Belarab’s hesitation had proved too much even for Hassim’s hereditary patience in such matters.  It is but becoming that weighty negotiations should be spread over many days, that the same requests and arguments should be repeated in the same words, at many successive interviews, and receive the same evasive answers.  Matters of state demand the dignity of such a procedure as if time itself had to wait on the power and wisdom of rulers.  Such are the proceedings of embassies and the dignified patience of envoys.  But at this time of crisis Hassim’s impatience obtained the upper hand; and though he never departed from the tradition of soft speech and restrained bearing while following with his sister in the train of the pious Belarab, he had his moments of anger, of anxiety, of despondency.  His friendships, his future, his country’s destinies were at stake, while Belarab’s camp wandered deviously over the back country as if influenced by the vacillation of the ruler’s thought, the very image of uncertain fate.

Often no more than the single word “Good” was all the answer vouchsafed to Hassim’s daily speeches.  The lesser men, companions of the Chief, treated him with deference; but Hassim could feel the opposition from the women’s side of the camp working against his cause in subservience to the mere caprice of the new wife, a girl quite gentle and kind to her dependents, but whose imagination had run away with her completely and had made her greedy for the loot of the yacht from mere simplicity and innocence.  What could Hassim, that stranger, wandering and poor, offer for her acceptance?  Nothing.  The wealth of his far-off country was but an idle tale, the talk of an exile looking for help.

At night Hassim had to listen to the anguished doubts of Immada, the only companion of his life, child of the same mother, brave as a man, but in her fears a very woman.  She whispered them to him far into the night while the camp of the great Belarab was hushed in sleep and the fires had sunk down to mere glowing embers.  Hassim soothed her gravely.  But he, too, was a native of Wajo where men are more daring and quicker of mind than other Malays.  More energetic, too, and energy does not go without an inner fire.  Hassim lost patience and one evening he declared to his sister Immada:  “To-morrow we leave this ruler without a mind and go back to our white friend.”

Therefore next morning, letting the camp move on the direct road to the settlement, Hassim and Immada took a course of their own.  It was a lonely path between the jungle and the clearings.  They had two attendants with them, Hassim’s own men, men of Wajo; and so the lady Immada, when she had a mind to, could be carried, after the manner of the great ladies of Wajo who need not put foot to the ground unless they like.  The lady Immada, accustomed to the hardships that are the lot of exiles, preferred to walk, but from time to time she let herself be carried for a