and swarming with stars.  The blackened ground smoked quietly with low creeping wisps, till a little breeze came on and blew everything away.  Brown expected an attack to be delivered as soon as the tide had flowed enough again to enable the war-boats which had cut off his retreat to enter the creek.  At any rate he was sure there would be an attempt to carry off his long-boat, which lay below the hill, a dark high lump on the feeble sheen of a wet mud-flat.  But no move of any sort was made by the boats in the river.  Over the stockade and the Rajah’s buildings Brown saw their lights on the water.  They seemed to be anchored across the stream.  Other lights afloat were moving in the reach, crossing and recrossing from side to side.  There were also lights twinkling motionless upon the long walls of houses up the reach, as far as the bend, and more still beyond, others isolated inland.  The loom of the big fires disclosed buildings, roofs, black piles as far as he could see.  It was an immense place.  The fourteen desperate invaders lying flat behind the felled trees raised their chins to look over at the stir of that town that seemed to extend up-river for miles and swarm with thousands of angry men.  They did not speak to each other.  Now and then they would hear a loud yell, or a single shot rang out, fired very far somewhere.  But round their position everything was still, dark, silent.  They seemed to be forgotten, as if the excitement keeping awake all the population had nothing to do with them, as if they had been dead already.’

CHAPTER 39

’All the events of that night have a great importance, since they brought about a situation which remained unchanged till Jim’s return.  Jim had been away in the interior for more than a week, and it was Dain Waris who had directed the first repulse.  That brave and intelligent youth ("who knew how to fight after the manner of white men”) wished to settle the business off-hand, but his people were too much for him.  He had not Jim’s racial prestige and the reputation of invincible, supernatural power.  He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of unfailing truth and of unfailing victory.  Beloved, trusted, and admired as he was, he was still one of them, while Jim was one of us.  Moreover, the white man, a tower of strength in himself, was invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be killed.  Those unexpressed thoughts guided the opinions of the chief men of the town, who elected to assemble in Jim’s fort for deliberation upon the emergency, as if expecting to find wisdom and courage in the dwelling of the absent white man.  The shooting of Brown’s ruffians was so far good, or lucky, that there had been half-a-dozen casualties amongst the defenders.  The wounded were lying on the verandah tended by their women-folk.  The women and children from the lower part of the town had been sent into the fort at the first alarm.  There Jewel was in command, very efficient and high-spirited,