Lakamba dozed uneasily off, but the wakeful Babalatchi sat thinking
deeply, sighing from time to time, and slapping himself over his naked
torso incessantly in a vain endeavour to keep off an occasional and
wandering mosquito that, rising as high as the platform above the swarms
of the riverside, would settle with a ping of triumph on the unexpected
victim. The moon, pursuing her silent and toilsome path, attained
her highest elevation, and chasing the shadow of the roof-eaves from
Lakamba's face, seemed to hang arrested over their heads. Babalatchi
revived the fire and woke up his companion, who sat up yawning and
shivering discontentedly.

Babalatchi spoke again in a voice which was like the murmur of a brook
that runs over the stones: low, monotonous, persistent; irresistible
in its power to wear out and to destroy the hardest obstacles. Lakamba
listened, silent but interested. They were Malay adventurers; ambitious
men of that place and time; the Bohemians of their race. In the early
days of the settlement, before the ruler Patalolo had shaken off his
allegiance to the Sultan of Koti, Lakamba appeared in the river with
two small trading vessels. He was disappointed to find already some
semblance of organization amongst the settlers of various races who
recognized the unobtrusive sway of old Patalolo, and he was not politic
enough to conceal his disappointment. He declared himself to be a man
from the east, from those parts where no white man ruled, and to be of
an oppressed race, but of a princely family. And truly enough he had
all the gifts of an exiled prince. He was discontented, ungrateful,
turbulent; a man full of envy and ready for intrigue, with brave words
and empty promises for ever on his lips. He was obstinate, but his will
was made up of short impulses that never lasted long enough to carry him
to the goal of his ambition. Received coldly by the suspicious Patalolo,
he persisted--permission or no permission--in clearing the ground on
a good spot some fourteen miles down the river from Sambir, and built
himself a house there, which he fortified by a high palisade. As he had
many followers and seemed very reckless, the old Rajah did not think
it prudent at the time to interfere with him by force. Once settled, he
began to intrigue. The quarrel of Patalolo with the Sultan of Koti was
of his fomenting, but failed to produce the result he expected because
the Sultan could not back him up effectively at such a