’A hush had fallen upon the town after the outburst of wailing and lamentation that had swept over the river, like a gust of wind from the opened abode of sorrow.  But rumours flew in whispers, filling the hearts with consternation and horrible doubts.  The robbers were coming back, bringing many others with them, in a great ship, and there would be no refuge in the land for any one.  A sense of utter insecurity as during an earthquake pervaded the minds of men, who whispered their suspicions, looking at each other as if in the presence of some awful portent.

’The sun was sinking towards the forests when Dain Waris’s body was brought into Doramin’s campong.  Four men carried it in, covered decently with a white sheet which the old mother had sent out down to the gate to meet her son on his return.  They laid him at Doramin’s feet, and the old man sat still for a long time, one hand on each knee, looking down.  The fronds of palms swayed gently, and the foliage of fruit trees stirred above his head.  Every single man of his people was there, fully armed, when the old nakhoda at last raised his eyes.  He moved them slowly over the crowd, as if seeking for a missing face.  Again his chin sank on his breast.  The whispers of many men mingled with the slight rustling of the leaves.

‘The Malay who had brought Tamb’ Itam and the girl to Samarang was there too.  “Not so angry as many,” he said to me, but struck with a great awe and wonder at the “suddenness of men’s fate, which hangs over their heads like a cloud charged with thunder.”  He told me that when Dain Waris’s body was uncovered at a sign of Doramin’s, he whom they often called the white lord’s friend was disclosed lying unchanged with his eyelids a little open as if about to wake.  Doramin leaned forward a little more, like one looking for something fallen on the ground.  His eyes searched the body from its feet to its head, for the wound maybe.  It was in the forehead and small; and there was no word spoken while one of the by-standers, stooping, took off the silver ring from the cold stiff hand.  In silence he held it up before Doramin.  A murmur of dismay and horror ran through the crowd at the sight of that familiar token.  The old nakhoda stared at it, and suddenly let out one great fierce cry, deep from the chest, a roar of pain and fury, as mighty as the bellow of a wounded bull, bringing great fear into men’s hearts, by the magnitude of his anger and his sorrow that could be plainly discerned without words.  There was a great stillness afterwards for a space, while the body was being borne aside by four men.  They laid it down under a tree, and on the instant, with one long shriek, all the women of the household began to wail together; they mourned with shrill cries; the sun was setting, and in the intervals of screamed lamentations the high sing-song voices of two old men intoning the Koran chanted alone.

’About this time Jim, leaning on a gun-carriage, looked at the river, and turned his back on the house; and the girl, in the doorway, panting as if she had run herself to a standstill, was looking at him across the yard.  Tamb’ Itam stood not far from his master, waiting patiently for what might happen.  All at once Jim, who seemed to be lost in quiet thought, turned to him and said, “Time to finish this.”