with twenty heads and holding a hundred swords—­seemed to live and threaten in the light of our camp fire.  Nothing dismayed us.  And on the road, by every fire, in resting-places, we always talked of her and of him.  Their time was near.  We spoke of nothing else.  No! not of hunger, thirst, weariness, and faltering hearts.  No! we spoke of him and her!  Of her!  And we thought of them—­of her!  Matara brooded by the fire.  I sat and thought and thought, till suddenly I could see again the image of a woman, beautiful, and young, and great and proud, and tender, going away from her land and her people.  Matara said, ’When we find them we shall kill her first to cleanse the dishonour—­then the man must die.’  I would say, ’It shall be so; it is your vengeance.’  He stared long at me with his big sunken eyes.

“We came back to the coast.  Our feet were bleeding, our bodies thin.  We slept in rags under the shadow of stone enclosures; we prowled, soiled and lean, about the gateways of white men’s courtyards.  Their hairy dogs barked at us, and their servants shouted from afar, ‘Begone!’ Low-born wretches, that keep watch over the streets of stone campongs, asked us who we were.  We lied, we cringed, we smiled with hate in our hearts, and we kept looking here, looking there for them—­for the white man with hair like flame, and for her, for the woman who had broken faith, and therefore must die.  We looked.  At last in every woman’s face I thought I could see hers.  We ran swiftly.  No!  Sometimes Matara would whisper, ‘Here is the man,’ and we waited, crouching.  He came near.  It was not the man—­those Dutchmen are all alike.  We suffered the anguish of deception.  In my sleep I saw her face, and was both joyful and sorry . . . .  Why? . . .  I seemed to hear a whisper near me.  I turned swiftly.  She was not there!  And as we trudged wearily from stone city to stone city I seemed to hear a light footstep near me.  A time came when I heard it always, and I was glad.  I thought, walking dizzy and weary in sunshine on the hard paths of white men I thought, She is there—­with us! . . .  Matara was sombre.  We were often hungry.

“We sold the carved sheaths of our krisses—­the ivory sheaths with golden ferules.  We sold the jewelled hilts.  But we kept the blades—­for them.  The blades that never touch but kill—­we kept the blades for her. . . .  Why?  She was always by our side. . . .  We starved.  We begged.  We left Java at last.

“We went West, we went East.  We saw many lands, crowds of strange faces, men that live in trees and men who eat their old people.  We cut rattans in the forest for a handful of rice, and for a living swept the decks of big ships and heard curses heaped upon our heads.  We toiled in villages; we wandered upon the seas with the Bajow people, who have no country.  We fought for pay; we hired ourselves to work for Goram men, and were cheated; and under the orders of rough white faces we dived for pearls in barren bays, dotted