birds’ nests for a Celebes trader.  Rajah Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery.  His cruelty and rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of the organised power of the Celebes men, only—­till Jim came—­he was not afraid enough to keep quiet.  He struck at them through his subjects, and thought himself pathetically in the right.  The situation was complicated by a wandering stranger, an Arab half-breed, who, I believe, on purely religious grounds, had incited the tribes in the interior (the bush-folk, as Jim himself called them) to rise, and had established himself in a fortified camp on the summit of one of the twin hills.  He hung over the town of Patusan like a hawk over a poultry-yard, but he devastated the open country.  Whole villages, deserted, rotted on their blackened posts over the banks of clear streams, dropping piecemeal into the water the grass of their walls, the leaves of their roofs, with a curious effect of natural decay as if they had been a form of vegetation stricken by a blight at its very root.  The two parties in Patusan were not sure which one this partisan most desired to plunder.  The Rajah intrigued with him feebly.  Some of the Bugis settlers, weary with endless insecurity, were half inclined to call him in.  The younger spirits amongst them, chaffing, advised to “get Sherif Ali with his wild men and drive the Rajah Allang out of the country.”  Doramin restrained them with difficulty.  He was growing old, and, though his influence had not diminished, the situation was getting beyond him.  This was the state of affairs when Jim, bolting from the Rajah’s stockade, appeared before the chief of the Bugis, produced the ring, and was received, in a manner of speaking, into the heart of the community.’

CHAPTER 26

’Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen.  His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look merely fat; he looked imposing, monumental.  This motionless body, clad in rich stuffs, coloured silks, gold embroideries; this huge head, enfolded in a red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big, round face, wrinkled, furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds starting on each side of wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a thick-lipped mouth; the throat like a bull; the vast corrugated brow overhanging the staring proud eyes—­made a whole that, once seen, can never be forgotten.  His impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb when once he sat down) was like a display of dignity.  He was never known to raise his voice.  It was a hoarse and powerful murmur, slightly veiled as if heard from a distance.  When he walked, two short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the waist, in white sarongs and with black skull-caps on the backs of their heads, sustained his elbows; they would ease him down