ur deprecating
words, or even to rebuke with severity those who attempted to touch his
knees with their finger-tips in gratitude or supplication. He was very
handsome, and carried his small head high with meek gravity. His lofty
brow, straight nose, narrow, dark face with its chiselled delicacy of
feature, gave him an aristocratic appearance which proclaimed his pure
descent. His beard was trimmed close and to a rounded point. His large
brown eyes looked out steadily with a sweetness that was belied by the
expression of his thin-lipped mouth. His aspect was serene. He had a
belief in his own prosperity which nothing could shake.

Restless, like all his people, he very seldom dwelt for many days
together in his splendid house in Penang. Owner of ships, he was often
on board one or another of them, traversing in all directions the field
of his operations. In every port he had a household--his own or that
of a relation--to hail his advent with demonstrative joy. In every port
there were rich and influential men eager to see him, there was
business to talk over, there were important letters to read: an immense
correspondence, enclosed in silk envelopes--a correspondence which had
nothing to do with the infidels of colonial post-offices, but came into
his hands by devious, yet safe, ways. It was left for him by taciturn
nakhodas of native trading craft, or was delivered with profound salaams
by travel-stained and weary men who would withdraw from his presence
calling upon Allah to bless the generous giver of splendid rewards. And
the news was always good, and all his attempts always succeeded, and
in his ears there rang always a chorus of admiration, of gratitude, of
humble entreaties.

A fortunate man. And his felicity was so complete that the good genii,
who ordered the stars at his birth, had not neglected--by a refinement
of benevolence strange in such primitive beings--to provide him with a
desire difficult to attain, and with an enemy hard to overcome. The envy
of Lingard's political and commercial successes, and the wish to get the
best of him in every way, became Abdulla's mania, the paramount interest
of his life, the salt of his existence.

For the last few months he had been receiving mysterious messages from
Sambir urging him to decisive action. He had found the river a couple of
years ago, and had been anchored more than once off that estuary where
the, till then, rapid Pantai, spreading slowly over the lowlan