. The trader
must possess an adventurous spirit and a keen understanding; he should
have the fearlessness of youth and the sagacity of age; he should be
diplomatic and courageous, so as to secure the favour of the great and
inspire fear in evil-doers.

These qualities naturally are not expected in a shopkeeper or a Chinaman
pedlar; they are considered indispensable only for a man who, of noble
birth and perhaps related to the ruler of his own country, wanders over
the seas in a craft of his own and with many followers; carries from
island to island important news as well as merchandise; who may be
trusted with secret messages and valuable goods; a man who, in short,
is as ready to intrigue and fight as to buy and sell. Such is the ideal
trader of Wajo.

Trading, thus understood, was the occupation of ambitious men who played
an occult but important part in all those national risings, religious
disturbances, and also in the organized piratical movements on a large
scale which, during the first half of the last century, affected the
fate of more than one native dynasty and, for a few years at least,
seriously endangered the Dutch rule in the East. When, at the cost of
much blood and gold, a comparative peace had been imposed on the
islands the same occupation, though shorn of its glorious possibilities,
remained attractive for the most adventurous of a restless race. The
younger sons and relations of many a native ruler traversed the seas of
the Archipelago, visited the innumerable and little-known islands, and
the then practically unknown shores of New Guinea; every spot where
European trade had not penetrated--from Aru to Atjeh, from Sumbawa to
Palawan.

II

It was in the most unknown perhaps of such spots, a small bay on the
coast of New Guinea, that young Pata Hassim, the nephew of one of the
greatest chiefs of Wajo, met Lingard for the first time.

He was a trader after the Wajo manner, and in a stout sea-going prau
armed with two guns and manned by young men who were related to his
family by blood or dependence, had come in there to buy some birds
of paradise skins for the old Sultan of Ternate; a risky expedition
undertaken not in the way of business but as a matter of courtesy toward
the aged Sultan who had entertained him sumptuously in that dismal brick
palace at Ternate for a month or more.

While lying off the village, very much on his guard, waiting for the
skins and negotiating with the treachero