’Meanwhile he wandered about the courtyard, shunned by some, glared at by others, but watched by all, and practically at the mercy of the first casual ragamuffin with a chopper, in there.  He took possession of a small tumble-down shed to sleep in; the effluvia of filth and rotten matter incommoded him greatly:  it seems he had not lost his appetite though, because—­he told me—­he had been hungry all the blessed time.  Now and again “some fussy ass” deputed from the council-room would come out running to him, and in honeyed tones would administer amazing interrogatories:  “Were the Dutch coming to take the country?  Would the white man like to go back down the river?  What was the object of coming to such a miserable country?  The Rajah wanted to know whether the white man could repair a watch?” They did actually bring out to him a nickel clock of New England make, and out of sheer unbearable boredom he busied himself in trying to get the alarum to work.  It was apparently when thus occupied in his shed that the true perception of his extreme peril dawned upon him.  He dropped the thing—­he says—­“like a hot potato,” and walked out hastily, without the slightest idea of what he would, or indeed could, do.  He only knew that the position was intolerable.  He strolled aimlessly beyond a sort of ramshackle little granary on posts, and his eyes fell on the broken stakes of the palisade; and then—­he says—­at once, without any mental process as it were, without any stir of emotion, he set about his escape as if executing a plan matured for a month.  He walked off carelessly to give himself a good run, and when he faced about there was some dignitary, with two spearmen in attendance, close at his elbow ready with a question.  He started off “from under his very nose,” went over “like a bird,” and landed on the other side with a fall that jarred all his bones and seemed to split his head.  He picked himself up instantly.  He never thought of anything at the time; all he could remember—­he said—­was a great yell; the first houses of Patusan were before him four hundred yards away; he saw the creek, and as it were mechanically put on more pace.  The earth seemed fairly to fly backwards under his feet.  He took off from the last dry spot, felt himself flying through the air, felt himself, without any shock, planted upright in an extremely soft and sticky mudbank.  It was only when he tried to move his legs and found he couldn’t that, in his own words, “he came to himself.”  He began to think of the “bally long spears.”  As a matter of fact, considering that the people inside the stockade had to run to the gate, then get down to the landing-place, get into boats, and pull round a point of land, he had more advance than he imagined.  Besides, it being low water, the creek was without water—­you couldn’t call it dry—­and practically he was safe for a time from everything but a very long shot perhaps.  The higher firm ground was about six feet in front of him.  “I thought