forgive himself.  “I am responsible for every life in the land,” he said.  He was moody at first; she served him with her own hands, taking the plates and dishes (of the dinner-service presented him by Stein) from Tamb’ Itam.  He brightened up after a while; told her she would be again in command of the fort for another night.  “There’s no sleep for us, old girl,” he said, “while our people are in danger.”  Later on he said jokingly that she was the best man of them all.  “If you and Dain Waris had done what you wanted, not one of these poor devils would be alive to-day.”  “Are they very bad?” she asked, leaning over his chair.  “Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others,” he said after some hesitation.

‘Tamb’ Itam followed his master to the landing-stage outside the fort.  The night was clear but without a moon, and the middle of the river was dark, while the water under each bank reflected the light of many fires “as on a night of Ramadan,” Tamb’ Itam said.  War-boats drifted silently in the dark lane or, anchored, floated motionless with a loud ripple.  That night there was much paddling in a canoe and walking at his master’s heels for Tamb’ Itam:  up and down the street they tramped, where the fires were burning, inland on the outskirts of the town where small parties of men kept guard in the fields.  Tuan Jim gave his orders and was obeyed.  Last of all they went to the Rajah’s stockade, which a detachment of Jim’s people manned on that night.  The old Rajah had fled early in the morning with most of his women to a small house he had near a jungle village on a tributary stream.  Kassim, left behind, had attended the council with his air of diligent activity to explain away the diplomacy of the day before.  He was considerably cold-shouldered, but managed to preserve his smiling, quiet alertness, and professed himself highly delighted when Jim told him sternly that he proposed to occupy the stockade on that night with his own men.  After the council broke up he was heard outside accosting this and that deputing chief, and speaking in a loud, gratified tone of the Rajah’s property being protected in the Rajah’s absence.

’About ten or so Jim’s men marched in.  The stockade commanded the mouth of the creek, and Jim meant to remain there till Brown had passed below.  A small fire was lit on the flat, grassy point outside the wall of stakes, and Tamb’ Itam placed a little folding-stool for his master.  Jim told him to try and sleep.  Tamb’ Itam got a mat and lay down a little way off; but he could not sleep, though he knew he had to go on an important journey before the night was out.  His master walked to and fro before the fire with bowed head and with his hands behind his back.  His face was sad.  Whenever his master approached him Tamb’ Itam pretended to sleep, not wishing his master to know he had been watched.  At last his master stood still, looking down on him as he lay, and said softly, “It is time.”