He should have sent
long ago."

Only at this point did the whole thing begin to seem queer. As evidence
that I must have been awake, I recalled afterwards that my arm had been
made numb by the pressure of my head upon it while lying down, and now
began to tingle.

"It is very late," the voice repeated. "Perhaps too late----"

The fire settled, flared up fresh, and lighted the man's face dimly,--a
long, pale face with gray mustache and pointed beard. He was all in
black, so that his outline was lost in darkness; but I saw that round
his neck was a short white ruff, and that heavy leather boots hung in
folds, cavalier-fashion, from his knees. He wavered there in the dark,
against the flicker of the bamboo shadows, like a picture by that Dutch
fellow--What's-his-name-again--a very dim, shaky, misty Rembrandt.

"And you, Mynheer," he went on, in the same toneless voice, "from where
do you come to this shore?"

"From Singapore," I managed to reply.

"From Singapura," he murmured. "And so white men live there now?--_Ja,
ja_, time has passed."

Up till now I may have only been startled, but this set me in a blue
funk. It struck me all at once that this shaky old whisper of a voice
was not speaking the Dutch of nowadays. I never before knew the depths,
the essence, of that uncertainty which we call fear. In the silence, I
thought a drum was beating,--it was the pulse in my ears. The fire close
by was suddenly cold.

"And now you go whither?" it said.

"To Batavia," I must have answered, for it went on:--

"Then you may do a great service to me and to another. Go to Jacatra in
Batavia, and ask for Pieter Erberveld. Hendrik van der Have tells him to
cease--before it is too late, before the thing becomes accursed. Tell
him this. You will have done well, and I--shall sleep again. Give him
the message----"

The voice did not stop, so much as fade away unfinished. And the man,
the appearance, the eyes, moved away further into the dark, dissolving,
retreating. A shock like waking came over me--a rush of clear
consciousness----

Humph! Yes, been too long away from home; for I know (mind you, _know_)
that I saw the white of that ruff, the shadowy sweep of a cloak, as
something turned its back and moved up the path under the pointed arch
of bamboos, and was gone slowly in the blackness. I'm as sure of this as
I am that the fire gave no heat. But whether the time of it all had been
seconds or hours, I can't tell you.

Wh