“The old man led me straight towards this, and, coming closer, I saw that the large house had a rough glacis about it and a round wall pierced with loopholes.  A number of goats were feeding here and a few small cattle; also the ground about the village had been cleared and planted with fruit-trees,—­mangoes, bananas, limes, and oranges,—­but as yet I saw no inhabitants.  The old Malay, who had kept ahead of me all the way, walking at a fair pace, here halted and once more signed to me to blow on the cornet.  I obeyed, of course, this time with ’The British Grenadiers.’  I declare to you it was like starting a swarm of bees.  You wouldn’t believe the troops that came pouring out of those few huts—­the women in loose trousers pretty much like the men’s, but with arms bare and loose sarongs flung over their right shoulders, the children with no more clothes than a pocket-handkerchief apiece.  I can’t tell you what first informed me of my guide’s rank among them—­ whether the salaams they offered him, or the richness of his dress—­ he was the only one with gold lace and the only one who carried pistols—­or the air with which he paraded me through the crowd, waving the people back to right and left, and clearing a way to a narrow door in the wall around the great house.  A man armed with a long fowling-piece saluted him at the entry; and once inside he pointed from the house to his own breast, as much as to say, ’I am the Chief, and this is mine.’  I saluted him humbly.

“A verandah ran around the four sides of the house, with a trench between it and the fortified wall.  A plank bridge led across the trench to the verandah steps, where my master—­or, to call him by his right name, Hadji Hamid—­halted again and clapped his hands.  A couple of young Malay women, dressed like those I had passed in the street, ran out in answer, and were ordered to bring me food.  While it was preparing I rested on a low chair, blinking at the sunlight on the fortified wall.  It had been pierced, on the side of the house, for eleven guns, but six of the embrasures were empty, and of the five pieces standing no two were alike in size, age, or manufacture, and the best seemed to be a nine-pounder, strapped to its carriage with rope.  Hadji Hamid saw what I was looking at, and chuckled to himself solemnly.  All through the meal—­which began with a mess of rice and chopped fowl and ended with bananas—­he sat beside me, chewing betel, touching this thing and that, naming it in his language and making me repeat the words after him.  He smiled at every mistake, but never lost his patience; indeed it was clear that my quickness delighted him, and I did my best, wondering all the while what he meant to do with me.