Daman, did these strange whites travel so far from their country?  The great white man whom they all knew did not want them.  No one wanted them.  Evil would follow in their footsteps.  They were such men as are sent by rulers to examine the aspects of far-off countries and talk of peace and make treaties.  Such is the beginning of great sorrows.  The Illanuns were far from their country, where no white man dared to come, and therefore they were free to seek their enemies upon the open waters.  They had found these two who had come to see.  He asked what they had come to see?  Was there nothing to look at in their own country?

He talked in an ironic and subdued tone.  The scattered heaps of embers glowed a deeper red; the big blaze of the chief’s fire sank low and grew dim before he ceased.  Straight-limbed figures rose, sank, moved, whispered on the beach.  Here and there a spear-blade caught a red gleam above the black shape of a head.

“The Illanuns seek booty on the sea,” cried Daman.  “Their fathers and the fathers of their fathers have done the same, being fearless like those who embrace death closely.”

A low laugh was heard.  “We strike and go,” said an exulting voice.  “We live and die with our weapons in our hands.”  The Illanuns leaped to their feet.  They stamped on the sand, flourishing naked blades over the heads of their prisoners.  A tumult arose.

When it subsided Daman stood up in a cloak that wrapped him to his feet and spoke again giving advice.

The white men sat on the sand and turned their eyes from face to face as if trying to understand.  It was agreed to send the prisoners into the lagoon where their fate would be decided by the ruler of the land.  The Illanuns only wanted to plunder the ship.  They did not care what became of the men.  “But Daman cares,” remarked Hassim to Lingard, when relating what took place.  “He cares, O Tuan!”

Hassim had learned also that the Settlement was in a state of unrest as if on the eve of war.  Belarab with his followers was encamped by his father’s tomb in the hollow beyond the cultivated fields.  His stockade was shut up and no one appeared on the verandahs of the houses within.  You could tell there were people inside only by the smoke of the cooking fires.  Tengga’s followers meantime swaggered about the Settlement behaving tyrannically to those who were peaceable.  A great madness had descended upon the people, a madness strong as the madness of love, the madness of battle, the desire to spill blood.  A strange fear also had made them wild.  The big smoke seen that morning above the forests of the coast was some agreed signal from Tengga to Daman but what it meant Hassim had been unable to find out.  He feared for Jorgenson’s safety.  He said that while one of the war-boats was being made ready to take the captives into the lagoon, he and his sister left the camp quietly and got away in their canoe.  The flares of the brig, reflected in a faint loom