji Hamid took it in both hands, felt it all over, patted it, and
ended by turning it over to me and calling in dumb show for a tune.
I tell you, my performance was a success. At the first blast he leaned
back suddenly in his chair; at the second he turned a kind of purple
under his yellow skin; but at the third he caught hold of his stomach
and began to roll in his seat and laugh. You never saw a man laugh like
it. He made scarcely any sound; he was too near apoplexy to speak; but
the tears ran down his face, and one minute his hand would be up waving
feebly to me to stop, the next he'd be signalling to go on again.
I wanted poor O'Hara; he u