He flung his stick at the nearest pair of black shoulders and stopped short.  The tall grasses swayed themselves into a rest, a chorus of yells and piercing shrieks died out in a dismal howl, and all at once the wooded shores and the blue bay seemed to fall under the spell of a luminous stillness.  The change was as startling as the awakening from a dream.  The sudden silence struck Lingard as amazing.

He broke it by lifting his voice in a stentorian shout, which arrested the pursuit of his men.  They retired reluctantly, glaring back angrily at the wall of a jungle where not a single leaf stirred.  The strangers, whose opportune appearance had decided the issue of that adventure, did not attempt to join in the pursuit but halted in a compact body on the ground lately occupied by the savages.

Lingard and the young leader of the Wajo traders met in the splendid light of noonday, and amidst the attentive silence of their followers, on the very spot where the Malay seaman had lost his life.  Lingard, striding up from one side, thrust out his open palm; Hassim responded at once to the frank gesture and they exchanged their first hand-clasp over the prostrate body, as if fate had already exacted the price of a death for the most ominous of her gifts—­the gift of friendship that sometimes contains the whole good or evil of a life.

“I’ll never forget this day,” cried Lingard in a hearty tone; and the other smiled quietly.

Then after a short pause—­“Will you burn the village for vengeance?” asked the Malay with a quick glance down at the dead Lascar who, on his face and with stretched arms, seemed to cling desperately to that earth of which he had known so little.

Lingard hesitated.

“No,” he said, at last.  “It would do good to no one.”

“True,” said Hassim, gently, “but was this man your debtor—­a slave?”

“Slave?” cried Lingard.  “This is an English brig.  Slave?  No.  A free man like myself.”

“Hai.  He is indeed free now,” muttered the Malay with another glance downward.  “But who will pay the bereaved for his life?”

“If there is anywhere a woman or child belonging to him, I—­my serang would know—­I shall seek them out,” cried Lingard, remorsefully.

“You speak like a chief,” said Hassim, “only our great men do not go to battle with naked hands.  O you white men!  O the valour of you white men!”

“It was folly, pure folly,” protested Lingard, “and this poor fellow has paid for it.”

“He could not avoid his destiny,” murmured the Malay.  “It is in my mind my trading is finished now in this place,” he added, cheerfully.

Lingard expressed his regret.

“It is no matter, it is no matter,” assured the other courteously, and after Lingard had given a pressing invitation for Hassim and his two companions of high rank to visit the brig, the two parties separated.

The evening was calm when the Malay craft left its berth near the shore and was rowed slowly across the bay to Lingard’s anchorage.  The end of a stout line was thrown on board, and that night the white man’s brig and the brown man’s prau swung together to the same anchor.