nd Fortunate. We had to invent details at
last to satisfy his craving curiosity; and our loyalty must be pardoned,
for we tried to make them fit for his august and resplendent ideal. We
talked. The night slipped over us, over the still schooner, over the
sleeping land, and over the sleepless sea that thundered amongst the
reefs outside the bay. His paddlers, two trustworthy men, slept in the
canoe at the foot of our side-ladder. The old confidant, relieved from
duty, dozed on his heels, with his back against the companion-doorway;
and Karain sat squarely in the ship's wooden armchair, under the slight
sway of the cabin lamp, a cheroot between his dark fingers, and a glass
of lemonade before him. He was amused by the fizz of the thing, but
after a sip or two would let it get flat, and with a courteous wave of
his hand ask for a fresh bottle. He decimated our slender stock; but we
did not begrudge it to him, for, when he began, he talked well. He must
have been a great Bugis dandy in his time, for even then (and when we
knew him he was no longer young) his splendour was spotlessly neat,
and he dyed his hair a light shade of brown. The quiet dignity of
his bearing transformed the dim-lit cuddy of the schooner into an
audience-hall. He talked of inter-island politics with an ironic and
melancholy shrewdness. He had travelled much, suffered not a little,
intrigued, fought. He knew native Courts, European Settlements, the
forests, the sea, and, as he said himself, had spoken in his time to
many great men. He liked to talk with me because I had known some of
these men: he seemed to think that I could understand him, and, with
a fine confidence, assumed that I, at least, could appreciate how
much greater he was himself. But he preferred to talk of his native
country--a small Bugis state on the island of Celebes. I had visited it
some time before, and he asked eagerly for news. As men's names came up
in conversation he would say, "We swam against one another when we were
boys"; or, "We hunted the deer together--he could use the noose and
the spear as well as I." Now and then his big dreamy eyes would roll
restlessly; he frowned or smiled, or he would become pensive, and,
staring in silence, would nod slightly for a time at some regretted
vision of the past.

His mother had been the ruler of a small semi-independent state on the
sea-coast at the head of the Gulf of Boni. He spoke of her with pride.
She had been a woman resolute i