With the first slant of sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other burst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of surprise, of dismay.  Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their hands on the stakes.  The popular story has it that Jim with a touch of one finger had thrown down the gate.  He was, of course, anxious to disclaim this achievement.  The whole stockade—­he would insist on explaining to you—­was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the inaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked to pieces and only hung together by a miracle.  He put his shoulder to it like a little fool and went in head over heels.  Jove!  If it hadn’t been for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein’s beetles.  The third man in, it seems, had been Tamb’ Itam, Jim’s own servant.  This was a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the state boats.  He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis settlers, had attached himself to Jim’s person.  His complexion was very dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile.  There was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his “white lord.”  He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow.  On state occasions he would tread on his master’s heels, one hand on the haft of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent brooding glances.  Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and all Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence.  At the taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the methodical ferocity of his fighting.  The storming party had come on so quick—­Jim said—­that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there was a “hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all had to clear out for dear life.”

’The rout, it seems, had been complete.  Doramin, waiting immovably in his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt.  When informed that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help, and, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of shade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a piece of white sheeting.  In Patusan the excitement was intense.  Jim told me that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers, black ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the open spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly with a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment.  His ears caught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring.  A lot of streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst the brown ridges of roofs.  “You must have enjoyed it,” I murmured, feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion.