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 FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, Publishers, 
 
 27 Park Place, New York. 
 
"OUE CONTINENT" LIBEAEY. 
 
 There Was Once 
 
 - A MAN. 
 
 A STORY. 
 
 BY R." H. NEWELL 
 
 (ORPHEUS C. KERK.) 
 
 . . . The Sacrilege 
 
 Raised up his head astounded, and accurst 
 The stars, the destinies, the gods. 
 
 Lander s CHRYSAOR. 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, 
 
 FOR 
 
 OUR CONTINENT PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1884 
 
COPYKIGHT, A. D. 1884, 
 BY OUK CONTINENT PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
To 
 
 THE ONE, TRIED AND PROVED, 
 UNSELFISH FRIEND 
 
 OF 
 
 MY MATURER YEARS : 
 
 WHOSE NAME 
 
 WILL BE WRITTEN HEREUNDER IN THE 
 
 COPY OF THIS BOOK RECEIVED 
 
 BY ITS POSSESSOR, 
 
 FROM THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
f O rov (3ifl\ov SHdidovS HOfAip&S JJL txyyapsv- 
 
 Tor rov ffvverov rvnoypacpeodS spyov arsv 
 
 rov spavrov x l PYP a( P ov y 
 * O 7roXvjuaO?)z avayiyvcoGrriS JJL apeaei npoG- 
 
 rsjLK&v rov avrov 
 
 Tov? gerovS XoyovS KOLI ra$ pijropiuaS drj- 
 ev rco fiip\<jp ev 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PROLOGUE, . . . . . ... 7 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE EFFINGHAMS, . . . . . 25 
 
 II. LIEUTENANT BELMORE PAYS HIS RESPECTS, 34 
 
 III. A CASE IN CHANCERY, .... 45 
 
 IV. FRIEND, OR FOE ? . . . . .64 
 
 V. THE THREADS UNITE, ..... 72 
 
 VL "AND SHE Is DEAD," . . . . .91 
 
 VII. LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES, . . 104 
 
 VIII. THE CROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN, . . 120 
 
 IX. OSHONSEE AT HOME, . . . . . 136 
 
 X. DOCTOR HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE, . 148 
 
 XI. UNDER THE DURION TREE, . . . 166 
 
 XII. THE PIC-NIC AT THE FORT, . . .184 
 
 XIII. WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST, . . .211 
 
 XIV. A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE, .... 226 
 
 XV. AT MR. MERTON S TABLE, . . . .247 
 
 XVI. COLONEL DARYL S DUTY AS AN UNCLE, . 275 
 
 XVII. CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER, . . . 291 
 
 XVIII. EDWIN S DUTY AS A NEPHEW, . . .313 
 
 XIX. THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT NOT COUNTED 
 
 UPON, 333 
 
 XX. A MISSING LINK is SUPPLIED, . . . 349 
 XXI. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, .... 363 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXII. IT is HARD FOB A MAN WHOLLY TO DIS 
 APPEAR, f . .380 
 
 XXIIL A SIGNET-RING RETURNED, . . . 401 
 
 XXIV. UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE, . 413 
 
 XXV. THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET, . . 436 
 
 XXVI. NIGHT S BRINGING FORTH, . . .462 
 
 XXVII. FORBEARANCE IN THE DIGNITY OF MIGHT, 481 
 
 XXVIII. BETWEEN TWO "WORLDS, .... 490 
 
 XXIX. SHE TELLS ALL, . . . . . . 605 
 
 EPILOGUE, ......... 513 
 
 AUTHOR S NOTE, ........ 523 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HE WAS RAISED UP BY THE DOCTOR AND THE 
 
 LAWYER, AND HE SIGNED, . . (Frontispiece) 
 
 AFTERNOON WALKS ON THE BATTERY, ... 8 
 
 MRS. DORNTON S ARRIVAL, . . . . . 9 
 " WITH A SOOTHING HAND ON HER KINSWOMAN S 
 
 NEAREST SHOULDER," . . . . .10 
 
 ON THE PORTICO, 17 
 
 " WILLIAM DARYL SPRANG TO His FEET AND TOOK 
 
 AN IMPULSIVE STEP FORWARD," ... 22 
 " CAN T You COME UP LONG ENOUGH TO RECEIVE 
 
 OUR THANKS?" . . . . . . . 30 
 
 THE CALLER STOOD BOWING IN THE DOORWAY, . 41 
 
 "WHAT SHOULD You SAY TO NUTMEGS Now?" . 51 
 THE CURIOUS OMNIUM GATHERUM OF THE CHINESE 
 
 BAZAR, 53 
 
 " I HAVE NOTHING, NOTHING TO FORGIVE EXCEPT 
 
 THAT SHE DID NOT LIVE," . . . 115 
 
 "TUAN BESAR Is NOT ALONE," .... 130 
 
 " O-SHON-SEE ! O-SHON-SEE !" CROAKED THE IN 
 FURIATED CREATURE, RAINING BLOWS WITH 
 IRRESISTIBLE RAPIDITY UPON THE RETREATING 
 MAN, 140 
 
 THE ADMIRAL, THE RAJAH, AND THE HANDSOME 
 YOUNG MALAY PRINCE STOOD TOGETHER ON 
 THE QUARTER DECK, . . . . . .214 
 
 " LORD FORGIVE ME !" CAME FROM THE WHITENED 
 
 LIPS OF THE NATURALIST, .... 236 
 
 "TUAN BESAR SHALL HEAR THE STORY AS IT HAS 
 
 BEEN TOLD ME," 352 
 
 HER MOTHER FOUND HER ABSORBED IN COLORING 
 
 THE STORMY SKY OF A LANDSCAPE, . . .370 
 
THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 I 
 
 IT was nearly sixty years ago. The interval of three 
 score years between then and now would be but insig 
 nificant as a paragraph in the history of any Old World 
 metropolis ; but in the marvelous record of New York 
 the predestined Millionopolis of Christendom it has 
 been a period of bamboo-like urban growth to amaze 
 even those yet living witnesses whose memories can 
 recall its every progressive phase. Only of late had the 
 town been surveyed and laid out beyond Houston Street, 
 and scarcely ten years had elapsed since a ghastly pro 
 cession of sheriff, bishop, hangman s cart, civic soldiery 
 and constabulary piloted a ribald mob from the Bride 
 well in the City Hall Park, to an open field immediately 
 below that street s intersection of the city s chief high 
 way, to the public execution of three wretches made 
 thus to expiate the crime of firing a church. 
 
 The root, the heart, the epitome of that beloved New 
 York of the Knickerbockers was Broadway, from the 
 wave-washed, umbrageous Battery to a few blocks north 
 of Warren Street ; and along its primitively-paved, tree- 
 shaded mile and a half such retailing shops as were 
 highest in fashionable favor made their ambitious dis 
 plays, at decent intervals, between the dignified brick 
 mansions of the wealthy and exclusive social class. In 
 the limited or select lower district, fronting the historic 
 Bowling Green, were what contemporaneous judgment 
 7 
 
8 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 deemed the sumptuous homes of the Grades, the Ellises, 
 and their like. Farther up the sunny, bustling prome 
 nade, the silver plates on doors bore such names as 
 Livingston, Wilkes, Grinnell, Minturn, Clarkson, Leroy, 
 Harmony, Yan Horn, Hicks, Costar, Morton, and others 
 as well known to choice local society ; while over toward 
 the East River, across irregular patches of low wooden 
 houses and marshy fields, could be seen the upper sto 
 ries and chimney-stacks of the stately seats of the 
 Rutgers, Willetts and Stuyvesants. Going "into the 
 country" above Lispenard Street, the stroller, or eques 
 trian of the period, saw, on his left hand, westerly, the 
 patrimonial meadows of that name, extending to the 
 present Spring and Sullivan Streets ; farther yet to the 
 left, on verdant heights near the Hudson, stood the im 
 posing mansions of the Glovers and the Varicks ; and 
 on storied Richmond Hill, in the vicinity of now shabby 
 Charlton Street, appeared the "grand" house succes 
 sively famous as the abode of Washington, of the pom 
 pous British consul Buchanan, and ultimately of the 
 brilliant and misguided Aaron Burr. 
 
 The Broadway of sixty years ago was scarcely more 
 than a brisk and sanguine promise of the future supreme 
 metropolitan highway of the Continent the triumphal 
 path of presidents, princes, heroic guests of the state, 
 and the nation s mightiest commercial potentates ; yet, 
 in its swiftly multiplying mercantile edifices, pretentious 
 private buildings, tree-arched vistas, of moving throngs 
 and streaming vehicles, gay groups of loitering prome- 
 naders and thunderous symphony of traffic, there stirred 
 incipient potentialities of the combined Regent Street, 
 Chausse"ed Antinand straightened Lastenstrasse it was 
 destined to become in another half century. As a cha 
 racteristic Concentration of what was brightest and 
 freshest and most imposing in the Kew York of the 
 
PROLOGUE. 9 
 
 Knickerbockers, it was loved and gloried in by its resi 
 dents and frequenters as no later generation of the far 
 vaster city is ever likely to show fondness and pride 
 over newer and more sumptuous avenues. To live upon 
 it, in the full tide of its rush and gayety, was to be re 
 cognized, without challenge, as of the most affluent 
 respectability ; while a residence upon any one of the 
 several quieter streets intersecting it to the westward, 
 yet near enough to share its costliness, was, perhaps 
 (like owning "seats" in view on either river-side), an 
 even subtler implication of social distinction. 
 
 And- it was in those comparatively primitive days, 
 early in the long twilight of an evening in June, that 
 one of the quieter connecting streets in question, known 
 as Park Place and extending from Broadway, at the 
 City Hall Park, toward the Hudson, was invaded from 
 the adjacent great thoroughfare by a carriage, driven 
 so rapidly as to attract the immediate curious atten 
 tion of everybody within sight and hearing of it. The 
 warmth of the idling hour had tempted a number of 
 family groups to the iron-railed stoops and balconies of 
 houses on either side of the way, while bands of playing 
 children gave parting life to the slowly shading side 
 walks ; and these all became interested spectators of the 
 hurried incursion of the vehicle, its sharp halt before a 
 mansion about midway down the block, and the almost 
 as summary alighting of a lady who, by her figure and 
 dress, seemed to be past middle age. Before the various 
 neighboring beholders had much chance to speculate, so 
 far as their breeding would allow, upon the identity of 
 the visitor arriving thus hastily, or her purpose in so 
 doing, the door of the Yon Gilder residence had ad 
 mitted her, and a servant had reopened it in the next 
 instant to wave and signal some apparently pre-under- 
 stood order to the coachman. As the latter drove 
 
10 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 slowly away close to the curb, obviously sent to the 
 family stable around the next corner, it could be seen 
 that horses, carriage and liveried driver alike were gray 
 with the dust of suburban roads. Hence, neighborly 
 curiosity had this only to discern for the time being- 
 that both lady and carriage, although by no means rustic 
 in general aspects, must have come from somewhere 
 outside of the city. 
 
 Within the house thus problematically emphasized to 
 exterior observation the guest had been promptly ush 
 ered up a sumptuously carpeted stairway to a boudoir 
 on the second floor, at the entrance of which stood 
 another lady of about the same age, who, without a 
 word, seized her outstretched hand and led her into the 
 room. In fact, the whole reception, so far, gave every 
 indication of a previously exact appointment ; as, in 
 deed, had been the case. The two ladies kissed in 
 silence, holding yet each other s hand, and then she of 
 the mansion spoke : 
 
 " I m so glad you have come, Louisa !" 
 
 " I should have been a queer mother if I had not !" 
 responded the other, with some asperity of tone and 
 quickly added : " "Where is Caroline ?" 
 
 Mrs. Yon Gilder for such she was induced the visi 
 tor to sit beside her on a sofa near a cheerfully-curtained 
 window before answering this pointed question, and 
 spoke again with a soothing hand on her kinswoman s 
 nearer shoulder and a look of affectionate entreaty : 
 
 "Louisa Dornton, you must not be too severe with 
 the poor girl in this affair. Being sure that you would 
 come immediately upon my message, I told James to 
 bring you up here on the instant of your arrival, that I 
 might see you at once. Perhaps there was no real need 
 of sending for you at all. But I felt a responsibility. 
 Tow, do not be severe." 
 
PROLOGUE. 11 
 
 Mrs. Dornton who was, perhaps, a matron of five- 
 and-forty years, with silver-streaked dark hair in ma 
 tronly curls of graduated precision on either side of her 
 decided forehead, with grayish-blue eyes, nose and chin 
 indicative of some pride, and a mouth too reserved 
 of outline to promise much emotional flexibility looked 
 back with a cold smile into the gentle eyes fixed upon 
 her. The two women were a harmonious contrast. In 
 the large black bonnet and sombre traveling-wrap, not 
 yet removed, the abrupt guest had a purposeful and, as 
 it were, retributive aspect ; while in the whole air of 
 her companion, pale of face, delicate of feature, wearing 
 a triangular dressing of lace upon her plainly gathered 
 hair, and a thin, neutral-tinted robe upon her tall and 
 slender figure, there was a suggestion of that intelligent 
 tenderness of mercy which mates most gracefully with 
 justice. 
 
 "Severe?" echoed Mrs. Dornton. "Edith, have I 
 ever been anything but too indulgent to Caroline ? Since 
 her sister s marriage, the child has been simply spoiled 
 by our indulgence. Mr. Dornton and I have been 
 foolish. And now she is repaying us. But where is 
 the ungrateful girl ?" 
 
 "I did not mean to reproach you, Louisa. I know 
 that you are a good mother. Only, you should not 
 judge her too harshly. Kemember her youth and inex 
 perience. She is in bed now, half sick." 
 
 " Sick !" exclaimed the mother, with a change of 
 countenance, and starting to leave her seat. 
 
 "You need not be alarmed. Only a bad headache," 
 continued Mrs. Yon Gilder, restraining her by a ges 
 ture. " This morning I told her, privately, and as re 
 assuringly as I could, that you were coming here to-day 
 by my invitation ; but she became excited, and now she 
 is as I tell you." 
 
12 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Then she is afraid to see me, Edith, depend on that. 
 Afraid to see her mother ! I must go to her at once." 
 And again the speaker was in the act of leaving the 
 sofa. 
 
 " No ! Hear me !" rejoined her companion quickly. 
 "You must not see her until I have told you all I know. 
 Now do reflect, Louisa, that the whole matter may not 
 really amount to anything at all. She is such an un 
 worldly, innocent young creature that when I saw them 
 so often together, and seeming to like each other so 
 well, I thought her parents ought at least to know about 
 it. I hated to speak to her on the subject ; for the very 
 childlike innocence of her look would make one feel 
 contemptible in approaching her on such a subject. I 
 did speak to Mr. Yon Gilder, and he only laughed, and 
 asked if I would find fault with a blossom for attracting 
 a butterfly ? He says he is sure that you and I flirted 
 a great deal worse when we were girls." 
 
 Mrs. Dornton drew herself up rather grandly at this, 
 "lam under obligations to your husband, Edith, for 
 his estimation of my youthful dignity of character. Do 
 you mean to say that a daughter of mine, a guest in the 
 house of her mother s cousin, has been so forgetful of 
 herself as to carry on a vulgar flirtation ?" 
 
 " How harsh your words are!" retorted her cousin 
 deprecatingly. "Do you want to make me wish that I 
 had not sent for you, Louisa ? I would answer for it 
 with my life that Caroline would do nothing unladylike 
 or wrong." 
 
 " She shall assure me of that with her own lips, and 
 at once," was the mother s grim interjection. "Home 
 she shall go with me to-morrow morning." 
 
 "Yes; but hear me first. I ll tell you the whole 
 story. After she had been visiting with us over a month, 
 and seemed to be growing really stronger, she went 
 
PROLOGVE. 13 
 
 with our Ada and myself to a party at the Lawrences , 
 over by St. John s Park, and there saw Lieutenant 
 Daryl. She told me that she had met him before at 
 Dornton Manor ; and they danced together, and then 
 he called here to see her. As he seemed to be perfectly 
 a gentleman, and she had known him in her own home, 
 I could not very well object. He invited Ada and her 
 to the theatre, with myself as joint-guardian. From 
 that it went to afternoon walks to the Battery, and then 
 drives up as far as the arsenal and back. Ada has been 
 their companion to within the past week, and it was, at 
 last, her indisposition to spoil company any longer, as 
 my girl called it, that occasioned my anxiety. On the 
 day before yesterday the Englishman and Caroline were 
 out walking several hours in the afternoon, and Ada did 
 not know where they were. Upon Caroline s return, 
 and while we were at dinner, I asked her with compara 
 tive seriousness, if she thought you would be willing 
 that she should see so much of the young gentleman ? 
 Instead of answering somewhat pertly, in the girlish 
 style, as I had half expected, she blushed, her eyes filled 
 with tears, and she hurried sobbing from the room. I 
 felt dreadfully, and Mr. Yon Gilder said, There, now, 
 you ve broken the child s heart ! Ada thought her a 
 baby ; you know how thoughtless Ada is. And, upon 
 the whole, Louisa, I thought I might better write to 
 you." 
 
 "Not a moment too soon, Edith," said her cousin, 
 rising to her feet. Her eyes had kindled with a clear 
 fire as the story ended, and her look was one of conclu 
 sive decision. "I ll go up and see her now. - You 11 
 excuse me to Mr. Yon Gilder and Ada if I do not see 
 them, nor you, again to-night. I should be poor com 
 pany at present. Please to see that my carriage is or 
 dered at nine in the morning." 
 
14 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Mrs. Yon Gilder s delicate face wore an anxious and 
 pained expression, but she attempted no useless opposi 
 tion. Her suggestion that the visitor should at least 
 lay aside bonnet and wrapper, and take a cup of tea 
 before the impending interview, was, not ungratefully, 
 rejected ; and then the aggrieved mother, requesting 
 that she should not be attended, went up alone to a 
 bedchamber she had often occupied herself, in hospi 
 table days past, there to arraign and assume custody 
 over the daughter who had offended her. 
 
 The scene ensuing between parent and child was 
 kept sacred from all other eyes and ears than their 
 own ; and on the following morning, when the former 
 appeared at the family breakfast-table, her fully-re 
 gained customary equipoise of manner gave no definite 
 clew to conjecture on the subject. " Caroline will take 
 a little breakfast in her room, if you please, Edith, be 
 fore we go. Her head is not right yet," was her inci 
 dental remark after the naturally subdued greetings of 
 Mr. Yon Gilder, his wife and daughter. In no circum 
 stances was she a woman to bring private tremors into 
 even the most intimate general company. With the 
 head of the family, who was a florid, gray-haired, rather 
 portly merchant, largely in the East India trade, she 
 discussed the recent introduction of gas in the city and 
 the rapidly approaching completion of the great Erie 
 Canal. With her cousin she exchanged notes regarding 
 the Ediriburg Review, and its editor, whom they had both 
 known a dozen years before, when he came to New 
 York to marry Miss Wilkes, and whose later promotion 
 to the lord rectorship of the University of Glasgow 
 was yet a matter of congratulatory remark among his 
 American friends. With Miss Yon Gilder, a fragile, 
 lively and pretty image of her father s fairest youth, she 
 debated the possibility of a renewal of the yellow fever 
 
PROLOGUE. 15 
 
 scourge after it had skipped one year, and joined in the 
 hope that none of them would ever see in their lives 
 again a fence across Broadway to define the infected 
 region. Only when the carriage was at the door, and a 
 slight, girlish figure, closely veiled and draped, came 
 down the staircase with the sympathetic Ada, and hur 
 ried out to the vehicle with barely one convulsive sob 
 of adieu, did Mrs. Von Gilder notice, in the peculiar 
 tension of her cousin s mouth, the first sign that the 
 story of the night might not have ended in exact conso 
 nance with that lady s imperious will. 
 
 Seating herself opposite to the fair culprit, who had 
 crowded desolately into the loneliest corner of her 
 wheeled prison and sat there without speech or motion, 
 the mother waved a farewell to the group at the door, 
 and preserved as unsocial a demeanor while the horses 
 started on their way. Silent yet both remained, in the 
 drive taking them up Broadway beyond the pavements, 
 and then onward to its northern limit above the old 
 City Arsenal grounds, where, turning to the eastward, 
 the hoofs clicked on the gritty surface of the Harlem 
 turnpike. Then the older rider spoke, as though come 
 to a sharp turn in her thoughts also. 
 
 "Caroline, if you don t wish me to think something 
 worse of you than you have confessed, stop this crying 
 and try to go home with a manner more becoming 
 to your father s daughter. I sent for your sister to 
 come up to Dornton Manor, and she will be there to 
 meet us." 
 
 With a quick, impulsive gesture the veiled recusant 
 suddenly leaned toward her mother, so as to grasp an 
 unguarded hand, and exclaimed, in a choked, tremu 
 lous voice : 
 
 " Oh, ma ! why can t you trust me as you do Julia ? 
 Why have you come to carry me home in this way, as 
 
16 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 though I had done something so awful? What will 
 Cousin Edith think ? and Ada ? and Mr. Daryl" 
 
 "Don t dare to name that man to me again, willful 
 child I" interrupted Mrs. Dornton, peremptorily, though 
 not withdrawing her hand. " (Let me close this cur 
 tain if we are not to be a spectacle for the roadside. ) 
 Your sister Julia honored and obeyed her parents in all 
 things. She was a dutiful daughter and is a decorous 
 wife. She never had half of the indulgence your father 
 and myself have shown to you ; but if she had been 
 allowed, like you, to visit three months away from 
 home, it would not have been her mother s humiliation 
 to force her back, like this, a recreant to filial duty, 
 maidenly modesty " 
 
 " You must not speak in that way to me, ma !" inter 
 rupted Caroline in her turn, her girlish tones growing 
 shriller with quickened breathing. "I have done 
 nothing to deserve it. Mr. Daryl I will mention his 
 name is a gentleman. What will he think ? You and 
 pa never said a word against him at Dornton. You told 
 me yourself that his grandmother was born there and 
 his family respectable." 
 
 Mrs. Dornton now withdrew her hand from the trem 
 bling clasp of the excited girl, and shook a finger at her, 
 as she shrank before it, with a deliberation of manner 
 the more passionately effective for seeming to be dispas 
 sionate. 
 
 41 1 cannot talk farther with you, my dear," she said, 
 " until you have recalled some sense of the respect due 
 to me. But this you may depend upon implicitly : il 
 this adventurous foreigner " 
 
 "Mother!" 
 
 " I say, if this unprincipled fortune-hunter, who has 
 basely allowed a silly, wayward girl like you to com 
 promise " 
 
rm 
 
PROLOGUE. 17 
 
 Before the sentence could be completed the daughter 
 had flung herself upon her knees in the carriage, crying 
 hysterically, as she buried her face in her parent s lap : 
 
 "Mother! we are married I" 
 
 n 
 
 ON the portico of the little white "hotel" of the 
 miniature village of Dornton stood two men, the one, 
 with an advancing foot already down the first step of 
 the short flight to the roadway, seeming to be taking 
 leave of the other. The younger and taller had a pe 
 culiarly upright carriage, brown hair with a rather 
 military cut, frank blue eyes and the complexion of 
 a wholesome school-boy. His companion was rather 
 stouter, wore glasses, and his crisp black locks and long, 
 flushed face were more pronouncedly foreign in effect. 
 Both wore straw hats, waistcoats and trousers of light 
 fabric and loose coats of thin black cloth. In the shade of 
 two luxuriant horse-chestnuts, linked by a whitewashed 
 tethering-bar, before the doorway of the modest inn, 
 stood the time-worn barouche long serving as the whole 
 livery of the house, and toward it was descending the 
 leave-taking younger gentleman. 
 
 " No, Larry." he was saying, with some signs of im 
 patience, "you must stay here, my dear fellow, and 
 allow me to go alone. They must not think that I come 
 like a green-bag-lawyer fellow, with a witness." 
 
 " But I tell you, Will, my boy, this may be a case of 
 law for you sooner than you think," persisted his friend 
 energetically, keeping yet a detaining hand on his nearer 
 arm. " A witness may be precisely what you want." 
 
 "We ve already talked that all over, and you know 
 
18 THERE WAS ONGE A MAN. 
 
 my feelings about it," was the hurried answer. "I 
 must go alone. If I am not back here in an hour, take 
 this old rattle-trap which I shall send back and be 
 driven to the landing. If I am not there, go down by 
 the boat and I 11 rejoin you in the city later on." 
 
 "Ah, my poor boy, you ve misgivings, then," re 
 turned Larry, shaking his head, but no longer striving 
 to detain the obstinate young man. "However, as I 
 came here only to serve you, I 11 do as you say." 
 His friend shook him cordially by both hands. 
 " That s like the good, grumpy, kind old boy you 
 always are, God bless you !" he said feelingly. "Now 
 I am off." 
 
 As he sprang into the shabby barouche and rode 
 away, the gentleman left upon the portico shook his 
 head again, and looked out after him in the fervent 
 summer sunlight with a troubled glance. 
 
 The noise that coast-beating surges alone can make 
 was already in the rider s ears before he had been five 
 minutes upon his short drive, and it became rapidly 
 more distinct as the rustic hackman guided his sorry 
 team from the main highway into a road ascending a 
 gradual eminence under a noble archway of trees. 
 
 Faced by grounds enclosed within a coped and shapely 
 brick wall, entrance through which was by an iron gate 
 in globe-capped stone pillars, stood the substantial, old- 
 fashioned homestead of Dornton Manor. Cresting a 
 verdant mound, or knoll, within a short distance of 
 Long Island Sound, its generous, well-kept garden in 
 front and at the sides, and lawn, dotted with fine old 
 trees, sloping to the water at the back, the sturdy stone 
 mansion at once asserted to the beholder its _ rank 
 among the oldest and most distinguished homes of the 
 country. Our young traveler knew it by some past so 
 cial experience ; but, alas ! none of them had been of a 
 
PROLOGUE. 19 
 
 character affording any gauge for the welcome he might 
 now be approaching. He was aware that something of 
 a previous evening s extraordinary perturbation at the 
 manor house had become vaguely known to village gos 
 sip. At the inn he had heard significant hints about a 
 recent hurried bringing home of Miss Dornton, by her 
 mother, from the city, and could perceive that his ar 
 rival with his friend attracted a style of attention indi 
 cating, at least, a suspicion of his special interestedness 
 in that unusual event. To his overwrought senses the 
 very atmosphere of the place teemed with something 
 mixed of dismay and reproach for him, and to his in 
 creasing discomposure, as he walked up the broad stone 
 steps of the house to the pillared porch, a sudden shame 
 faced impression of audacity in his mission greatly dis 
 ordered the courage hitherto emboldening him. Had 
 he really done a wrong to any one ? Should his bearing 
 be, properly, that of a consciously offending suppliant, 
 rather than the confident dignity of a man who had 
 come to assert a legitimate, manful right ? 
 
 "Well, Mr. Daryl, of course we have expected this 
 visit from you," was Mrs. Dornton s greeting, as she 
 acknowledged his constrained bow, and then quietly 
 took a chair near the open doorway by which she had 
 slowly entered the reception-room. Venetian blinds, 
 drawn down to intercept the glowing sunbeams, made a 
 cool twilight for the two figures, but in the broadest day 
 the lady s countenance would have revealed no agita 
 tion. A slightly worn expression, perhaps, and some 
 twitching at the corners of the lips, were the scarcely 
 perceptible changes from her ordinary gracious aspect 
 for any acceptable morning caller. 
 
 " May I be allowed to hope, then, madame, that I am 
 not unwelcome ?" asked William Daryl, taking momen 
 tary refuge in a commonplace formality. 
 
20 THERE WAS ONGE A MAN. 
 
 "I wish that I could answer you truthfully, sir, in 
 the affirmative." 
 
 This opened the battle. 
 
 "Mrs. Dornton, how is my Caroline ?" broke forth 
 the boyish young soldier, leaning eagerly toward her, 
 his hands clasped upon his knees, and all his fears and 
 constraint forgotten. " Deal considerately with us, dear 
 madame, even if we seem to you to have acted like chil 
 dren. For I do love her so !" he added in an ingenuous 
 abandonment to youthful passion. 
 
 "Before you go any farther, Mr. Daryl," said the 
 matron, showing no emotion whatever, "you should be 
 warned that I have consented to receive you this morn 
 ing, solely and purposely for your information that Miss 
 Dornton wishes never to lay eyes on you in this world 
 again." 
 
 "I ll never believe that!" he ejaculated, springing 
 half-way from his chair, as though under an electric 
 shock "At least forgive me, please I m sure you 
 must mistake her feelings. You are a good woman a 
 mother and will surely pardon me for my own dear 
 mother s sake." 
 
 " The circumstances make you pardonable, sir, as far 
 as mere words go." 
 
 " And for my acts, too, I hope, Mrs. Dornton. You 
 can t imagine how dearly I love Caroline nobody can ! 
 When I found that the time was near at hand when she 
 must leave that kind Mrs. Von Gilder s, and realized 
 how fond we were of each other, and thought how, pos 
 sibly, a thousand things might come between us, I just 
 lost my head. Yes, dear madame, I 11 confess it frankly, 
 I did lose my head. And then I begged and raved and 
 persuaded ; and at last the dear girl went with me to the 
 rectory that afternoon, and and we were married!" 
 
 But for the words these two were uttering, and the 
 
PROLOGUE. 21 
 
 narticulate sobbing of the waters heard through open 
 :asements, no sound seemed to be in all the great house, 
 [t was as though a desolate, inhospitable emptiness 
 aintly echoed back the young Englishman s voice, even 
 n its softest tones, and struck a chill to his every real 
 lope. The mother of Caroline received what he had 
 ast said without immediate remark, but pulled a bell- 
 -ope near at hand. To the trim young woman coming 
 loiselessly down the polished staircase of the adjoining 
 mil to answer the summons, she said : 
 
 " Tell your mistress that we are ready for her." 
 
 Daryl flushed fiery red and then turned white at these 
 signs. As the maid disappeared, Mrs. Dornton turned 
 tier keen eyes upon him again. 
 
 " Young man, I knew your grandmother in Dornton, 
 in her girlhood, and until your grandfather married her 
 ind carried her back with him to England. I am sorry 
 for you. Probably my daughter s giddiness and sim 
 plicity have been as much to blame in this mad affair as 
 your own dreadful rashness was. But if you must suffer, 
 she, also, must pay a bitter penalty, and we her father 
 and myself have to share it. I would sooner have seen 
 her dead, William Daryl, than see her as she is scarcely 
 more than a child and, in effect, a widow." 
 
 "A widow !" repeated the young man, unnerved by 
 the ambiguity of such a term at such a time. 
 
 "Yes, practically that. This marriage shall be an 
 nulled, if there is any moral justice in law. Be good 
 enough not to interrupt me quite yet I say it must be 
 broken and forgotten. My husband is consulting his 
 attorney about it to-day. I have sent for my daughter, 
 herself, to tell you with her own lips that it must be 
 so, and that she wishes it so." 
 
 " She wishes it so ?" he cried, panting like a hard- 
 pressed runner. This was the second time his bride 
 
22 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 the soft, the gentle, the loving Caroline had been 
 quoted to him as so soon false to their plighted love. 
 
 "Here she is, to speak for herself," continued the 
 lady, in rising tones, as a hurried nutter sounded nearer 
 from the hall. 
 
 Then, with snowy kerchief pressed to burning face 
 by both white hands ; with jet-black locks disordered 
 on her shoulders, and a well-known dress of many a 
 happy Yon Gilder hour attiring her convulsed form, the 
 girl tottered into the room, sank upon her knees beside 
 her mother s chair, and ah, fickle heart ! without one 
 glance for him, hid her tear-stained features against 
 that mother s daring heart. 
 
 William Daryl sprang to his feet and took an impul 
 sive step forward. Instinctively he held out both hands 
 toward the sobbing, recumbent figure. 
 
 " Caroline ! my dear wife !" cried he, all the tender 
 ness of his nature in his trembling voice. 
 
 The mother looked intently down upon the bowed 
 head on her bosom, and placed her arms soothingly 
 around the slender waist. 
 
 My child, you must tell Mr. Daryl that I have not 
 misrepresented you in saying that you repent your great 
 folly." 
 
 "Oh, yes! Bitterly!" 
 
 The positive, absolutely shuddering bitterness with 
 which the last word was pronounced, muffled and choked 
 as was the tone, thrilled the rejected husband like sud 
 den contact with the cruel edge of a treacherous sword. 
 He folded his arms, turned pallid to the eyes, and drew 
 a long breath. 
 
 "Caroline," he said slowly, "if you do indeed re 
 pent so early the love I thought you had given me for 
 ever, I have nothing more to say. I have only to go. 
 Do you bid me go ?" 
 
PROLOGUE. 23 
 
 Mother and daughter, in their motionless embrace, 
 remained speechless under this appeal at first, she who 
 had been addressed responding only with augmented 
 sobs. In the dim light straining faintly through the 
 drawn blinds they were like widow and orphan at a 
 new grave. 
 
 "My poor child, you must answer," murmured the 
 parental lips at last. "Do you, of your own free will, 
 bid him go ?" 
 
 Another pitiful pause, and then, as in a gasp, came 
 the one fatal word" Yes !" 
 
 The young Englishman s crossed arms relaxed and 
 fell to his sides, from over a heart swelling too imperi 
 ously to bear any stress but its own. A moment his 
 large eyes stared fixedly, yearningly, upon her whom 
 he had so loved ; then he raised them bravely to Mrs. 
 Dornton s now colorless face. 
 
 "Madame," he said, " your husband need not trouble 
 his attorney until after my return to England. I shall 
 never make any appeal from the judgment this lady s 
 lips have pronounced. I have the honor to bid you and 
 her farewell forever." 
 
 A bow, and he was gone. 
 
 The staunch, foreboding friend, taking his way from 
 the "hotel" to the steamboat-landing alone, as he had 
 promised, saw him arrive there, too, in feverish haste, 
 even as the boat was starting, and read in his drawn 
 features all that he had not the heart to ask. They 
 scarcely spoke while the voyage continued as far as the 
 East Kiver extends. When the laboring Morrisania 
 was turning the Battery toward her pier on the Hudson 
 shore of the city, the poor young fellow looked wearily 
 out toward the ocean. 
 
 "I must get out of this country immediately," he 
 said. 
 
24 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 As he spoke, a commotion arose on the forward part 
 of the deck upon which they were standing, and a wo 
 man s shriek drew both in headlong haste to the spot. 
 A child had sprung from its mother s arms into the 
 water. Daryl s quick look caught sight of its white 
 dress sweeping past, and in an instant he had leaped 
 overboard to the rescue. In his disordered condition of 
 mind he heeded not that he was in front of the yet re 
 volving wheel on that side, nor that he dropped rather 
 than jumped. A sloop following close upon the boat 
 picked up the child unhurt ; but, although the murder 
 ous wheels were promptly stopped, and the water 
 anxiously scanned for sight of the human form, but now 
 so grand in its noblest dedication to the God in whose 
 image it had been created, no sign of William Daryl 
 appeared. The river had closed over his head. 
 
CHAPTEK I. 
 
 THE EFFINGHAMS. 
 
 ON a beautiful afternoon in the spring of 1845 so 
 early yet in the season that the northwestern or rainy 
 monsoon had, according to almanacs, a fortnight s far 
 ther privilege of inclemency, an unusually motley fleet 
 lay basking, under cloudless sky and brilliant atmos 
 phere, in the picturesque roadstead of the British 
 Malayan port of Singapore. Always a curiously-varied 
 pageant of warlike and commercial shipping, the an 
 chorage in question presented a peculiarly imposing dis 
 play on this occasion. Added to its customary array 
 of towering East Indiamen, all named after some 
 " Castle " or another ; trim smaller merchantmen from 
 Liverpool, Amsterdam or New York ; antiquated 
 Cochin-China imitations of modern naval architecture ; 
 lumbering Chinese junks, and an endless variety of 
 Archipelago prahus, were Sir Thomas Cochrane s full 
 squadron, the historical United States frigate Constitu 
 tion, and a long, low stranger coming into the Strait 
 that very afternoon with the Stars and Stripes at the 
 peak. 
 
 To every observant seaman s eye, at least, this latter 
 craft, lying among and contrasting with the marine 
 models of several different nations, was an object of 
 curious interest. Apparently of from twelve to fifteen 
 hundred tons burden, sitting deep in the water aft, no 
 tably broad of beam immediately forward of the centre, 
 and then sharpening keenly to a stem lifted almost clear 
 of the waves, by the bold rising of her keel ; with her 
 tall, slender masts and tremendously long yards, she 
 25 
 
26 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 looked fitted to outstrip many a steamer, much more 
 any man-of-war. 
 
 In fact, the Comanche was a forerunner of the won 
 derful American "clippers," destined, in a few years 
 thence, to witch those very seas with noble sailing, and 
 develop the old constructive principle of the fleet and 
 famous Chesapeake coaster into an ideal of full-fledged 
 maritime grace and speed. While certain wiser English 
 naval officers knew what a boat built on such lines could 
 dare and do from experience with divers American pri 
 vateers some thirty and odd years before, a majority of 
 old-school mariners wagged their heads dubiously at 
 the prahu-like hull and enormous clouds of sail, and 
 maintained that she must either "run under" or 
 " break her back " in any kind of a bad sea. Neverthe 
 less, there she was, safe, sound and neat as a yacht, off 
 Deep Water Point in the North Channel at Singapore, 
 having carried her owner and his family, besides cap 
 tain and crew, nearly around the world. 
 
 And the owner of this so-criticised example of his 
 country s innovating temerity, Mr. Richard Eflingham, 
 with wife, daughter and only son near at hand, stood 
 upon the deck, an evident sharer in the pleasant inter 
 est naturally responsive to such animated scenes as 
 those around them. He was a tall, spare figure, charac 
 terized by bushy iron-gray hair, black eyes, unsensuous 
 mouth and chin, and nose and forehead energetically 
 and reflectively prominent. 
 
 Of Mrs. and Miss Eflingham, occupying camp-chairs 
 within speaking distance, not much more could be noted 
 immediately than that both possessed peach-like com 
 plexions and very small hands, so disguisingly were 
 they draped in brown linen wrappers from shoulders to 
 feet, and so far forward upon their faces, in deference 
 to an equatorial sun, came the scarfs knotted under 
 
THE EFFINGHAMS. 27 
 
 their chins. Clambering stealthily on the bulwarks far 
 ther toward the taffrail was the youngest of the Effing- 
 hams, a lad apparently about ten years old and of elfin 
 slenderness, in a check suit, made somewhat in the 
 juvenile style now called the " Knickerbocker." 
 
 Including a third lady and two body-servants, not yet 
 visible, this was the family party of the wealthy New 
 York shipping merchant owning the great vessel ; and 
 from the athletic activity of mates and sailors furling 
 sails and squaring yards on the recently-anchored Co- 
 manche, to the strange and striking views of mingling 
 barbarism and civilization in the whole picture around, 
 the eyes of the idlers on the deck roved in tireless 
 scrutiny. 
 
 So clear was the balmy air that the two miles yet in 
 tervening between themselves and the city did not seem 
 to be more than a third of that space, and the European 
 warehouses, residences, churches and hotels along the 
 beach, the fine stone Government House on the eleva 
 tion beyond, the silvery intersecting river and its 
 bridges, the Chinese quarter and mercantile buildings 
 on the west side, an edge of the Malay campong on the 
 east dome of mosque, tower of Buddhist temple, and 
 the fort commanding town and bay on Pearl Hill all 
 had a cameo-like distinctness to the vision, and a charm 
 made dramatical^ complete by the oriental setting of 
 hills dotted with villas and nodding with palms. The 
 opposite island of Battam, looking like one solid mass 
 of luxuriant tropical forest and jungle, was a finely ar 
 tistic pendant, with emerald islets dappling all the more 
 distant perspective until the last flash of the waves was 
 lost among them. A very trestlework of the primitive 
 triangular masts of Malay prahus extended along the 
 shore ; and on the glittering expanse of water between 
 that and the anchored shipping darted swarms of native 
 
28 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 sampans or light row-boats with palm-leaf awnings, or 
 crawled the more sluggish Bugis coaster, whose sturdy 
 ere W N added their sonorous " Vela-ah ! vela!" as they 
 handled their matting sails to the various strange but 
 not unmelodious sounds which caught the stranger s ear. 
 
 Mr. Effingham sauntered nearer to the ladies, with 
 right hand grasping the corresponding lapel of his coat, 
 as was his wont in moments of casual contemplation. 
 
 "This is very fine," he remarked, with a movement 
 of his head toward the town. 
 
 "But not quite so striking as Batavia, papa," re 
 turned a sweet, strong voice, while a pair of bright 
 black eyes were lifted to meet his. 
 
 " I like it much better at first sight," said Mrs. Effing- 
 ham, whose voice was lower, though as musical and 
 more measured in its tones. " I have a prejudice 
 against any place that, like Batavia, shows its worst 
 part first. The old town there, and the canal between 
 the water and the respectable quarter, disenchant one 
 so, that even all the handsome streets and houses of 
 Weltevreden Heights do not quite compensate for the 
 shock." 
 
 "But then those glorious blue mountains behind - 
 how grand they are !" persisted the younger speaker 
 enthusiastically. 
 
 "Yes," assented her father, smiling at her rather 
 quizzically; " and then such pleasant friends as some 
 of us found at the Hotel des Indes !" 
 
 Before this colloquy could lead to farther revelation, 
 the captain of the ship joined them, to inquire whether 
 his employer would go ashore immediately, or "wait 
 for Mr. Dodge to come off?" 
 
 " Wait, by all means," said Mr, Effingham. " I sup 
 pose, my dear," turning to his wife, "that Miss An- 
 keroo is preparing your things for landing ? And, by 
 
THE EFFINGHAMS. 20 
 
 the way," he added, looking sharply around, "where 
 can Cherubino have " 
 
 The eyes of the others had involuntarily followed his, 
 and all caught sight at the instant of a pair of small 
 check legs vibrating in the air on the bulwarks, what 
 time the shrill voice of the remainder of an inverted boy, 
 standing on his hands, was heard saluting a third female 
 figure coming up from a cabin with the remark : 
 
 " See here, Cousin Sadie, I 11 bet you can t do this !" 
 simultaneously with which incredible challenge the in 
 verted small boy went overboard. 
 
 Father, mother, sister and the captain rushed to the 
 side under a common terror, there to behold a glossy 
 round head and two young spindles of arms swim 
 ming vigorously after a lop-sided floating cap, while a 
 frigate s boat, with an officer in the stern, rowed hotly 
 in chase. The whole event the fall and the appearance 
 of the boat had been breathlessly sudden, and almost 
 as quick was the rescue. 
 
 " All right ! The Cherub s quite unhurt !" came up 
 a cheery, familiar voice, and a dripping system of blink 
 ing countenance and tender check limbs, all moving to 
 express rapture over the saving of the tightly-clutched 
 cap, was held aloft over the thwarts in the strong arms 
 of the young naval officer. 
 
 "Oh, you everlasting little plague !" ejaculated she 
 who had been called Cousin Sadie, as the moistened 
 child was expeditiously handed up the rope ladder 
 swiftly let down from the deck. " And what a mess !" 
 for he was enriched by a coating of the pea-soup-like 
 scum, having an odor as of painter s oil, and called by 
 the Malays "sara," that sometimes comes into those 
 waters at ebb from the China Sea. 
 
 "Papa, it s Lieutenant Belmore !" was the exclama 
 tion of Miss Effingham, who, now that her first pallor 
 
30 THERE WAS ONCE A J/JLY. 
 
 had disappeared, displayed an animated face of recog 
 nition toward the comely and blonde young man in 
 English uniform, bowing a return laughingly from amid 
 the upraised oars of his boat. 
 
 "My dear young sir," called her father, " we did not 
 expect to see you so soon again. Can t you come up 
 long enough to receive our thanks ? Is your ship here ?" 
 
 "No thanks deserved, sir," shouted back the Lieu 
 tenant. " Have the pleasure of paying my respects on 
 shore. Official business just now ; but knew the Co- 
 manche a mile off. Left Batavia on the Cressy, and 
 transferred to the Agincourt, for Singapore, on sick- 
 leave !" And he smiled archly and waved a temporary 
 adieu as his crew dropped oars again into the waves. 
 
 The ladies now withdrew to their cabins, whither 
 Cousin Sadie, otherwise Miss Ankeroo, had hurried the 
 sloppy young torment of her life, and were there in 
 formed, after they had somewhat recovered from their 
 flutter, that the cap which the Cherub first thought of 
 in the water had been found to contain, feloniously hid 
 den in its lining, the long-missing potato-knife of the 
 cook. 
 
 It remained for the head of the family to be thought 
 fully congratulated by the Captain upon his son s ob 
 viously charmed life inasmuch as he had fallen down 
 a very steep companion-ladder seven times, and been 
 headlong into the water twice, since their sailing from 
 Batavia, with miraculous impunity and then to turn 
 his attention again to the shore. While thus he looked, 
 one of the many plying sampans in sight, rowed by a 
 half-naked coolie at either end, and bearing, over the 
 centre, a striped canopy under which sat a passenger 
 in European dress, was seen to emerge from its com 
 panions and make sharply for the ship. 
 
 "This is Mr. Dodge coming, I think, sir," observed 
 
THE EFFINGHAMS. 31 
 
 the Captain leading the way to an opening on the side, 
 where steps had been swung for shore-boats. 
 
 The long and narrow little native craft was yet mov 
 ing, when a tall, elastic specimen of manhood in some 
 kind of pith helmet, alpaca coat and white waistcoat 
 and trousers, unfolded himself nimbly from beneath 
 the canopy, and, seizing a side of the iron gangway, 
 came up hand over hand to the deck. 
 
 "That s like your old style, Mr. Dodge," laughed 
 Captain Brace ; the gentleman by his side looking on 
 with amazement. 
 
 " Yes how d do, Cap ? that s my style when I m 
 feeling first-rate," was the hearty answer of the stranger, 
 who was now seen to be about thirty-five years of age, 
 the possessor of a frame like an athlete s in full train 
 ing, and of a capping of closely-cut reddish hair over 
 dancing hazel eyes, and nose and mouth humorous in 
 their boldness. " I see you re looking first-rate, Brace, 
 after all this while four years, isn t it ? and you re 
 sailing a stunner this time, sure enough." He was 
 shaking hands energetically when first seeming to ob 
 serve that they were not alone : "Where sMr. excuse 
 me, though is this ?" 
 
 "This is Mr. Dodge, Mr. Effingham," interjected 
 the Captain. 
 
 "I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Dodge," the mer 
 chant said, rather stiffly. 
 
 "Thank you," responded the other with a business 
 like shake of the hand, and without the least embarrass 
 ment. " I hope that you ve had a pleasant voyage up, 
 and that the ladies and young master are well. What 
 do you think of us here, so far ?" 
 
 As the Captain walked off, Mr. Effingham looked 
 somewhat sternly into the lively eyes of his now first-met 
 correspondent at Singapore. In a moment, however, 
 
32 IBERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 he realized that there was no good ground for offense, 
 and answered that he found the weather warmer than 
 he had expected. 
 
 " That s because we re having what the natives call 
 the Java wind, just now," explained Mr. Dodge. 
 " About as sensible, you know, sir, as though you should 
 call it the Florida wind when you have an occasional 
 hot southern sea-breeze in the summer in New York. 
 You 11 find the land breeze cool enough." 
 
 "I see that our frigate Constitution is here." 
 
 " Yes. Some of her officers have been at my hotel. 
 She s been to Bruni that s Borneo to offer the Sultan, 
 there help against the Sooloo pirates if he chooses to 
 make a commercial treaty with the United States. At 
 least, so I understand it. The acting commodore is 
 supposed to be waiting now for a final answer ; but they 
 say that he s been played false by his interpreter (who 
 came here with Rajah Brooke, of Sarawak), and will not 
 be able to report a success to the new president, Mr. 
 Polk." 
 
 "Then Mr. Brooke is not favorable to Americans," 
 remarked Mr. Effingham with quick interest. "I m 
 sorry for that, since we are going to Borneo." 
 
 " On the contrary, my dear sir," corrected Mr. Dodge 
 and he barely missed saying, "my dear boy"" the 
 Tuan Besar , as they call him in his Rajahdom, takes 
 to. us mighty kindly. The interpreter and he parted 
 company at Singapore here, when they first came out, 
 six years ago. They re not good friends." 
 
 "I should regret, on general principles, to find so 
 great an Englishman as Mr. Brooke inimical to my 
 countrymen," said the merchant. And then, after a 
 pause " I infer that you received my letters from Lon 
 don, Funchal, Rio de Janeiro and Batavia." 
 
 "Yes, sir ; and have carried out your instructions to 
 
THE EFFINGHAMS. 33 
 
 the best of. my ability," responded the other. " Much 
 obliged to my old employer in New York, Mr. Yon 
 Gilder, for recommending me to you." 
 
 The conversation now took a brief turn toward busi 
 ness, not of immediate interest for this narrative. At 
 its conclusion, prefatory to withdrawal, the correspond 
 ent at Singapore begged leave to offer one of his cards, 
 an exhibition of which at the landing, he said, would 
 attract the proper porter for his hotel. 
 
 "You 11 see, sir," he added, " that I ve come as near 
 giving my house a name worthy of a truly American 
 proprietor as the geography of these parts will allow. 
 Shall have the pleasure of waiting upon you there again, 
 I hope." 
 
 Then he darted down the steps, in flying leaps, to his 
 sampan ; the latter pushed off through the shore boats 
 of fruit and other local commodities now beginning to 
 beset the sides of the Comanche ; and Mr. Effingham 
 put on his eye-glasses to peruse the card : 
 
 UNITED STRAITS HOTEL, 
 SINGAPORE. 
 
 FELIX DODGE, PROPRIETOR. 
 Entertainment for Man and Beast. 
 
 Agent for P. T. Barnum. 
 
 "He seems to be sensible and shrewd," soliloquized 
 the merchant as he walked cabinward to advise his 
 family and servants that their private "gig" was pre 
 paring for the shore ; "he seems to be intelligent and 
 trustworthy ; but Yon Gilder never told me that he was 
 the style of man to behave circus-like and tend to puns. 
 Agent for Mr. Barnum, too ! "Well, we shall see." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 LIEUTENANT BELMORE PAYS HIS RESPECTS. 
 
 A YEAR earlier than the memorable arrival in Singa 
 pore of that Englishman who was to be known to future 
 romantic fame as a Rajah of Borneo, an American mer 
 chantman from Hong Kong brought to the same port 
 a passenger no less boldly enterprising in his way, 
 although of another nationality. As commercial trav 
 eler for the New York firm of Yon Gilder & Co., pro 
 moted on his merits to that rank from a previous home 
 clerkship, Mr. Felix Dodge had decided to go back 
 from China by way of the Strait of Malacca, in order to 
 have a glimpse at least of the mighty East Indian Archi 
 pelago and some of its twelve thousand islands. 
 
 It was being wrecked upon the Isle of Wight, on his 
 return from sick-leave to his cadetship in India, that 
 determined James Brooke to the so-illustrious historical 
 change in his career ; and incidental, scarcely less dis 
 mal experience of contemporary hotel life in the cos 
 mopolitan City of the Straits turned our American 
 mercantile tourist into a phenomenally successful local 
 innkeeper. 
 
 The illogical disproportion between the bill tendered 
 by his temporary landlord and the native curiosities of 
 bed and board which he had endured inspired a lively 
 discussion at parting, the termination of which was his 
 vigorous assertion of the practicability of a hotel "fit 
 for white men " in Singapore, and positive pledge to 
 "start" one of that Caucasian appropriateness there 
 himself immediately. It may have been that the idea 
 of really undertaking such a thing had not occurred to 
 
 34 
 
LIEUT. BELMORE PAYS HIS RESPECTS. 35 
 
 him before uttering the design, yet from the moment of 
 that emphatic utterance he was possessed of the resolu 
 tion to execute it to the fullest extent. Having accu 
 mulated savings in his employment to the amount of 
 ten thousand dollars, the thought of investing them in 
 an appreciative property of his own in this busy and 
 novel part of the speculative world grew upon his liking 
 equally with the pleasant fancy of becoming his own 
 master. Besides, as an American familiarized with the 
 East Indies and trained to general business, might he 
 not supplement his proprietorship as a publican with 
 commercial agencies for houses in the United States ? 
 
 Acting upon the reflection, Mr. Dodge wrote at once 
 of his scheme to Yon Gilder & Co., and then, through 
 the friendly help of acquaintances in counting-houses 
 to which he had brought letters, secured a site for his 
 proposed enterprise on the eastern and "fashionable" 
 side of the river, or creek, dividing the modern town 
 from the Chinese and mercantile quarter. In person he 
 bought his timber from the Chinese lumbermen in the 
 interior of the island ; he drew his own simple archi 
 tectural plans and personally supervised his small army 
 of oriental workmen, and the result was the most rapid 
 example of household construction ever witnessed in 
 Singapore. 
 
 This was the genesis of the first American hotel in 
 East India a large, square building of two stories, 
 painted white, with pillars to the cornice and two long 
 balconies in front, and palm trees judiciously distributed 
 around the back and sides. It stood near enough to the 
 more prominent European residences, counting-rooms, 
 churches, official buildings, parade-ground and drive to 
 be thoroughly eligible in point of position ; commanded 
 a breezy, characteristic view of beach, roadstead and 
 the opposite shore of Battam ; had a receiving zoologi- 
 
36 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 cal garden of its own for any rare beasts, birds or 
 snakes of the Archipelago which might be attainable at 
 any time for a certain American showman of rising 
 celebrity, and rejoiced in a Portuguese chief cook and 
 staff of Javanese servants most exactingly selected. 
 
 When the cards of this new caravansary were out 
 from the job-office of the Straits Times, and by some 
 hitherto incredible ingenuities of circulation had pene 
 trated to the tables, desks and cabin of every civilized 
 home and counting-room in the town and ship in the 
 harbor, it was known that "while," as an inclosing 
 printed circular said, "the name chosen for the house 
 should be congenial to the local attachments of the 
 most Straitest sect, it yet phonetically suggested the 
 proprietor s native country with only a little r -tistic 
 difference." 
 
 Upon the whole, this manner of putting the thing 
 was happily received by the English-speaking Singa 
 poreans, even if they were at first somewhat slow about 
 patronizing the place. There was, however, one long- 
 remembered exception to the rule. A ve^ fat and 
 choleric old Scotch gentleman, Mr. Mac Terrifer by 
 name, heavily in the pepper exportation, found the 
 terms of the circular quite unintelligible and took them 
 in grievous dudgeon. 
 
 "The mon s daft, ye ken," he insisted, growing 
 fiercely red in the face. "What hae the Screeptural 
 tairms o most straitest sect to do wi yon Yankee 
 tavern ? And it s States and not Straits he cooms 
 from. Away wi yer noonsinse, I tal ye 1" 
 
 In vain his calmer and more idiomatic English friends 
 wrestled with him on the subject from day to day, ex 
 plaining over and over, with laborious distinctness of 
 syllables, that the word "Straits" spelt without "a 
 little r " has the sound of " Staits States. " " United 
 
LIEUT. BELMOEE PAYS HIS RESPECTS. 37 
 
 Straits, without the little r, United Staits States. 
 Don t you see now ? a little r -tistic difference !" 
 
 But no ! he would not have it. " What had art to 
 do wi it all?" And so he went on, irascibly disdain 
 ful, until fully six months later, when, dining vora 
 ciously upon haggis, there abruptly dawned upon him, 
 between two mouthfuls, a perception of the joke. 
 
 "A wee airteestic deef rence?" he suddenly sput 
 tered and choked, to the startled dismay of those 
 around him. " Hech, sirs, it s as plain as the nose on 
 a mon s feece !" then fell into alarming convulsions of 
 guttural tumult, having barely the strength to murmur 
 huskily, "Let me be bled !" as they assisted him to a 
 couch, whereon be was to have a very narrow escape 
 from apoplexy. 
 
 To a suite of rooms in the hotel with this history 
 came the American family of our story, leaving the 
 Comanche to go back in her own wake a distance, dip 
 ping her colors to the gallant old Constitution, and sail 
 ing up the China Sea to Hong Kong. The Effinghams, 
 father an4 son, have already been described sufficiently 
 for the present ; it is the turn of the ladies, now that 
 their heads are uncovered and their forms free from the 
 ever ungraceful outer trappings of ocean life, to be 
 introduced more definitely. 
 
 The reception-room occupied by them had a bare 
 ness of upholstery suitable to the tropical climate. 
 Scattered mats of brightly-colored rattan, or palm, or 
 cocoanut fibre, took the usual place of carpet ; settees of 
 bamboo and cane faced each other on either side of the 
 apartment ; chairs of equally cool anatomy stood around 
 at social intervals, and at the two tall French windows 
 leading out to the balcony between which were table 
 and mirror curtains of figured Chinese matting and 
 
38 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 corded blinds made it practicable to modify the light 
 without excluding the breeze. 
 
 Engaged in some fragile form of needlework, Mrs. 
 Effingham, sitting near one of the casements, and 
 glancing abstractedly through the blinds in the inter 
 vals of her employment, was a figure gracefully focus 
 sing, as it were, the tranquil domesticity of the family 
 group. Not yet forty years old, she looked not over 
 thirty, despite the matronly cut of a dark dress, Quaker- 
 like in its freedom from all ornament, and surmounted 
 by a broad white collar, and a prim fall of cap-lace over 
 the generous braid into which her plenteous black hair 
 was drawn back as uncompromisingly as its natural 
 wave would allow. A complexion showing no trace of 
 voyaging exposure, and unusually fair to accompany 
 such rich black locks, added delicacy of effect to fea 
 tures indicative only of soft womanly traits ; and when 
 the dark eyes were raised occasionally to glance through 
 the blinds, they exhibited a certain unchanging sadness 
 of expression informing the w r hole refined face - with 
 serious thoughtfulness. 
 
 On a settee opposite, in the shaded light of the other 
 window, Miss Effingham had assumed a half-reclining 
 posture as a reader, her book being a volume of Dick 
 ens "Martin Chuzzlewit," a work then newly published 
 in London, and but freshly received in the Indies. If 
 her hair and complexion were like her mother s the 
 daughter seemed to have inherited none of that parent s 
 settled pensiveness of aspect, the lustrous black curls, 
 reaching nearly to her pink-ribbon girdle, showing not 
 more exuberance of girlish naturalness than the varying 
 flashes of the now particularly rounded black eyes pe 
 rusing what appeared to be a page not wholly soothing. 
 Appareled in white, with a narrower pink ribbon bowed 
 at the neck to match the one around an equally supple 
 
LIEUT. BELMORE PAYS HIS RESPECTS. 39 
 
 little waist, Miss Effingham might have been a mere 
 bud of a school-girl vexing over a lesson, instead of a 
 greatly traveled young lady passing time with a novel. 
 The third figure of the trio present gave her attention 
 to a book also, but it was one of graver proportions, 
 opened upon the table between the windows, and the 
 reader in the chair drawn up thereto had a marked per 
 sonality of her own. She was Miss Sarah Ankeroo, 
 otherwise second-cousin Sadie to Mrs. Emngham, since 
 the death of her parents in Vermont an adopted mem 
 ber of thQ New York family, and, by inclination and 
 fitting acquirements, nursery-governess, "companion," 
 and chief domestic counsel of the household. She was 
 now with her late mother s cousinly kinfolk in the curi 
 ously-mixed capacity of dragon to Master Cherubino, 
 dressing-maid to his sister, interpreter to the party and 
 prospective missionary to the ingenuous Dyaks of 
 Borneo. Her possession of an education elaborated even 
 to -some scientific knowledge of medicine, and inher 
 itance of the revenue of a goodly patrimonial farm, 
 made this energetic Green Mountain spinster of thirty 
 years no less confident to assume varied intellectual re 
 sponsibilities than capable of paying her own way. 
 
 Nevertheless, Miss Ankeroo displayed none - of the 
 gaunt, acrid outer-belongings of ordinary unfeminine 
 strong-mindedness. She was slightly below the medium 
 stature, wholesomely plump, and had rosy cheeks and 
 flossy yellow hair. Gold spectacles, necessitated by 
 near-sightedness, gave whimsical severity of effect to 
 pale-blue eyes, else mating harmoniously with a child 
 like roundness and mobility of countenance. But even 
 perpetual sobriety of attire could not much intensify 
 the sage maturity of individual presentment it was her 
 whim ordinarily to affect. 
 Afternoon had advanced far enough toward the cooler 
 
40 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 hours for the sounds of wheels and of the animation 
 temporarily renewed in the city when the hottest period 
 of the day had passed, to arise from the baked street 
 below the hotel balcony. With an impatient little 
 bang of her book and its pettish casting aside, Miss 
 Effingham straightened to an upright posture on the 
 settee, loosened her massive curls by a pretty movement 
 of the head, and returned to colloquial life. 
 
 " I declare, Cousin Sadie," she began, " the way you 
 keep on with that hateful old Marsden s Dictionary is 
 enough to turn you into a Malay yourself." 
 
 The gleam of the scholarly spectacles was turned 
 upon her with patient toleration. 
 
 " Every hour is precious now, Abretta, when we 
 shall so soon be in Borneo. I am not half so far in the 
 language yet as I ought to be, even after those lessons I 
 took in Batavia." 
 
 "Well, but of course papa will secure a regular in 
 terpreter here before we go." 
 
 " That will be nothing to me in my Dyak school, 
 Abretta." 
 
 "At any rate," pleaded the impracticable young 
 beauty, " you can spare time, Cousin Sadie, to hear just 
 what I think about Mr. Charles Dickens and the way he 
 abuses America. I do declare, I m almost ready never to 
 read an English novel again ! The English are always so 
 ut-ter-ly aggravating when they have anything to say 
 about us ! Here is Dickens, who was treated so well 
 on his visit, making Americans talk with hyphens be 
 tween all their syllables ; and, oh, he does represent 
 our editors and ladies as such ridiculous creatures ! I 
 declare, I could detest everything English after reading 
 such a book !" . 
 
 " My dear ! my dear ! do not be so extravagant," re 
 monstrated her mother gently. 
 
LIEUT. BELMORE PAYS HIS RESPECTS. 41 
 
 " But, mamma, I do mean it all !" persisted the 
 glowing young patriot. "Without exception. English 
 men are the most unjust, selfish, hateful" 
 
 A knock at the door, and a yellow-faced servant in 
 spotless white nankeen, with a card for the ladies. 
 
 " Mr. Edwin Belmore, " read Mrs. Eflingham as the 
 waiter departed. 
 
 Cousin Sadie turned from her book, and flashed her 
 glasses upon the interrupted previous speaker in piti 
 lessly-abashing reprehension. "Without exception," 
 echoed she, "Englishmen are the most unjust, selfish, 
 hateful " and was dwelling awfully yet upon the last 
 word when the caller stood bowing in the doorway. 
 
 "Ladies, a thousand pardons for following my paste 
 board in such a hurry," he apologized, shaking hands 
 very heartily all around. " I hope I haven t broken up 
 any little scolding of yours, Miss Ankeroo. I know how 
 harmless they always were at Batavia, you know ! But 
 really I ve been in a hurry to get here ever since I 
 heard that you had come ashore. You all seem so like 
 real old friends. That is, I don t mean that you seem 
 old, at all, Miss Ankeroo. Quite the contrary. You 
 know what I mean, Mrs. Efiingham." 
 
 His frank sailor face showed the flush of ardent 
 good feeling even through its manly tint of tan. 
 
 " We know you always mean everything that is polite 
 and kind," said Mrs. Effingham. "Pray be seated, 
 Mr. Belmore." 
 
 "With your permission, ladies," he replied briskly, 
 availing himself of the invitation. 
 
 " Doesn t this seem like being in Batavia again, Miss 
 Eflingham ? Was I really introduced to you there at 
 that party at Mrs. Van Zant s, or have I known your 
 family ever so many years ?" 
 
 The two older ladies smiled acknowledgment of his 
 
42 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 so freely-shown partiality for their party, as they might 
 have smiled at an amiable boy s greeting of welcome. 
 The Effinghams had indeed first met the young Lieu 
 tenant at a party in Batavia while his ship was there, 
 and took his immediate obvious attraction to their circle 
 in a spirit worthy of his singularly ingenuous character. 
 
 " We ve known you long enough it seems, Mr. Bel- 
 more," said Abretta demurely, "for you to pass 
 through a fashionable season, and be dangerously sick 
 and get well again. It ought to take at least a year for 
 all that to happen." 
 
 "Now you re laughing at my sick-leave from the 
 Cress?/," he cried, flushing guiltily. " I didn t think it 
 of you, Miss Efnngham ! You see, ma am and Miss 
 Ankeroo," turning for a moment to them, "as my 
 uncle is at Singapore just now with his regiment, it was 
 an excuse for me to come here for recovery from a 
 slight sunstroke very slight, I 11 confess. But, upon 
 my word, Miss Effingham, it s hardly kind in you to be 
 so quick in catching me up." 
 
 Miss Ankeroo, who already confessed a strong parti 
 san feeling for the young man, had her spirit of cham 
 pionship sympathetically stirred by what sounded like 
 his ungenerous arraignment by the one of their party 
 who should have been the very last to question the oc 
 casion of his presence with them again. 
 
 "You can hardly hope to find a fair judge in our 
 Abretta, Mr. Belmore," was her sharp interjection here. 
 " At the moment of your arrival she was saying to us 
 that, without exception, Englishmen " 
 
 " If you repeat that, Cousin Sadie, I 11 never forgive 
 you !" broke in the culprit, blushing furiously. 
 
 "It was something against my unfortunate country 
 men, then," retorted the Lieutenant, more than re 
 venged by her discomfiture, and smiling instant pardon. 
 
LIEUT. BELMORE PAYS HIS RESPECTS. 43 
 
 " But, you know, ladies, I have some very good Yankee 
 blood in my own veins. That must be one reason," he 
 added innocently, "wlr^ I ve* always taken to you so 
 tremendously. One of my great-grandmothers was born 
 in the United States." 
 
 "There, mamma!" 
 
 Abretta was the speaker, and by an impulse she would 
 have found it hard to explain to herself. Assuredly it 
 originated from no past counsel with her mother on the 
 genealogy of their visitor ; for they had all accepted 
 him without the least conjectural reserve as to that 
 point. It was, therefore, without apparent notice of 
 her daughter s irrelevant exclamation that Mrs. Effing- 
 ham now regarded the youth with a freshened interest 
 showing vividly in her inquiring look at him. 
 
 " Indeed, Mr. Belmore ?" said she. " May we ask if 
 that was your father s grandmother ?" 
 
 Admiring the lady s dignified beauty and exquisite 
 feminine refinement of manners, as he had enthusiasti 
 cally from the first hour of his acquaintance with the 
 family in Java, Belmore was delighted with this special 
 earnestness of concern about himself. 
 
 "No, dear madame," was his ready reply; "my 
 mother s. She died long before I was born ; but I know 
 that my great-grandfather first saw her in New York, 
 and married her there. From her portrait she must 
 have been very handsome. I m only afraid my ances 
 tor wasn t half good enough for her he was such an 
 eccentric. I give you my word it was his queer cutting- 
 up with his will that has kept us all poor ever since, 
 with the family estate and fortune in Chancery." 
 
 "What a shame!" ejaculated Abretta, who, with 
 elbow on an arm of the settee, and curly head leaning 
 upon uplifted hand, had paid animated attention to 
 this rehearsal. 
 
44 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " That everlasting English Chancery !" commented 
 Miss Ankeroo, always more forcible than exact in her 
 terms when she forgot her scholarly obligations of 
 speech. 
 
 As Mrs. Effingham merely inclined her head slightly 
 and dropped her eyes again to her needlework, the 
 Lieutenant went no farther with his confidence than to 
 observe that, under the circumstances, his uncle, the 
 Colonel, ought to be more favorable to Americans than 
 he was. 
 
 "He s the dearest of old fellows like a father to 
 me, Miss Effingham ; but I sometimes think I can see 
 some of my queer grandfather s blood in him. Besides, 
 he s been in your country, too ; and, although my 
 mother would never tell the secret, I ve always thought 
 he must have met some great trouble there." 
 
 Neither Cousin Sadie nor the younger lady having the 
 inquisitorial assurance to pursue so delicately personal 
 a subject, the brief ensuing silence was followed by 
 general conversation ; and when, upon the appearance 
 of Mr. Effingham in the room, the caller finally laughed 
 his adieux, it was with the understanding that the 
 family would gratefully avail themselves, during their 
 stay, of his avowed ample leisure and superior know 
 ledge of the city. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 A CASE IN CHANCERY. 
 
 THE arrival of the historical United States frigate at 
 the capital of Borneo proper, to test the practicability 
 of "a commercial treaty with Hamet AH, the putative 
 Malay Sultan of that principal district of the island, 
 was a political result of the great interest that had re 
 cently been excited in America by the dramatic story 
 of Sarawak. The Vincennes had brought home from 
 the Archipelago some fuller details of events already 
 celebrated in English accounts; and, although Com 
 mander Keppel s history of his expedition thither on H. 
 M. S. Dido had not yet been published, the world knew 
 the essential facts of Mr. Brooke s heroic battles with 
 Borneon rebels and pirates, and his beneficent advent 
 to a virtual sovereignty of the province he had redeemed 
 from chronic barbarian anarchy. 
 
 No episode of modern political history appeals more 
 strikingly to the imagination, or more congenially to 
 man s higher moral nature than the English Rajah s 
 crusade at Sarawak. Born to no higher estate than a 
 patrimony acquired in the civil service of the East India 
 Company in Bengal ; diverted by a mere casualty of 
 incidental travel from farther destination to an Indian 
 cadetship, wherein his highest immediate dream of glory 
 had been nearly fatally realized in a gallant charge over 
 a stockade at Rungpore, in the Brahmapootra valley, 
 during the first Burmese war this eminent man made 
 no more selfish use of his inheritance of wealth, taste of 
 war and ten years of maturing trips around the world, 
 than to apply them finally to the rescue and Christian 
 45 
 
46 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 civilization of a remote barbaric territory and people, 
 previously known to general mankind chiefly through 
 the imperfect annals of peaceful ships and men assailed, 
 from inaccessible pirate-dens, for two centuries, by the 
 most pitiless freebooters of the Eastern seas. 
 
 It was a noble illustration of the imperially confident 
 supremacy of mental and moral culture over the utmost 
 physical force that ignorance and superstition can op 
 pose to it, when the former youthful cadet of the soul 
 less East India corporation entered the Java Sea, in the 
 spring of 1839, with only his private yacht, Royalist, 
 and a staff and crew of less than forty Europeans, to 
 essay, unassisted by any stronger backing than his own 
 indomitable will, the redemption of millions of heathen 
 bondmen from a despotism and darkness practically 
 unbroken for hundreds of years. 
 
 How he succeeded and quickly became the literally 
 idolized governor of Sarawak, a southwestern depend 
 ency of Borneo proper, was soon known to outer civili 
 zation in news of his decisive victory for honest old 
 Muda Hassim, the Borneo sultanate s viceroy or band- 
 hara, there, over a horde of murderous rebel bandits 
 who had mercilessly ravaged the land for several years. 
 
 Later came word of his formal investment with the 
 Rajahship at Bruni, the Borneon capital, by Hamet Ali, 
 and the restoration through his influence of his friend, 
 the bandhara, to the royal favor he had temporarily lost 
 by his misadventures with the rebel Dyaks : his benefi 
 cent rule at his own capital city of Kuchin ; lifting the 
 merciless Malayan slavery of ages from the patient 
 shoulders of the simple-hearted aborigines, and making 
 of them loyal co-workers in opening all the varied riches 
 of their mighty island to the commercial world ; his 
 fearless missions of humanity to savage Sumatra, as 
 well as in Borneo, for the deliverance of captive passen- 
 

 A CASE IN CHANCERY. 47 
 
 gers and crews of merchantmen from their piratical 
 despoilers ; and, latest, his accompaniment of Captain 
 Keppel s expedition as volunteer guide, counsel and 
 sturdy fighter, when Her Christian Majesty s govern 
 ment had finally been persuaded to avenge immemorial 
 outrages against British commerce, by inflicting signal 
 punishment upon the piratical Shereefs of the swarming 
 Sarebas and Sakarran rivers. 
 
 The merchant had an interest in such exploits as 
 these no less than the moralist ; for supplementary to 
 the story of the Christian Rajah s deeds were sanguine 
 prophecies of the new sources of commercial wealth to 
 be available in the Indies, since there was now estab 
 lished a civilized power at a commanding point, to open 
 and protect hitherto virgin regions of the most valuable 
 products of the tropics. Wild tales of endless diamonds, 
 gold and coal were in circulation ; not to speak of un 
 limited fresh fields for coffee, opium and nutmeg culture. 
 The United States shared in the credulity of the hour ; 
 and its shippers, especially those already in, or having 
 important relations with, the India trade, were prompt 
 to enlist their government and themselves in efforts to 
 make the most of an apparently golden opportunity. 
 
 Mr. Emngham was an early participant in the feeling. 
 Born and educated to lead an affluent life of leisure, at 
 his majority he could not resist the national magnetism 
 of business purpose. Some time in the twentieth cen 
 tury may possibly find in the American metropolis an 
 unemployed aristocratic class of sufficient firmness of 
 root and naturalness of growtli to require no con 
 strained seclusive cultivation for the sure retention of 
 accessions appropriately its own. In Mr. Effingham s 
 youth the primitive provincial beginning of such a social 
 factor could barely generate enough of a special foster 
 ing and protecting atmosphere to sustain its own first 
 
48 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 meagre proportions ; and the consequent tendency of its 
 every fresh shoot possessing any native vigor at all, 
 was to assimilate with the commercial utilitarianism of 
 the hardy young field of national life growing swiftly 
 all around it. Our scion of moneyed leisure was men 
 tally, if not physically, robust and elastic. Immediately 
 upon becoming his own master he passed unreservedly 
 into the full whirl of business life, and to such effect that, 
 while yet on the right side of his fiftieth year, the rich 
 ness of his harvest justified him in thinking of retire 
 ment for the repair of a never perfect health. Then, 
 however, occurred the East Indian fever and the sudden 
 celebration of Borneo. The Coinanclie was building for 
 Mr. Emngham s house, and it suggested itself to the ship 
 ping merchant, after many consultations with his older 
 friend, Yon Gilder, that he could not more happily con 
 join sanitary policy with an esthetic climax of a com 
 mercial career, than by going with his family, on his 
 own new vessel, upon a luxurious trip to the East, by 
 way of England and Madeira, for a deliberate personal 
 inspection of Kajah Brooke s regenerated Golconda. 
 
 This much antedated narrative is necessary as ex 
 planatory natural perspective for our characters now in 
 the foreground. 
 
 By request of the host of " The Straits " the Ameri 
 can merchant, while the ladies were awaiting their 
 caller, had followed a servant to the private managerial 
 office of the hotel, where, lingering longer than he 
 realized in the ante-room, to read over the names of 
 some volumes of old New York newspapers, gazetteers, 
 and commercial reports, there ranged in a glass case, 
 he was surprised by the unusual manner of Mr. Dodge s 
 quickly attending advent. 
 
 Coming rapidly along the hall, with his arms briskly 
 swinging back and forth over his chest, in the sweeping 
 
A CASE IN CHANCERY. 49 
 
 movement so popular with hardy cabmen and steve 
 dores when they would "get up a little circulation, " the 
 Correspondent in Singapore had leaped high in the open 
 doorway to a powerful finger-hold upon the outer ledge of 
 the casement, drawn himself up, with rigidly-bent knees, 
 to a pendent sitting position, and come down sharply 
 again upon the sill, before discovering that he had a 
 spectator. 
 
 "Beg your pardon, really, Mr. Effingham," he puffed, 
 a little abashed. "I didn t expect to find you here 
 thought you d be in the office. I always feel so first- 
 rate after my regular afternoon nap. Walk in, sir, walk 
 in." 
 
 By this time the merchant was sufficiently accus 
 tomed to Mr. Dodge s peculiarly gymnastic manner of 
 expressing his exuberant constitutional superiority to 
 a tropical climate for a fairly philosophical assumption 
 of resignation to it. 
 
 "You certainly do appear to be fortunately organized 
 for the neighborhood of the Equator," he remarked, as 
 they proceeded to their conference in the farther room. 
 " That boy of mine has rather a tendency in the same 
 way, I think. By-the-by, I hope he s in no mischief?" 
 
 " Well," said the younger man, reflectively, " I think 
 I did hear from somebody that he d been bitten by one 
 of the monkeys in our temporary zoological collection 
 out back of the house, and was next seen hanging 
 bodily on to the cue of one of my Chinese chamber- 
 men. I don t think the Equator 11 hurt him much." 
 
 A troubled smile was the fatherly recognition of this 
 assurance. Cherubino was a much-jointed filial com 
 bination of pipe-stem legs and arms, pinned together 
 with a head, particular responsibility for whom was 
 tacitly shifted by either misgiving parent upon the 
 other, until Miss Ankeroo and the human family at 
 
50 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 large were anguished under the unrelieved vivacity of 
 his fullest American small-boyhood. 
 
 With a glance around the cool office, whereof a stand 
 ing desk, founded on a system of pigeon-holes, a table, 
 two rattan chairs, several maps pasted on the thin walls 
 an iron " safe," and a large Dyak mat, were the furni 
 ture, Mr. Effingham settled into his usual practical 
 aspect. 
 
 " To go on, now," he resumed, " with the subject of a 
 previous conversation, I ve understood you to say that 
 a Dutch brig here in ballast, and suitable to my purpose, 
 can be chartered." 
 
 " Exactly so ; I ve opened negotiations for her. But 
 you might have gone up either river, sir, to Bruni, or to 
 Kuchin, with the Comanche herself for that matter. 
 Sir Thomas Cochrane s men-of-war out in the offing here 
 now the Agincourt, Vixen, Pluto, Nemesis, and so on 
 are all going up to Bruni, they say, before long, with 
 Rajah Brooke, to get back a couple of shipwrecked 
 English sailors imprisoned there since the treaty. The 
 old Sultan s a slippery customer, and there may be 
 some fighting for you to see, if you stay in Borneo long 
 enough. As for the Sarawak River, Sir Edward 
 Belcher s frigate Samarang, and Keppel s Dido, both 
 found six fathoms of water at ebb spring-tide within 
 biscuit-toss of the Rajah s house." 
 
 Mr. Dodge s glibness of information surprised his 
 hearer. 
 
 "You appear to be very familiar with Borneo," said 
 Mr. Effingham. 
 
 "Why," rejoined the other, "it s only a little over 
 four hundred miles from here to Kuchin, and I ve been 
 there several times, on Mr. Brooke s own antimony 
 schooner, the Swift, to go up the country, for a way, 
 after animals. There is an odd sort of old Englishman 
 
. ~ 
 
A CASE IN CHANCER7. 51 
 
 living up there a doctor and naturalist, and queer 
 genius generally who s got a living orang-outang that 
 I m bound to have yet for Mr. Barnum, if it costs a 
 fortune." 
 
 "And you think," pursued the merchant, gravely 
 ignoring this branch of discovery, " that the feasibility 
 of immediate coffee culture in that region has been 
 exaggerated?" 
 
 "I don t believe in it myself," answered Mr. Dodge, 
 confidently. "Look at Rajah Brooke himself, how he 
 sticks to his antimony ore, even though some Chinamen 
 are trenching a diamond mine for him at a place called 
 Suntah, up the Sarawak, and he owns an opium farm 
 two hours walk from Kuchin. Gold and tin and dia 
 monds may be all there, as they say ; but my idea is that 
 there "s more money in rice, antimony and sago. There s 
 coal there, too, undoubtedly. But what should you say 
 to nutmegs, now ?" suggested the versatile Felix, lean 
 ing toward his attentive auditor, a hand on either knee, 
 with abrupt access of animation. 
 
 "I shall be pleased to hear your own opinion of 
 them," remarked Mr. Emngham, with a smile. 
 
 "There s money in nutmegs!" continued this off 
 hand commercial cyclopedia, energetically. "On Pe- 
 nang, up the Strait here, one gentleman has cleared 
 fourteen thousand pounds in a year by them. Seventy 
 years ago, when the East India Company had a port at 
 Balambangan, in the northernmost notch of Borneo, 
 they sent a ship to hunt for nutmegs in jSTew Guinea ; 
 yet right along the coast, not far north of Sarawak, is 
 the island of Sumpudin, with wild nutmegs growing on 
 it as thick as hops. You see, sir, they need salt air. If 
 I was in the planting way myself, I d rent that island 
 from Hamet AH and go into the cultivation at once. It 
 could be had for a song. There are your canary trees 
 
52 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 all ready to shade your shoots while you are turning 
 your wild nutmegs into the eatable kind ; and," added 
 the host of " The Straits," with a concluding triumph 
 ant wave of his hands, "you can hire all your labor 
 done by Chinamen ready to work for their mere bread 
 and Buddha !" 
 
 By way of dignified rebuke to his correspondent s too 
 frequent paronomastic infirmity of speech, Mr. Effing- 
 ham had, several times since his arrival, pointedly dis 
 continued conversation at its appearance. With some 
 impatience of manner he now ended the conference by 
 rising from his chair for the purpose of rejoining the 
 ladies. 
 
 And to them, after the lapse of a day, the story now 
 also returns. 
 
 Considerate intercession by his uncle s warm friend, 
 the Governor, and indulgent blindness on the part of 
 the captain of the Cressy, enabled the chivalrous Eng 
 lish lieutenant to devote himself, as he had proposed, 
 to the duty of chaperon of the party. The head of the 
 family went with them in their initiatory round of the 
 " City of the Lions," to the stately Government House, 
 the Fortress on the Hill, the richly-stocked Botanical 
 Gardens, the famous Institution of Oriental Philology, 
 and even shared their unsatisfactory exterior viewing of 
 such jealously exclusive attractions as the Mosque and 
 the Buddhist and Hindoo Temples. At that point, 
 however, he relinquished the squiredom of dames 
 almost wholly to their assiduous young cavalier ; the 
 while he and Mr. Dodge were occupied in supervising 
 the outfit of the brig Weltevreden for Borneo, and ac 
 quiring requisite information from friendly acquaint 
 ances in local commercial circles. 
 
 At all the dinner-parties to which they were hospita 
 bly invited during their sojourn, whether given by polite 
 
A CASE IN CHAyCERY. 53 
 
 official households or those of neighborly merchants, the 
 Effiughams were sure to meet Beknore. With boj -like 
 thoughtlessness of anything savoring of tact, the hand 
 some sailor made it obvious to the least observant eye 
 that it was the delight of his life to be with them on any 
 and ever}* occasion ; and if Miss Effinghain, in the usu 
 ally cool manner of the sex in its insensate "teens, took 
 it all as a matter of course, Miss Ankeroo pronounced 
 him a paragon of good, obliging boys, and Mrs. Effing- 
 ham s habitual gentleness of demeanor seemed }*et more 
 softened for him into an approving motherliness of re 
 gard no less marked because it was so pensive and 
 quiet. 
 
 Accustomed to a yet more ardent summer sun in 
 their own land, the American ladies were not averse to 
 excursions by carriage at any hour of the balmy equa 
 torial day. Abretta s piquant gyps} straw hat, with 
 its graceful white feather and veil, and Cousin Sadie s 
 unsparing spectacles, soon became associated in the 
 popular mind with the most detailed views possible to 
 be taken of every object of interest in Singapore by 
 foreign eyes. For Miss Ankeroo ? s particular benefit 
 there were visits to the mission and Chinese schools, 
 and a trip into the interior of the island as far as the 
 Jesuit missionary village of Bukit-tima. 
 
 "While Mr. Effingham was across some bridge, among 
 the counting-houses on the more mercantile side of the 
 river of the town, intent on matters of business, his tire 
 less deputy was taking mother, daughter, cousin and 
 sometimes unavoidable son on picturesque sails, be 
 tween shores of mangroves, up the Peloi way ; escort 
 ing them through the curious omnium gatherum of 
 Chinese or Kling bazar, guarding them along the 
 original Malayan town, or Campong Glani, built on 
 water-washed pties, and most comfortable to inspect 
 
54 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 from a flat-bottomed sampan ; there to see a trading 
 pralm from the Moluccas, whose every plank, mast, 
 sail, rope, oar and awning was made from the cocoanut 
 tree, and whose whole cargo oil to burn at night, and 
 food and "grog" to consume by day were all of the 
 same generous and stately palm. His was the familiar 
 ized intelligence to aid their discrimination and appre 
 ciation of even a greater variety of nationalities and 
 costumes, in the streets and on the drives, than they 
 had wondered at in Batavia plump and thrifty bare 
 headed Chinese merchants, in ample white smocks and 
 trousers of blue, with long cues tipped gayly with red 
 silk ; gaunt Klings from Western India, in turbans and 
 zouave-like dresses ; Arabs, in flowing white robes ; 
 yellow-faced Malays, in many-colored open jackets, 
 wearing the inevitable deadly kris in the gatherings of 
 their sarong, or native kilt ; Portuguese clerks and 
 shopmen, in their favorite white ; Bugis traders from 
 Celebes the Yankees of the Archipelago in half- 
 European, half-Malayan attire ; Parsees, Javanese, Ben- 
 galese, Coolies ; Englishmen, in the invariable tight 
 coats, waistcoats and trousers of their kind for any cli 
 mate, and an occasional uniform from the garrison on 
 Pearl Hill or the frigates in the harbor. 
 
 An association of this daily practical character be 
 tween the young man and his fair charges, prefaced, as 
 it had been, by an instinctive common liking, could not 
 fail to engender an intimacy of feeling more likely to 
 endure than if it had sprung from any other experience 
 of social travel. The habit, on the one hand, of finding 
 a delightful new pleasure in accustomed things, from 
 being able to show them for the first time to immedi 
 ately appreciative minds ; and, on the other, of depend 
 ing exclusively upon an individual intelligence for the 
 guidance of every untried step and novel perception 
 
A CASE IN CHANCERY. 55 
 
 is always more or less subtly implicatory of a mutual 
 relation much closer than that of any ordinary ac 
 quaintance. Thence Belmore and the Effinghams un 
 consciously blended into one family, as it were, during 
 these pleasant days at Singapore ; and as unconscious 
 were they all that something especially in the involun 
 tary magnetism of the tactiturn Mrs. Effingham s per 
 manent manner toward the youthful naval officer, went 
 farther than any other factor to open his inmost heart 
 to them. 
 
 One evening in their room at the hotel, after a some 
 what fatiguing trip to the gambir plantations and tiger- 
 pits of the northern part of the narrow island, returning 
 from which they had caught sight of the Constitution, 
 with studding sails set aloft and below, standing out of 
 the Roads for Borneo and an answer to her diplomatic 
 mission ; while the music of the garrison band sounded 
 in final cadence through the window-casements from the 
 Parade, and Mr. Effingham withdrew to the lower 
 balcony for a post-prandial cigar a pause in the con 
 versation started by Miss Ankeroo on the merits of the 
 agar-agar jelly of sea-weed, shellfish, soup, rice and hot 
 vegetables sold by the criers in the street, was succeeded 
 by an irrelative exclamation from our domesticated 
 Lieutenant : 
 
 " What a nuisance it is to be poor !" 
 
 "Well, now," rejoined Miss Ankeroo, " of all places 
 in the world to say that in, this is the last ! Think of 
 that Jesuit missionary at Bukit-tima being passing 
 rich on thirty pounds a year. I m told that one sago 
 palm, only needing to be chopped down, is ample twelve 
 months food for a hearty man ; and here in Singapore 
 you can buy a good meal at any corner for three pence !" 
 
 "I mean that I wish my family had what rightfully 
 belongs to it," resumed Belmore, with an audible sigh. 
 
56 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " "When I noticed this afternoon that you ladies were 
 made homesick by seeing that frigate move off, I thought 
 of my own home in England, and my uncle and then 
 about our estate in Chancery." 
 
 "Your uncle, I think you have told us, is stationed 
 here," said Mrs. Effingham casually. 
 
 "For the time, ma am. You know these Straits 
 Settlements, as they are called, are subordinate to the 
 presidency of Bengal. Uncle William is only tempora 
 rily transferred here ; he has been for years in India. 
 I in staying at his quarters up on the Hill, but he s on 
 a visit to his old friend, Mr. Brooke, in Borneo. You 
 see, Mr. Brooke s financial agent, Mr. Henry Wise, 
 came here from England, and Uncle arid he went to 
 Sarawak together." 
 
 " How I do long to see the Rajah of Sarawak !" cried 
 Abretta. Then added, with quick revulsion to a sub 
 ject even more immediately congenial to her imagina 
 tion, "I should think, Mr. Belmore, that you would 
 prefer some profession allowing you to stay at home and 
 look after y our fortune. " 
 
 "That s just where it is, Miss Emngham !" con 
 tinued he excitedly, moving his chair nearer to hers. 
 " This happens to be the very part of the world where 
 Uncle Will and I must look for a solution of our troubles 
 that is, if there is any hope anywhere." 
 
 Here the startling diversion of a juvenile snore from 
 beneath the settee was a jarring revelation that Master 
 Cherubino had been overtaken by heavy slumber there, 
 while undoubtedly seeking surreptitious auditory under 
 the common infantile conviction that to be an unknown 
 and undesired presence to one s elders is to be happy ; 
 and he was promptly grated forth by Miss Ankeroo and 
 summarily escorted by her toward his own supplement>r- 
 ary chamber, in that dazed condition of mind and speech 
 
A CASE W CHANCERY. 57 
 
 which is peculiar to the rudely interrupted repose of 
 dreamless childhood. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Belmore," pursued Abretta, too much 
 interested for even a pardonable sisterly interjection, 
 "it seems strange that an estate in the English Court 
 of Chancery should have anything to do with the East 
 Indies." 
 
 Mrs. Effingham now interposed : 
 
 "My daughter!" 
 
 "Don t object, Mrs. Effingham, please," pleaded the 
 young man, earnestly. "It s very good in her and 
 you all to show an interest in a poor fellow s affairs. 
 Quite a romance it is, too, if you 11 allow me to tell 
 what I know about it." 
 
 " Oh, do !" was the impulsive response of his younger 
 auditor and that was enough. 
 
 " This is the way of it, ladies," continued he, speaking 
 rapidly : " I have already told you that my great-grand 
 father the grandfather of my mother and Uncle Will 
 was a very eccentric kind of man. My great-grand 
 mother, whom he married in America, was his second 
 wife. His first was English, from Devonshire, and died 
 while their only son was a baby. That was my grand- 
 uncle Roderick, and we hardly ever mention him now. 
 except when telling the story. He and his father must 
 have been very much alike, for they both loved each 
 other dearly, and never agreed, and at last hated each 
 other." 
 
 " That is apt to be the case, indeed," remarked Mrs. 
 Effingham quietly. 
 
 "Yes: the ultimate antagonism of likes, I suppose 
 philosophers would call it. The family estate, and very 
 valuable, too, is not far from Reigate, in Surrey ; and a 
 much more secluded, wild place than you d think from 
 the nearness to London. After the death of Roderick s 
 
58 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 mother, my great-grandfather went roving all over the 
 face of the globe, leaving his son to be brought up by 
 servants and schoolmasters. When, finally, he brought 
 my great-grandmother home with him from America, 
 and the lad showed jealousy, he caressed him like a 
 dotard, and said, over and over again, that it was only 
 to secure him a renewal of a mother s care that he him 
 self had married again at all. As I was saying the other 
 day, I m afraid my great-grandfather was not half good 
 enough for his American wife." 
 
 " Then why did she marry an Englishman ?" broke 
 in Miss Effingharn hotly. 
 
 Again the motherly remonstrance : " My daughter !" 
 " Oh, never mind, ma am, if she will be so hard on 
 us," momentarily disconcerted. " But, to proceed with 
 the story : As time went on, and my great-uncle Sidney 
 and grandfather were born, Roderick grew up to have a 
 taste in his turn for roving about the world. In spite of 
 his father s wishes, he never gave any sign of settling 
 at home again until Sidney had a commission in the 
 army ; and then he brought home with him from a reck 
 less sort of hunting bout somewhere in Ireland, the 
 wildest kind of a wild Irishman, whom he had rescued 
 from death at the hands of his own people for inform 
 ing or warning an unpopular landlord, or something 
 in that line. We ve never, any of us, known exactly 
 what it was. The man s name was Ruadh Something- 
 or-other. Uncle Will says that his father, Sidney, you 
 know, could remember him as a regular curiosity of uii- 
 civilization red-haired from head to foot, they said, 
 like a shaggy dog, and scarcely more than an unreason 
 ing, devoted kind of animal, as the family thought. He 
 was to be the cause of no end of mischief. He took to 
 my great-grandfather at once, with as extravagant a 
 devotion as to his younger master, and they let him be 
 
A CASE IN CHANCERY. 59 
 
 a sort of gardener, man-of-all-work, body-servant, and 
 pretty much everything else he chose, in that carelessly- 
 ordered house ; but, from the very first, he seemed to 
 entertain a brute-like, jealous aversion to my grand 
 father and his brother Sidney. My great-grandmother 
 died ; my grandfather married a daughter of a captain 
 in the navy, with only his pay, against the prejudices 
 of the old gentleman, and grand-uncle Sidney took his 
 part. Then he cast them both off, my great-grand 
 father did, you know, and he and Koderick and Ruadh 
 formed a mutual admiration society by themselves." 
 
 "How unnatural !" murmured Abretta. 
 
 "Not for their kind, you know," went on Belmore. 
 " They were three odd mortals together. But it didn t 
 last. Some money question brought all the love between 
 parent and favorite son to grief with a grand blow-up, 
 and Roderick went tearing away from home in an awful 
 rage, while his father fell down in a bad fit. As the 
 other servants of the house subsequently testified, from 
 that time forth Ruadh dogged his aged master s every 
 step, slept at his room-door at night, and seemed to be 
 wholly under control of some unspoken instinct of fear 
 for him. 
 
 " Word presently came that Roderick was in Amster 
 dam, and that his half-brother Sidney, Uncle Will s 
 father, you know, was about to marry. Characteristic 
 ally enough, the old gentleman took the latter piece of 
 news with comparative unconcern, but broke forth into 
 renewed fearful rage against his first-born, whom he 
 cursed for deserting him. You see what his consistency 
 was. Finally, he had another terrible fit, and, upon re 
 viving from it, only to be warned by his physician that 
 he had but a few days more to live, sent in hot haste for 
 a lawyer, with the avowed intention of cutting off 
 Roderick with a shilling. 
 
60 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "He was perfectly clear-headed when the lawyer 
 came, and, in a strong voice, ordered him to draw up, 
 on the spot, a will leaving everything in equal parts to 
 my grandfather and Uncle Will s father, calling the 
 physician also to witness his intention. The instru 
 ment was drawn, read to him, and the housekeeper 
 summoned to be a second witness. Meanwhile Ruadh 
 knelt at the foot of the bed, silent and crossing himself. 
 The paper was placed before the dying man on a book, 
 he was raised up by the doctor and the lawyer, and he 
 signed. The lawyer had hardly carried the will to a 
 table, and the housekeeper was signing, when an omi 
 nous sound from the bed drew them all back thither in 
 breathless alar m. My great-grandfather was dead in 
 five minutes, and no one has ever seen that will again 
 to this day !" 
 
 Lieutenant Belmore discontinued his rapidly-spoken 
 recital for a moment to take breath and change position. 
 
 "A strange piece of carelessness on the part of the 
 lawyer, I should think," said Mrs. Emngham, mechani 
 cally ; " but it must have left all three of the sons equal 
 heirs then." 
 
 " I m sure that creature Ruadh had something to do 
 with it," was the more characteristic remark of the 
 daughter. 
 
 " Oh, don t you spoil my little romance by anticipa 
 ting me, Miss Emngham ! Yes, Ruadh and the will 
 had gone off together ; and not only that, but a lot of 
 title-deeds, some money, and the first sheet of grand- 
 uncle Roderick s offending letter from Amsterdam were 
 also missing from a partly-rifled secretary in the bed 
 chamber. These, though, must have been abstracted 
 before the day of the death, and as equally important 
 papers were left behind without any intelligent know 
 ledge of their relative values. That is, all except the 
 
4 CASE IN CSANOEEY. 61 
 
 part of the letter. The fellow must have taken that for 
 the address." 
 
 " Could he read ?" asked Abretta. 
 
 "Kot a syllable," continued Belmore ; "he must 
 have done it by instinct. And, more, he could have 
 known only in the dimmest sort of way that the dying 
 will meant harm to the absent master possessing his 
 brute-love. But you are wrong, Mrs. Emngham, about 
 the equal inheritance left. In the same secretary I m 
 talking about was found an earlier will, disinheriting 
 my grandfather and Uncle Will s father in favor of Mr. 
 Koderick." 
 
 " I in telling this story awfully," went on the young 
 man, his voice sinking disconsolately. "I know I m 
 making a mull of it, with all its greats and grands 
 and that sort of thing. Uncle Will does it a great deal 
 better ; but I m near the end now. 
 
 "You needn t be told that when, almost instantly 
 after the sudden death-scene, the hardly-yet-dry will 
 was missed from the table, and the Irish factotum no 
 where to be seen, those interested knew how to put two 
 and two together. Within forty-eight hours, however, 
 a letter came from the diplomatic office in Holland, say 
 ing that Roderick had just died in Amsterdam in a fit. 
 This seemed to end all trouble about the estate not an 
 entailed one, you 11 understand. As a precaution, 
 Euadh was traced by the police to Reigate and London 
 and then on board a vessel leaving Liverpool for the 
 Zuyder-Zee. He had gone to Amsterdam after Rode 
 rick, paying his way with the stolen sovereigns. 
 
 " There might have been no farther particular care 
 for the poor devoted animal if, all at once, just as newly- 
 married grand-uncle Sidney and my grandfather, sum 
 moned home from London, were about entering into 
 their rights, a strange lady from Ireland, with a weakly 
 
G2 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 infant, had not suddenly come forward as the clan 
 destinely-married wife of Roderick with proper mar 
 riage-lines to show, too and claimed the estate. 
 
 " Now you can see how it all got into Chancery. The 
 widow would have all or none ; the lawyer, physician 
 and housekeeper could swear to the contents and sign 
 ing of the revocating instrument ; but it could not be 
 produced and there was the earlier will, all straight 
 and regular. There was nothing for it but Chancery, 
 with a stated allowance for the widow and babe they d 
 been living near London and a renewed chase after 
 Ruadh. They traced him again going from Amsterdam 
 to Batavia, down here in Java, as a Dutch officer s ser 
 vant, and then into the lunatic department of the mili 
 tary hospital there ; gone mad, it was supposed, in 
 terror of the conjectured coming of our fleet if the wars 
 of Napoleon went on. 
 
 "This is why Uncle Will originally took service under 
 the Company in India, after that secret trouble of his 
 in the United States. He has ascertained., beyond a 
 doubt, that Ruadh certainly escaped from the hospital 
 and managed to get to Sambas, just south of Sarawak, 
 in Borneo, when it was sure England could take Bata 
 via ; and that he always had with him, and took with 
 him, an oilskin packet, worn next his shaggy breast, 
 perpetually, and secured by a cord around the neck. 
 The hospital officials supposed it to be some kind of 
 charm, and, as he was harmless in his lunacy, never 
 took it from him but it must have been the will and 
 the other papers. 
 
 "From Sambas, where the Dutch have some foot 
 hold, we have not been able to get the slightest hint of 
 his fate. He went there in a Malay prahu, in which he 
 had taken refuge when flying from the hospital. So 
 our family romance has stood in all the years since. 
 
A CASE IN CHANCERY. 63 
 
 The widow died, though her son is living yet, I believe, 
 in spite of his weakliness. My grandfather, my mother 
 and Uncle Will s father are all gone, too. But my uncle 
 will never give up, and I think he s infected me a little 
 with the same infatuation. At any rate, it s enough of 
 a romance, you know, to be kept alive for the credit of 
 the name." 
 
 The long-drawn breaths of his auditors in the dark 
 ening room, gave evidence that the story thus ending 
 had worked adequately upon their silent fancies. Against 
 the clearer dimness of the air beyond one of the open 
 windows two graceful feminine heads and shadowy 
 forms could be discerned ; the gentleman sitting close 
 by, with his face to them and the casement. 
 
 "Mr. Belmore," said Mrs. Effingham in a low, mea 
 sured tone of speaking re very, " you have not mentioned 
 the name of your great-grandfather." 
 
 " Have I not ?" he returned surprisedly. " Perhaps 
 that was my modesty, ma am I m named after him. 
 He was Sir Edwin knighted for carrying up a loyal 
 address sometime Sir Edwin Daryl." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 There was such a pause before Mrs. Effingham re 
 turned this commonplace sign of attention, that both of 
 her companions glanced at her more particularly. They 
 saw only that she was looking away from them toward 
 the not remote water view beginning to sparkle under a 
 rising moon, where lights were coming upon prahu and 
 ship-of-war, near and distant, like remembrances of a 
 far past kindling slowly in the retrospective first watch 
 of the night. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 FRIEND, OR FOE? 
 
 THE city of Bruni ("The Bravest"), or Borneo, 
 whence Portuguese navigators early in the sixteenth 
 century extended the name to the whole immense island, 
 called by its own people Pulo Kalamantan, has been 
 described under the simile of a barbarian Cybele rising 
 sullenly from the waters. In the last thirty-five years it 
 must have undergone much change and modernization 
 by neighborly community with the rapid development 
 of European civilization in Sarawak ; but at the time 
 herein treated of the Borneon Venice, with its two or 
 three thousand houses, and, perhaps, five times that 
 number of inhabitants, was yet one of the rudest and 
 fiercest cities of the lawless Malay. Spreading from a 
 noble amphitheatre of swelling green hills to the shore 
 of the wide, deep river of the same name, the fifteen 
 feet rise and fall of that massive water, combined with 
 the tides of several smaller streams confluencing it at 
 that point, gave the town the usual Malayan character 
 istic of seeming to rise from the sea ; its buildings being 
 elevated upon piles, and its many tortuous highways 
 and byways practicable to be traversed only in boats. 
 The long, rambling white Palace, however, with its 
 surroundings of barracks and offices, stood back upon 
 one of the cleared hillsides overlooking the great level 
 stretch of the jagged palm-leaf roofs and boat-dotted 
 streets of savage Bruni, and upon an adjacent elevation, 
 yet higher, appeared a structure that, if as barbaric, was 
 more imposing. 
 
 As the latter is the architectural object immediately 
 6* 
 
FRIEND, OR FOE? 65 
 
 interesting us, it may be more particularly mentioned 
 as having from the town below an aspect of at least a 
 hundred feet of one-story whitened front, with a steep- 
 peaked roof of great interlapping Xypa palm-leaves ; 
 standing upon a terrace serrated with dingy six-pounder 
 cannons, and flanked by two little summer-houses with 
 conical tops. Upon ascending the difficult intervening 
 acclivity, however, the seeming terrace was found to be 
 a substantial stockade of heavy stakes and a tenacious 
 triangular embankment of mixed soil and rattan, in 
 closing the whole building in a defensive square some 
 six feet high ; the summer-houses were watch-towers at 
 the corners, connected by a parapet walk, and occupied 
 by sentries with alarm-gongs, while the long, irregular 
 building itself, decked with a deep veranda on which 
 glittered two brass guns taken from some crippled mer 
 chantman, was lifted bodily to the height of the palisade 
 on massive trunks of former trees. All over the open 
 space within the fortifications stood or reclined groups 
 of a Kadien Dyak body-guard and Malayan officers ; 
 the latter in muslin turbans figured with gold thread, 
 light-blue blouses, petticoated from the waist by red 
 sarongs, and loose trousers of striped nankeen ; the 
 former handsomer and fairer in complexion wearing 
 head-dresses of pheasants feathers set in bands of flexi 
 ble bark, red jackets padded to resist spears, white and 
 red plaided kilts, or sarongs like the Malays , and broad 
 brass bands on the wrists, ankles and hanging from 
 either distended ear-lobe. The inseparable betel-box 
 hung at every waist. Two krisses were in the sarong 
 of each officer, while the soldiery, excepting one here 
 and there with a ship s musket, carried tall oval shields 
 and long lances of bamboo, and bore the "parang- 
 ihlang," or war-sword, of their race. 
 Such was the home and virtual citadel of Usop, a pu- 
 

 66 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN". 
 
 tative uncle of the Sultan of Borneo, and one of the 
 most daring and powerful pangerans, or princes, at 
 Court. Like the bandhara, Muda Hassim, his superior, 
 and the pangerans Budrudeen and Makota, his princely 
 equals, this shrewdly-intelligent follower of the Prophet 
 had contracted many European ways from the unusual 
 British visitors to his country in the preceding three 
 or four years. He could sit easily upon a chair instead 
 of a divan, drink wine, smoke English cigars and 
 adroitly adapt his bearing and conversational key to the 
 level of the respectful equality expected by those who 
 deemed themselves his superiors through civilization. 
 Adhering yet to the chewing of betel, he also knew how 
 to forego it on occasions of social policy. He was a 
 middle-aged, short, active Oriental politician ; abler, 
 perhaps, in secret scheming than in warlike action, but 
 capable of great pertinacity in both. 
 
 In a long, high room with three large windows, cur 
 tained with Turkey red, and leading to the veranda, this 
 man and a very incongruous guest were now looking 
 forth through a casement intently. The apartment it 
 self was a presentment of incongruities. The partitions 
 of colored mats with a divan along them, the matted 
 bamboo floor and half-nude kneeling Dyak slaves around 
 the doorway were Oriental enough ; but about the place 
 were scattered cabin chairs and tables unmistakably 
 European, and several handsome compasses and spy 
 glasses were hung from the ceiling by chains like artis 
 tic decorations. 
 
 The Pangeran, in costume like that of his nakodahs, 
 or Malay followers, outside, save that he wore a dark 
 jacket trimmed with gold lace and opening upon a shirt 
 of mail beneath, had a gaunt, olive-tinted face that, 
 with its beetling black brows, near-set eyes and retreat 
 ing chin, had a certain effect of cruelty, notwithstand- 
 
FRIEND, OR FOE? 67 
 
 ing the smile more habitual to it than frowns. His 
 companion, near whom he stood, occupied an English 
 chair, tilted back from the centre of the window, and 
 held a cup of smoking tea in his lap and a long native 
 cigar between his thin, straight lips. For this was an 
 Englishman, in the ordinary summer dress of his 
 country ; a black silk skull-cap on his head and cloth 
 slippers on his feet ; probably fifty years old, and stout 
 in figure, with a long, full face, patriarchally bearded 
 and uniformly florid, to which gold-framed spectacles, 
 the cap and the black hair hanging from the latter to 
 the shoulders gave a rather monkish tone. 
 
 The prospect surveyed by these two oddly-associated 
 men, gazing over the veranda and the top of the stock 
 ade, included the whole town and harbor of Bruni under 
 the searching sunlight of the dry monsoon. Varying 
 brownish tints of the wilderness of roofs, seeming as 
 though they might be melting slowly into the watery 
 plain of their foundation, carried the eye gratefully 
 from the intense green of the semicircling hills to the 
 golden gleam of the broad yellow river, whereon a float 
 ing market of hundreds of tiny canoes, made picturesque 
 by the huge palm hats of their chattering market 
 women, and heaps of fruit and other edibles, was centre 
 to an ever-converging, sluggish procession of sampans, 
 trading prahus and Chinese craft coming continually by 
 either way of the stream. On the opposite shore, to 
 throw out every color of this characteristic waterscape 
 into strong relief, was what seemed a lofty wall of ivy- 
 green, being the luxuriant pepper vine, covering the 
 trunks and intervals of tall mango trees. Here and 
 there on pile foundations, near the prahu anchorage, 
 were forts of earthwork mounted with cannon. Up 
 the river a short distance, midway of the tide, the 
 blackened ruins of an ancient stone fortress were the 
 
68 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 picturesque monument of a past civilization ; and from 
 down the river seaward was approaching a great barge, 
 with high prow and poop, dingily black and gilt, rowing 
 a score of oars on either side, and carrying on the mast 
 a large yellow flag. 
 
 To this gaudy vessel of state the attention of the 
 spectators at the window was principally directed. As 
 it came on the guns of the forts gave greeting, and its 
 turning into the natural canal leading to the Sultan s 
 wharf was accompanied by clang of gongs and a vigor 
 ous beating of the wooden Malay drum. 
 
 "Mohammed and the Bandhara Tumsee come back 
 from Pulo Combong, with another message from the 
 English Tuan Captain to the sublime Sultan," muttered 
 Usop. 
 
 " So I take it, Pangeran," assented the Englishman 
 phlegmatically, speaking also in Malayan. 
 
 " Hamet Ali will not yield." 
 
 " That s bosh ! as your friends in Istamboul say," re 
 torted the other. " Sir Thomas Cochrane is not the 
 kind of Tuan to stand that style of business. Hamet 
 Ali or Muda Hassim for him signed a treaty with my 
 country not six months ago, binding your government 
 to quit at once and forever this barbarism of putting 
 shipwrecked English sailors into your dungeons ; and I 
 tell you, Pangeran Usop I, Doctor Lawrence Hed- 
 land, tell you, as a sensible man that the sooner you 
 give up those two men whom you have hidden, the 
 safer you 11 be from guns able to blow your whole 
 piratical nest out of the water." 
 
 " Was it with your Queen or with the Tuan Besar that 
 this treaty was made ?" asked the Pangeran mildly. 
 
 " With the Kingdom of Great Britain !" was the testy 
 response. " On that occasion, at any rate, Mr. Brooke 
 Tuan Besar, great man, as you call him came here as 
 
FRIEND, OR FOE? 69 
 
 the accredited British agent to Borneo, and you must 
 keep faith with him and Captain Bethune, or you 11 see 
 something worse out here in the river, before the wet 
 monsoon, than the Driver and her gunboat." 
 
 The Malay prince sank noiselessly to a chair, and 
 rolled a tobacco leaf, handed him by a kneeling servi 
 tor, into a cigar for himself. 
 
 " The Tuan Hedland does not always wish the Faith 
 ful to make terms with the English-speaking stranger," 
 he went on as gently as before. "Only a little time 
 ago, when those other orang siranis Christian men 
 came here with their ship from farther over the great 
 sea, to ask a treaty, I was in the surow audience room 
 of the Sultan s palace when Tuan Hedland acted as 
 interpreter." 
 
 Doctor Hedland s florid countenance turned a yet 
 warmer red at this, and he tossed away cigar and tea 
 cup angrily. 
 
 " Those Americans," sputtered he, "had no business 
 here at all ! But you know, Pangeran, that I trans 
 lated exactly between them and Hanlet Ali what each 
 had to say to the other." 
 
 "A word from Tuan Hedland himself might have 
 helped the orang sirani," intimated the Malay. 
 
 " I interpreted literally for both sides, and had no 
 business beyond that, I tell you!" was the pettish re 
 joinder. " However, " continued the speaker more de 
 liberately, "you are at liberty to know what I never 
 disguise from living soul, that I have no good words of 
 my own, on any occasion, for the Yankees Americans. 
 They didn t know their ground, and I had other occu 
 pation than to turn schoolmaster for them. You East 
 ern characters can never understand the difference 
 between not turning actually treacherous to those you 
 can t admire, and, at the same time, not actively be- 
 
70 THEEE WAS ONCE A MAN 
 
 friending them. Here you and Makota are forever 
 taking it for granted that because I parted company 
 with Kajah Brooke I would like to see him and his 
 friends driven back to England. That s bosh again, 
 Pangeran Usop. You and Makota have been very fair 
 friends of mine for five years now. Your Sultan has 
 treated me well, and when he wanted me to come to 
 Bruni as interpreter between himself and the strange 
 orang sirani, I came to oblige him. I don t choose to take 
 up Tuau Brooke s quarrel against you, because I ve no 
 interest in politics, and you and your side are useful to 
 me. I m no politician, nor soldier ; only a peaceable 
 man of science. But then you must remember, Pan 
 geran, I m an Englishman, too ; and I tell you, as a 
 friend, that you must give up those two English sea 
 men, or the war-ships will be here again. England 
 stands no nonsense about her treaties." 
 
 However much or little of this harangue, dogmati 
 cally delivered, the Pangeran could understand, he 
 maintained his unruffled demeanor, and kept to the 
 point chiefly interesting himself. 
 
 "They say at Batavia," resumed he, "that there 
 was a treaty twenty years ago binding your country to 
 keep away from the Archipelago." 
 
 "Pouf! that s the Dutch opinion of the treaty of 
 1824, is it?" was the contemptuous answer. "You 
 Malays are not over-fond of the Dutchmen, I think ?" 
 
 "They are dogs, and sons of dogs!" snarled the 
 Mahometan, a peculiarly bitter national hatred momen 
 tarily overcoming his usually politic dispassionateness. 
 
 " Then don t quote them to me, Usop !" said Doctor 
 Hedland. " Be advised by me again, and do not depend 
 you and your party upon any secret help that old 
 fool, the Sultan of Sambas, can give you, whether the 
 government at Batavia puts him up to it or not." 
 
FRIEND, OR FOE? 71 
 
 A fresh outburst of gongs, tom-toms and cymbals in 
 the direction of the palace drew the attention of both 
 men again to that point, and they stared in silence at a 
 procession filing up from the barge between double 
 ranks of the royal body-guard in their huge white tur 
 bans and coats of steel the bearer of the horse-tail en 
 sign, then the Bandhara Tumsee, carrying on his head 
 the brass tray containing the Letter of State, rolled in 
 silk and covered by an embroidered cloth ; next, the 
 prime minister, Muda Hassim, and his brother, Mo 
 hammed, in flowing ceremonial robes; and, lastly, a 
 train of retainers. 
 
 Suddenly the English looker turned to his companion 
 both were now standing and pointed to a moving 
 object high in the brilliant air. 
 
 " Mark that, Pangeran !" he exclaimed, with a quick, 
 keen scrutiny of the other s countenance. " There is a 
 frigate-bird hovering over the barge just to the left of 
 it and now he darts away from it by the stern. My 
 Dyaks would call that a bad Antu evil spirit for 
 your Sultan an omen that his answer to the Tuan 
 Captain may bring him to grief." 
 
 If this shrewd appeal to Malayan superstition was in 
 tended for a politic admonition to the princely barba 
 rian, it scarcely accomplished that design. With curling 
 lip and a cold smile, the Pangeran replied : 
 
 " In his women s apartments, our Sublime Lord who 
 Eules has a sacred gusi a talking jar covered with 
 gold brocade. It told him when his favorite wife died. 
 What cares he for the antu of the Dyak dogs when he 
 has that to consult ?" 
 
 "The fellow is too sharp for me," growled the doctor 
 to himself. Then, turning from the window, and speak 
 ing aloud : " I must go and see after Oshonsee now." 
 
 "Oshonsee is Tuan Hedland s antu, " said Usop, 
 
72 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 not without a suggestion of irony in the softly-spoken 
 remark. "How soon will he talk more than his name ?" 
 
 "About the time when that gusi jar of yours does," 
 answered his blunt guest. He added, walking toward 
 the doorway: "I must depart from your hospitable 
 presence now for a while, most puissant Pangeran, for 
 that worshipful reclaimed pirate, Pa Jenna, has his 
 prahu ready to start with us for Sarawak to-night, and 
 I should be preparing." 
 
 The Malay struck a gong, and immediately the room 
 swarmed with crawling slaves. 
 
 " Attend Tuan Hedland whither he would go," he 
 commanded, with a lordly wave of the hand. "I give 
 your lives into his hands. I and my poor house and all 
 within it are his 1" 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE THREADS UNITE. 
 
 GOING down the China Sea along the western side of 
 Borneo ; from the mouth of the Bruni southwesterly ; 
 a distance of something less than three hundred miles, 
 past a picturesquely varied coast of alternating densest 
 primeval jungle and weirdly engroved mountain and 
 river, brings the voyager to the point of land known 
 as Cape Sirrik, between which and the opposite Cape 
 Datu the shore line curves inland almost in a semi 
 circle. About midway of this sheltering indentation 
 empties the Sarawak, where, until scarcely one year 
 before, when the terror of Rajah Brooke s name and 
 the guns of Commander Keppel awed them into for 
 bearance, the truculent pirate fleets of the Sarebas 
 and Sakarran were wont to gather for their nightly 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 73 
 
 missions of plunder and murder, on sea or on land. 
 Now, however, no more peaceful river came down from 
 amongst the hills to the ocean in all the three thou 
 sand miles of Pulo Kalamantan s seaboard. Flying 
 under the smoke of their burning fastnesses of Rembas, 
 Patusen and Karangan ; with the pinnaces, cutters and 
 gigs of the Dido and Phlegethon decimating them from 
 everj tortuous water-way, and the loyal Dyaks of 
 Brooke storming through the jungle, the fierce hordes of 
 shereefs Jaffer and Sahib had taken cowed refuge in their 
 gloomy Madi Mountains, and the gateway of the Tuan 
 Besar s new dominion was open to the Christian world. 
 
 Entering there-through from the sea, on the third 
 morning after the departure from Bruni, was Pa Jen- 
 na s prahu, with great sailing-mats spread to the fresh 
 breeze on bamboo yards, and a low prow and high 
 poop bearing up the muzzles of old-fashioned brass 
 bow and stern chasers. On either side of the long, 
 narrow deck, too, were three of the small iron four- 
 pounder guns known, from the place of their origin, as 
 Carronades. This was the usual armament of a trader 
 coasting between Bruni, Sarawak and Singapore ; and 
 such a trader the vessel probably was, though on the 
 present occasion making a special passenger-trip by 
 orders from the palace. A rudder at either end, with 
 ropes of cocoanut fibre running from it to a helm 
 strapped to the sternpost with rattan, and a canopy 
 of plaited rattan and Nypa leaves to keep off sun and 
 shower, were also among the appointments of a craft 
 of fifty tons, into the primitive native construction of 
 which not one nail had entered. Beginning from a 
 large canoe, shaped from a single great tree, the whole 
 planking superstructure was lashed tightly together 
 with ropes of rattan, or bark. 
 
 Crossing the bar of Sarawak River, the prahu had, 
 
74 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 on ite Left side, a sloping beach bordered by the feathery 
 and peculiarly elegant casuarinaa of the Tropics, mount 
 ing sharply from which the great emerald mass of 
 stately Sontobong went up two thousand feet to a 
 coronet of graceful ciifls plumed with trees ; on the 
 right, a deeper spread of shore, carrying a network 
 of pale green mangroves to the base of a verdurous 
 round hill farther inland, and completing with the 
 fairy-like accessory of little Pulo Karra, or Monkey 
 Island, and the distant peak of towering Mount Poa 
 one of the noblest imaginable shadowy portals to a 
 domain wherein the glorious light of the Cross was 
 breaking triumphantly through the lifeless twilight of 
 the Crescent. 
 
 Unimpeded rays from a rising sun, beating down the 
 shining river, revealed upon the after-part of the ad 
 vancing boat s deck, of eanework on a seat running 
 along the outride of a small poop cabin, the figures of 
 Doctor Hedland and a companion shrouded from head 
 to foot in some sort of extemporized mantle. Knife in 
 hand, the scientist, who now wore a Panama hat, was 
 energetically cutting into the tough rind of an oval 
 green fruit known as the durion ; ite surface of briery 
 spines, on a circumference equal to that of a large eo- 
 coanut, making the task no easy one. The rank odor a 
 of bruised onions, arising from the track of the blade 
 in the sutures of the carpels, was a strange libel upon 
 the rarely delicate beauty of the satiny white Ulterior 
 presently shown, when the knife had laid open the five 
 .ous cells of the durion. Its liberation, however, 
 induced movements by the mufflx-d shape which Doctor 
 ind answered with a half of the opened fruit ; and 
 another apparent effect was the coming toward the two 
 of a man previously ordering the movements of a knot 
 of Malay sailors near the prow. 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 75 
 
 This was a tall, very strongly built person ; in fact, 
 no other than the captain of the craft, redoubtable Pa 
 Jenna ; by birth and antecedents an Illanaon, a pirate, 
 prisoner to Muda Hassim in the rebellion extinguished 
 by Rajah Brooke, and then one of the pardoned by 
 Tuan Besar s humane intercession, and a partly con:- 
 verted master of a peaceful trader. In the fullest prime 
 of manhood ; his unbearded face scarcely darker than 
 that of a sunbrowned European, on his head a close 
 cap of monkey-skin bound around with a long-ended 
 muslin band, and the common Malayan blouse, sarong 
 and trousers completing his attire ; he looked like what 
 he was a barbaric compromise with civilization. 
 
 " We re breakfasting, Pa Jeuna," observed the Doc 
 tor, in acknowledgment of his deferential greeting. 
 "This fellow," with a bend of the thumb toward his 
 companion on the seat, "is too sensitive yet to stand 
 the morning air without some muffling. But you see 
 he can eat his durion with a spoon, like a Christian 
 isn t it so, Oshonsee ?" 
 
 " Oshon-see ! O-shon-see ! O-shon-see 1" came in a 
 startling, half-coughing, half-pumping sound from the 
 muffled one, accompanied by a movement apparently of 
 all his limbs under the clumsy envelope beneath which 
 he appeared to be eating. 
 
 "I should think so !" assented Hedland, with an in 
 describable aspect of proudly pleased gratification ; the 
 while the Illanaon stared at both with undisguised, in 
 tent curiosity. 
 
 " We ve made a royal voyage of it, Pa Jenna," con 
 tinued the scientist, turning to his own half of the 
 creamy-pulped fruit. " Every time I get on board one 
 of these crazy prahus, I in freshly surprised at what 
 they can stand and do." 
 
 "Sakarra and his Datus shone upon our sailing," 
 
76 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 said the barbarian, pointing to the heavens. " Their 
 silver spears were over us when we left Bruni, and 
 Bulan the moon was Sakarra s shield." 
 
 " Sakarra and his Datus ? You mean Taurus and 
 the Pleiades were above the horizon, " retorted his inter 
 locutor testily. "If you re going to become an orang- 
 sirani Christian you must drop all that heathen-god 
 nonsense, my converted friend." 
 
 " Tuan carries his own antu with him everywhere," 
 Pa Jenna insinuated, pointing this time to the cloaked 
 shape. 
 
 The obstinate superstitious conviction of his Dyak 
 friends, that the taciturn Oshonsee was a kind of do 
 mestic god (or " antu," as they called it) of his, always 
 so exasperated Doctor Hedland, that some even of his 
 European acquaintances in Sarawak and Singapore 
 ventured occasionally to refer to it merely for the 
 amusement of witnessing his wrathful outburst thereat. 
 In great irritation, he now putted away the covering 
 from the head of this alleged familiar spirit, and a face 
 that, but dimly discernible in its hooded obscurity, 
 had seemed as though it might perad venture belong 
 to some elderly scientific person heavily whiskered, was 
 found to be the bristling countenance of a great Orang- 
 outan. 
 
 " Speak to him, Oshonsee !" cried his indignant 
 master in English ; and, at the sound of his words, the 
 creature thus phonetically named dropped the durion 
 and spoon with which he had been engaged, and, with 
 every sign of mingled rage and nervousness, started 
 from the seat. A chain at his waist, however, held him 
 from farther advance, though Pa Jenna involuntarily 
 recoiled, with a hand on his kris. 
 
 "I ll certainly let him slip on some of you fools of 
 savages yet," admonished the Englishman, resuming 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 77 
 
 the Malayan patois of his previous speech, a grim smile, 
 however, stealing over his features at the effect pro 
 duced. "Back, Oshonsee ! Down, boy ! You must 
 not talk that kind of tomfoolery to me, Pa Jenna, be 
 cause you know better, and I 11 not have it from you ! 
 Heathen you may be, but you ve got the brains to un 
 derstand, by this time, that I m studying this creature 
 in the interest of human knowledge. Your daughter 
 has better manners. Go and send Amina here 1" 
 
 Accustomed to the imperious ways of this mysteri 
 ously powerful Tuan Sirani and friend of the Sultan, the 
 unwitting offender bowed low in acquiescence and re 
 tired toward the prow, whence presently a young girl 
 appeared in his place. 
 
 Amina, the youngest and favorite child of the re 
 claimed Illanaon, was as mature in form at fourteen 
 years of age as other than Dyak maidens are at twenty ; 
 for the females of her short-lived race are old at thirty. 
 She had the delicate mulatto complexion of the Lauts, 
 or Sea Dyaks, her tribe having come originally from the 
 pirate islets of Sooloo, off the bay of Illana, in Min 
 danao, of the Philippines ; nose, mouth and chin were of 
 the most regular Asiatic type, and only by her brilliant 
 black eyes and hair curiously bound up with strings of 
 agate beads did she suggest any possibility of a former 
 sea-rover s daughter. Her dress, like her father s, was 
 a crude compact with civilization ; the sleeveless and 
 usually loose jacket of her class being drawn tightly 
 close from the neck by English buttons of gilt, and her 
 dark "bedang," or petticoat, reaching to her ankles. 
 Golden hoops in her ears, and a conical hat of plaited 
 rattan in several bright colors, were the final touches 
 of a picture of girlish grace very prettily in harmony 
 with the general surrounding scene. She walked con 
 fidently to the side of the cabin, and boldly began strok- 
 
78 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 ing the uncouth, reddish head of the now quieted 
 Oshonsee. 
 
 " That s a sensible child !" was the approving ejacu 
 lation of the choleric man of science, who forthwith 
 cast away the durion husks and chestnut-like seeds, 
 and proceeded to roll a tobacco-leaf into a segar. " We 
 shall be back in our village in a few hours more, Amina ; 
 and then you 11 see your mother again, and Oshonsee 
 shall try another turn in my old suit of clothes. I was 
 a coward not to let him wear them to Bruni ; but, if I 
 had, they d have talked me to death, I suppose, with 
 their rubbishing antu stuff." 
 
 The girl understood no larger proportion of the 
 Doctor s usual discourse than did the average of his 
 native hearers ; so, with only a childlike smile, she 
 sank into a seat beside the dozing occupant of the long 
 mantle, and silence followed. 
 
 A fine breeze, aromatic from tropical woodlands and 
 bracing with the keen savor of the western sea, urged 
 the prahu swiftly up the remaining forty miles of her 
 voyage ; the calm river reflecting her quaint outlines 
 between banks as varied and lovely as nature s virgin 
 growth, under the skies of perpetual summer, could 
 make them. Few, indeed, were such effects of color as 
 flowers often give to the boundaries of watercourses in 
 South America, the West Indies, Florida, and even in 
 Great Britain. Only at long intervals appeared blos 
 soms of any conspicuous hue. But in every conceiv 
 able shade and form of living green ; from the almost 
 black of the pepper-vine and the pale verdure of the 
 mangrove, to the alternating olive and transparent 
 emerald of the mangosteen ; from the marvelously ser 
 pentine rattan, running its feathery crests over the 
 tallest trees, to the elm-like durion and the gigantic 
 Nypa palm the wild luxuriance of the scene was rich 
 
TEE THREADS UNITE. 79 
 
 beyond comparison. Of fruits showing on their stems, 
 though in no glaring tints, there were the lofty durions 
 and the orange-like mangosteens already mentioned, 
 and others with the less known names of lansat, ram- 
 butan, jambon and blimbing. Large, cream-colored 
 pigeons, with a gong-like note, hovered from above the 
 prahu to the tree-tops ; now and then a wild hog ruffled 
 the underbrush, or an adventurous monkey swung 
 from one to another overhanging limb ; and occasion 
 ally an alligator \vas seen in the reeds. 
 
 Canoes, sampans, and other trading prahus began 
 passing ; a trim European brig and an East India 
 schooner hove in sight ; the steam-launch of a man-of- 
 war went by; denser jungle and more numerous Nypa 
 palms appeared on the shores in the shadow of encroach 
 ing hills ; at a bend the river widened rapidly to an ex 
 panse of fully three hundred feet ; and, it being about 
 noon, the prahu of Pa Jenna, gliding, as by magic, into 
 a whole fleet of prahus, canoes, frigates, boats and cano 
 pied sampans was abreast of Kajah Brooke s capital. 
 
 Nestling at the wave-washed feet of hillocks receding 
 by the gentlest undulations, the town of Kuchin looked 
 at first glimpse like a smaller Bruni ; its clustering Ma 
 lay, Chinese, and Dyak habitations, too, on their morass 
 piles, aiding the resemblance ; but as the eye of the 
 beholder from the river took a more comprehensive 
 survey, these primitive elements of the view were dis 
 cerned to be barely more than a picturesque local color 
 ing. Before the near background fairly began its ascent 
 into the rolling uplands, houses of European aspect were 
 visible. Between the shady patches of characteristic 
 wood and jungle yet uncleared upon the grassy knolls, 
 or swells, lapping each other in all directions, were the 
 veritable Swiss cottages of a lately-incoming civiliza 
 tion ; other dwellings of the same class appeared in 
 
80 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 course of construction at various equally eligible points ; 
 and, on the crown of a conspicuous mound, partly em 
 bosomed in noble trees, with the new flag of Sarawak 
 marking its official dignity, was the spacious court and 
 home of the English Kajah. 
 
 Less than four years of Christianized mastery had 
 doubled the population and infused the formerly squalid 
 and savage " Cat Town" with a spirit of wonder-work 
 ing regeneration. The frigate flying an English ensign 
 and the other European vessels from Singapore, which 
 appeared among the native craft on the river, were 
 even less significant of this redemption than was the 
 actual " shop," selling English merchandise in the town 
 itself. 
 
 On the prahu from Bruni, now waiting for certain 
 supplies from the shore, Doctor Hedland had studied 
 the. remoter objects of interest through a glass. Pa 
 Jenna was at work with his crew, Amina had long since 
 withdrawn to a lower cabin, and the simian passenger 
 was asleep in a hammock under the poop. What at 
 tracted the Doctor s immediate observation was a little 
 procession of the town mob as it were Dyak, Malayan 
 and Chinese following, with cries and gesticulations, a 
 knot of persons apparently bearing some injured person 
 to one of the modern houses on a knoll rising not far 
 back from the former rajah s wharf. He could see sev 
 eral figures on the veranda of the house, in European 
 dress, evidently in alarm at the approaching cortege, 
 and that they finally received into their own arms and 
 hurriedly bore through the doorway the limp object of 
 the throng s solicitude. While he was pondering what 
 it all could mean, a small boat came flying out from the 
 town toward his prahu, rowed swiftly by a Malay sailor 
 who had but now gone ashore, and in another moment 
 there came clambering over the side to him a burly old 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 81 
 
 Englishman, panting for breath and perspiring through 
 every salient curve of his linen jacket and trousers. 
 
 " Why, old Peter !" he exclaimed, in surprise, "what 
 is all this about ?" 
 
 "Ah, Doctor, it s a miracle you are here, to oe 
 sure," puffed the man, wiping his steaming forehead. 
 "There s been an accident to a lad up at yon house, 
 and I made so bold, when the poor ladies were fit to die 
 of fright over it, as to say that Pa Jenna s boat was in 
 the stream, with you on it, and that I thought you were 
 just the kind gentleman to come with me and see the 
 poor lad." 
 
 " That explains the fuss I saw going on over there," 
 muttered the Doctor, not greatly delighted. " But what 
 are you doing in that house, Peter ? Who are the 
 people ?" 
 
 " It s an American family lately come, sir, from Sin 
 gapore. That s their Dutch brig down the river. The 
 Rajah s old house has been repaired for them, and His 
 Highness gave me orders to help them all I could. I 
 think you re coming, sir ; for I m fearing the lad s fall 
 was a bad one." 
 
 " His Highness h mph !" Saying this with supreme 
 scorn, Iledland turned and walked a pace or two then 
 back. "They are Yankees, eh? Where s your own 
 surgeon, Doctor Treacher ?" 
 
 "At Singapore, sir." 
 
 " H mph ! And you came for me without any one s 
 orders ?" 
 
 " It was a great liberty, I know, sir," apologized poor 
 Peter, dismayed at the question; "but they re real 
 gentlefolks, and strangers in this heathen place ; and 
 I d seen your boat coming in don t I know her as well 
 as if it was the old Royalist herself? and the 
 pan putting off for shore." 
 
82 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Well, my good fellow," said Doctor Hedland, after 
 a pause, " since you come on your own responsibility, I 
 think I 11 go with you. Get the boat ready again, there, 
 and I 11 bring out my haversack." 
 
 He stepped into the cabin, as the servant hastened to 
 obey, and, returning therefrom with a leather bag 
 swung under an arm by a strap over the shoulder, fol 
 lowed down into the sampan. 
 
 Very few minutes were spent in the row into the 
 town, and the brisk walk through a tangle of native 
 huts and up the gradual acclivity on which stood the 
 house of their destination. Substantial pillars of Ni- 
 bong palm held the structure aloft some five or more 
 feet, so that a flight of stairs must be mounted to the 
 veranda. Putting a foot on the first of the steps the 
 Doctor spoke again : 
 
 " You have not told me their name." 
 
 "Effingham, sir." 
 
 From the central doorway, above, a gentleman of dig 
 nified aspect advanced to meet them, and, after a flur 
 ried introduction by Peter, greeted the strange-looking 
 Englishman with grateful courtesy. 
 
 "I must apologize to you at once, sir," said Mr. 
 Effingham, leading the way into the house, "for this, I 
 fear, unwarrantable imposition upon your kindness. 
 My mischievous boy does not seem to be seriously hurt ; 
 but the ladies are naturally nervous at aii} r little acci 
 dent in a scene yet so strange to them, and our good 
 Peter was off before I could be consulted." 
 
 "No apology is required: men of my nominal pro* 
 fession are public property everywhere," returned the 
 unsmiling Hedland. "Let me see the lad, if you 
 please." 
 
 A hall, penetrating half of the depth of the building, 
 led past two doors on either side to a larger one at the 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 83 
 
 end, and beyond the latter the gruff guest was conducted, 
 without further propitiation, into a spacious family room. 
 Modern furniture from Singapore subdued somewhat its 
 native crudities of structure ; and, upon an extempor 
 ized couch of three chairs and several shawls ; with a 
 cushion under his head and three ladies and as many 
 Chinese servants hovering perturbedly over him ; lay 
 the child of ten American summers and fifty foreign 
 falls. During an inspecting tour of the more perilous 
 windings of the lower town, concerning which, for pri 
 vate reasons, he did not take preliminary counsel with 
 his parents and governess, Cherubino had seen fit to 
 dazzle a group of Dyak boys, at play on a bamboo ladder 
 leading up to their home on piles, by illustrating to them 
 the marvels and graces of an ascent and descent accom 
 plished in the curious obverse quadrupedal arrangement 
 of body known to the more flexible youth of his age and 
 country as "bending the crab." When lifted from the 
 ground by a quickly ensuing swarm of the older popu 
 lace of the quarter, he was at first believed to be dead. 
 His subsequent fragmentary remarks, while being borne 
 homeward, as to the possible wholesome local effect of 
 "punching" some hypothetical native laugher at his 
 mishap, reassured his bearers on this point, even if they 
 did not understand the dark menace to their class, and 
 their cries on approaching the house were designed to 
 convey the blessed hope of recovery to the little fellow s 
 exquisitely tortured kindred. 
 
 " This is the patient, Doctor. Doctor Hedland : my 
 Wife : my Daughter : Miss Ankeroo," announced and 
 summarized Mr. Effingham, confining himself thence 
 forth to the briefest requisite amenities with a person 
 who seemed to resent anything less terse. 
 
 " Your servant, ladies. Now, little man, what have 
 you been doing to yourself?" 
 
84 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "I fell down the ladder because some fellow jerked 
 it," moaned the bruised small boy ; in an agony lest it 
 should enter into the common mind that the contusions 
 had resulted from a deficiency in his own elastically 
 muscular resources. 
 
 " Oh, you bad young thing I don t believe you can 
 be killed!" exclaimed Miss Ankeroo, exasperated to 
 hear an egotistical form of explanation familiarized to 
 her by innumerable past experiences of needless appre 
 hension. 
 
 "Is it possible, Bino, that you ve been climbing 
 again ?" asked his mother, reproachfully. 
 
 " And we troubling this gentleman, Dr. Hedland, 
 about him !" added Miss Effingham, turning disdain 
 fully to join Miss Ankeroo near a window. 
 
 Mr. Effingham, with arms folded and an annoyed ex 
 pression of countenance, looked on from an adjacent 
 chair, while the sententious and unsociable stranger 
 made unceremonious experiments with the Cherub s 
 maddening limbs. 
 
 "No bones broken. I ll leave the ladies a strip of 
 plaster to put on that cut over the eye. Nothing more 
 is required." 
 
 The speaker, not the more affable, perhaps, from feel 
 ing a certain indignity to his professional pride in the 
 obvious needlessness of his call, had lifted the flap of 
 his haversack to extract the insignificant remedy men 
 tioned, when, with surprising indifference to pain, the 
 injured boy arose suddenly to a sitting posture and 
 gazed at him with sparkling eyes. 
 
 "Are you the doctor that Peter says has got the 
 monkey ?" 
 
 Passionate precipitation marked the scientist s seizure 
 of his Panama hat and betaking to the door before an 
 other word could be uttered. 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 85 
 
 "Mr. Effingham, and Ladies, I have the honor to 
 wish you a very good day. No, Peter, not a step ;" 
 and, breathing hard in his wrath, he emerged unat 
 tended from a house whose occupants had found his 
 whole manner an embarrassment. 
 
 " Yankees ! !" he snarled, with an actual stamp of the 
 foot, as he passed through the opening of the palisade 
 and crossed the foot-bridge of a ditch surrounding the 
 building. Such violence of manner, even in a man of 
 his constitutional petulance, seemed out of all rational 
 proportion with the provocation of a mere piece of 
 childish pertness. In his irritated abstraction he nearly 
 ran over a handsome Dyak youth, in civilized dress, who 
 bowed and presented a folded paper immediately in his 
 path. 
 
 " Ah confound it ! Situ ? What s this ?" 
 
 "For Tuan Hedland," explained the messenger, 
 raising a hand in half-European salute to the scarf 
 tied about his elfin locks, and offering the paper with 
 the other. 
 
 Sighing his impatience the Englishman took the prof 
 fered missive, and read therein as follows : "Do drop in 
 and see me for a moment, dear Larry, before you go 
 aboard again. I am here, at The Grove, sick, on my 
 return from an inspecting trip to Labuan with Brooke. 
 They tell me you are ashore, at the American s. Give 
 me a call, for old friendship s sake. You need see no 
 one else unless you choose. DAKYL." "With a 
 "h mph!" the reader concluded his perusal, and 
 stood, for a moment, eyeing the bearer abstractedly. 
 
 "Daryl!" he echoed, mechanically. 
 
 " Tuan Colonel," said the Dyak boy. 
 
 After slowly tearing the paper to pieces and casting 
 the latter from him, Doctor Hedland motioned for the 
 lad to lead the way, and the two took the direction 
 
86 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 of the knoll on which stood the Kajah s official resi 
 dence. 
 
 It is not necessary to give here the details of their 
 progress, part of which was by boat, nor to say more at 
 present of the appearance of the building whither they 
 went than has already been shown in the view from the 
 river. Suffice it to relate, that, when the house had 
 been reached, the Doctor was ushered into a private 
 apartment, opening from a large central room alter 
 nately used as court and dining hall, and there found, 
 upon an easy-chair near a window, the man who had 
 sent for him. The latter needed not any military trap 
 pings to show that he was a soldier. The poise of his 
 well-formed head, the uprightness of his broad should 
 ers, and a kind of formality of general movement, 
 plainly indicated his profession. He had enough gray 
 in his closely-cut brown hair, and lines in his sternly- 
 set face, to indicate fifty years, though his real age was 
 known to be less. This was Colonel Daryl. 
 
 "My old friend !" he said, with positive emotion, ris 
 ing to greet the new-comer with both hands. "It is 
 kind in you to do this. Probably you expected to find 
 me in bed : but I really am a little ailing. To be 
 strictly honest, however, my dear Larry, that bit of 
 pathos about sickness was an egregious ruse to make 
 sure of your coming." 
 
 " Well, I m here, you see, Will," returned Hedland, 
 phenomenally mild, as he took a chair. " This is not the 
 first time, by any means, that I ve come at your call." 
 
 " I don t forget that, Larry !" 
 
 " Not that I d remind you of it ; but it ought to be 
 something out of the common to bring me under your 
 Tuan Besar s roof again." 
 
 "You never will be just to poor Brooke, I am 
 afraid," said Colonel Daryl, with a grave smile. "You 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 87 
 
 part from a man by your own volition, after coming 
 half across the world with him and me, too, you 
 know and then turn crusty on him forever after. 
 I m sure, Lawrence, he d welcome you here as heart 
 ily as he ever welcomed you and me to the original 
 Coombe Grove in old Bath ; and here am I old 
 friend to you both obliged positively to fib to make 
 you come and see me here." 
 
 "We parted at Singapore by common assent, Daryl," 
 was the answer, with something of the old, testy man 
 ner again. " We are simply incompatible natures ; 
 that s all, I suppose. He keeps his way, and I keep 
 mine. You and he are friends ; but I have friends in 
 this part of the world to whom he is not favorable, and 
 I do not choose to cast them off on that account." 
 
 "Nor would he for one moment wish you to," re 
 joined the other, very earnestly. "I tell you, as I ve 
 told you before, Hedland, it is all a, gratuitous assump 
 tion of yours that James Brooke is inimical to you on 
 account of your relations with Makota, and that set. 
 The quarrel, if it can be called one, is wholly on your 
 side." 
 
 " So be it then ; have it your own way, Tuan Col 
 onel," was the response, given with wonderful humility. 
 
 Daryl saw that this conversation, not novel, in its 
 material points, between them, had reached what he 
 knew, from experience, to be the limit of all useful im 
 mediate prosecution. 
 
 "Well, well," he said, "you shall be converted yet. 
 "So you ve been to see the Americans. They came 
 here while I was at Labuan, and I ve not even had a 
 glimpse of them. What are they like ?" 
 
 "Yankees." 
 
 "That sounds so like yourself I What an unlimited 
 old cynic you are, Lawrence 1" 
 
88 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Shrugging his powerful shoulders, the Doctor gave 
 the Colonel a peculiar look : 
 
 "If you are an admirer of Americans, I don t know 
 that I should object to them, my boy. It was much 
 more for your sake than my own, you 11 remember, 
 that I took my first dislike to them." 
 
 Daryl s face clouded, and he turned it toward the 
 window. 
 
 "I ll do these particular people, over here, the jus 
 tice to say, that they appear to be well bred, and are 
 good looking," resumed Hedland, with a somewhat 
 compunctious flutter of manner. " My only grievance 
 from them is, that they allowed that blundering Peter 
 to come and drag me from my boat to see a youngster 
 who d been breaking his head in some rough prank. I 
 never saw such a detestable little beggar. Damme if 
 he didn t want to know, first thing, if I wasn t the doc 
 tor that had a monkey !" 
 
 A thoroughly hearty laugh is a good, wholesome 
 thing in either the mouth or the ear. Of all expressions 
 of human feeling and judgment it is the least selfish 
 and most just, because in its immediateness of full 
 development there can be no discriminating calculation, 
 and in its character of involuntary tribute it can make 
 no conventional distinction of person. In simplest 
 youth and the most erudite age it is the same an unre 
 served, honest outgiving of all that honest Nature has 
 to render when the clearest inherent springs of the 
 mind are appealed to for the most generously quick 
 solution of unpurchasable thought. ! can never be 
 disingenuous, or prejudiced, or unkind, for, by every 
 principle of its genesis, it is, for the time being, the last 
 surrender of intellectual dignity under an instinct that, 
 like the fearless trustfulness of innocence, knows no 
 dread of attack, because conscious of no element of 
 
THE THREADS UNITE. 89 
 
 harm in itself. Alas for him who never had or has lost, 
 the faculty of this laugh ! Even more to be distrusted 
 is the woman without it. To laugh such a laugh is to 
 be at once a thoughtless child in the delightful simpli 
 city of every responsive sensibility of human nature, 
 and an adult of mind in the keenest instantaneous per 
 ception of which cultivated thought and imagination 
 are capable. To hear it, is to be without power of re 
 fusing it some echo, in momentary feeling at least, how 
 ever jaded to the humors of existence the auditor may 
 be, or dulled by its tears ; and when the genuinely 
 hearty laugh breaks from lips which have been drawn 
 habitually stern by pain or sorrow, it bespeaks some 
 thing of a remaining childlike faith in God, and in man, 
 and in the goodness of all things, that will yet either 
 soften those lips in life under man s ultimate justification 
 of it, or make them sweet in death with the smile of 
 putting off earth for Heaven. 
 
 At Doctor Hedland s unexpected outburst against 
 the inquisitive Cherubino, Colonel Daryl s previously 
 darkened face lightened up all at once in every curve, 
 and he fell back in his chair, roaring with laughter. 
 Even the victim could withstand the contagion for one 
 hesitating moment only, and then, from an unwilling 
 grin,- relaxed into a train of hoarsely chuckling sounds 
 not to be repressed. 
 
 "Oshonsee here Oshonsee there!" cried the first 
 friendly laugher finally, with such a look of boyish mer 
 riment as he had not worn before in twenty years. 
 " Everybody knc(Js about him, you see ! By the way, 
 Larry, why don t you bring Oshonsee some time to see 
 theKajah s Betsy? " 
 
 Suddenly the scientist was all himself again. 
 
 " Betsy is only a common specimen haven t I told 
 you, "Will ? This creature of mine is something more ; 
 
90 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 as different from the ordinary Mias of the Indies as a 
 thoroughbred horse is from a zebra. Do you think I m 
 a fool, Daryl ? Do you suppose that a man like myself 
 would waste the time and study I am giving this ani 
 mal on a mere menagerie brute ? As I told you at 
 Singapore, before I went to Bruni, this Oshonsee is at 
 least two degrees farther up in the scale of intellectual 
 being than any specimen of the simia ever before 
 known to naturalists. Let fools and children laugh, 
 but you, Daryl, ought to be above such imbecility. 
 Brooke, I suppose, thinks, too, that I m going mad 
 over monkeys." 
 
 "No; there you are imagining an injustice again, 
 Hedland. He speaks of your hobby with respect." 
 
 " My hobby ! " repeated the other, springing to his 
 feet in an astonishing excitement. "Well may it be 
 for him if his hobby has one thousandth part the good 
 for mankind in it ! I must go now, Will Daryl, to get 
 home some time before midnight, and all I ve got to say 
 to you is, make me a visit before returning to Singapore, 
 and see for yourself. Come and see for yourself." 
 
 "And so, for the sake of this Oshonsee," said the 
 Colonel, also rising, " advanced a simian as he may be, 
 you can cherish animosity against a man like the Rajah 
 of Sarawak, and harbor with his enemies !" 
 
 The scientist turned upon him with characteristic 
 irascibility. 
 
 "Ah, that means Makota, I suppose. Well, to him 
 I am eternally indebted for this wonderful creature, 
 by which, if I live, I shall make my name immortal. 
 Am I to throw off this Malay benefactor of mine, one 
 of the original and true rulers of the country, because 
 Mr. Brooke finds him inimical to his own brand new 
 antimony Eajahship ?" 
 
 "We must drop that discussion once more, I see," 
 
"AND SHE IS DEAD." 91 
 
 the Colonel said, rather sadly. " At any rate, you and 
 I should remain always friends, Lawrence." 
 
 " Oh, that, of course. I ve had too much trouble 
 about you, my dear boy, to put you in any common 
 category. You 11 come to see me ?" 
 
 " I certainly shall." 
 
 They shook hands fervently, and then Doctor Hed- 
 land was plodding his way to the shore-boat and the 
 prahu of Pa Jenna. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 "AND SHE is DEAD." 
 
 THEY were in Kuchin at last the Effinghams. Be 
 tween that place and Bruni the preference wavered for 
 some time, the head of the family thinking the latter 
 city might probably be the more advantageous for his 
 immediate design of looking for coal-beds. At the 
 mouth of the Kiangi, one of the rivers entering the 
 Borneo at that point, Mr. Dickenson, an American mis 
 sionary, had, some years before, found strong indications 
 of the genial mineral ; and, after all his inquiries, Mr. 
 Effingham was nearly convinced that the coal question 
 gave better promise than any other to which he could 
 turn his earliest attention. Mr. Dodge did not gainsay 
 this, though surrendering none of his own lively faith in 
 nutmegs ; but both he and Belmore stoutly protested 
 against Bruni as a residence for the ladies. 
 
 Then, for a few hours, the scheme of leaving the fair 
 ones and the Cherub in comfortable Singapore found 
 prosaic masculine favor : whereat the romantic Abretta 
 eloquently declared that hardships and barbarism would 
 be the delights of her life if they assured her a sight of 
 
92 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Borneo and its English hero ; and Miss Ankeroo em 
 phatically announced that she should go there herself, 
 as a missionary to those cunning little Dyaks, whether 
 the family accompanied her or not. Finally, Mrs. 
 Effingham, in her undemonstrative way, allowed it to 
 appear that she was philosophically indifferent to any 
 calculable discomfort of temporary sojourn in a place 
 her daughter and cousin were so anxious to know. This 
 turned the scale : Dodge and Belmore exalted Sarawak, 
 the former dexterously hinting at coal indications on the 
 neighboring Simunjon Kiver ; and Kuchin was the des 
 tination at last accepted by all. 
 
 Letters of cordial courtesy on the subject passed be 
 tween Mr. Effingham and the Rajah of Sarawak before 
 the latter went to Labuari. The American gentleman 
 had a certain informal diplomatic standing, from being 
 the bearer of dispatches from his own government to 
 any of its official representatives whom he might en 
 counter in his travels. If this was but an abstract form, 
 politically speaking, it accredited the high respectability 
 of the bearer, at least ; and Mr. Brooke not only ex 
 tended a warm welcome to Mr. Effingham, but hand 
 somely placed at his disposal the house of his own first 
 occupation in Kuchin. Chinese carpenters were, accor 
 dingly, sent from Singapore to repair the somewhat dis 
 mantled building, and the family took with them, on 
 their brig Weltevreden, such varied furniture as could 
 be obtained, for its further domestic redemption. 
 
 Although Dr. Hedland has been lately seen approach 
 ing this novel American home through a portion of the 
 town, it was because the landing-place of his sampan 
 was at some distance below its site. It really stood 
 upon the bank of the river, in villa fashion, facing the 
 stream to the north, and from its eastern end command 
 ing a part of the picturesque bend of the water where 
 
"AND SHE 18 DEAD." 93 
 
 the town first comes into view. Westward, over undu 
 lations and tree-tops, loomed the distant azure peaks of 
 the mountains of Matang ; and to the south, or behind 
 all, stretched a clearing of four or five hundred feet, be 
 yond which and its palisade boundary was the jungle. 
 A stout palisade and an artificial moat surrounded the 
 estate, more to keep sheep, bullocks, poultry and other 
 animated stock from straying, than for military defense, 
 and within its inclosure were also the detached ser 
 vants -quarters, kitchen, bathing apartment, and other 
 minor structures. The mansion has already been shown 
 as supported by palm pillars, in the fashion of the 
 country. Its one story, more than fifty feet square, bore 
 a roof of huge Nypa leaves, and had nine windows on 
 either side. Entering from the veranda the visitor 
 found a large central room, with smaller ones and bed 
 chambers ranging around it ; boarded floors and parti 
 tions, instead of the usual bamboo strips and leaves, or 
 mats ; and ceilings of wood painted white. 
 
 The man who should take to such an abode, in such 
 a place, wife and daughter of the shrill and helpless 
 order, would soon bewail the fatuous day when he had 
 been tempted to bring them from the supporting new 
 toilets, novels and servants of their normal domestic in 
 capability. If, from the necessarily exceptional illustra 
 tion heretofore given of them, the ladies Effingham have 
 seemed to be of this flimsy class, the impression does 
 them unchivalrous injustice. For the mother, though 
 exempted by her rank in life from any particular execu 
 tive training, had none of the constitutional indolence 
 of mind, or body, making the inefficient woman a mock 
 ery to her youngest servitor. Her aspect of pensive ab 
 straction did not mean the intellectual blank to betray 
 womanhood as something weaker than childhood when 
 confronted by the mildest test of her sex s true distinc- 
 
94 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 tive sovereignty of common life ; and her daughter was 
 what the magnetism of such maternal qualities, added 
 to the natural heredity from potentiality of domestic 
 character in both parents, must necessarily make of a 
 younger woman. 
 
 So it was that the inexperienced and sad-faced Mrs. 
 Effingham presently evoked systematic order and rest- 
 fulness from the opening chaos and strangeness of the 
 new home. Under her noiseless direction and control, 
 developing all at once, as it seemed, from some hitherto 
 dormant instinct, things fell easily into their proper 
 places ; the alien servants brought, at great cost, from 
 Singapore, learned, they scarcely knew how, the routine 
 of their duties, and within a fortnight this household in a 
 comparative wilderness was working as smoothly in 
 its every essential function as though indigenous to the 
 soil. 
 
 "Without proportionate efficient harmony of spirit, at 
 least in the daughter, this result would not have been 
 possible so soon ; but in Miss Ankeroo was found a 
 lieutenant who could have told the Chinese servile 
 brigade all that it did not realize of the method by 
 which it was so quickly drilled into practical service 
 ability. The supernaturally lustrous glasses of this 
 accomplished female dumpling s spectacles gleamed 
 everywhere over the lagging Chinaman, like the com 
 pulsory planets of his nativity, and the language ac 
 quired from Marsden s Dictionary sounded in his ears 
 with such a novelty of imperiousness as to make him, 
 perforce, excel the customary alacrity of his race. 
 
 Then, too, when the same indefatigable manager and 
 linguist turned the former outer cook-house of the 
 domain into her long-anticipated mission-school for the 
 benighted juvenile Dyaks, Malayans and Chinese of 
 Kuchin, not even the manifold aggravations and evil 
 
"AND SHE IS DEAD," 95 
 
 examples of the irredeemable Cherub could deter her 
 from such educational progress with them, that, on the 
 very first day, two aboriginal mites fought desperately 
 over the question of whether the letter "A" was a 
 house-roof, or a frame for a bamboo swing. 
 
 Mr. Effingham. loyally served by the veteran Peter, 
 exercised the requisite masculine supervision over all, 
 and silently wondered at the facility with which his 
 family adapted themselves to so many changed con 
 ditions of existence. More than once in the first two 
 or three days the impulse was strong upon him for a 
 comprehensive shipment back to Singapore. Aside 
 from the lack of nearly every familiar luxury of civilized 
 life, what were the ladies to do with themselves, in 
 such a place, when he might be absent ? There were no 
 streets, nor roads ; consequently, no horses ; any trans 
 portation from the house suitable for their sex must 
 be by boat ; and any manner of journey beyond the 
 town toward the inland Dyak country would encoun 
 ter embarrassing unconventionality of native habits. 
 He was really dismayed within himself by contempla 
 tion of the unnatural seclusion to which the household 
 must, seemingly, be subjected during a residence of 
 months, and watched wife and daughter closely for any 
 sign of misgiving to justify him in a removal back to 
 the Straits. 
 
 But they showed no such sign. So far as he could 
 see, they felt no fears on their own account ; indeed, 
 found agreeable occupation and no little refreshing 
 enjoyment in mastering the endless novelties of the 
 situation ; while Miss Ankeroo and the small-boy simply 
 reveled in the missionary and acrobatic opportunities. 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Effingham was greatly anxious for 
 the earliest possible support of what social relations 
 Kuchin might be able to afford, and had particular 
 
96 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 gratification in bidding his wife prepare for their first 
 neighborly visit. 
 
 "My dear," he said, "the Rajah, who is so hos 
 pitably kind as to wish to be simply Mr. Brooke to us, 
 is likely to make an unceremonious call here this eve 
 ning ; bringing, perhaps, a friend to whom he introduced 
 me this morning at his house. As you know, from our 
 past talks, he has treated me with the most generous 
 politeness, since finding us arrived, upon his return 
 from Labuan ; and his assignment of this building for 
 our use, when he knew me only by name, was a very 
 handsome attention." 
 
 "It was, indeed," assented Mrs. Efiingham. "But, 
 Richard, what do you mean by unceremonious call ? 
 Is not some etiquette to be specially observed in re 
 ceiving one of his rank on any occasion ?" 
 
 " Only the customary form of welcoming any private 
 gentleman coming in as a neighbor. This he impressed 
 upon me in the frankest manner. He is Rajah only to 
 those with whom he is obliged to meet officially. I 
 never saw a more unaffected English gentleman. With 
 his fellow countrymen of his staff, and especially with 
 the two or three naval officers over at The Grove, 
 just now, he is as simply unpretentious as the quietest 
 of them." 
 
 Miss Eftmgham, who had been listening with interest, 
 here put in a question : 
 
 "Is it one of the officers, Papa, he is to bring with 
 him?" 
 
 "No; I was coming to that. Oddly enough, my 
 dear, the friend is no other than the uncle of young 
 Belmore : the same, Abretta, that he told you of as 
 hunting with him after the family fortune in Chancery, 
 in the strange story you repeated to me. And, yet 
 more oddly, my dear," turning again to his wife, "he 
 
"AND SHE IS DEAD." 97 
 
 is a Colonel William Daryl ; the very name without 
 Colonel of the poor fellow drowned in New York so 
 many years ago." 
 
 " Why ! who was that, mamma ?" exclaimed Abretta 
 quickly. 
 
 "No one known to you, my child," returned that 
 lady, with a sharpness of manner surprising even her 
 husband. " At what hour may these gentlemen be ex 
 pected, Kichard ?" 
 
 " Soon after sunset, I suppose. That is the dinner- 
 hour at The Grove," said Mr. Effingham, 
 
 An early-rising full moon was above the surrounding 
 hills, and a delightfully cool evening breeze daintily 
 feathering the glassy river, when the white gig Lily, of 
 the historic vessel Royalist, was rowed to the former of 
 ficial wharf opposite to the bank on which stood the 
 mansion. Escorted by only four oarsmen, in the modified 
 Malay dress of his little body-guard, the Bajah of Sara 
 wak came thus unostentatiously, with his friend, on his 
 appointed social call. Strict deference had been paid 
 to his expressed wish for no ceremonial reception im 
 plying his official character. At the landing, his own 
 man, Peter, and two private servants of the family, an 
 old Swiss and a negro, previously left on board the 
 Weltevreden, awaited him and his companion with lan 
 terns. On the veranda the host advanced to greet the 
 gentleman, as he had before to Doctor Hedland ; but, 
 except for the prostrations of the Chinese servants 
 about the doorway, which could not be restrained, the 
 welcome was as simple as to the familiar visitors of any 
 country-house in America or England. 
 
 The light of numerous candles in sconces, protected 
 from the attraction of insects by gauze nettings at the 
 open windows, gave the large room of the house, with 
 its modem furniture and graceful female figures, an 
 
98 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 illusion of Home dramatically in contrast with every 
 feature and sentiment of the scene without. Mrs. Ef- 
 fingham walking forward so tranquilly to meet her 
 husband and his guests, and Abretta and Cousin Sadie 
 arising as tranquilly from their chairs behind her ; all 
 three of the ladies in the evening dresses suitable to 
 their years and an informal social occasion ; were the 
 consummate human life of a picture that seemed as 
 though it must be a picture, only, in savage Borneo. 
 
 It is scarcely in keeping with either the requisites or 
 the proprieties of art to attempt any minute portrayal 
 of the illustrious man who, standing beside his friend, 
 looked with undisguised pleasure upon this gratefully 
 incongruous spectacle. Those whom History has made 
 distinctive potential presences to the world, can be 
 most faithfully accorded with their historical ideals, in 
 a work like this, by no more detail of mere physical 
 personality than is essential to some immediate indi- 
 vidualization of the intellectual effect intended to be 
 produced. History alone can safely venture to retouch 
 History in this, as in many another, province of descrip 
 tion. 
 
 James Brooke, now in his forty-second year, appeared 
 fully the man represented by the Story of his Deeds, if 
 scanned by the judgment capable of discerning in eyes 
 and brow and, perhaps, chin all that is necessary to 
 account for the mighty acts recorded of their posses 
 sor. A form erect, finely poised, and muscular without 
 robustiousness ; so made and kept, despite the constitu 
 tional impairment of the lung-wound received in India, 
 by habitual practice of every manly exercise ; was not, 
 needed to assure the observer of his alternately mobile 
 and decisive face, that he could fight, as well as argue, 
 for a principle. From the thinning light hair at his 
 sensitive temples to the vigorous turn of his neck ; from 
 
"AND SEE 18 DEAD." 99 
 
 his shoulders, set back like a guardsman s, to the tips 
 of his slender and nervous hands, he gave the impres 
 sion of a man of action abruptly grafted upon a man 
 of study ; the capacities to do instantly and to think 
 profoundly having equal suggestion in his average 
 aspect. 
 
 "Ladies," said he, with unconventional heartiness, 
 upon being presented to them, "I do assure you that 
 your coming to Kuchin is a positive benefaction to me. 
 As I have already said to Mr. Effingham, your courage 
 in becoming even but temporary inhabitants of a place 
 we have been able to civilize so imperfectly yet, gives 
 us a moral help for which any poor courtesy of welcome 
 that I can offer is like pence against pounds. That s 
 my little speech," he explained, with a smile, " and now 
 allow me to introduce to you, ladies, my friend, Colonel 
 Daryl." 
 
 The Colonel, who, during this prelude, had been 
 staring at Mrs. Effingham s profile with eyes dilating 
 more and more, started and fairly caught his breath at 
 the sound of his name ; the two other gentlemen notic 
 ing it with no little surprise, and also the obviously 
 great effort it cost him to compose his features again 
 and bow constrainedly at each introduction. Then, 
 fixing a strange look upon Mrs. Emngham again, who 
 met it haughtily, he said slowly : 
 
 "I think, that I have had the honor of meeting 
 you, Madame, before." 
 
 There was an embarrassed pause, until the lady, with 
 increased hauteur, answered, in a tone as though re 
 buking, without contesting, a presumptuous remark : 
 
 " It may be. I have no recollection of it, sir." 
 
 Under his friend s questioning glance, the older gen 
 tleman s aspect now of displeasure, and the wondering 
 regards of the younger ladies, Colonel Daryl turned 
 
100 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 first red and then white to the set lips, but with the 
 same intent look at the proud face encountering it. 
 
 " Madame," he said at last, with a low bow, " I can 
 only ask you to pardon me. I see that I have made an 
 unfortunate mistake ;" and stepped mechanically back 
 ward from the little circle. 
 
 "I must venture a slight explanation for the Colonel," 
 remarked Mr. Brooke, as the chairs were being placed. 
 "He once suffered a heavy sorrow in your country, Mrs. 
 Effingham. You and he will excuse me for referring to 
 it in these circumstimces, since I shall say no more than 
 that it was of a character to make extremely painful 
 even a mistaken identity recalling it to mind." 
 
 "Colonel Daryl is quite excusable, Mr. Brooke," ob 
 served Mr. Effingham, over whose offended manner a 
 softening change had come. Indeed he began to recog 
 nize, though somewhat vaguely yet, some possible close 
 relationship between his now silent guest and a William 
 Daryl he had heard of before. 
 
 "Colonel Daryl," said Mrs. Effingham, turning to 
 him with a graceful inclination of her head, " has been 
 already commended to our high respect by the many 
 obligations we owe to the very polite attentions, in Ba- 
 tavia and Singapore, of his nephew, Mr. Belmore." 
 
 The Colonel bowed. 
 
 "And now, Mr. Brooke," she added, with the least 
 perceptible hurry in her speech, " though you so gener 
 ously disclaim thanks, I must really tell you how grate 
 ful we, women, are, for the help of Peter. Our own two 
 servants from home were so helpless at first, from know 
 ing nothing of the language or ways of the country, 
 that Mr. Effingham decided to keep them on the brig 
 until our Chinese household was in some kind of order. 
 And without my cousin s study of Malayan, and your 
 servant s instruction of our strange people, I am fearful 
 
" AND SHE IS DEAD." 101 
 
 we should have remained in anarchy a much longer 
 time. It was Peter who brought Doctor Hedland to us. 
 
 " I have heard of that," responded the Kajah, under 
 standing and falling readily into her design of banishing 
 all awkward topics. "The Doctor, Madame, is an old 
 friend of the Colonel and myself. We were all three 
 together in the Royalist, coming out here. At Singa 
 pore he decided to leave us to our own fortunes and 
 betake himself to his old pursuits, as a naturalist, in 
 Borneo. He is an accomplished Oriental linguist, as 
 well. May I ask how you liked him ?" 
 
 The conversational ball being now fairly set rolling, 
 all took part, at intervals, as the subjects varied ; until, 
 after about an hour of such general sociability, the mer 
 chant and his principal guest unwittingly drifted into 
 some discussion of national polity, that allowed the 
 others to group themselves independently for the time 
 being. So it happened, that when some sound from the 
 river outside diverted feminine attention momentarily 
 in that direction, the Colonel said, composedly enough, 
 to Mrs. Effingham : 
 
 " Madame, may I be allowed to show you the peak of 
 the mountain near which Doctor Hedland s village 
 lies?" 
 
 Looking her assent, that lady silently placed a hand 
 on his proffered arm, and they went out calmly to the 
 veranda together. There, with the torches nickering 
 in the boat on the water below, the placid moon over 
 head, and the shadowy mountains around them Mrs. 
 Emngham dropped her hand ; and spoke first : 
 
 " Colonel Daryl, I am Caroline s sister." 
 
 He turned, to look at her more fully in the chastened 
 light : 
 
 " At first I took you for herself. " 
 
 " We were considered very much alike." 
 
102 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " TFere?" 
 
 1 Yes. Caroline is dead. 
 
 Taking a few steps away from her, he averted his 
 face toward a bend of the river, and remained motion 
 less and silent a moment, then, returning 
 
 " And she is dead !" 
 
 "Yes. We thought you, too, were dead." 
 
 " The unhappy do not die so easily," said Daryl, hit- 
 terly. " I was reported drowned, Mrs. Effingham ; but 
 boatmen picked me up, unconscious, from the river, 
 after the steamboat had passed on. When I came to 
 myself I bribed them to tell no one but my friend, Hed- 
 land, who had also thought me lost. Who else was 
 there in that country to care ?" 
 
 Mrs. Effingham sighed, and looked down. 
 
 " Since then my life has been as though I had truly 
 died," he went on ; his low, concentrated tone full of 
 suppressed passion ; " since your sister my wife ! 
 rejected me, like a dog, at her mother s bidding." 
 
 " She, too, is dead, Colonel Daryl." 
 
 "Then Heaven show her the mercy she refused to 
 me! "he ejaculated, as through his set teeth " That 
 she refused to Us, I ll say to Us ; wedded improvi- 
 dently perhaps ; young, uncalculating, unsordid ; yet 
 wedded truly before God, and in our own hearts ! But 
 you " bending his head suddenly to her "why is it 
 that your name sounds strangely to me ? You were 
 married then ?" 
 
 " I have been a widow. Mr. Effingham is my second 
 husband." 
 
 Again he looked away, and was lost in unspoken 
 thoughts until her hand once more touched his arm. 
 
 " Shall we return ?" 
 
 " I beg your pardon. At your service." 
 
 "A moment, Colonel Daryl and then. My sister 
 
"AND SHE 18 DEAD. 1 103 
 
 loved you ! Whatever you thought from what you saw 
 and heard last she loved you ! Our mother was abso 
 lute with us, beyond what you can imagine ; thinking 
 it right and brooking no opposition. You have spoken 
 tenderly of Caroline, Colonel Daryl think of her ever 
 as true ; think of her as true poor, suffering darling I 
 to the last." 
 
 Mrs. Emngham spoke, for the first time, in accents 
 of tremulous excitement, and, at the last word, moved 
 instantly back toward the room , Daryl mutely follow 
 ing. 
 
 Soon thereafter the two gentlemen departed, and the 
 family watched, from above, their embarkation for 
 home, and the gliding away of the boat with its pictur 
 esque rowers and torches. 
 
 Late into the night Daryl talked unreservedly with 
 his old friend of the last, dreary page turned for him in 
 a story that both had believed to be closed long ago ; 
 and, yet later, he looked moodily forth from his own 
 chamber into a night waning gray with the rising of 
 the western hills against its glory. Over waters so 
 smooth that ship and prahu dotted here and there upon 
 them were like embanked masts and fantastic islets 
 transfixed in clouded glass ; over barbarous roofs and 
 motionless jungle ; through the mighty leaves of un- 
 rustling palms ; and weighing sentiently, as it were, 
 upon the enfolding solemn mountains themselves 
 reigned a stillness so blank that it was as the in 
 tangible walls of a sleep, which make a dream of no 
 time, or country, or circumstance, to be limited by 
 localizing sign, or sound. He looked ; unseeing where 
 he was, and what he had become, and living over again 
 the hour of his youth, far away, when he had thought 
 that the fairest hope of his life was killed by a recreant 
 tongue. 
 
104 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "And she is dead!" 
 
 That hope, then, had really been out of its grave all 
 these years, though in an unrevealing, unreasoning, 
 dumb existence ; waiting, waiting for what ? For 
 any miracle that may happen in years in years 
 crushing upon years so long as Death, only, is not 
 yet. And now, at last, when hope was, indeed, at 
 its last agony ! 
 
 He clenched his nails into his hands in the supreme, 
 voiceless struggle of Love, Despair, Hate and Love 
 again. Which should master the ghost of that dead 
 hope for its servant, to make of it a genius of good, or 
 of evil, for the time to come ? 
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES. 
 
 WHEN Mr. Effingham married into the Dornton 
 family, and thus became duly entitled to a share in its 
 closer confidences, his imperious mother-in-law, to the 
 strength of whose maternal government his success in 
 wooing was even more attributable than he had ever sus 
 pected, explained to him why her younger daughter, 
 Caroline, was a yet sadder recluse than the grave 
 young widow whom he had gained as a wife. Such de 
 tached facts of the case as had already come to his 
 knowledge in general society pointed to nothing more 
 unusual than a summarily checked little flirtation be 
 tween an inexperienced girl and an unsuitable foreigner. 
 
 Mrs. Dornton named and described the alien enemy 
 to him as an English army officer of insignificant rank 
 and no means, who, after a designing courtship of only 
 
LETTING B TO ONES BE B YG ONES. 105 
 
 two or three weeks, surreptitiously prosecuted while 
 the mere child was visiting family relations in New 
 York, persuaded Caroline into a clandestine marriage. 
 Fortunately, his egregious young dupe was recovered 
 by her parents before this fortune-hunting Lieutenant 
 William Daryl could actually claim her as his property, 
 and not long thereafter the whole humiliating problem 
 had been retributively solved by the drowning of the 
 Lieutenant as newspapers reported from a steamboat 
 in New York Bay. 
 
 To this grim recounting the lady added no comment 
 upon her daughter s prolonged melancholy, Mrs. Effing- 
 ham volunteered no information, and even after Caro 
 line s death no farther admittance to the piteous 
 romance was vouchsafed to Mr. Effingham. When, 
 after nearly twenty years interval, he saw the stern 
 and grizzled Colonel at the English Rajah s house, the 
 name found so vague an association in his mind at first 
 that only when his lately eccentric guest met Mrs. Ef 
 fingham so discomposedly did the truth of the identity 
 flash upon him. Then a moment s indignation gave 
 way to generous commiseration, for he could perceive 
 the suffering behind the man s confused surprise of 
 manner. 
 
 u And so he is really the same William Daryl, and 
 took you for Caroline ?" he said, after listening to his 
 wife s prompt repetition to him of the short conversa 
 tion on the veranda. "You were wonderfully self- 
 possessed, Julia. Until the truth of the matter occurred 
 to me, I was growing seriously offended at his equivo 
 cal bearing. I think your mother must have been 
 mistaken in her judgment of the man. Did you recog 
 nize him first by his name, or how ?" 
 
 "By the name," replied Mrs. Effingham gravely. 
 " When his nephew mentioned it in the story he told 
 
106 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 us, I was struck by the coincidence. I can t say, 
 though, that I realized the actual identity how could 
 I, when we thought him surely drowned ? until he 
 said, in such a tone, that we had met before." 
 
 " And you had never seen him ?" 
 
 u No. I was married and away before he came to 
 Dornton Manor." 
 
 "Well, the poor fellow has certainly been an ideal 
 lover," was the husband s comment, with a sympa 
 thetic sigh. " Poor Caroline !" 
 
 "Ah, my poor sister !" echoed the wife. And, after 
 a pause, she added, looking up from her dressing-table : 
 "My heart ached for him, Richard, when I saw, in his 
 mistaking me for her our voices were much alike, you 
 remember that he had not gotten over his love of so 
 long ago. I was glad when he gave me the opportunity 
 to speak to him about Caroline. Did Mr. Brooke notice 
 our absence ?" 
 
 "Not that I could observe. But from what he said 
 before that, my dear, it is plain enough that he is fa 
 miliar with the story. Upon my word, it is a very 
 curious chance that brings us upon such a resurrection 
 of the old family skeleton in this out-of-the-way corner 
 of the world ! Really," said Mr. Effingham, clasping 
 his hands over his head with an air of perplexity, as he 
 sat in his easy-chair, " this finding young Belmore and 
 the Colonel, and even the Rajah, all linked to us, in a 
 way, by such a delicate subject, may make our social 
 situation here by no means easy to manage without 
 some tact. And it seems that this ill-mannered Doctor 
 Hedland, too, is in the secret." 
 
 "Mr. Belmore is not," observed Mrs. Effingham 
 thoughtfully. . 
 
 "But soon will be, you may depend," rejoined her 
 husband. " He is to be here presently from Singapore, 
 
LETTING B TO ONES BE B YG ONES 107 
 
 you know, as the squadron goes up to Bruni ; and, after 
 what has happened to-night, his uncle is likely to tell 
 him who his new American friends are. It will be 
 necessary, to prevent awkwardness, if his acquaintance 
 is to continue. And there is Abretta, too." 
 
 " I asked Sadie, before they went to their rooms just 
 now, to tell Abretta the story as discreetly as she could. 
 Sadie knows it all, from my mother and from myself, 
 though she never knew Caroline. Of course it is neces 
 sary now for Abretta to be informed, after what she had 
 seen and heard already to-night." The speaker gazed 
 abstractedly for a moment or two at the wedding-ring 
 she wore, and then, looking up again with a faint smile : 
 "It is too bad, Eichard, that you and our daughter 
 could not have been spared this old Dornton trouble." 
 
 To which her husband replied, with affectionate em 
 phasis : 
 
 "Neither Abretta nor I would thank any one for ex 
 empting us from anything in the remotest degree 
 affecting you, my dear." 
 
 The influence of this retrospective episode was seen 
 in no immediate effect upon the family life beyond some 
 natural conversational recurrence to it at the next 
 morning s breakfast-table. Abretta s general tenor of 
 reference thereto, on that occasion, proved that Miss 
 Ankeroo had judiciously limited her explanation of Col 
 onel Daryl s past association with the Dorntons to the 
 simple revelation that he had been, in his youth, an 
 avowed admirer of that fair Aunt Caroline whose very 
 existence was scarcely more than a dim tradition to her 
 niece s mind. Taken in connection with the kinship of 
 this gentleman to their friend, the naval Lieutenant, 
 and his concern in the romantic search after poor, mad 
 old Kuadh and the long-missing Will, any such revela 
 tion was calculated to quicken a girlish imagination ; 
 
108 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 yet, after a due interval of wonder, Miss Effingham ex 
 hibited a more abiding interest in the Kajah of Sarawak. 
 
 "Did you notice, Papa, that Mr. Brooke held his 
 handkerchief in hand the whole time he was here ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "I observed the same peculiarity in him at his own 
 house," said her father, "and could not help mention 
 ing it privately to his English agent, Mr. Wise, whom 
 I met there. He was good enough to tell me that the 
 Kajah has contracted the habit from originally adopting 
 the form, out of policy, as a traditional usage of all 
 high officials in Mahometan countries. To Eastern 
 minds it is an inseparable sign of sovereignty." 
 
 That is interesting, observed Miss Ankeroo. In 
 deed, he is the most interesting English character I 
 have yet seen. Cousin Julia," she went on, turning 
 her plump countenance and tutorial spectacles to Mrs. 
 Effingham, "you and Abretta haven t shown much 
 faith in my missionary idea ; but what do you suppose 
 this hero of yours said to me about it, while you arid 
 that glum old Colonel were having your private chat ? 
 He declared that he had long wished for American 
 missionaries here, because they always deal more sensi 
 bly than either English, or Germans, with the people of 
 a country like this. They don t begin by abusing Mo 
 hammed," he said, " but show some respect for honesty 
 even in a mistaken faith. And he was really delighted 
 to hear that I know something of medicine. That 
 branch of knowledge," he says, "is simply invaluable 
 as an aid to the spiritual influence of missionaries in 
 Eastern lands." 
 
 " Though, as I told him, you hadn t the presence of 
 mind to think of it when Cherubino got that fall, and 
 you allowed Peter to go after Doctor Hedland," re 
 marked Mr. Effingham, in smiling skepticism. 
 
LETTING B TG ONES BE B TG ONES. 109 
 
 "Yes, and it was too bad in you, Cousin Bichard. 
 But where is Bino now ?" she interjected, abruptly, 
 with a hurried look around the table, and from thence 
 to a window through which suggestive sounds were 
 coming. " He was here a minute ago. Why, I do be 
 lieve I" (going precipitately to the window in question) 
 " Yes I there he s got two of the chickens fighting on 
 that gravel bed which Peter smoothed out for me so 
 nicely in front of my school-house !" 
 
 In the grieved parental and sisterly silence following 
 the irritated lady s immediate headlong flight in the 
 direction indicated, all ears, including those of Berner, 
 the attendant Swiss major-domo, heard a piping little 
 voice presently exclaiming : 
 
 "Oh, didn t the red-and-black one whip him like 
 sixty, though !" 
 
 Two or three days passed on without further notable 
 incident in the principally exotic household. With 
 Berner, the staid and elderly, established as butler 
 (now that Peter had gone back to "The Grove"), and 
 interpreted to his Oriental subordinates by Cousin 
 Sadie ; Ambrose, the equally veteran negro familiar, 
 as amateur gardener, boat-keeper and messenger; 
 and the whole domestic system working with com 
 parative smoothness ; Mr. Emngham was at liberty 
 to mature his preparations for a trip to the Simun- 
 jon coal region, in company with the Kajah s chief 
 Aide and interpreter, Mr. Williamson, and the ladies 
 had leisure for needlework, sketching and missionary 
 developments. It remained a piquant novelty, for all, 
 to be thus indigenously housed together immediately 
 over the Equator ; the customary blending quaintly 
 with the strangest of adjacencies in-doors, and the 
 half-fearful charm of being upon the veriest edge of 
 a great Unknown Land pervading everything outside. 
 
110 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 The grassy interval between the broad front of the 
 palm-roofed mansion and the palisade, had by this time 
 been turned into something like a miniature botanical 
 garden ; retaining Nypas, ferns and several wild dur- 
 ions to shade the flowers during the hottest hours, 
 though the temperature of summer-noon was never 
 so high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and the nights 
 were refreshingly cool. Behind the house, what avail 
 able space was not required for live-stock, had assumed 
 the regularity of a Chinese vegetable preserve. The 
 ladies, with sampler, or pencil, or book, found a placid 
 luxury of sight and mind in sitting long hours within 
 view of half-civilized river, or massively retreating 
 mountain, or pathless forest primeval ; and the hus 
 band and father was not without enjoyable mental 
 zest for the philosophical revery coming so easily 
 with a cigar in such suggestive scenes. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, however, when the third 
 afternoon after the evening call brought company by 
 boat again, no one regretted the variety. At mid-day 
 an English brig had come up the river from the sea, 
 saluting the Rajah s flag, and it was only five hours 
 later when no less than three gentlemen were filing 
 within the palisade. The foremost of these, and con 
 spicuously the most elastic in general movement, was 
 no sooner inside of the inclosure than he at once 
 started upon a run for the durion tree, up which, by al 
 ternate elevation of hands and knees, he went climbing 
 with extreme velocity. From a height of perhaps six 
 feet he came down as swiftly, and then looked for splin 
 ters in his palms with glowing vivacity. 
 
 " I tell you, gents, it feels first-rate to take a square 
 breather on dry land after so many days sailing !" he 
 puffed, removing his pith helmet for a fan. 
 
 " It is to be hoped we have no observers, Mr. Dodge," 
 
LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES. Ill 
 
 remarked his older companion, without much relish; 
 and the younger one laughed. 
 
 They were the host of " The Straits " and Lieutenant 
 Belmore, arriving from Singapore ; with Colonel Daryl 
 to bear them company ; and the party were presently 
 proffered welcome by their friends in the house. 
 
 First greetings being over, and hot tea served all 
 around, according to the custom of the country, the 
 Colonel, whose whole genial manner was strongly in 
 contrast with that of a previous occasion, entered into 
 a deprecating apology for the informality of his own 
 coming. 
 
 "My nephew," said he, "would have me come with 
 him, if only to help excuse his headlong haste to see 
 you in your Borneon quarters. Mr. Dodge was also 
 good enough to abet him. I do not see, however," 
 with a smile, "why an old soldier should stand on punc 
 tilio in a case like this. My friend, Mr. Brooke, has vir 
 tually waived the stricter conventionalities for all of us. " 
 
 "And you will be good enough to think no more of 
 them, my dear Colonel, " said Mr. Effingham. 
 
 "Thank you: I shall forget them with great plea 
 sure." Then, motioning slightly toward" his nephew, 
 who was chatting over his teacup with Abretta and 
 Miss Ankeroo : " Although Edwin has been here only a 
 few hours, I have already found time to tell him, Mrs. 
 Effingham, that I have certain recollections of your 
 family in America. My descent from an American 
 grandmother, who was known to your mother, is also a 
 kind of friendly tie to which neither of us can be indif 
 ferent." 
 
 All this was said in a tone of the most unreserved 
 cordiality, yet both Mr. and Mrs. Effingham could find 
 only conventional terms for their immediate responses. 
 The former murmured something about "reciprocal 
 
112 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 sentiments," and the latter, with an anxious look in her 
 soft dark eyes, merely bowed. 
 
 " I have always remarked," ventured Mr. Dodge, to 
 whom the whole matter was, of course, a sealed book, 
 " that a friendly tie of any sort between elders is 
 very apt to be tied by the youngsters in the form of a 
 beau." And he wagged his head in the direction of 
 the absorbed young Lieutenant. It was a timely di 
 version, at least, even if somewhat coldly received, and 
 afforded Mr. Emngham a pretext for presently drawing 
 the presumptuous athlete into abstract discourse, and 
 then moving away with him on excuse of business exi 
 gencies. 
 
 Fully understanding her husband s intention to in 
 trust to her the particular entertainment of a guest 
 whose moods and sensibilities she would probably have 
 the truest intuitive instinct to meet considerately, Mrs. 
 Effingham promptly availed herself of their temporary 
 isolation to forego all farther aspect of indecision. Bel- 
 more, Abretta and Cousin Sadie were apart from them 
 the width of the room, and the two men of business 
 paced the veranda. 
 
 "I cannot tell you, Colonel Daryl," she began, in a 
 subdued but firm voice, "how much it gratifies my 
 feelings to find you adopting this tone with us, for I give 
 you credit " looking more intently at him "for sin 
 cerity." 
 
 "That you may safely do, madame," he replied, in 
 clining his head at the compliment. " My chief purpose 
 in coming here this afternoon is to beg that you will 
 pardon my abruptness of manner at our first interview. 
 Not that I doubted for a moment the forgiving impulse 
 you must have felt as a woman," he added quickly, 
 " but if you could excuse a man for momentarily show 
 ing his harsher nature under a harrowing reminder for 
 
LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES. 113 
 
 which he had not been in the least prepared, I cannot 
 so gracefully excuse myself for not realizing that to you 
 personally I owed nothing but gratitude." 
 
 " If we are to be friends at all, you must not talk in 
 that vein," said Mrs. Effingham, flushing. "We are 
 both too old for false sentiment ; and you would not 
 have occasion for this conversation, sir, if I had not 
 felt, when I knew whom you were, that, from my 
 family, a heavy debt of reparation was due must 
 ever be due to you." 
 
 " Such frankness of confession leaves me no longer a 
 creditor," he began, formally and coldly. But again 
 he melted, as he continued : " I am really in no mood, 
 myself, Mrs. Effingham, for high-flown talk. Will you 
 not tell me more about Caroline ? Your voice so re 
 minds me of hers that I forget my gray hairs in hearing 
 it ! Why was it possible for her to be persuaded to re 
 ject me as she did ? I mean so bitterly. Her own 
 words were, that she regretted our union bitterly !" 
 
 " A mother s authority over both of us was what we 
 dared not to oppose," was the sorrowfully-spoken 
 answer. 
 
 "Perhaps I expected too much of one so young," 
 the Colonel went on, with a long breath ; " yet she was 
 my wife. The woman soul should have grown enough, 
 even within her girlish years, to have spared me the 
 crowning indignity of being literally spurned!" 
 
 " She could scarcely have known what she said, Col 
 onel Daryl." 
 
 " If her affection had been what I had confidently as 
 sumed it to be in seeking that last, miserable interview, 
 a something in the gentlest human nature superior to 
 all repression, would have made it instinctively impos 
 sible for her to use the contemptuous words she did. 
 They were what gave to my wound a shame a Shame, 
 
114 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 madame ! that I feel ignominiously to this very hour." 
 His compressed lips and lowering brows were more 
 expressive than his language. 
 
 Unconsciously clasping her hands in her lap, the sis 
 ter of Caroline Dornton despairingly realized that, in 
 the keeping of this old love alive so long, there was a 
 feeling more obdurate to reparation than any ordinary 
 sense of personal injury. Merely the having been de 
 prived of one existing for him in name, alone, as a 
 bride, would not have left so sinister a trail across the 
 whole life of a man like this. 
 
 " You forget, " she said, " what I assured you of the 
 other evening that Caroline s love was worthy of 
 your own, in spite of those last appearances. Colonel 
 Daryl, I loved my sister very dearly, and, until my own 
 first, early marriage, we were inseparable. Our moth 
 er s severe rule kept us the closer together. I knew 
 her every thought and feeling, as she did mine, and can 
 say, of my own knowledge, that, in believing you dead, 
 her own death-blow came from the conviction that you 
 must have died without faith in her worthiness. From 
 the day when our mother, deeming it wise, however 
 harsh, handed her a newspaper reporting you as 
 drowned, she sank into a lifeless dejection, to be 
 ended by death only. She died of a broken heart. 
 And what is more, Colonel Daryl, if we had known 
 you to be alive, Caroline would have given up her own 
 existence sooner than consented to any interference of 
 the law. After all this can you not wholly forgive her ? 
 forgive the poor, loving girl, so early lost, who died 
 your wife ?" 
 
 An ordinarily sympathetic listener might have been 
 deeply moved by the pathos of this sisterly retrospect 
 and last appeal. The Colonel s whole face quivered at 
 the climax. 
 

 W/ 
 
 ft / / /rfjp 
 
LETTING B YG ONES BE B YG ONES. 115 
 
 "I have nothing, nothing, to forgive except that 
 she did not live !" 
 
 " And try, also, to think not too hardly of our mother. 
 I am sure she would have acted the same if any one had 
 sought to marry my sister just then. Under all her aus 
 terity of demeanor was an idolatrous love for Caroline. 
 The circumstances compelled her to assign common 
 place reasons for her conduct ; but it was a frenzied 
 unwillingness to have the object of her secret worship 
 taken from her home by any one, in any manner, that 
 inspired her harshness to you both. Caroline s death 
 hastened her own." 
 
 "I mean anything but vain compliment, Mrs. Effing- 
 ham," answered Daryl, with feeling, " when I say that 
 your pleading moves me almost to doubt that I, myself, 
 am not the one who, alone, should have sought pardon. 
 I will be frank with you, madame, in adding, however, 
 that, under all the cooler and maturing judgment of 
 twenty later years, I have not been able to see that I 
 committed any serious wrong in my marriage. I was 
 as innocent of any disingenuousness, or sordid calcula 
 tion, in it, as your sister herself. From our meeting at 
 the party in New York and my first call at Mrs. Yon 
 Gilder s, the association drifted naturally, of itself, into 
 a passion we were both too young and inexperienced to 
 recognize. It was that, of course, which influenced us 
 to our union ; but neither of us realized what was 
 really our subtly irresistible impulsion. For my own 
 part, when Caroline began talking of a return to Dorn- 
 ton Manor, I was at once aghast with misgivings of 
 ever even seeing her again. I had been there, you may 
 have heard that is, in Dornton, where my grand 
 mother belonged and dreaded that Mrs. Dornton 
 would show little favor to a poor young foreign 
 Lieutenant on furlough. I said as much, in my per- 
 
118 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Mrs. Effingham had crossed the room to where her 
 daughter and the young sailor were yet conversing, and 
 the Colonel gave his attention chiefly thitherward. 
 
 " Oh, no ; there you re quite mistaken, sir," corrected 
 the amateur of orang-outans ; "quite, I assure you. 
 He was at Singapore for a few days before he went to 
 Bruni to interpret for the Sultan and the Constitution, 
 and I approached him with a view to negotiations on 
 behalf of Mr. Barnum. What do. you want ? said he. 
 That monkey, on your own terms, to send to the 
 States with two tigers and a bird of paradise, said I. 
 It is unnecessary for me to repeat to you, gentlemen 
 and lady, the exact terms of his genial rejoinder, but 
 they amounted to a high tribute to my native land for 
 its prolific yield of bashful timidity of character. See 
 here, Doctor, said I, just think over this thing, and 
 I 11 come up some time and see you about it on the 
 Sarawak. And I expect, Mr. Effingham, to give him 
 a call when you and I are on our way back from Simun- 
 jon. Take my word for it, sir," concluded Mr. Dodge, 
 confidently, "Hedland can be one of the most agreeable 
 old fellows in the world, when he doesn t want to." 
 
 The merchant took this final antithesis rather grimly ; 
 but Miss Ankeroo felt enough of a naturalist s interest 
 in the subject to question further. 
 
 "Is the owner of this accomplished mias really a 
 physician that he is called Doctor?" she asked. 
 
 " Used to be of that profession, ma am, I ve heard," 
 was the reply. " Indeed, you see "with an air of re 
 flective after-thought" this island of Borneo ought to 
 be a great harvest of fever patients." 
 
 "You don t tell me! Why?" cried the lady, in 
 some alarm. 
 
 " So much Malay-ria on the coast, don t you observe ? 
 and so much Mias-ma inland." 
 
LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES. 110 
 
 Then Mr. Effingham somewhat peremptorily went 
 over to the other side of the room, with the equally 
 startled English soldier ; and, while Mr. Dodge sauntered 
 thoughtfully to a window, Miss Ankeroo, gazing blankly 
 after him where she stood, mechanically removed her 
 spectacles to give the greater freedom of dilating aston 
 ishment to her incredulous eyes. 
 
 The boat in which Colonel Daryl and his nephew 
 were going back to a sunset dinner in the Rajah s hos 
 pitable halls, was watched by very friendly eyes, so 
 long as it could easily be followed from the casements 
 of the American home. It was seen that the Indian 
 helmets worn by both men came close together, as 
 though the wearers held confidential communion, and 
 the Dyak rowers plied their flashing oars with a smooth 
 protraction of the pull that seemed sympathetic. 
 
 "And are they not all capital people ?" the younger 
 man was saying, his face a-light with the glow of the 
 sinking sun. "You mustn t judge Dodge too soon; 
 he s no end of good company, when you know him well, 
 and was a prime favorite on the brig. Miss Ankeroo, 
 too, is the most intelligent woman I ever met. You 11 
 like the Eflinghams the better the more you see of them ; 
 for they are what I call a thoroughly well-bred family. 
 "What a splendid woman the mother is so gentle, and 
 self-possessed, and young-looking ! Did her sister re 
 semble her much ?" 
 
 No sooner was the thoughtless question out of his 
 mouth than the youth s quick instinct reproached him 
 for it. But his uncle s face, if looking, to his fancy, per 
 haps, a little older, and even a shade graver than before 
 the visit, indicated no particular discomposure at his 
 words. 
 
 "Yes, the family likeness is strong. But I don t 
 think, Edwin, that you have yet mentioned the one who 
 chiefly attracts you." 
 
120 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "Why, of course, Mr. Effingham has received me 
 with the most open-handed welcome from the first." 
 
 "That is a very poor evasion, my lad. I m afraid 
 you are forgetting your profession and the Cressy in 
 the fascination of these new friendships. You must be 
 getting back to your ship and duty. Beauty in a golden 
 setting is not for you, Edwin, until you can show some 
 thing more than a lieutenant s commission and pay." 
 
 The ingenuous malingering sailor boy blushed freely 
 at this prosaic home-thrust. 
 
 " No harm is done in loving to look at a pretty girl, 
 is there?" he half stammered. "You can t blame 
 me much for that little weakness, when I ve had so few 
 opportunities for it in my life can you, Uncle Will ?" 
 
 " Daryl laid a caressing hand upon his shoulder and 
 regarded him with an affectionate smile : 
 
 " Blame ? God bless you, my boy I no. I, too, have 
 lived in Arcadia. " 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 THE CROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 
 
 To describe one house of civilized occupation in the 
 Sarawak of 1845 is to give the plan of all, for each was 
 like unto the other in being quadrangular, resting upon 
 a colonnade of palm piles, having only one spacious 
 story, with a central main apartment surrounded by 
 the lesser rooms and dormitories, and standing within 
 palisades on tree-embellished hillocks, generally on the 
 right bank of the river. Five years earlier, when the bold 
 English master of the little Royalist taught the Sultan s 
 despairing governor or bandhara, Muda Hassim, how 
 to clear his territory of rapacious enemies, the houses 
 
THE CROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 121 
 
 of this prince and his brother pangerans formed the 
 whole presentable body of the town of Kuchin ; the 
 Malay, Dyak and Chinese campongs being mere water 
 side lines of petty huts. Mr. Dodge, viewing the pros 
 pect from the deck of an antimony schooner before this 
 aspect had been improved, declared that it reminded 
 him of a "jumble of wholesale corn-cribs, thatched with 
 old hay and fringed with seaside styes." 
 
 But it has already been remarked that this unesthetic 
 aggregate knew a rapid and ennobling change at the ad 
 vent of Bajah Brooke. The Malay princes rejoined the 
 court in Bruni, and such of their mansions as were in 
 sufficient order to be retained became the abodes of 
 the native magistracy the Patinghi of the Dyaks, the 
 Tumangong of the Malays, etc. and of many of the 
 better class of natives, now returning to a Kuchin where 
 there was no longer either war or princely extortion. 
 One of the buildings erected for the new Kajah has 
 been seen in possession of the Effinghams ; houses for 
 the Europeans of the staff, not also living there, sprang 
 up, in improving architecture, on the high, dry grounds 
 around it, and gradually the huts on the water were left 
 almost wholly to sailors and fishermen. Yet in all this 
 regeneracy of local habitations the indigenous spirit of 
 precarious tenure retained its traditional expression. 
 The homes of the new-comers might have floors and 
 partitions of plank, instead of bamboo and matting, and 
 might even rest on iron-wood piles, but they were cal 
 culated to last only two or three years. "Within that 
 period the storms of the wet monsoon would make havoc 
 of the palm-leaf " ataps " at least, and to repair would 
 scarcely be more economical than to reconstruct alto 
 gether. In a country where the ruler s head-servitor, 
 Peter, enjoyed only five pounds a month, labor of all 
 grades was phenomenally cheap, and the cost of con- 
 
122 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 structing a new residence insignificant. Thus in less 
 than six years the English Eajah himself had three 
 different houses, and what has been seen of the one 
 occupied by our American family needs only some en 
 largement to represent that to which attention is now 
 invited. 
 
 It was an hour after the sunset meal, there, in the 
 same great room that had served during the day as 
 court and hall of judgment. The usual evening throng 
 of simple-hearted popular worshipers at the unosten 
 tatious shrine of their Tuan Besar had glided in, to 
 touch his hand with loyal reverence, sit thereafter for 
 half an hour upon the floor near the doorway, watching, 
 as they chewed their betel and areca, his every look and 
 movement, and then as mutely disappeared in the dark 
 ness without. The officers and general guests of the 
 household were withdrawn to their respective quarters 
 or dispersed elsewhere ; and now the Rajah led his one 
 remaining companion to his library, where, taking 
 chairs near a silk-curtained window looking out upon 
 dim forest foliage and drawing in the sweet odor of 
 tropical flowers, the two men lighted cigars and re 
 laxed for sociable colloquy. 
 
 A sultry glow, retained yet by vast convolutions of 
 showery clouds in the western sky, gave enough interior 
 illumination to show well-stored bookcase, arms formed 
 into trophies against the walls, cabinet of native mam 
 malian and ornithological specimens, desk, table, guitar, 
 matted floor, ship s divan, and, most light-catching of 
 all, over the primitive open clay fireplace with chimney 
 of ship s funnel, an oil painting of an elderly lady of 
 sweetly gracious presence. 
 
 Through the smoke curling from his lips the Rajah s 
 friend eyed this picture for some moments in silence, 
 and then made it the occasion of his first remark ;" 
 
THE GROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 123 
 
 "That picture of your mother grows upon me, 
 Brooke. The painter seems to me to have caught the 
 very expression she always had when you were men 
 tioned. I 11 warrant the dear woman talked to him of 
 you often enough in her sittings." 
 
 "Ah, most partial of parents I" responded the other 
 in a tone scarcely less despondent than tender. "What 
 can I ever gain here to compensate me for never hearing 
 her voice in this world again ?" 
 
 "For such a loss there can be no earthly compensa 
 tion, my friend. That I feel and know. Her faith in 
 you was really beautiful for its implicit unreserve. She 
 thought you could do everything. I shall never forget 
 how, when I last saw her at your old home, three years 
 ago, during my English trip about that Chancery tor 
 ment of mine, her face lighted up with fresh motherly 
 pride as she handed me that treatise of yours against 
 the Jesuitical Article 90 of the Oxford Tracts which 
 you had sent her." 
 
 " She believed in me, Daryl, beyond any other being 
 in the world. I honor the memory of my good father ; 
 he was a clear-headed practical man of affairs, and 
 wished his son to lead an unsentimental, prosperous 
 career in his own old service. But my mother was not 
 only always indulgent to my dream of winning an inde 
 pendent name, but placed outspoken confidence in my 
 capability of so doing. When I went back home from 
 my shipwreck on the Isle of Wight, sixteen years ago, 
 and confided to her that I believed my Indian cadetship 
 would be lost by the delay, she told me that it was be 
 cause I was born for something higher . And that she 
 always believed. You remember how you and I were 
 shipmates after that, on the old Castle Huntley, going 
 from Calcutta to Hong Kong, and became interested 
 together in Borneo. As you know, so well, Daryl, she 
 
124 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 entered enthusiastically into my ensuing ambition for 
 this Island, more like a sister than an elder. And she, 
 and my lawyer friend, Templer, and you, have been the 
 staff, scrip and buckler of my whole best life I" 
 
 The Rajah s manner of speech was so excited with 
 commingling ardor and filial regret, that Daryl, after 
 leaning forward a moment to clasp his hand, thought it 
 kind to divert the strain of thought. 
 
 "I have often wondered," he resumed, musingly, 
 " whether you ever felt any particular literary ambi 
 tion ?" 
 
 " What put that into your head ?" 
 
 " Why, you remember the newspaper we conducted 
 amongst ourselves on the Huntley, and your liberal con 
 tributions to it." 
 
 A pleasant laugh greeted this youthful reminis 
 cence. 
 
 " I do, indeed, old friend. And those same contribu 
 tions were ultimately the beneficent means of bringing 
 me to my sober senses about my literary genius. You 
 recollect how I signed them ?" with another laugh. 
 
 "It was Cholera Morbus, wasn t it ?" and they 
 laughed together. 
 
 "Well, no man who could tolerate such a clumsy 
 nom de plume as that, was ever born to cut a figure as 
 an imaginative writer. In my later years, when I had 
 become acute enough to see all that such a thing meant, 
 that specimen of what I thought happily humorous in 
 my poetic days, recurred to me as a wet blanket for 
 every future literary aspiration. The stupidest of born- 
 scribes would have been more felicitous of invention 
 than that, in his very cradle." 
 
 "I admit your logic," assented the Colonel, with a 
 pensive puff; "and now it will be only fair for you 
 to remind me of that Tragedy you encouraged me to 
 
THE GROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 125 
 
 put into manuscript while we were coming around the 
 Cape in the Royalist." 
 
 " Upon my word, Daryl," laughed his friend, again, 
 " you are magnanimous to recall that ! What a grand, 
 gloomy and peculiar Manfred of a fellow you were, 
 occasionally, in those days. Almost as ungracious as 
 poor Hedland." 
 
 " And have not gotten over it yet," was the answer, 
 given with a heavy inspiration. " I think you and 
 Hedland are really the only men in the world with 
 whom I ever have the slightest disposition to show my 
 self a social being. What a thousand pities it is that 
 Larry cannot be fair-minded to you." 
 
 The Rajah waved his cigar in an impulse expressive 
 of helplessness on that point : 
 
 " He was perversely intractable from the first hour of 
 our actual association in a common undertaking. In 
 that whole long voyage, when was he ever once in 
 thoroughly good-humor, except when we picked up 
 those Portuguese men-of-war Physalice Atlanticce, I 
 think they re called going down with the Calliope and 
 Grecian, from Eio ? The little purple-and-pink blad 
 ders made him as pleased as a child with a toy. No 
 more men of science for me, again ! At Singapore 
 he dropped us as unceremoniously as though we had 
 been no more to each other than barely endured ac 
 cidental associates of an ordinary sea-voyage." 
 
 "Yet he has some noble traits," suggested Daryl, 
 musingly. 
 
 " I am sure of it. But he is plainly not the kind of 
 man to be comfortable himself, or make others com 
 fortable, in any close relation of mutual aim. I call 
 him a chronic Incompatible. Who could fancy Hed 
 land ever being married ? His family must be all eccen 
 tric. There s that brother, living, a prince, amongst 
 
126 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 the wild rajahs of Lombok. Probably if the Doctor 
 had not been so infatuated by this mias we hear so 
 much about, he might have been vexing the courts of 
 Lombok before now." 
 
 Once more the friends laughed softly, in unison, at 
 what was whimsically amusing to both. 
 
 " I must see this Oshonsee," the Colonel said. " They 
 tell me that Larry actually carries the beast with him 
 to Singapore and Bruni. " 
 
 "Where did he find the name, Daryl ? Anyjemin- 
 iscence, do you suppose, of my New Foundlander, 
 Humshee, on the Royalist?" 
 
 " It is said that the mias, when excited, utters sounds 
 something like such a word." 
 
 A brief silence ensued, during which the two cigars 
 glowed liked fixed stars in the deepening darkness. 
 
 " I think, Daryl," resumed the Kajah, " that Makota 
 actually believed he was securing a rival Tuan Besar, 
 for his side in politics, when he took so much trouble 
 to procure this phenomenal animal for our crusty old 
 friend. He was shrewd enough to see that Hedland 
 had some pique against me, that his hobby was any 
 thing from beetle to monkey, and that it would be a 
 great stroke of statecraft to arraign Englishman against 
 Englishman." 
 
 "But you surely do not believe, Brooke, that Law 
 rence would ever lend himself to any scheme inimical 
 to yourself amongst these wrangling heathen ?" queried 
 his friend, with some heat. 
 
 "No more than I would believe it of you," was the 
 hearty response. 
 
 These two Britons had a stanch confidence in the 
 loyal compatriotism of a third fellow countryman in a 
 foreign country, sufficient in itself to stamp them as 
 exceptional specimens of their race. 
 
THE CROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 127 
 
 "I see you cling to your books yet," remarked Daryl, 
 motioning with his cigar toward the bookcase, once 
 a portion of the Royalist s cabin furniture. 
 
 "Yes, there they are Lardner, and Jane Austen, 
 and Sir Stamford Raffles, and Dickens cheek by jowl," 
 was the cheery answer. "Do you know, although I 
 have roared over Pickwick, and am delighted with 
 Pecksniif and Sairey Gamp in this last book of Dickens , 
 my favorite funny character of all literature is that pre 
 posterous Mrs. Bennett, in Jane Austen s Pride and 
 Prejudice? " 
 
 " She is certainly a very British matron, of a certain 
 class," assented the soldier. 
 
 "I ve met many such among the better style of 
 country folks in my jaunts to old Lackington and Hil- 
 lingdon. Ah! Will Daryl," in a tone of luxurious 
 re very, "what wouldn t both of us give for another 
 sunny walk, to-morrow morning, in Water Lane, among 
 those lovely blue veronicas ! Do you remember our 
 week s pedestrian adventure westward from Penzance, 
 when heather, furze, crag, cliff and sea were glorious in 
 such May sunlight as I have never seen anywhere out 
 of old England ?" 
 
 "You deserved a more cheerful companion than I 
 was then, Brooke. How often have you been home 
 sick since you came to Borneo ?" 
 
 " Never, my dear boy, except for an hour or so, when 
 my sister s letter came with news of our mother s death !" 
 exclaimed the ruler of Sarawak, in tones of peculiar 
 fervor. "My mother s God knows that my home-life 
 was anything rather than unhappy," he went on, as 
 intensely ; "but the most delicious hour of my exist 
 ence was when the Royalist passed up Prince s Strait 
 from Java Head, and anchored in Anjer roads. It was 
 being in the gateway of my new kingdom, with the 
 
128 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 future all before my imagination in the colors of fairy 
 land ! You must remember that day in May, only six 
 years ago, how I was a very boy in my noisy glee over 
 everything ; the lake-like, shallow Java sea ; the grace 
 ful little islands ; the picturesquely indented shore and 
 superb mountains. Even the canoes instantly swarm 
 ing about us, with their motley of cocoanuts, yams, 
 shells, fowls, sweet potatoes, monkeys, parrots, and 
 what not, were things of incredible charm to my en- 
 glamored eyes ! At last I felt that I had come finally 
 within the magic circle of the life I had dreamed over 
 for years. No misgivings vexed me then, as they did 
 after you bade me good-by at Singapore, to return to 
 Calcutta, and I sailed down the Strait to find my real 
 Borneo. My whole feeling was that I and our little 
 company had come upon a mission ennobling to hu 
 manity, and ought to be blest in it." 
 
 Colonel Daryl caught the fire of the glowing recollec 
 tion, and replied sympathetically : 
 
 " So you have been, and will be ! See what you have 
 already made of this Kuchin here your rising Carth 
 age, as you call it; and the whole Christian world 
 echoes the fame of your having struck more real terror 
 to the pirate dens of the Archipelago than the power of 
 three strong nations had been able to excite in a hun 
 dred years before." 
 
 "I have done something, I think," rejoined Kajah 
 Brooke ; the impetus of strong feeling exhibited in his 
 rising, and measuredly pacing from window to door in 
 the dim room. "You would have appreciated that 
 fight at Patusen, up the Batang-Lupar, last year, 
 Daryl. While the boats of the Dido and the Phlege- 
 thon were engaging the forts, the marines and my 
 faithful Dyaks, under the brave old patinghi, Ali, and 
 Pangeran Budrudeen, charged magnificently on shore. 
 
THE CROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 120 
 
 The wild scenery of tree-hung river, spear-lit jungle, 
 echoing mountains and encragged pirate-fortress ; the 
 noise of guns and men warring on both land and water ; 
 the flaming pirate dens ; the strange dresses of Arab 
 shereef, Malay prince and Dyak sea-wolf ; the uniforms 
 of our men, and their bayonets showing through the 
 smoke at one side of the picture, and the masts and 
 yards of a frigate at anchor looming spectrally at the 
 other it was a wonderful sight, wonderful !" 
 
 "My dear Brooke, after all, you are a soldier at 
 heart," the Colonel pointedly observed, with profes 
 sional enthusiasm. 
 
 "Don t say that, my friend," entreated the other 
 quickly, stopping in his walk. " Fine deeds of arms stir 
 my admiration as a man of dramatic sensibilities, and I 
 shall never shun the sword sanctified by duty ; but if I 
 am here in this poor Dyak land as a fighting man, 
 coveting manual conquest, my soul should plead blood- 
 guiltiness for the fall of the gallant Wade of the Dido, 
 fearless Steward, my faithful old Dyak patinghi, Ali, 
 and all the loyal humbler followers who have perished 
 in our battles ! But I hate this warfare, this unchris 
 tian butchery of blind heathen wretches, who only need 
 to know that my country does indeed stand at my back, 
 to be awed into submission to their own redemption. 
 This is why I want England to take possession of La- 
 buan Island, where Bruni and the whole "Western coast 
 can be kept under guardianship of a Christian flag. 
 This is why I am anxious for the Queen to knight me 
 that I may have the moral aid of the naturally power 
 ful appeal of such an investment to the respect of these 
 Eastern worshipers of titular rank. This is why I 
 shall glory in going up so soon with Sir Thomas Coch- 
 rane s ships to Bruni, to demand from the Sultan repa 
 ration for his dishonoring a humane British treaty." 
 
130 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Vivid lightning, followed by thunder long resounding 
 among the Matang Mountains, came to their eyes and 
 ears like a salute of great guns. 
 
 " There awakes the artillery of the Soldiers of the 
 Cross," said Colonel Daryl with reverence. 
 
 The two friends were now ready to part for the night, 
 after a conversation in which each had shown himself 
 more freely to the other than either ever did to the 
 nearest associate besides. Servants with lights came 
 noiselessly to answer the summoning gong, and the 
 Kajah, going first to the door of his friend s dormitory, 
 withdrew, even unwontedly thoughtful of countenance, 
 to his own chamber. 
 
 Arrived in that unadorned refuge of many a proud, 
 many an unsuspected humble hour, Mr. Brooke mo 
 tioned his attendants to retire, and then, abstractedly 
 extinguishing both of the candles left upon the table, 
 drew a chair to the window to look out at the gathering 
 storm. Bustling in the first gust of a shower, the palms 
 seen from the casement had a semblance of gigantic 
 draped forms, swaying in ranks amid a gloom in which 
 the moan of the wind sounded as though they might 
 themselves be uttering it. No rain had fallen yet. The 
 Eajah was drawing back the hand he had extended to 
 test that fact when, by an instinct too quickly acting to 
 account for itself, he wheeled his chair swiftly round to 
 face inward. 
 
 " Tuan Besar is not alone." 
 
 The voice was almost simultaneous with a flash re 
 vealing a man in Malay dress standing only a few paces 
 back from the window, his arms folded and his face to 
 the Rajah. 
 
 " I know you, Makota !" 
 
 Not the slightest discomposure qualified the English 
 man s tone. Within reach of his right hand was a 
 
THE CROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 131 
 
 dressing-table on which stood a case of pistols, but he 
 made no movement to touch it. 
 
 "You do not fear me?" came the voice from the 
 darkness ; not harsh, nor of much volume, but with a 
 certain metallic property in its rise and fall. 
 
 "I do not, Pangeran. If you intended harm to me, 
 you could have used your kris a moment since. Now, 
 we are face to face and in the dark. 
 
 A more politic answer could not have been given to 
 such a questioner. It was in the true vein of Oriental 
 diplomacy either a compliment or a menace. The 
 hearer might take it as a tribute to his scorn of assassi 
 nation and worthiness of the frank trust leaving him 
 yet in the cover of night, or as a contemptuous intima 
 tion that, having lacked the hardihood to strike before 
 discovery, he was not to be dreaded when confronted 
 on equal terms. Makota responded as characteristic 
 ally : 
 
 "The Malay s skin may be darker than the orang 
 sirani s, but his heart is white. The grain of tin comes 
 black from the mine, but within is a brightness more 
 than silver. 
 
 By the lightning, now flashing nearer and more fre 
 quently, the master of the chamber could discern that 
 his uninvited visitor had a look and bearing, fitfully as 
 they were shown, more indicative of prompt purpose 
 than was at all usual to his tortuous genius. 
 
 "You are not here to-night, Pangeran, to talk pan- 
 tuns poems," said the Kajah. "How came you to 
 enter so secretly ? My door is open to any man in Pulo 
 Kalamantan." 
 
 "I would not meet Budrudeen," was the answer, in 
 a low, harsher tone. 
 
 " The brave Pangeran is not here yet." 
 
 " I wished to see Tuan Besar alone," returned the 
 
132 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Malay, in a hissing whisper. "From my prahu I 
 watched until the gong called for lights. I am no 
 stranger here." 
 
 "Three years ago your own house was upon this 
 spot, I know, Makota, and your own conscience may 
 tell you why it is now necessary for you to come in by 
 a window when the night shows no stars." 
 
 " But not as an enemy, Rajah. I stood at your elbow 
 when you put out the lights, and you saw me not. 
 Would an enemy have spared you then ?" 
 
 "Enemy, or not, you have chosen for yourself. I 
 have been no enemy of yours, except as you elected to 
 plot and instigate against my action on behalf of the 
 integrity of your own sovereign. You might have 
 been my best-esteemed friend in this island. When I 
 first came to Sarawak, who but you and young Budru- 
 deen were my chosen counsellors ? I selected you, 
 Pangeran, for your intelligence, your superiority to the 
 ways of other princes around you, to lend me special 
 help in saving the province from utter ruin. At Sinia- 
 wan, when you and your associate, Subtu, were hard 
 pressed by the rebels, I and my twelve Europeans gave 
 you that great victory on the plain. Budrudeen and 
 the noble young Illanaon, Si Tundo, were my aides in 
 thus enabling you to return to Muda Hassim s presence 
 a conqueror, and be by him exalted as such before the 
 Sultan. And how did you repay me? Because the 
 Sultan invested me with a rajahship not wanted by 
 yourself, you became from thenceforth my enemy, as 
 well as the bandhara s. You entrapped my friend, Si 
 Tundo, to a treacherous death, while I was absent in 
 Singapore. You sought to bribe my servant to place 
 arsenic in my rice. You secretly prompted the Sultan 
 of Sambas to help the Sarebas and Sakarran sea-wolves 
 against Tuan Keppel and myself. You were the known 
 
THE CEO 88 KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 133 
 
 adviser of the pirate Shereef Sahib at Patusen, and 
 your own piratical den was burned with his, and your 
 cannon captured by Budrudeen. And how did I pun 
 ish your murders and treachery ? When it was for me 
 but to have dropped my handkerchief and a score of 
 krisses would have drank your blood, I only banished 
 you from Sarawak. "When, after the last fight on the 
 Sakarran, you were my prisoner, caught red-handed, I 
 had you brought to me on the deck of the Phlegethon, 
 and told you you were free !" 
 
 Sitting with his back to the fiercer-growing elemental 
 strife outside, and his eyes fixed to catch every change 
 revealed by the flashes upon the face confronting him 
 within, the Englishman went over this notorious pas 
 sage of recent Borneon history with a dispassionate 
 calmness of narrative made the more like an irrevoca 
 ble utterance of the passionless Fates themselves by 
 the accompaniment of thunder and rain. 
 
 " It is Allah s truth !" confessed the Malay, his voice 
 rising shrilly. "I have been against you, Tuan Besar, 
 and you have spared my life when it was in your hands. 
 But this night I am here as your friend, your slave I 
 swear it by the beard of the Prophet ! Trust me, and 
 answer what I would ask : Shall you go with the ships 
 to Bruni?" 
 
 " You know it, Pangeran." 
 
 "Will the ships stay at Point Sapo, or go up to the 
 city?" 
 
 " They will anchor before Bruni." 
 
 A tremendous clap of thunder and blinding burst of 
 light made the other flinch and pause before replying : 
 
 "Usop will not yield." 
 
 " Then the guns will settle it, Makota. Those Eng 
 lish sailors must be surrendered to the ships of Eng 
 land, if Bruni is destroyed to secure it." 
 
134 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 By this time the rain was falling in a vertical torrent 
 through air unstirred by the faintest breeze ; the light 
 ning flashing incessantly to a continuous rumble of 
 thunder. It was the culmination of one of those fre 
 quent showers of the dry monsoon in Borneo, w r hen, 
 after hours, perhaps, of ominous gathering, the tempest 
 seems to melt all at once into a windless space of water 
 and fire, and then be over as suddenly as it began. In 
 the glare at this moment filling the bed-chamber the 
 tawny face of the Malay prince was like a livid mask, 
 the coal-black beard and eyebrows intensifying its 
 pallor. 
 
 "Turn those guns upon the palace, Kajah, and the 
 musnud of Borneo is yours !" cried Makota, involun 
 tarily stepping forward, to be heard above the storm, 
 his eyes glittering and white teeth showing. " What is 
 Hamet AH but an old woman, fit only for his harem 
 and talking jars ? What is Muda Hassim but a dotard, 
 and Budrudeen but a boy ? Think you Usop and Ma 
 kota could have opposed you, Tuan Besar, if this bab 
 bling usurper of the musnud had not been ever secretly 
 false to you ? His very title of Sultan is a coinage of 
 the foreign sirani, whom he has flattered for the sake 
 of their gifts. Strike him down with your guns, and 
 Makota will summon fifty Pangerans, and the shereefs, 
 Sahib and Jaffer, with their valiant Dyaks, to make the 
 Rajah of Sarawak the true lang de per tuam Lord 
 who Rules of Pulo Kalamantan !" 
 
 The excited speaker poured out these words with 
 such resistless impetuosity that his amazed auditor 
 could not restrain him until the whole perfidious propo 
 sition had been uttered. Then, however, the Rajah 
 was upon his feet in a wrathful instant, and the gong 
 crashed loudly at his blow. 
 
 "Out of the window with you, audacious traitor!" 
 
THE CROSS KNOWS BUT ONE CROWN. 135 
 
 he ejaculated, fiercely ; moving aside a pace, and point 
 ing, in the dimming lightning-flash, to the low case 
 ment : " Traitor alike to your sovereign, your faith, 
 and your blood away ! before those come who may be 
 less merciful than I." 
 
 Gliding noiselessly to the open window, and resting 
 with one knee on the sill for a moment, a shadowy tur- 
 baned form against the fainter-glimmering, hushing 
 outer gloom ; the foiled tempter had the temerity to 
 speak once more, though there were sounds of ap 
 proaching feet. 
 
 " The hand you have scorned knows how to find the 
 kris." 
 
 " Out with you, miscreant !" 
 
 "This for your friends !" hissed the Malay, leaping 
 forth ; the lights, coming into the room at the instant, 
 reaching no more of him than was like a second s fall 
 ing star in the glint thrown back by drawn steel. 
 
 "My friends!" echoed the Rajah, as he turned to 
 dismiss his servants again. "Ah, a vain boast, the 
 rascal !" 
 
 By the fresh candles he sat down to re-read the last 
 letters from his English home, and was presently lost 
 peacefully in them, as the storm in the sweet breath of 
 grateful flowers. 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 OSHONSEE AT HOME. 
 
 HALF a day s sail up the Sarawak from Kuchin are 
 the war-scarred ruins of the once-thriving Dyak village 
 of Leda Tanah, where the river divides into two 
 branches : that to right going past Siniawan and the 
 scene of the decisive rebel defeat in 1841 ; while the 
 left, skirting a pebbly sandbank formed by the junction 
 of the two branches, runs through a dim archway of 
 mighty trees and creepers into the mountains. 
 
 At anchor in the opening of this latter umbrageous 
 vista was the Weltevreden awaiting Mr. Effingham and 
 his exploring party from the Simunjon region, whither 
 they had gone, by sea or river, as happened to be im 
 mediately practicable, under the generously subsidized 
 guidance of Pa Jenna. 
 
 Mr. Effingham, Mr. Dodge, and the Kajah s represen 
 tative, Mr. Williamson, had undertaken the adventur 
 ous trip in company ; the latter gentleman essaying it 
 as preliminary to a more extended official progress ap 
 pointed for later in the year; and it was upon Mr. 
 Dodge s urgent solicitation that his chief consented to 
 rest for awhile in the home of their Dyak pilot, on the 
 way from the point of embarkation on the prahu to the 
 deeper waters where the brig was to be found. Their 
 return was by a course different from that of their ad 
 vance, which had been by schooner along the coast to 
 Sadong river, and up that stream to the Simunjon. It 
 gave them a signal experience of the hard travel of a 
 wild country ; and when the prahu of the Dyak chief 
 was reached on the Sarawak branch, and the Weltevre- 
 136 
 
OSHONSEE AT HOME. 137 
 
 den known to be only a few miles farther on, all were 
 glad enough at the approaching end of the journey to 
 assent to almost any reasonable proposition. More 
 over, as, by Mr. Effingham s invitation, Colonel Daryl 
 was to have come up by the brig on his visit to Doctor 
 Hedland, the merchant thought it friendly to take the 
 chance of finding that gentleman, and having his so 
 ciety back to Kuchin. 
 
 Going down the mountain stream toward its wood- 
 walled entrance into the main river, a stretch of rice 
 fields, primitively trenched and embanked, was passed, 
 and then, half way up the steep slant of a densely 
 wooded hill, the travelers beheld the village of Pa 
 Jenna and the Naturalist. 
 
 Not only were a series of bamboo ladders necessary 
 for the scaling of the acclivity to the woodland founda 
 tion of this lofty hamlet, but a vertical ascent of more 
 than thirty feet had yet to be accomplished by similar 
 means ; for the one great house, five hundred feet long, 
 was elevated that distance into the air on a decapitated 
 grove of iron-wood. Mr. Dodge instinctively took the 
 lead even of the Illanaon Dyak in this arduous sur 
 mounting ; with the remark that he was "inured to 
 every climb ;" and exhibited so many feats of muscu 
 lar agility that his less suicidal followers exchanged 
 notes of impatient wrath. 
 
 Arriving finally at the level of the vast human eyrie, 
 the climber emerged upon an enormous veranda, or 
 gallery, fully six yards in width, with stout bamboo 
 flooring, and a fence of bamboo pickets lashed with 
 rattan along the edge, where the tops of palms ap 
 peared ; this airy platform extending unbrokenly 
 around the whole one-housed village of nearly three 
 hundred people. Narrow doors, or gates, opened 
 upon it, at short intervals, from the adjoining quar- 
 
138 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 ters of fifty families, and at longer intervals stood 
 benches bearing stone slabs, which were the culinary 
 fireplaces of the community. Only by occasional vari 
 ation of height in the peaked roofs of palm " ataps," as 
 one addition after another had been made, could any 
 particular habitation be distinguished from its neigh 
 bor, except at the centre of the row, where a taller, 
 round structure, with conical top, broke the sky-line 
 picturesquely. This was the head-house of the village, 
 devoted in the upper part to the " smoked " heads won 
 by the warriors in days prior to Sarawak civilization, 
 and in the lower to the sleeping accommodation of the 
 unmarried men. 
 
 Few human figures, and those apparently decrepit 
 old people and nearly nude children, were scattered 
 over the long bamboo walk ; for husbands and brothers 
 were away fishing, or hunting turtles eggs, or perhaps 
 on trading prahus ; and wives and sisters were not yet 
 returned from their work in the rice-fields. Pa Jenna, 
 who was the Orang-Kaya, or chief man, of this now 
 deserted village, waited until some of the guard and 
 sailors of their boat had brought up the nankeen cloth, 
 gunpowder, confectionery, beads and Chinese toys, 
 which Mr. Emngham designed leaving as presents, 
 and then led the way to his own private quarters, 
 near the head-house. Very readily the merchant and 
 Mr. Williamson followed, being inclined for shade and 
 rest, and willing to evade the attention they and their 
 train were attracting from such villagers as were at 
 home. Not so, however, Mr. Dodge, who, feeling 
 "first-rate " in that rarefied air, as he expressed him 
 self, and catching sight of an object of interest some 
 distance off, was disposed for a brief promenade before 
 retiring in-doors. 
 
 The object of interest was sitting in a huddled pos- 
 
OSHONSEE AT HOME. 139 
 
 ture upon a bench of cane-work against the front of the 
 last house of the row, and, on more particular inspec 
 tion, had a European aspect, that might well have ex 
 cited the curiosity of all the new-comers, if they had 
 been disposed at the time to notice it. For more than 
 a moment the keen-eyed gentleman from Singapore sus 
 pected that this might be the ungracious naturalist 
 himself, purposely abstaining from recognizing visitors, 
 whom he might be likely to view in the light of unwel 
 come intruders. The drooping attitude suggested ad 
 vanced years, not to speak of what looked like a cane 
 under the chin ; and the outline of the costume, except 
 ing the round, peaked hat common to the country, was 
 that of civilized dress. Willing to conciliate the suppo 
 sitions Doctor by early civility, with a view to the re 
 newal of a certain zoological proposal, Mr. Dodge 
 advanced cautiously to a nearer view, but went slower 
 and slower as more of the details of the motionless 
 form became distinct to him. Now he saw, that, while 
 coat and trousers were undoubtedly the rusty black 
 articles familiar to the stocks of an army of old-clothes 
 dealers, the supposed cane was one of the sticks used 
 by Dyak women to beat out cotton before spinning, and 
 that an empty tobacco-pipe was held against the proper 
 aperture in a marvelously bearded face by means of a 
 perforated strip of palm-leaf fastened behind the head. 
 
 Soon assured that it could not be Doctor Hedland he 
 was approaching, the curious investigator was fairly 
 stealthy in his step at last, until almost upon the inert 
 sitter. Then, with an actual skip, he finally confronted 
 his puzzling object, and, stooping unceremoniously for 
 a closer view of the face, slapped a knee resoundingly. 
 
 " Upon my word, it s the Mias himself, all in train 
 ing for the show !" was Mr. Dodge s startled exclama 
 tion. " How are you, old boy ?" he continued, 
 
140 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 positively dancing around the clumsy shape and spar 
 ring at it exuberantly. "How are things going, old 
 chap ? "What do you say to Barnum s Museum, old 
 
 The salutation went no farther, for, with a celerity of 
 transfiguration little short of magic, the seeming little 
 old goblin of the downcast hairy face became instantly 
 an erect and furiously jumping incarnation of chatter 
 ing rage, and his stick came down upon the pugilistical 
 disturber s unguarded shoulders with prodigious force 
 and clatter ! 
 
 " O-shon-see ! O-shon-see ! O-shon-see !" croaked, or 
 coughed, or pumped the infuriated creature, raining 
 blows with irresistible rapidity upon the instinctively 
 upraised arms of the bewildered and mechanically re 
 treating man. The band with the pipe in it had slipped 
 below the chin, and the astounding animal, leaping, 
 chattering and slashing, had a frightful appearance of 
 smoking from his shaggy neck. 
 
 "Halloa, there! Come, somebody !" called the be 
 labored Dodge, retreating helplessly yet around the bend 
 of the veranda as it turned the corner of the house. 
 
 A heavy tramp or shuffle sounded suddenly behind 
 him. A sharp, authoritative "Oshonsee!" made his 
 assailant drop the stick, spring for the bamboo fence, 
 and cling there in complete subjection. 
 
 The victim of the assault had scarcely collected his 
 dazed senses sufficiently to recognize Doctor Hedland in 
 the coatless, white-trousered and slippered person of his 
 timely rescuer, when the whole of his own party, at 
 tended, of course, by the collective aboriginal age and 
 infancy of the village, came crowding around the corner 
 in hurried surprise. 
 
 "Xow, what is the meaning of this, sir, if you 
 please ?" demanded the owner of Oshonsee, after a stiff 
 bow to the general circle. 
 
OSHONSEE AT HOME. 141 
 
 It means that you re training your Greatest of 
 Living Curiosities down too fine," said the disheveled 
 Mr. Dodge, tenderly fingering the shoulder on which he 
 had caught it most severely. "I only addressed him 
 with unassuming civility, and made a friendly pass or 
 two at him, perhaps because I was feeling first-rate 
 myself, when what does he do but let at me with a 
 whoop, and I m beaten black-and-blue. " 
 
 At Hedland s first question the animal had slipped 
 over the fence and disappeared downward. The natu 
 ralist now lost his first expression of anger in a look of 
 keen interest. 
 
 "Did you speak to him in English ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Don t you know Malayan?" 
 
 "I ve picked tip enough for business. Everybody in 
 Singapore has a smattering, you know." 
 
 " If you had used Malayan, he might not have mis 
 behaved. And yet it is curious curious ! You did not 
 strike him, I understand ?" 
 
 "When I strike, Doctor, it s at a man an English 
 man greatly preferred," said Mr. Dodge, decidedly in 
 dignant at the implied indifference to his own injuries. 
 " I merely cut a few cheerful sparring capers around 
 him he did look such a rum old customer ! and then 
 he was at me like a Donny brook Fair-y." 
 
 Doctor Hedland s black mane and beard, skull-cap, 
 spectacles and florid face could present a formidable 
 concentration of forbidding expression as, indeed, they 
 had done when he was first recognized ; but it was ob 
 servable that they all acquired a more considerately 
 tolerative air as he listened. 
 
 "You must not take offense, sir," said he, "if my 
 naturally absorbing interest in any novel phase of 
 Oshonsee s behavior has made me almost forget to 
 apologize for his rudeness to you." 
 
142 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Rudeness is good," murmured the person ad 
 dressed. 
 
 " Gentlemen, you will all be good enough to pardon 
 my abruptness of manner at being aroused from a siesta 
 in such an emergency," the Doctor continued, with a 
 conciliatory nod to the wondering merchant and Mr. 
 Williamson. "This animal is now the great study of 
 my life, and almost every day develops some fresh sign 
 of his amazing instinct. For reasons which I can only 
 conjecture, he becomes frenzied at certain sounds. His 
 behavior with our friend here to-day is quite a new 
 thing. In fact, if you, gentlemen, see fit to favor me 
 and my friend, Colonel Daryl, with a call before you 
 leave, I shall take pleasure in explaining to you more 
 fully what peculiar justification I believe that there is 
 for the great scientific importance I am well known to 
 assign to the remarkable creature you have seen." 
 
 Mr. Williamson bowed. Mr. Effingham did the same, 
 but spoke also : 
 
 "Thank you, Dr. Hedland. But excuse me you 
 mention Colonel Daryl as having arrived ?" 
 
 "He came this morning, and is now in my house 
 taking a nap." 
 
 " Then I will not disturb him until later." 
 
 The naturalist regarded him sharply as he spoke, with 
 a new perception. 
 
 "Allow me to ask if you are not the American gentle 
 man of Sarawak ?" 
 
 Here Mr. Williamson interposed : 
 
 " Mr. Effingham, permit me to make you acquainted 
 with Doctor Hedland." 
 
 " Didn t you hear the gentleman call me by name ?" 
 snapped the Doctor, hastily. "We have met before, 
 I see, though I did not at first recognize you, Mr. 
 Eflingham." 
 
OSHONSEE AT HOME. 143 
 
 This was not surprising, as the travelers wore very 
 high top-boots, flannel blouses gathered at the waist by 
 pistol-belts, and sun-helmets. The merchant bore but 
 slight resemblance to his domestic self, and assured the 
 petulant sage that his earlier lack of discernment had 
 been quite excusable. 
 
 Pa Jenna, who had first driven the little native rabble 
 away from the vicinity, and then listened to the con 
 versation as gravely as though it had been comprehen 
 sible to him, now obeyed Mr. Williamson s signal to 
 lead the way back to his house ; Mr. Dodge alone tarry 
 ing to observe that the retiring man of science called 
 the mias up the piles and over the veranda-guard again 
 by a low whistle, and took the animal with him into a 
 detached building that connected with the bend of the 
 veranda by a dizzy bridge of bamboo. 
 
 In the chief apartment of the Orang-Kaya s residence, 
 lighted, like all its neighbors, only through the door 
 way and an uplifted flap in the roof, our trio of guests 
 made themselves as comfortable as possible while their 
 host was warming a luncheon of salt fish and coffee on 
 the fireplace outside. Benches formed of halves of logs, 
 slightly hollowed, were the exclusive furniture of the 
 room, and, but for a bottle of Javanese arrak and two 
 bottles of dry sherry, presently brought to them by a 
 handsome native lad, with Tuan Hedland s compli 
 ments, the interval between active incidents might 
 have been a dull one. 
 
 u ]^ow there you have the man, exactly," commented 
 Mr. Williamson. "He is like a mangosteen, with all 
 his roughness and acridity on the outside. You ob 
 served how offish and testy he was with me ? That 
 was because I am Mr. Brooke s aide and interpreter " 7 
 having accepted the position he himself threw up, when 
 he and the Rajah first came to Singapore. Yet, for all 
 
144 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 his wholly gratuitous dislike of Mr. Brooke and my 
 humble self, he would not require much placation to 
 invite us to become his own guests here." 
 
 " I suppose this must be Cape wine he s sent us," 
 hinted Mr. Dodge, smacking -over a cup of the sherry. 
 
 The aide smiled feebly, and looked as though he did 
 not care to commit himself in speech. 
 
 " Because, you 11 observe it comes from a Hedland 
 cape or headland, as the geographers say." 
 
 "How long has the gentleman been settled here ?" 
 asked Mr. Effingham, stonily oblivious to the trivial 
 interruption. 
 
 "I suppose about a year; ever since the Pangeran 
 Makota procured this mias for him," answered the 
 Englishman, who did not half appreciate their friend s 
 style of humor. "The beast belonged to the Mala}^ 
 and is said to have come from somewhere in the wildest 
 interior of Borneo. And it is really a strange speci 
 men, differing greatly from any hitherto known to 
 Europeans. This village is made up chiefly of the Sib- 
 nowan tribe of Dyaks Laut, the most intelligent of the 
 partly reclaimed Sea-Dyaks, though their Orang-Kaya 
 is an Illanaon by origin, and after being liberated from 
 slavery to Malayan captors, by the Rajah, was not 
 finally made the loyal subject to us that he now is, until 
 we fined him nearly two hundred pounds for taking the 
 head of a rival chief. All Europeans are as beings of 
 supernatural power to these simple-minded aborigines, 
 and, for that matter, to their old Malay masters also, 
 and Hedland is an autocrat here. He has reformed 
 their dress and manners to a degree, given them Sun 
 day expositions from the Scriptures, and the village 
 now sends more rice, fruits, mats, baskets and beeswax 
 to Kuchin than any other in the province." 
 
 Here Pa Jenna reappeared, with his fish on curious 
 
08HON8EE AT HOME. 145 
 
 bronze plates, and the coffee in sailors pewter cups. A 
 form of partaking at least the latter was observed by 
 the gentlemen, to whom thereafter came Colonel Daryl, 
 with many polite expressions of pleasure at meeting 
 them. 
 
 In their journey to Simunjon the explorers had 
 climbed into several Dyak villages and encountered the 
 shock of as many "head-houses." Nevertheless they 
 were not repelled from visiting the chamber of horrors 
 yet retained by the villagers of the Sarawak. As already 
 introduced, it was a round, central structure, with a roof 
 shaped like a Chinese hat. Looking upward from the 
 spacious interior, ranged about with the hollowed half- 
 log benches and couches of the bachelors of the com 
 munity, the visitors could see hundreds of blackened 
 and hideously-painted ragged balls, suspended from a 
 network of beams by rattan cords, and swinging grimly 
 to the breeze admitted by a series of round openings 
 near the eaves. These were the ghastly trophies of 
 many years head-hunting. Some had been gained in 
 war, but a majority came singly, the prizes of individ 
 ual "hunters" to placate sweethearts, or do honor to 
 the memory of the dead, or supply a requisite basketed 
 appointment of one of the tribal spear-dances. 
 
 "The simple-minded Dyak certainly understands 
 how to get ahead in the world," remarked Mr. Dodge, 
 his face upturned, hands in pockets, and feet very 
 widely apart. 
 
 "Can that object ever really have served a human 
 being as a head ?" questioned Mr. Effingham, pointing 
 to a thing shaped like a great potato, hanging where 
 the light from the nearest opening in the wall struck 
 fully upon it at the moment. 
 
 Mr. Williamson spoke to Pa Jenna in Malayan, and 
 learned from him that the head in question was the last 
 
146 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 that had been taken. A young man of the village 
 wished to propitiate the maid of his affections with the 
 traditional offering, and as head-hunting was already 
 under the ban of even Malay law, had much difficulty 
 in securing his trophy. Nevertheless he succeeded, in 
 some way, at last, and there hung the head. 
 
 "It must have belonged to a man not high in the 
 scale of intelligence," and the merchant stared at it 
 doubtfully through his eye-glasses. 
 
 "It certainly does not look at all human," assented 
 the Colonel, staring curiously also. " I was in here this 
 morning, soon after my arrival, and did not then notice 
 the peculiarity of shape. Probably the light is on it so 
 strongly as this, only at certain hours." 
 
 "I have seen the skull of a Panam woman," Mr. 
 "Williamson observed, "and it was almost like a cocoa- 
 nut. The Panams are one of the aboriginal tribes of 
 the interior, and the Malays insist that they live in 
 trees, and are hunted like animals by the Anga-Anga 
 Mountain people." 
 
 If you ever happen to meet a lady of that tribe in 
 this life, Mr. Williamson," cried Mr. Dodge, with pro 
 fessional quickness, "you might casually mention to 
 her that my friend, Mr. Barnum, would cheerfully en 
 gage her at two hundred rupees a week and expenses." 
 
 The craniological discussion closed at that point, and 
 all went back to the veranda. Colonel Daryl took tem 
 porary leave to rejoin Doctor Hedland ; not, however, 
 without admonishing the later guests to remember their 
 own virtual appointment with that scientist ; and then 
 the two Americans and their genial English associate 
 moved forward to the bamboo pickets for a survey of 
 the return of the villagers from their labors of the day. 
 
 Between the topmost fronds of palms growing close 
 to the piles of their aerial perch, and over the sinking 
 
OSHONSEE AT HOME. 147 
 
 heads of others clustering thickly down the slope, the 
 men had a dizzy bird s-eye view of their dwarfed prahu 
 far below, with dots of little canoes putting into the 
 shore all around it. There was a rising hum in the 
 rosy sunset air, coming more syllabled to their ears 
 every moment. From the canoes flitted figures which 
 were quickly lost in the waterside jungle, and while the 
 observers were watching for their reappearance farther 
 up, a chorus of shrill laughter from the roots of the 
 great iron-wood piles suddenly proclaimed the prox 
 imity of a throng of women, who had come around the 
 side of the hill from the rice-fields beyond, and were 
 tripping up the last train of ladders like a flight of do 
 mesticated doves. Presently up they all came, stream 
 ing upon the veranda at twenty different points ; the 
 women in pointed hats of plaited rattan, sleeveless jack 
 ets and bedangs, or petticoats, of gayly-striped native 
 cloth, and curious bodices, made of strips of bamboo, 
 bound together with fine brass wire ; the men in caps 
 made, turban-like, of elastic bark, Malay blouses, 
 sarongs (or tartans, worn as sashes) and short trousers 
 and all with larger or smaller ear-rings, the parang- 
 latok, or harvest-sword, at the waist, and a basket or 
 bundle of some sort on head or shoulder. 
 
 Pa Jenna s authoritative interposition was necessary 
 to avert an immediate congestion of the picturesque 
 human upwelling around the three strangers, whonl the 
 returning multitude discovered with much round-eyed 
 and ejaculatory surprise. The Orang-Kaya briefly ex 
 plained that these sirariis were known to Tuan Hed- 
 land and under the protection of himself and his 
 "antu;" whereupon the variegated stream flowed on 
 again, with a resumed chorus of not unmelodious chat 
 ter and laughter, and soon all the different houses of 
 the long row had their great roof-flaps lifted and many 
 
148 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 doors open, and fires began kindling for the day s last 
 meal. 
 
 Later on, in the final splendid flush of the sky, before 
 the tender pallor of twilight, the whole veranda was a 
 bustling street, full of characteristic figures and groups. 
 Before many doors were pairs and trios of black-eyed 
 tawny belles (with falls of beaded cloth on their luxuri 
 ant midnight locks now), threshing paddy or husk-rice 
 with long clubs in wooden troughs, or, mayhap, win 
 nowing it with primitive shovel and fan. Elsewhere 
 sat plaiters of mats and baskets, while everywhere 
 lounged the fishers, hunters and sailors of the day 
 chewing the eternal betel and furtively watching the 
 strangers. 
 
 A bringing forth of divers bamboo vessels of Tuak, or 
 tribal home-brewed beer, by bevies of damsels whose 
 smiles revealed teeth dyed with the expressed sap of 
 " sinka" wood, involved a proffer of hospitality of which 
 only Mr. Dodge was bold enough to partake, and be 
 tokened a kinship with lower mortals for this village in 
 the air. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 
 
 CONNECTING by a movable, V-shaped foot-bridge, or 
 batang, of bamboo, with the great veranda compassing 
 the main village, the detached house of the naturalist 
 was in other respects similar to the ordinary Dyak habi 
 tation, save that, in addition to the common hinged flap 
 in the roof, it boasted several square openings in the 
 sides for windows. Then, again, at a depth of eight or 
 nine feet below the flooring, on the supporting piles of 
 
DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 149 
 
 metrosideros vera, or iron-wood, a platform had been 
 constructed, in an inclosure of rattan matting, for the 
 storage of the casks of medicated arrack used by the 
 Doctor in preserving the skins of animals, his arsenical 
 preparations for birds, butterflies and other small speci 
 mens, and his reserve of ammunition. Yet lower, a 
 second platform, walled from all outer inspection with 
 Nypa "ataps," was the bedchamber of the wonderful 
 mias ; and from thence to the ground only mossy and 
 creeper-wreathed piles obstructed a view of the great 
 iron vat in which the flesh was boiled from the skeletons 
 of beasts worth anatomical retention. Ladders at prac 
 ticable angles led down through the whole interior, from 
 a trap in the floor of the house ; none appearing on the 
 exterior. 
 
 In the house itself, formerly belonging to the pan- 
 glima, or chief-warrior, of the tribe, there were three 
 compartments ; a dormitory on either side of a much 
 larger central room. The latter was where the American 
 merchant and Mr. Williamson found Doctor Hedland 
 and Colonel Daryl awaiting them that evening, with 
 Oshonsee, (no longer disguised in human attire,) on a 
 bench upon the low table beside which they were sitting. 
 
 Several clumsy oil-lamps, of the same native pottery 
 with the rude naga, or dragon, jars of the Dyaks, were 
 so disposed on the table as to concentrate what rays 
 they could produce upon the docile, sleepily-blinking 
 wild-man-of-the-woods, and the light elsewhere diffused 
 gave but dim definition to such surrounding furniture as 
 a swinging shelf of books ; a tall bamboo framework, like 
 a printer s case, on which rested a volume of commercial- 
 ledger aspect and an inkstand ; several cane chairs of 
 as many different shapes ; guns and butterfly -nets hang 
 ing by rattan-loops from the undistinguishable beams, 
 and so on. 
 
150 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 When the two guests first caught sight of this rather 
 sinister interior, upon the opening of the door for them 
 by a voiceless Dyak attendant, they were not greatly 
 surprised to see Dr. Hedland press a significant finger 
 to his lips as he hastily advanced to receive them. An 
 admonition of silence was in keeping with the general 
 suppressing tone of the whole scene. 
 
 "Excuse me, gentlemen," began the naturalist in 
 French ; " but I did not wish you to speak in English. 
 Colonel Daryl and I talk in the best French we can 
 muster, to avoid the extraordinary excitement any sound 
 of English occasions in this animal as you saw, for 
 yourselves, to-day. Since you must depart from here 
 to-morrow, I sent Kalong to invite your presence im 
 mediately. Do I make myself intelligible ?" 
 
 The new-comers nodded assent ; and Mr. Effingham 
 added, in very good French, that Mr. Dodge s experi 
 ence of "tuak," very temperate though it was, had 
 obliged the gentleman to forego the pleasure of his pro 
 posed call, in favor of an early couch. 
 
 "Well, that I regret," remarked the Doctor ; "for I 
 hoped to induce him to repeat his performance of tip-day 
 with Oshonsee. It involved a new and (to me) suggest 
 ive illustration qf the creature s intimations of reason. 
 Mr. Dodge should know enough of Borneo, by this time, 
 to run from that villainous tuak, though those young 
 Dyak witches might persuade Saint Anthony himself. 
 But I suppose we must do without him. Now draw up 
 to the table, if you please, gentlemen, and I ll get 
 through with the mias as soon as possible." 
 
 In obedience to an order, in his own tongue, the at 
 tendant Dyak, Kalong, brought forward chairs, and then 
 two bottles of the Doctor s port and some cheroots. 
 When the party were seated, it was observed that the 
 table held also a small metal tub of water, with a small 
 
DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 151 
 
 shelf around the rim on which were ranged a number of 
 cocoanut shells, seemingly linked together by a cord. 
 
 And now that the most famous of orang-outans, or 
 miases, was seen close at hand, and in his natural as 
 pect, the visitors remarked, with exchange of surprised 
 glances, that he differed, in many startling particulars, 
 from the wild members of his species observed by them 
 on the Simunjon. Doctor Hedland noticed their looks, 
 and could not repress a complacent chuckle, as after a 
 cup of the wine in amicable pledge he arose and placed 
 a caressing hand on Oshonsee s nearer shoulder. 
 
 "Now, gentlemen," said he, with spectacles pushed 
 up on forehead, "I wish to avail myself of the only 
 opportunity I am ever likely to have in Borneo, for ex 
 plaining to educated men, of my own race, why I place 
 so high a value and bestow so much exclusive study 
 upon a specimen of natural history that vulgar rumor 
 has represented to be no more than a common mias 
 pappan. I propose to show to you, so far as I can and 
 with as few technical terms as possible, that, while the 
 animal is an anthropomorphous ape, he is so far beyond 
 the most intelligent type of tailless simise yet known to 
 European science, and so far short of any actual human 
 assimilation, that he must be a hybrid of species not 
 yet included in the hundred-and-thirty different mon 
 key kinds at present known to man." 
 
 This exordium had in it a certain tone of covert dog 
 matical defiance, that made even the Colonel uncom 
 fortable lest his friend should drift into some ludicrous 
 extravagance at the next stage. 
 
 " But before going further in this vein," proceeded 
 the speaker, clasping his hands behind him, " let me 
 premise that I do not really believe this creature belongs 
 to Borneo. Makota pretends to have procured him for 
 me from a district belonging to himself beyond the Madi 
 
152 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Mountains, whither no European has yet penetrated. 
 He has assured me that the animal was carried to the 
 sea, and then brought down the coast, at his command, 
 by the Bajows, or sea-gypsies. I suspect, however, 
 that he clings to this representation, because, when ex 
 pressing to him my wish to secure a large mias, on my 
 first acquaintance with him in Bruni, I particularized 
 the Borneon species. I am sure in my own mind that 
 Oshonsee came from Sumatra, where his species is 
 said to attain higher stature, and to walk erect on the 
 ground more frequently, than on this island. Probably 
 Makota persists in his assertion because he cannot un 
 derstand the scientific aspect of the matter, and sus 
 pects that I question him from a secret fear of my own 
 that the animal is not veritably Borneon. I hope to get 
 the full truth from him eventually, as it is very essential 
 to my purpose. Hence I keep on good terms with the 
 fellow ; have made him many presents ; and, above all, 
 did not interpose, as I might have done, only a short 
 time ago, when our friend, Pa Jenna, allowed his 
 daughter, Amina, to go up to the Sadong with the Pan- 
 geran as his wife her older sister, Inda, being already 
 a wife to the Pangeran Budrudeen. It is to my interest, 
 as a man of science, to retain the good will of Makota, 
 whatever the new politicians of Kuchin may think of it." 
 
 " They do not think of it at all, Hedland ; as I have 
 so often assured you. Or, at any rate, not in an un- 
 amiable way," retorted the Colonel, stanchly. Mr. Wil 
 liamson smiled. 
 
 " Well, it shall be precisely as they please," was the 
 curt rejoinder. 
 
 The naturalist took the strangely passive Oshonsee by a 
 wrist, and made him rise from the bench and stand erect. 
 
 " Set the clock," ordered the master, in Malayan. 
 
 With a shuffling step, as though fearful of slipping, 
 
DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 153 
 
 the mias advanced to the metallic tub on the table, 
 tilted one of the cocoanut shells from the rim into the 
 water, with a finger, and returned. 
 
 " That is a prahu clock, such as is used for keeping 
 watches at sea. There are a dozen of those shells, each 
 with a fine hole in the bottom to secure the filling of 
 the shell with water, by its own weight, in exactly an 
 hour. You have seen how it is set, and that the shells 
 are tied to each other by certain lengths of cord. In 
 one hour the shell that Oshonsee has floated will sink. 
 In so doing it will strike the bottom of the tub with a 
 noise, and also pull the next shell from the rim into the 
 water, by its cord, for the next hour. And so the 
 clock will run, as accurately as any chronometer, for 
 twelve hours. It would not be difficult to mark the 
 shells with a scale of the sixty minutes, and so have 
 them registered by water, also." * 
 
 As a curiosity, in itself, the Malayan time-keeper 
 deserved some attention ; yet the Doctor had not in 
 tended it to receive the chief notice in the episode of its 
 employment. 
 
 "I see, "said Mr. "Williamson, "that your satyrus, 
 besides being extraordinarily long in his legs, does not 
 walk on the sides of his soles, in the usual manner of 
 his kind. He and the Kajah s Betsy move like ani 
 mals of wholly different species." 
 
 "Ah, you observed that !" resumed the naturalist, in 
 a gratified tone. "He certainly does tread on his 
 knuckles yet when moving on all-fours ; but you must 
 perceive that his knees turn out less than those of the 
 common iiithecus satyrus. And in his upright move 
 ment, without support, you must have noticed, also, a 
 firmness of tension in the action of the hip-joint, as 
 though the femur had the ligamentum teres by which the 
 human leg is braced for walking. Remark, too, that 
 
154 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 his thumbs turn less into the palms than with the wild 
 mias. Now all these approximations to human traits 
 have been developed since the animal came under my 
 training." 
 
 " But his extraordinary length of leg can hardly be 
 an educational result, sir?" intimated Mr. Emngham. 
 
 Doctor Hedland took the remark very graciously, and 
 answered, with animation 
 
 u To a certain degree yes ! By accustoming him to 
 an erect attitude I have appreciably modified the original 
 oblique articulation of his lower extremities. It re 
 mains true yet, however, sir, that the legs are longer 
 than those of any ape familiar to science. But I have 
 some comparative measurements to give you of an even 
 more curious suggestiveness. " 
 
 By this time the man of science was warmly into his 
 favorite subject, and, with hand again upon a hairy 
 shoulder of the well-trained mias, looked, in the flicker 
 ing light, like a fantastic necromancer placing a spell 
 upon his familiar demon. In white linen blouse and 
 nether garments ; his black beard, lank hair, inky eye 
 brows and skull-cap made more intensely sombre by 
 contrast, and giving a startling distinctiveness to the 
 long, florid face, lustrous with moisture, and glasses 
 flashing high on his lofty forehead ; he was an ominous 
 figure in group with the great ape. While the three spec 
 tators ; their own countenances barely within the waver 
 ing circle of the lamp-rays, and gloom all round and 
 above them ; might have fancied themselves present at 
 a forbidden incantation in some secret cavern of the 
 Equatorial wilderness. 
 
 "It is my conclusion," went on the Doctor, "from 
 all that I have studied of Buffon, Cuvier, Owen, the 
 new man, Darwin, and others ; from all my inquiries 
 of Malays and Dyaks, and from all that I have been 
 
DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 155 
 
 able to observe for myself, that at least four species of 
 miases can be found on this island and in Sumatra. 
 Makota knows only the larger or Mias Pappan, and 
 the smaller, or Mias Kombi. Pa Jenna and some of 
 the Dyaks Darrat, or native peasants, have assured me 
 of the existence of a third species, or Mias Kassar, 
 around the head waters of the river Coti, just east of the 
 Anga-Anga mountains. The probable fourth species, 
 of the simia Abellii, is undoubtedly the Sumatran. 
 
 "Now the question is. to which species does this mias 
 here belong ? By his stature he should be a Pappan, 
 yet his height, of five feet, is more, by over six inches, 
 than that of the largest orang-outan ever before cap 
 tured. The Pappans called by Owen simia Wurmbii 
 have callosities on either side of the face ; which this 
 mias has not ; neither has the Kombi, nor Kassar. The 
 Pappan s hair is blackish-brown on the body and black 
 on the face ; Oshonsee s hair, as you see, is brownish- 
 red throughout like that of the supposed Sumatran 
 mias. The Kassar (simia Morio), once erroneously 
 taken for the female of the Pappan, has small teeth, 
 and no ridges rising from the front of the head, as has 
 the Pappan. 
 
 "Oshonsee s teeth are like man s, and he shows no 
 frontal ridges. Xotice his nose ; there is the septum, 
 or partition of the nostrils, very much alike in man and 
 ape ; but the outer curve of his nostrils, you see, is not 
 confluent with the cheek, as in all known Borneon 
 miases. The query arises : do the stature of the tallest 
 conceivable Pappan, the coat and face of the Kombi, 
 and the teeth and forehead of the Kassar come together 
 in the reported simia Abellii of Sumatra ; and has the 
 Sumatran mias also the nose and long legs of Oshonsee ? 
 I lean to that supposition, because this animal in our 
 presence cannot be either a Pappan, or a Kombi, or a 
 Kassar." 
 
156 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 The scientist paused for a long breath, and Colonel 
 Daryl spoke : 
 
 u Haven t you spoken of him as a hybrid, Doctor ?" 
 
 " I have. But I believe him to be a hybrid of species 
 not yet found in Borneo. His excess of height, alone, 
 not to mention a lack of proportionate width of ex 
 tended arms, shows that he can be no Pappan." 
 
 "Is the gain of stature by the legs, only ?" inquired 
 Mr. Williamson. 
 
 " I may say yes to that. From hip to heel he meas 
 ures two feet ten inches ; or one foot less than a tall 
 man, and six inches more than the largest known 
 Pappan." 
 
 "I really cannot understand, Dr. Hedland, what you 
 are making him out to be," observed the American 
 merchant. 
 
 "I am by no means sure," was the frank answer, 
 " that I know that, exactly, myself. But allow me, 
 gentlemen, to give you the general measurements of 
 this animal, which, excepting his stature, legs and cir 
 cumference of head, are about the same as those of 
 the full-grown great mias Pappan. With them I 11 give 
 the corresponding average human proportions, for sug 
 gestion s sake. In breadth across outstretched arms, 
 from finger-tip to finger-tip, the mias is seven feet, nine 
 inches ; man is two feet less, or twelve inches less by 
 each arm. In lengths of feet and hands mias and man 
 are about alike twelve inches for foot, and an inch or 
 two less for hand. Across the shoulders, again, they do 
 not differ much, the mias measurement being one foot, 
 six inches. Under the arms the mias circumference is 
 three feet, to the three to four feet of man ; and around 
 the ribs he is three and three-quarters, or near the 
 human average. 
 
 " When we come to the neck, even as with his legs, 
 
DR. EEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 157 
 
 Oslionsee differs more from his own known species than 
 he does from mankind. A large mias Pappan measures 
 two feet, four inches, around the neck ; man perhaps a 
 foot less ; and Oshonsee, one foot, nine. From forehead 
 to chin, the Pappan, nine and three-quarter inches ; 
 man eight and a half inches ; Oshonsee, a fraction below 
 nine inches. Across face below eyes, the Pappan (in 
 cluding callosities), thirteen inches ; man, ten inches, 
 and Oshonsee the same. Ear to ear, over top of head, 
 the Pappan, nine and a-half inches ; man, fourteen and 
 a quarter inches ; Oshonsee, twelve and a quarter 
 inches. From ear to ear behind the head, the Pappan 
 nine and three-quarter inches ; man, ten and a half 
 inches ; Oshonsee, not quite ten inches. The brain 
 capacity of the Pappan is from twenty-six to twenty- 
 seven cubic inches, and that of Oshonsee thirty as 
 near as I can judge. You 11 remember the leg meas 
 urements, which I gave before ; the Pappan, of the 
 largest known size, two feet, four inches ; a tall man, 
 three feet, ten inches ; Oshonsee, two feet, ten inches. 
 In comparing length of legs, however, I have given you 
 the measure of a Pappan certainly from four to five 
 inches taller than the one made the standard of my 
 general comparison. Hence, Oshonsee s disproportion 
 is so marked in this respect, that if, being a mias 
 Pappan, the breadth across his extended arms were 
 proportionate to his stature, that breadth should be 
 not much less than ten feet, or four feet more than 
 man s ; whereas it is, as I have said, seven feet, nine 
 inches. 
 
 "In short, the mias before us is not a Pappan, nor a 
 Rombi, nor a Kassar. He belongs to neither the simia 
 Wurnibii, nor the simia Morio. Are the simice Abellii, 
 or Dr. Clarke Abel s miases, a new species, and of Su 
 matra ? If so, is Oshonsee a Sumatran ape ? He is 
 
158 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 not a Borneon, unless this island contains a species of 
 his race wholly unknown to science." 
 
 Not caring, apparently, to hear any amateur com 
 ments on this nice point of the subject, Doctor Hedland 
 hastened to draw from one of his pockets a small bam 
 boo tube, and handed it to the quadrumanous phenom 
 enon. 
 
 . " Oshonsee, the gentlemen want fire for their segars, " 
 he said, in Malayan. 
 
 Taking the article in both hands, the mias drew from 
 the tube a cube of lead, with a hollow in the top filled 
 with tinder. Then he struck the tube down, sharply, 
 over the lead again ; as sharply withdrew it ; and 
 handed the cube to his master with the tinder a-light. 
 
 u They say," remarked the sage, with a grim smile, 
 handing the fire around to the party, " that the lowest 
 order of human intelligence is superior to the highest 
 development of simian brain, if only in the simple 
 matter of making fire. Give the mias permanent need 
 of fire, and he 11 learn how to kindle it fast enough. 
 Oshonsee can handle this curious little native kindler 
 quite as adroitly as I can myself ; and I question if he 
 doesn t understand its philosophy as well. Some of the 
 Malay and Dyak fire-makers are really puzzling ; not 
 to speak of the production of combustion by the rub 
 bing of sticks together, or by boring into a hard wooden 
 block with a pointed club. The metal tube and piston, 
 bringing a spark by compression of air, always bothered 
 me ; and so does the Dyak method of laying tinder 
 upon a bit of broken crockery, and striking fire into 
 it with bamboo. 
 
 Following this frank confession of his crudity in nat 
 ural philosophy with a call to his Dyak, Kalong, the 
 Doctor briefly ordered that native mute to convey 
 Oshonsee to bed ; and while yet the three auditors of 
 
DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 159 
 
 the lecture were in a subdued stir at the abruptness of 
 the movement, the Dyak led the unresisting mias down 
 from the table, and disappeared with him through a trap 
 in the floor not many paces from where they were sit 
 ting. 
 
 "I wanted to get back again to our proper English, 
 gentlemen," the Doctor explained, though in a lowered 
 voice ; and resumed his own chair, vigorously mopping 
 his face. There was an interval of wine-sipping, and 
 then he went on : 
 
 "You all understand now, I presume, what are my 
 reasons for making such a hobby, as Mr. Brooke is 
 pleased to call it, of an animal that even Mr. Effing- 
 ham s promising youngster has found amusing." 
 
 " And the lad s father begs leave to apologize to you, 
 sir, unreservedly, for that impertinence," exclaimed 
 Mr. Effingham, earnestly. 
 
 "And I, sir, have to apologize, for my own hastiness 
 of manner in allowing a child s remark to make me 
 discourteous to ladies, no less than to yourself." 
 
 A general light laugh followed this conciliatory refer 
 ence to an episode of which all who were present had 
 heard, and then the naturalist remounted his hobby in 
 phenomenal good humor. 
 
 "On that extemporized standing-desk, to our right, 
 is a book in which I put down each day s observations 
 of what I may call Oshonsee s systematic intellectual 
 development. In a few months hence I shall take the 
 creature with me to Europe, and then make public my 
 theory respecting him. In strict confidence, between 
 ourselves, I am firmly convinced that, in this same ani 
 mal, I have nothing less than an unmistakable clue to 
 discoveries likely to overturn some of the longest-ac 
 cepted fundamental principles of biology, anthropology, 
 geology and even Theology I I m afraid so I Unless 
 
160 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 I am egregiously in error, this mias goes a long way to 
 disprove Lyell s conclusion as to the extinction of spe 
 cies, and does completely confute Buflfon s axiom, that 
 * that which is the most constant and unalterable in na 
 ture is the type or form of each species. If the mias 
 is what I grow more and more confident that he is, we 
 are on the verge of proof that there has been no extinc 
 tion of species since the beginning of the world, and 
 may regard it as already demonstrated, that the types 
 and forms of species do alter, and run consecutively 
 into each other " 
 
 Darwin s theory of- the origin of species, and the ac 
 cessions of Lyell and others to it, being yet many years 
 off, the auditors of this bold hazard of judgment were 
 rather shocked, as by an extravagance of obvious mo 
 nomania, than pleased as under a revelation of scientific 
 discovery. 
 
 "For I mean to assert," proceeded the sage, draw 
 ing back from the table, and leaning forward to empha 
 size what he said by pounding with his right fist on his 
 left palm "I mean to assert that the species to which 
 Oshonsee belongs whether in some not hitherto ex 
 plored recess of Borneo, or, as is more likely, in Sumatra 
 is, by at least two important stages, a nearer approach 
 to human form and type than science has hitherto 
 deemed possible of existence in the world. In form and 
 attributes it is about equidistant from man and from the 
 most man-like example of the Asiatic quadrumana ever 
 before observed. 
 
 "I tell you, gentlemen, this mias, or mias-hybrid 
 perhaps, practically bridges the interval between men 
 and simise. Between his anatomy and that of our own 
 species there is scarcely as much difference as between 
 the skeletons of Asiatic and African elephants ; and his 
 structure varies from that of the Pappan of Borneo, or 
 
DR. EEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 161 
 
 any conceivable Borneon hybrid, chiefly in differences 
 which we may imagine possible to have been effected 
 by changing conditions of life through two or three gen 
 erations. 
 
 "Take the human beings of some savage tribe, of 
 lowest intellectual order ; compel them to live in trees, 
 for safety or subsistence ; oblige their every ordinary 
 movement to be made in a bending posture, to clear the 
 boughs perpetually over their heads ; make it their con 
 stant necessity to clasp with their feet the boughs upon 
 which they stand ; make their readiest and only safe 
 means of travel the clasping of high twigs with both 
 hands and the swinging of the body s whole weight from 
 tree to tree cut these wretches off, absolutely, from 
 sight or influence of any higher order of men and how 
 many generations of them, think you, would be required 
 to produce a race with lower limbs dwarfed and per 
 verted to obliquity, knees turned outward and foot-soles 
 and great-toes turned inward ; with arms elongated 
 disproportionately by continual perpendicular tension 
 in traveling ; and necks crowded down by incessant 
 stooping, dodging and crouching ? Add to this the in 
 tellectual degeneracy no less sure a result of the blank 
 monotony of such a life ; and the consequent decay of 
 the physical mediums of intellectual expression ; and 
 the creatures would only need hair-coatings which 
 many a civilized man is already curiously afflicted with, 
 below the shaving-line, as any physician can tell you 
 to be orang-outans ! 
 
 u On the other hand, train a few generations of se 
 lected anthropomorphous apes to live upon the ground, 
 use their hands and feet like men, find variety of mental 
 excitement in everything challenging their notice, wear 
 clothing, develop imitative and imaginative powers from 
 contact with educated mankind, and acquire the social 
 
162 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 instinct of pride and how far removed, do you suppose, 
 their final type would be from man ?" 
 
 "Now, really, Hedland," struck in the Colonel, "you 
 are proving the converse of what I take to be your pro 
 position, as well as the proposition itself. By your 
 reasoning, Oshonsee may as well be a degenerate Man 
 as a regenerate Ape." 
 
 "So he might," returned the naturalist, his black 
 eyes shining with excitement," if it were Thinkable that 
 human beings could ever be reduced and limited to the 
 condition requisite for their degradation to apedom. 
 No known race has voluntarily assumed such conditions, 
 and it is Unthinkable that the compulsion thereto could 
 ever be practiced by superior human-kind. Therefore, 
 the ape-Man has, probably, never existed. The process 
 of realizing the man- Ape, however, is Thinkable. We 
 may readily imagine circumstances of country, climate, 
 the adjacency of benevolent mankind, and steady physi 
 cal regeneracy, at least, therefrom, to account for the 
 evolution of the species of an Oshonsee from that of the 
 Borneon Pappan, or the African chimpanzee, or that 
 other and greatest ape of all, said to have been discov 
 ered, just now, by missionaries, in Guinea." 
 
 " You think, then, Doctor Hedland, that, in this spe 
 cies, you have found the link between man and mon 
 key, " remarked Mr. Williamson, doubting his own ears. 
 
 " I am sure," reiterated the Doctor, emphasizing with 
 his fist again, " that the mias procured for me by Makota 
 is either a hybrid mixture of Borneon, Pappan, Rombi 
 and Kassar ; or, possibly, a true Sumatran ape of a new 
 species ; or, more probably, perhaps, a Sumatran hybrid. 
 I am also sure that, whatever island or class he belongs 
 to, he is, structurally and intellectually, an advance 
 over at least half of the interval hitherto believed to be 
 clearly existent between the highest type of simia and 
 
DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 163 
 
 the lowest type of humanity. If I am right, my propo 
 sition proves that Buffon is wrong, and that the types 
 and forms of species are alterable. By implication it 
 shows, also, that Lyell is, probably, as mistaken in his 
 theory of the extinction of certain species ; since, if, by 
 evolution of one into another, different species can pro 
 gressively modify their types and forms, it is easy to 
 believe that no one species may ever go totally out of 
 existence." 
 
 " This sounds like a startling discovery, undoubtedly," 
 said Mr. Effingham, with intense interest; "but are 
 you not assuming too much human similitude for your 
 orang-outan, from his purely animal unlikeness to the 
 types of his family with which you are familiar ?" 
 
 "Why, you have heard the measurements of his 
 head, sir, as compared with those of man s and the 
 Pappan s. They prove an intellectual development 
 more than ape, if less than man. You have seen him 
 walk upright, unsupported ; though shuffling because 
 the smooth surface of the table is yet insecure to feet 
 more familiar with grass, tree-bark, or rough bamboo 
 floors. If he yet stands on his knuckles, like all miases, 
 and has a protuberant jaw and chin, I shall soon train 
 him to spread his toes (nether fingers, if you choose,) 
 as he is already learning to walk on his soles, regularly ; 
 and I could pick you out thousands of prognathous 
 skulls from among human beings of the lower agricul 
 tural classes and city slums of Europe." 
 
 The prahu clock had, before now, reminded them of 
 the flight of time by the tapping of a flooded cocoanut- 
 shell on the bottom of its tub and the splash of another 
 in the water, and the gentlemen sat more upright in 
 their chairs, preparatory to a dispersion. The Doctor 
 was becoming husky from so much speaking, and 
 hurried to his peroration : 
 
164 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " I am educating Oshonsee to human ways as rapidly 
 as possible, in the not illogical hope that the process 
 may develop, more to my satisfaction, his unquestion 
 able sensibility to some past human associations. You 
 have seen that I am accustoming him to human dress ; 
 he eats the same food with me, using plate, cup and 
 spoon ; and I shall soon have him taught to hold and 
 smoke a pipe. I think his affection for me increases 
 through this method of treatment, and that he makes 
 proportionately plainer to me every day the meaning 
 of some of his peculiarities. Ever since he first came 
 into my possession the sound of any word in English 
 has frenzied him beyond control, and made him chatter 
 his O-shon-see! O-shon-see ! like a mad creature. 
 When my friend, here, Colonel Daryl, puts on his 
 sword, the animal goes into a paroxysm of terror. 
 From all of which I am sure that English-speaking 
 men, with swords, have at some time been pursuers of 
 Oshonsee in his native wilds. That might have been 
 in Sumatra, when English ships have been there. His 
 demonstration with the stick against Mr. Dodge, to-day, 
 does not altogether explain itself to my mind ; for, 
 under all his frenzy at the man s English, I detected 
 something also very like a kind of hysterical glee. But 
 you ve had enough for one lecture, gentlemen, and if I 
 have not already justified myself to your intelligences 
 for my high estimate of the importance of this animal 
 to science, volumes more might not avail." 
 
 In taking leave for the night, with Mr. Williamson ; 
 as he did soon after ; the American merchant thanked 
 his host in all hearty sincerity, and spoke to him of 
 that last trophy in the head-house which had seemed 
 to him so curious. The naturalist confessed that his 
 repugnance to the place had prevented his particular 
 notice of the object in question, but promised to ex- 
 
DR. HEDLAND DELIVERS A LECTURE. 165 
 
 amine it soon ; and Colonel Daryl agreeing to accom 
 pany them back to Kuchin on the Weltevreden next 
 day the Kajah s aide and Mr. Effingham withdrew, 
 under pilotage of the reappearing Kalong, to their 
 quarters in Pa Jenna s house. 
 
 The two remaining persons lingered over their cigars 
 and wine in a conversation naturally turning back to 
 their common experiences in other years and scenes ; 
 the Colonel informing his friend of what Mrs. Emngham 
 had told him of the deaths and sorrows since he was a 
 husband and widower in the one hour. 
 
 "Man s lot has not much changed since the days of 
 Tacitus, when spes et prcemia in ambiguo ; certa, funera 
 et luctus," quoted the Doctor, sympathetically. 
 
 The prahu clock tapped for midnight, and the ex 
 hausted lamps sputtered out, one after another, while 
 old days were yet being recalled ; and the talkers were 
 even tempted out of doors and beyond the bridge, for a 
 noiseless walk on the moonlighted veranda, in list 
 slippers, before seeking their beds. 
 
 Scarcely, however, was the ghostly tramp begun, 
 when a figure, without coat and having a handkerchief 
 tied about the head, came tripping fantastically from 
 the shadow of one of the houses. 
 
 "Bless me, it s Dodge !" muttered Hedland, halting 
 in amazement. 
 
 "Excuse me, gentlemen," enunciated that spectre 
 of his earlier self, somewhat desolately. "I could not 
 attend the monkey lecture. Slight indisposition. Dyak 
 hospitality. I would ask you, however, Doctor Hed 
 land, if you are yet open to liberal negotiations on 
 behalf of my respected principal, Mr. Barnum?" 
 
 "I answered you on that point, sir, at Singapore," 
 said the Doctor, in a mood to be rather amused than 
 angered by the semi-somnambulist s pertinacity ; "and 
 
166 THERE WAS ONGE A MAN. 
 
 I 11 say to you now, young man, that you 11 do credit 
 to yourself and your country by an immediate return 
 to your chamber. Good night to you it is one o clock. " 
 " One o clock !" echoed Mr. Dodge, turning in a large 
 circle to retrace his steps, "by the feeling of my head 
 it must be nearer half-past Tuak." 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 UNDER THE DURION TREE. 
 
 Miss ANKEROO S spiritual inheritance from the Puri 
 tan forefathers of her native New England made it im 
 possible for her to be either quiescent or conservative, 
 under what the select little circle of civilized Kuchin 
 society was allowed to know of the latest scientific as 
 sumption. Refusing to judge it from any other than 
 the theological point of view, she insisted that its ac 
 ceptance, in any degree, meant nothing less than a 
 complete renunciation of the Biblical theory of man s 
 special creation in the Divine likeness, and his indi 
 vidual responsibility. 
 
 "If we are all to turn atheistic materialists at last, 
 let us at least be honest with ourselves," she said, at 
 the breakfast-table, on the morning after the return of 
 the Simunjon party. " The meaning of all this specu 
 lation about the man-ward development of apes is just 
 this : that the Almighty did not create Man as Man, 
 but left him to be a subsequent evolution from progres 
 sive elements, which, in the first days of the Universe, 
 may have been but atoms of the atoms gathered from 
 space to form a slowly rounding world. Men being but 
 highly developed brutes, brutes may as well be but highly 
 developed vegetables or fishes ; and vegetables, or fishes, 
 
UNDER THE DURION TREE. 167 
 
 but ultimate animations of land and sea primeval coag 
 ulations. To allow one conclusion, is to approve the 
 logic compelling final belief in all ; and to believe in 
 any, is to absolve all that is spiritual, moral and intel 
 lectual in humanity from any immediate responsibility, 
 to a specifically creating God, and hold it accountable 
 only to the local conventions of the last materialistic 
 development of what may originally have been but so 
 many particles of sand ! A nice man this Doctor Hed- 
 land must be, to give his unfortunate villagers Christian 
 instructions on Sunday, and then ask three of his edu 
 cated fellow-beings to credit that a deformed ourang- 
 outan proves, by its very monstrosities, that its race is 
 a natural incipience of ours ! And he must talk in 
 French before the creature, because some past painful 
 mental association yes ! nothing less than mental asso 
 ciation ! makes the frightful .animal frantic at the 
 sound of English ! 
 
 " Est ce que la tete tourne a cet homme?" asked Miss 
 Ankeroo, in withering practical satire upon the Doc 
 tor s Gallic resort "is the man s head turned by this 
 hateful monkey, that he sets himself above Buffon, 
 Saint Hilaire, Cuvier, Owen, Lyell and all the other 
 great naturalists and geologists of the world ? Down 
 right atheism is just what all such stuff practically 
 means an absolute denial of the whole Biblical story 
 of the Creation, and a resolution of all that is either 
 good or bad in the human soul into the mere compul 
 sory effects of the unavoidable circumstances of a 
 growth from the brute condition. There can be no di 
 vine Father to be especially prayed to by human beings 
 in such a system ; and I d have more respect for this 
 crazy Doctor, if he came out at once and said, frankly, 
 that his monkey abolishes the Supreme Being of re 
 vealed religion. " 
 
168 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 When Miss Ankeroo took a lively interest in any 
 subject, and particularly if it trenched upon religious 
 tenets, her style of remark was wont to be rather de 
 clamatory ; perhaps from some of her earlier scholastic 
 habituations. Probably her mood was more serious and 
 her judgment more sweeping on this occasion than 
 were those of some of the other people in Kuchin to 
 whom the same topic had been similarly commended. 
 At the Kajah s, for instance, an amiably whimsical pos- 
 tulation of a characteristically sardonic motive for the 
 grim philosopher s theory about Oshonsee, induced 
 more apparent amusement than reprobation. Never 
 theless, what the latest comers from the Dyak village 
 felt themselves at liberty to divulge, in detail, of that 
 which they had seen and heard there, left in certain re 
 flective minds an under-current of unspoken thought by 
 no means wholly unsympathetic with the lady s radical 
 treatment of the matter. 
 
 But the first missionary spirit in Sarawak troubled 
 herself little to know whether her sentiments in this 
 relation were echoed, or not. Having spoken her own 
 mind, she contemptuously dismissed the whole heretical 
 fantasy from further contemplation, and gave renewed 
 energy to her daily infant-school, and projected Sunday 
 meeting for native girls and women. 
 
 In the evening Mr. Dodge was to start, by trading 
 schooner, on his return to Singapore, and, in a few 
 hours before the time of departure, he and Miss Ank 
 eroo chanced to be left by themselves in the general 
 room : he looking over the latest-received number of 
 the Straits Times, and she, at a table, prosecuting 
 her tireless study of Marsden. The miniature academy 
 had been dismissed ; Berner and the servile staff were 
 preparing dinner in the outer buildings ; Mr. Effing- 
 ham wrote letters in his private chamber ; Mrs. Effing- 
 
UNDER THE DURION TREE. 169 
 
 ham had withdrawn with her needlework to the 
 veranda, and sounds of youthful voices, at intervals, 
 were wafted up from the garden with the rustle of 
 leaves, and hum of bees, and odor of sweet blossoms. 
 
 In the shaded light by which he was trying to read 
 his newspaper, Mr. Dodge found the whole effect of 
 the domestic situation so perilous of undesirable slum 
 ber, that, after several futile efforts to master an article 
 upon the reported engagement of American ships in the 
 atrocious Coolie trade between China and Peru, he 
 allowed the weekly sheet to settle quietly into his lap, 
 and gazed, for wakefulness, at the fair student s half- 
 bowed profile. 
 
 " I really beg your pardon, Miss Ankeroo," he said, 
 when caught at it. "I should have gone to sleep if I 
 had looked at anything else." 
 
 " And no wonder over such newspapers as there are 
 in this part of the world !" remarked the practical lady, 
 closing her book for the moment. "I feel sometimes, 
 myself, as though I would almost give my eyes to see 
 the Boston Advertiser once more." 
 
 "But this isn t so bad, for a new paper, in a place 
 like Singapore," pleaded the adopted citizen of that 
 ambitious port, referring to his so lately unreadable 
 sheet. "Our friend, Belmore, out here," (with a 
 motion of his head toward the garden) "should have 
 taken you to the new Times offices, while he was 
 escorting all of you to see the lions of the town. The 
 proprietors are going to establish a spacious public 
 news-room, to be supplied with files of all the princi 
 pal journals and commercial magazines in the world. 
 They talk, too, of printing and binding books and doing 
 lithographic work." 
 
 " Importing their workmen from Europe ?" 
 
 "Oh, no; not at all. They employ Malays, China- 
 
170 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 men, Portuguese, Klings, Javanese, and even Hindoos ; 
 and, really, the way such printers can set up English 
 without understanding a dozen words of it, is curious to 
 see. "When you are all in Singapore, again, on your 
 way home, I 11 do myself the honor of showing your 
 party to the Times quarters that is, if my services 
 are acceptable and the Lieutenant visit there again." 
 
 "Is the Times your only paper?" inquired Cousin 
 Sadie, calmly regardless of the personal reference. 
 
 " There is the old Free Press a dozen years older. 
 Kajah Brooke writes in it occasionally ; so it has been 
 looked upon, in a way, as his organ. That may start 
 the Times against him, some day. But newspapers 
 are the same the world over, Miss Ankeroo. Just 
 think of one of them publishing a rumor that Mr. 
 Effingham s Comanche has gone up to China as a 
 slaver, after Coolies ! I wonder if young Belmore has 
 seen that, yet ?" 
 
 "I m sure I can t say. It s too ridiculous for any 
 one s notice. But, Mr. Dodge, " said Miss Ankeroo, with 
 more alertness of manner, "I can t help observing that 
 you refer very often to this young man. Perhaps Mr. 
 Emngham has not told you, that Colonel Daryl knew 
 my cousin Julia s family well, in his youth, when he 
 and this monkeyfied Dr. Hedland were on a visit to the 
 United States together. To tell the whole truth, the 
 Colonel was a great admirer of a sister of Mrs. Effing- 
 ham, now dead. We are so few here, in this wild place, 
 who speak the same language and can associate with 
 each other, that I see no sense in having any mystifica 
 tion amongst ourselves. Well, at Batavia we became 
 acquainted with Mr. Belmore ; and he happened to be 
 at Singapore, too, convalescing from a slight sunstroke ; 
 and here, in Borneo, the chapter of accidents makes us 
 find his uncle, the Colonel. It is an exceptional, Gypsy- 
 
UNDER THE DURION TREE. 171 
 
 fied kind of life we are all leading ; the very houses are 
 more like tents than like permanent habitations ; and, 
 of course, what English-speaking people there are in 
 such a community must naturally be more or less like 
 one family." 
 
 This long speech was designed to restrain at least one 
 temporary member of the limited community in ques 
 tion, from judging immediate social aspects as though 
 they had been presented by the normal good society of 
 a Christian country. The gentleman from Singapore 
 fully appreciated the feminine tact of its inspiration, 
 and his shrewd hazel eyes lighted with a certain humor 
 ous perception, also. 
 
 " Nothing can be clearer than that," he said, with an 
 assenting nod. " I know how it is with myself, yet, in 
 Singapore : any one coming to The United Straits with 
 straight English on his tongue, is immediately a cousin, 
 at least, in my affections. So it s a sunstroke, is it, that 
 keeps our young sailor- friend so long off his ship ?" 
 
 "I ve understood," returned the lady primly, "that 
 Mr. Belmore had what they call the coast fever, three 
 or four years ago, when his vessel was at Tripoli. He 
 has never been perfectly strong since, and I suppose 
 his sunstroke, in the Java Sea, may be attributed to 
 that." 
 
 Mr. Dodge raised himself in his chair, to glance 
 with wider range, for a moment, through the handiest 
 window ; but whether to ascertain within how close an 
 earshot Mrs. Effingham was sitting, or to assure himself 
 that the audible talkers in the garden were not approach 
 ing, did not seem clear. 
 
 " Even sailors must expect to be sunstruck sometimes, 
 I suppose," he observed ; "but I needn t ask if it ever 
 occurs to you, at all, that the Lieutenant may be 
 daughter-struck. " 
 
172 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Miss Ankeroo s spectacles concentrated upon his face 
 in a searching focus, and the trim educator of youth 
 tapped the bridge of her shapely little nose with a pro 
 fessional wooden lead-pencil. 
 
 "Do you know, Mr. Dodge," said she, musingly, "I 
 fancy, at times, that I can detect a gleam of meaning in 
 what you say ? Do you really think" 
 
 " No ma m, not at all," struck in the possible mischief- 
 maker, in haste to redeem himself : " I never had a dozen 
 thoughts in all my life, but think the visual line that 
 girds me round, the world s extreme. Pollock s Course 
 of Time. Did you ever read Pollock, Miss Ankeroo ? 
 Because, if you ever did don t !" 
 
 " I do declare !" exclaimed Cousin Sadie, rising impa 
 tiently from her chair and tucking the dictionary under 
 a plump left arm. " What is the use of ever trying to 
 talk sense to a man ! If you could join my Dyak Sunday 
 Bible class, sir, I might teach you to be serious for once !" 
 
 He had a genuine desire to propitiate this quick- 
 minded, yellow-haired, comely little Yankee woman. 
 She had been an object of real, homelike pleasantness 
 to his sight from the hour when he first set eyes upon 
 her ; and now, as she stood there, on the mat by the 
 table, so coolly neat in her, close-fitting, practical dress 
 of brown Hollands ; a very becoming flush of momen 
 tary temper on her wholesome face ; he would have 
 given anything not to have started her off. Yet such 
 is the power of trivial mental habit he could not help 
 saying : 
 
 " Sinner, turn ; why will you Dyak ?" 
 
 A door opened and shut sharply, in token of Miss 
 Ankeroo s unspeakably disdainful retirement : leaving 
 Mr. Dodge ample leisure to repent, in solitude, and 
 then betake himself to preparation for the dinner that 
 was to preface his embarkation for Singapore. 
 
UNDER TEE DURION TREE. 173 
 
 But other conversation, indistinct murmurs whereof 
 had partly suggested the one already given, went on yet 
 in the garden ; where, seated, at colloquial distance, 
 upon a rustic bamboo settee, in the shade of the durion 
 tree, Miss Effiugham and Lieutenant Belmore enjoyed 
 the rising afternoon breeze together. 
 
 It seems that there should be opportunity to give a 
 pretty picture here. No setting could have been more 
 suggestive to the artistic instinct, more grateful to the 
 artistic eye, than the palm-roofed house and its creeper- 
 loaded palisade inclosure ; the former lifted into a 
 pavilion-like effect by its supporting natural colon 
 nade, and showing against a background of lofty, 
 umbrella-shaped tree-tops, rock-patched mountain jun 
 gle and fleece of dappled sky, like some primitive ark 
 stranded half way up its vernally regenerated Ara 
 rat ; the latter shutting out waterside declivity, squalid 
 Malayan town, and the sweep of circumjacent wilder 
 ness, from within living green walls to a spacious quad 
 rangular valley of yellow paths, sumptuous banks of 
 flowers strange and familiar, and occasional graceful 
 tree-ferns, fruit palms and elm-like altitudes of rustling 
 verdure, seen only in the Tropics. 
 
 Half in the dense, cool shadows of gigantic Nypa, 
 majestic durion, or delicate mangosteen ; half in the 
 full, mellow light of an Equatorial afternoon ; the cos 
 mopolitan rose, jessamine, veronica and lily shared 
 their fertile beds with chumpaka, kenangee, and other 
 odorous, brilliant plants of an eternal summer. Ferns 
 of every size and shape, from the low clump of emerald 
 fans to the great pandanus shaft of leaves large enough 
 for sails, made flower-lighted groves to the eye at every 
 turn ; and across floral bank and foot-path, from stem 
 of palm to bough of fruit-tree, swung luxuriant ropes 
 of the milky jantawon creeper. The choicest natural 
 
174 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 growths of the soil had been reinforced here by treas 
 ures from the fine Botanical Garden of Singapore, 
 under the enthusiastic skill of the negro, Ambrose ; 
 and the quick result in that climate of the Equator was 
 a feast of color and palmated form possible only in the 
 teeming lands of the sun. 
 
 Scarcely satisfactory could be any picture in words 
 of a scene so combining civilized design and rank wild- 
 ness that the abruptness of the association imparted an 
 effect of strangeness to ordinarily familiar objects, and 
 made unaccustomed features the stranger from the jux 
 taposition. Pictorial efforts in language must always 
 be more confusing than definitely graphic to the imagi 
 nation, when dealing with sights, or forms, greatly un 
 like whatsoever the minds appealed to can recall of 
 their own past perceptions. It is by graphic strokes of 
 the familiar, even in his most foreign delineations, that 
 the successful word-painter conveys a clear and com 
 pact image of that which he describes ; and where, 
 both elementally and consummately, all is practically 
 strange, the receptive intelligence can perceive but a 
 vague generalization of effect in which there is little 
 informing soul of realizing detail. 
 
 Applying this rule to literature descriptive of persons, 
 the inference is, that the vividest pen-picture of an in 
 dividual can reproduce to the mental eye only the su 
 perficialities of feature, form and dress ; for each human 
 being has characteristic details of expression, manner 
 and complete aspect in some wise different from those 
 of any other mortal. These differences in which all 
 distinctive individuality of character exists, can be illus 
 trated to the reader by no suggestions of familiar com 
 parison, any more than the distinguishing details of leaf 
 and branch in one oak-tree can be imaginatively realized 
 with exactness by reference to any or all other oak-trees. 
 
UNDER THE DURION TREE. 175 
 
 If it is impossible for a painter to make an accurate pic 
 ture literally from even the most minutely elaborate de 
 scription of remotely foreign landscapes wholly unknown 
 to his observation, it is equally impracticable for an ar 
 tist to draw exactly the most masterly example of hu 
 man character-portrayal from print. Both painter and 
 draughtsman must idealize more, or less, to supply the 
 inevitable deficiency of comprehensible graphic definite- 
 ness on the part of the writer, and, to that extent, 
 make the pictures their own. Thus, the cleverest 
 book-illustrations, whether of Travel or Romance, owe 
 as much to the artist s imaginations as to the author s 
 delineations ; and even the romancer himself, if he 
 chances to be a draughtsman also, can seldom draw 
 from his own descriptions a picture coming anywhere 
 near what he would have it particularly represent. 
 
 To this day Borneo is so much a land of anomalous 
 mystery for the civilized world, save only in a mere 
 segment of its vast circumference of coast, that even 
 literary voyagers assuming to be the most familiar with 
 the few ports and provinces -accessible to Europeans, 
 halt curiously in all their attempts to describe such a 
 characteristic view, for instance, as is presented by a 
 Borneon forest. The reason is, that such a forest 
 rarely suggests any one single familiarity of usual 
 Tropical description that can be seized upon to help 
 either writer or reader to an associatively expressible 
 idea of its novel effect to the eye. Palm and jungle 
 are but indefinite sky and groundwork of a scene in 
 finite in its striking diversities from forests beheld 
 elsewhere in the Tropics themselves, and which can 
 be represented by no familiar types of delineation. A 
 story like the present one, having its principal action 
 in a country so scarcely describable, can achieve little 
 more exactness of pictorial illustration than may exist 
 
176 THEEE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 in its fidelity of general local color. As for its actors, 
 it is a question whether or not they have all thus far 
 interpreted themselves with sufficient definiteness of 
 detail to be clear individual existences in the reader s 
 apprehension. 
 
 Now here, within sight of us at this moment made 
 strange by the surrounding of such a landscape, and 
 making it the stranger by their presence are Mrs. 
 Effingham, sitting at her needlework on the veranda, 
 under the palm eaves a graceful bending figure robed 
 in dark barege ; Ambrose, in straw hat and brown 
 linen, bowing his glistening black face to the weeding 
 of a bed near the palisade-opening toward the river, 
 with Cherubino beside him in the usual cap and checks, 
 putting maddening inquiries for the cause of every 
 movement ; and, on the bamboo sofa in the shade of 
 the wild durion tree, the young naval officer in gold- 
 laced cap, blue camlet coat, sword-belt and white trou 
 sers, and the daughter of the house in fleecy pink, with 
 her black curls gathered back by a ribbon into one rip 
 pling mass beneath the farther curve of a Leghorn 
 "Gypsy" hat. Of these, the mute abstracted needle- 
 worker on the veranda should have shown for herself, 
 by this time, a sufficiently suggestive personality ; even 
 the small-boy may, perhaps, be distinctively developed 
 as a positive irritant ; but how much more than a larger 
 boy has been seen in the invalided lieutenant of the 
 Cressy, and how much more than a pretty school 
 girl in his fair companion ? Indeed the two have yet to 
 be found working out their own illustrations, from out 
 line to full figure, and here, in this garden in Borneo, 
 let them begin it. 
 
 " Every day my Uncle is more urgent that I shall re 
 turn to duty," were the words the young man was say 
 ing, as a previously somewhat desultory talk went on, 
 
UNDER THE DUEION TREE. Ill 
 
 "and I have coaxed the Kajah to allow me to go with 
 him on the Bruni expedition, as a volunteer, so that I 
 may have at least a fortnight longer on this delightful 
 island. After that, I really must go back to Singapore, 
 I suppose, to look for my ship." 
 
 "With hands clasped, the one arm hanging and the 
 other across the back of the seat, he sat with face 
 toward her and a pathetically deploring expression 
 upon it. Sitting slightly forward, measuring a fan me 
 chanically between finger-tips in her lap, her charming 
 head turned far enough in his direction for ingenuous 
 communion of eyes, she heard and saw his regret with 
 unaffected sympathy. 
 
 "We shall all be so sorry to have you go," she said. 
 "Mamma and you get along so well together, and Papa 
 and Cousin Sadie take your kindness about their Singa 
 pore mails and other things so much as a matter of 
 course, that we shall be fairly homesick without you." 
 
 "I don t want you to think me conceited, Miss Effing- 
 ham," returned he ; " but, upon my word, you know, I 
 hope the event will go a little hard with T/OM, particu 
 larly." 
 
 " Oh, I shall be more than sorry, "cried the girl, with 
 out the least coquettish pretense of reserve in the mat 
 ter. " You have been so good to us, so thoughtful for 
 us in every way, in this strange country, that it will 
 not seem half so pleasant and safe to me when you are 
 gone. How could it ?" 
 
 Belmore was not distinctly conscious of having been 
 able to exercise any marked protective power in the 
 case ; but it was very grateful to his masculine instinct 
 that feminine helplessness should so innocently credit 
 him with it. He did not detect quite what he coveted, 
 however, in her unhesitating gratitude. 
 
 " I wonder how long you d be sorry if we never 
 
178 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 should meet again ?" he went on, with a weak relapse 
 into some of his old boyishness. " After this little pic 
 nic of ours, to-morrow, I shall turn fighting-character 
 once more, and smell gunpowder. There is no doubt, 
 they say, that the rebel pangeran up at Bruni Usop, I 
 believe, his outlandish name is will give our ships a 
 warm reception. I may be killed, you know." 
 
 A momentary, undefinable change passed over Miss 
 Effingham s sensitive countenance ; but before her 
 watchful observer could fairly catch it she shocked 
 him with a little peal of laughter. 
 
 "I don t believe it, Mr. Belmore," was her comment, 
 with a sportive shake of the head. 
 
 " May I ask why ?" (With some dignity. ) 
 
 " Because I feel sure that if you thought so, yourself, 
 you wouldn t go." 
 
 She laughed again, and, after an instant s blushing 
 impulse of resentment, Belmore frankly gave way to 
 merriment also. 
 
 "Dear me! I m afraid you re too right," he con 
 fessed, with another blush. " Perhaps if I knew that 
 there was actually a bullet billeted for me at Bruni, I 
 shouldn t be quite so brave. But you ought not to be 
 so cruel to a poor fellow s little vanity, Miss Effingham, 
 when you must know, very well, that if I am particu 
 larly willing to live just now, it is because I want to see 
 you again." 
 
 " Then there really will not be much danger where 
 you are going will there ?" asked Abretta, the least 
 possible deeper tint rising to her cheeks, and her man 
 ner the least bit fluttered. 
 
 " Oh, I may only lose an arm, or some trifle of that 
 kind," the lieutenant began ; but he was far too soft 
 hearted to work long upon any one s feelings, even in 
 such a case as this, and closed his pretended forebodings 
 
UNDER THE DURION TREE. 179 
 
 with a laugh designed to drive away the gravity begin 
 ning to show in the expressive black eyes meeting his 
 cloudless blue ones. 
 
 "You are too kind to us to wish us to be unhappy 
 about you," answered the young lady, responding 
 rather to his manner than to his words. 
 
 " I hope I am. Only only you see, it s natural for 
 one like myself to want his friends to care a little for 
 what happens to him. You can scarcely imagine, Miss 
 Effingham, how new and pleasant my experiences have 
 been to me since I met your family in Java," he con 
 tinued, with increasing earnestness and a fall in his 
 voice. " Losing both of my parents while I was only 
 a boy yet, and going into the navy as soon afterward as 
 possible, I am quite a savage in my ignorance of home- 
 life and gentle society. Uncle Will has never given me 
 much encouragement to cultivate what social opportuni 
 ties there are for an officer of my grade in foreign ports. 
 He tells me that, until I am at least a captain, I shall 
 only be tolerated from general respect for the service, 
 and should feel too much pride in our respectable 
 descent to enjoy that kind of notice. There never 
 was a more benevolently unsordid nature than his, in 
 most things ; but he is extraordinarily bitter over the 
 heartlessness of society, all the world round, for poor 
 gentlemen. Of course I have been greatly influenced 
 by him, and have fought shy of anything like social 
 patronage. This is why my acquaintance here with 
 you, and your father and mother and cousin, has been 
 a perfect novelty, as well as a delight to me. Your 
 father plainly don t care a pin whether I m an admiral 
 or a boatswain, and your mother makes me feel all the 
 time as though I wanted her to know everything about 
 me that I know myself. Then there s Miss Ankeroo, 
 who lets me get books and things for her from Singa- 
 
180 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 pore, when I know that she d treat me like a forward 
 boy if I was not in her good graces to a special degree. 
 I sha n t say what it has been to me to know you, your 
 self, Miss Effingham ; because we ve been two young 
 folks together, and, for one, I am bold enough to say 
 that it s beyond any happiness I ever dreamed could 
 be possible ; but don t you see how naturally I hate to 
 tear myself away now, and long to believe that you 11 
 all be sorry to have me go?" 
 
 ; Abretta listened to this honest expression with a 
 sympathy showing undisguised in her look of responsive 
 interest ; yet when it was her impulse to answer with 
 the free warmth of a sister to a brother, some instinc 
 tive embarrassment suddenly turned her speech to 
 awkwardness : 
 
 "It is natural, I think, to to like those who like 
 us," she said, uneasily twirling her fan, and looking 
 down. In a moment, however, youth s impatience 
 with sensations it cannot understand made her raise 
 her eyes fearlessly again to his, and she added : " There 
 is not one of us, Mr. Belmore, who will not be anxious 
 every hour while you are at Bruni. I don t see why my 
 being a girl should make me ashamed of good human 
 feeling, and I 11 say, for myself, that I wish you were 
 not going where there is to be any fighting." Before 
 he could put into words what the brightening of his face 
 intimated, she hurried to a diversion : "But will you 
 have your uncle with you ?" 
 
 "No, he will remain here until the Expedition has 
 done its work, and then he expects to meet me at 
 Singapore." 
 
 " He must be a very kind, good man, at heart, from 
 what you have told us of him," proceeded Miss Effing- 
 ham, with some remaining precipitancy of tone. " I 
 thought him cold and inclined to what I took for a very 
 
UNDER THE DUR10N TREE. 181 
 
 pronounced military hauteur, when he first came here 
 with the Rajah. Who could wonder at it, though, 
 when he mistook Mamma for my poor Aunt Caroline ?" 
 
 " There, you see, is another reason why I should feel 
 particularly drawn toward you all, Miss Eftingham 
 that curious romance of Uncle Will s with your family, 
 so many years ago, 1 suggested the young officer, with 
 renewed animation. "It must have been a pretty 
 serious matter to affect the whole life of a man like 
 him. I m sure our elders don t let you and me into 
 half the seriousness of it. There s an old story, I ve 
 heard, about his jumping recklessly off a boat in the 
 river, before he left the States, to save somebody s life ; 
 and while that would be very like him in a general way, 
 there is a suggestion in the story, as I remember it, 
 that he would just as soon have lost his own life as not. 
 Besides, he seems to me to have grown four or five 
 years older since he came up here from Singapore with 
 Mr. Wise. I think that the meeting with your mother, 
 Miss Effingham, has been a saddening revival of some 
 especially bitter memory for him." 
 
 "Why, you know, he had not heard before that Aunt 
 Caroline was dead," said Abretta. 
 
 " And your Aunt oh, I am sure she could not have 
 been one to trifle with the feelings of such a man !" 
 
 " The ladies of our family have always been ladies, 
 Mr. Belmore," Abretta reminded him, with offended 
 grandiloquence. 
 
 "Beg your pardon I shall never doubt that. If I 
 thought otherwise ; knowing as I do what a lifelong 
 martyr from some early great unhappiness my Uncle 
 has been;" he added, involuntarily straightening and 
 flushing, "I could not have any very kind thoughts for 
 the people or the country associated with a wrong to 
 my best living friend my second father 1" 
 
182 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 The long-lashed girlish eyes in the shade of the 
 "Gypsy" hat dilated as he spoke, and the short upper- 
 lip gave the faintest suggestion of a curl. The youthful 
 pair were separately English and American at some 
 possible points of thought, and none the less so because 
 the Englishman was descended from an American great- 
 grandmother. 
 
 "As my Aunt was incapable of knowingly injuring 
 any one, and is dead," remarked Miss Effingham, tap 
 ping her delicate chin with the fan, and casting a look 
 toward where her mother now stood on the veranda, 
 " I think we may suppose that you need not be preju 
 diced against our country on her account. If your 
 Uncle, who seems so noble in some respects, can allow 
 himself to give way to the usual English injustice to 
 America, and be a blighted character all his life, because 
 an American lady either refused him her hand, or did 
 not give him enough encouragement to ask for it, he 
 must be weaker than I have ever thought a high-minded 
 man and especially a brave soldier, could be." 
 
 "Probably we are both of us too young to judge a 
 man like my Uncle, Miss Efnngham," intimated the 
 nephew, with lofty coldness. 
 
 "That may be true, sir. I do not pretend to any 
 particular competence for estimating character ; but I 
 know what I admire, and the grandest Englishman, to 
 my eyes, that I have ever seen, is the Kajah." 
 
 The poor young sailor s heart was already sick within 
 him at this first little ruffle in their ideal friendship as 
 it had been to him and the last fine touch of feminine 
 temper failed to cut when he saw the pathetic quaver 
 of lip and eyelid by which it was incongruously accom 
 panied. 
 
 "Now I have offended you, great goose that I m 
 always making of myself," he pleaded, penitentially. 
 
UNDER THE DURION TREE. 183 
 
 "There s Mamma coming to meet us," the girl said, 
 rising. 
 
 " Only one minute more !" he exclaimed, rising also, 
 and placing himself between her and the approaching 
 matron, with his back to the latter. " I can t stand it 
 to have you angry with me I d sooner ask your pardon 
 on my knees ! After the pic-nic to-morrow we may 
 never meet again. Who knows ? Now won t you just 
 say it s all right again, before your mother comes ?" 
 
 Those black eyes which he so admired evaded his 
 challenge for an instant, and then impulsively met it 
 with a bright smile. 
 
 " Cousin Sadie would call us a. pair of stupids !" she 
 said, blushing and laughing very prettily together ; 
 and Belmore knew that it was " all right again." 
 
 " My dear, is it not time for you to be preparing for 
 dinner ?" asked Mrs. Emngham, coming up to them in 
 her usual tranquil, unhurried way. 
 
 "That s a hint for me, too; isn t it?" said the 
 young man. " I never know when to leave when I am 
 here." 
 
 "And must you go now ? Can t you dine with us, 
 Mr. Belmore ?" 
 
 "A thousand thanks; but I m pledged to Uncle 
 Will to-day. Be good enough, won t you, Mrs. Emng 
 ham ? to tell Mr. Dodge that I 11 row out to the 
 schooner and bid him good-by. Until the pic-nic, 
 then, ladies, adieu!" 
 
 He lifted his cap, caught the younger lady s glance 
 for an instant as a final reassurance, and, with a bow, 
 turned down the path to the river. 
 
 And mother and daughter watched him as he went ; 
 two figures looking etherially picturesque and artistic 
 in the softening shadow of the durion ; while the up 
 right elastic form going from them in the beating 
 
184 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN, 
 
 sunlight was as luminous, over flower-banks and 
 through palm-leaves, by contrast, as a hasty young 
 day, leaving twilight and its veiled stars behind him. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE PIC-NIC AT THE FORT. 
 
 IF all of the houses erected for Europeans on the 
 hills and knolls about Kuchin, during the first three or 
 four years of the English Kajahship, had been occupied 
 by the full families of their owners, the Christian society 
 of the town would not have lacked a sufficiently propor 
 tionate feminine element to assure and maintain the 
 usual refined sociabilities of civilized life. But such 
 was not the case. A majority of the new, Swiss- 
 cottage-like structures were scarcely more than the 
 lodgings of members of the Kajah s staff ; or the bach 
 elor-halls of English, or Dutch, traders who had been 
 attracted from Singapore, Java, or even India, by the 
 rising commercial fame of Sarawak ; or the business- 
 offices of agents of some of the more enterprising gen 
 eral shippers of the Archipelago. To these residents 
 the place had yet somewhat the temporary character of 
 an encampment, and the married ones postponed the 
 calling of their wives and children thither until they 
 could, at any rate, be more sure of the permanence of 
 their own stay. Nevertheless, a few of the more san 
 guine and positive white comers, from ports not far 
 away, brought their families with them, and their 
 households contained the only English-speaking mem 
 bers of the gentler sex to whom those arriving later 
 could look for womanly countenance. If the American 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 185 
 
 ladies had been less capable than they were of finding 
 much compensation for this peculiar social situation in 
 its suggestive novelty, their experience of life in Borneo, 
 limited as it was to be, would have been intolerably con 
 strained and lonely. But they had gone thither with 
 an intelligent appreciation of the exceptional conditions 
 to be encountered ; chose rather to submit to them in 
 any supposable phase than be separated from husband 
 and father ; and were quite willing to bear their utmost 
 strangeness for the sake of looking on, for a while, at 
 the progress of one of the most remarkable passages in 
 modern history. 
 
 When, therefore, the local social outlook was found to 
 be exactly what these fair visitors might have expected, 
 they adapted themselves cheerfully to its limitations. 
 Mr. Effingham s early acquaintance with two or three 
 of the Europeans with families led presently to such 
 amenities between his and their ladies as were prac 
 ticable in a community where the river was the most 
 eligible way to the house of one s nearest civilized 
 neighbor. Perhaps once a week Mrs. Effingham and 
 her daughter, or Mrs. Effingham and Miss Ankeroo, 
 were rowed in a mat-canopied sampan, under guardian 
 ship of the phlegmatic Berner, for an afternoon call 
 upon the Mertons, or the Yon Camps (as they may be 
 named for present purposes) ; or received like aquatic 
 courtesies from the dames and damsels of those friendly 
 houses in their own home. If the visiting-list was soon 
 exhausted, it had, for that very reason, a charm of its 
 own ; and the roundabout navigation involved, by rea 
 son of there being no sign of such a thing as either 
 street or road in the whole province of Sarawak, would 
 have made a wider range of inter-visitation scarcely 
 desirable under a Borneon sun. 
 
 The "*pic-nic" suggested by Mr, Belmore to signalize 
 
186 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 his last day in Kucliin, prior to the Bruni expedition, 
 was to include Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Merton, and Mr. 
 and Mrs. Yon Camp, who, with the Effinghams and 
 himself (Cousin Sadie declining) would make a party 
 congenial, if small. Miss Merton being at once juvenile 
 and unavoidable, it was also decided to include Master 
 Cherubino for her casual neutralization ; and the objec 
 tive point of the watery journey was to be an old Malay 
 fort on the river-bank, about two miles down the turn 
 of the stream below the town, where, in the days of the 
 Sarebas and Sakarran pirates, many a savage battle 
 had been fought. 
 
 When, on the afternoon appointed for this simple fes 
 tival, the private boats of the three families were mar 
 shaled opposite the Effingham house, for a start, it was 
 observed that the Lieutenant, all attired in snowy duck, 
 had brought a boat much in style like an English 
 wherry, with an awning of striped blue-and-white cloth 
 over the middle, on movable iron rods. 
 
 " I ve borrowed it of a Company s light cruiser down 
 below, at the anchorage," he explained, even before 
 being asked ; " for, as I m a sailor, you know, I want 
 to do a little rowing, myself." 
 
 The other craft were canoes with peaked canopies of 
 matting over two midship seats, and high stems and 
 sterns, at each of which stood a lithe Dyak waterman 
 with a paddle. 
 
 " You see, I can take the two little people with me, 
 if they can be trusted in that way," continued this 
 obliging young man. " Though, to be sure," he added, 
 as though suddenly struck by the idea, "I suppose it 
 would be safer if some one else should be with us." 
 
 "I should say, that the less load you have, the less 
 will be your chance for another sunstroke, Mr. Bel- 
 more," observed Mr. Effingham, dryly. 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 187 
 
 " And I would advise you, sir, to take our lightest 
 weight with you, at any rate, said stout and amiable Mr. 
 Von Camp, who saw, as they all did, what he wanted. 
 
 "Well, I never could talk my way to anything dex 
 terously," laughed the young Englishman, in some 
 confusion. " The plain fact is, I do want Miss Effing- 
 ham to let me be her boatman this time." 
 
 "Honestly said, lad!" cried Mr. Merton, a little, 
 light-haired exile from Manchester, attired, like the 
 other elders, in a thin blue suit and straw hat. "If 
 the young lady can resist that, I m mistaken." 
 
 "And she s so light," chorused Mrs. Yon Camp 
 and Mrs. Merton, with admirable good nature. 
 
 "I suppose all four of the children must go together, 
 for once," assented Mrs. Effingham, looking smilingly 
 at her husband ; and, as he graciously nodded, and the 
 sailor extended a hand, Abretta demurely stepped 
 into the wherry with the small people. 
 
 In any country of polite usages the scheme of transit 
 necessitated in this excursion by water would have been 
 ludicrous ; for the several married pairs embarked each 
 in its respective native boat ; all three of the husbands 
 carrying fire-arms with them, as though duck-shooting 
 might be a purpose of the unsociably distributed 
 party. Berner, with the hampers and two aboriginal 
 subordinates, went ahead in a separate canoe to assure 
 practicable ingress for them at the designated landing ; 
 the wherry led the family procession, because its oars 
 man was to be the professional guide, and then followed, 
 in line, the other boats. 
 
 But in the scenery of a wilderness, where the over 
 whelming preponderance and massive complications of 
 inanimate Nature make the native man comparatively 
 as insignificant as the commonest brute of his own for 
 est, and the human intruder, from without, little more 
 
183 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 imposing than a mere automaton of petty incongruity, 
 the less ostentation of civilized state there is in the con 
 ventional forms observed by casual Christian invaders, 
 the less unfortunately conspicuous is the suggestion of 
 so many minnows assuming importance upon their ad 
 vent to an unexplored ocean. 
 
 The appropriateness of the spectacle presented by 
 the foreign water-party under consideration was in its 
 modest acceptance of appearances in keeping with the 
 silent spirit of the scene ;" the very hiding of the dresses 
 of civilization under the tent-like awnings of mats on 
 the canoes being a happy concession to the consistency 
 of Nature s eternal harmony. The Dyak figures at the 
 up-curling prows and almost vertical sterns of the na 
 tive boats, in conical hats of plaited rattan, and sleeve 
 less striped frocks, belted at waist with red sarongs tied 
 scarf-wise, were in chromatic as well as bodily con 
 sonance with the picture all round ; and while the 
 white-clad, temporarily hatless young English rower 
 and his wherry certainly jarred upon the esthetic 
 sense, the forms of children always, like flowers, con 
 sistent in any hues or modes of dress with any vernal 
 clime and of the girl, in her graceful broad hat and 
 neutral-tinted muslin, softened even them into a kind 
 of allowably fantastic relief to the scenic monotone. 
 
 To splash and prismatic spray of British oar and 
 Borneon paddle, the course of the little voyage was 
 past the riverside campongs of the Chinese and Ma 
 layan populace and through a swarm of watercraft 
 great and small in the anchorage overlooked by the 
 Eajah s house. Near the Weltevreden was the Eng 
 lish corvette destined to start with the ruler of Sara 
 wak for Bruni on the morrow, and from the several 
 small boats plying busily back and forth between it and 
 the government wharf more than one naval officer 
 waved a hand to Belmore. 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 189 
 
 "They arc my coming shipmates, you know," ob 
 served that gentleman to Miss Effingham. 
 
 But tide-washed town, and picturesque fleet, and 
 rolling green heights on either side with bamboo Swiss- 
 cottages among the palms, were soon left behind. Be 
 tween narrowing banks of dense jungle, mighty Nypas 
 and snake-rooted mangroves, the little flotilla went on 
 down the watery valley, in the grateful shadow of hills 
 showing every tint that sunlight can produce on inter 
 posing verdure. Even in this nearness to familiar 
 human habitation and protection, there was a solitary 
 wildness in the view on every hand, a suggestiveness 
 of unimaginable savage mystery in this mere covert 
 verge of vast and unknown Borneo, that disposed the 
 strange voyagers more to wrapt contemplation than to 
 speech. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the never leg-wearied Cherubino 
 did not come wholly under this rule ; for, after a series 
 of unsmiling climbing and stumbling revolutions around 
 the doll-like Miss Merton in the middle of the boat, 
 during which he cross-examined her as to why she 
 wore each article of dress or ornament that he could 
 indicate with a moistened forefinger, the inquiring 
 child suddenly realized that his older companions par 
 ticularly desired to remain quiet, and, accordingly, 
 found himself irresistibly impelled to address them. 
 "With one of those abrupt changes of attention from 
 one object to another so often astonishing the nerves of 
 elderly childless observers of children, the boy discon 
 tinued an attempt to look Miss Merton out of counten 
 ance with his nose almost touching hers, in order to 
 lurch startlingly to the side of the boat and stare in 
 tensely at the shore. 
 
 "Why, J don t see any monkeys !" he cried, with a 
 shrill emphasis on the personal pronoun, as though the 
 
190 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 presence of a multitude of indigenous simise in the over 
 hanging trees had been specially announced by somebody 
 else. 
 
 " Look into the water, and you 11 see one," muttered 
 the indignantly disenchanted Lieutenant. 
 
 In childlike unconsciousness of the sarcasm intended 
 by this piece of advice, the literal Cherub forthwith 
 folded so long a section of his upper-person so far over 
 the wherry s edge in search of the predicted animal, 
 that his sister sprang toward him with a cry of alarm, 
 and his affrighted adviser " caught a crab" with his oars 
 in a spasmodic effort to row and rescue simultaneously. 
 
 "Oh, Bino, how disagreeable you can be !" was the 
 sisterly expression of feeling, as the active little fellow, 
 summarily drawn back by his waistband, braced himself 
 perpendicularly again across the boat, in the shape of a 
 spiked check triangle. 
 
 " Then why didn t they let Nellie Merton and me go 
 in the boat with Berner ?" asked the Cherub, in a tone 
 of reproachful inquiry. " But I know why, Bretta," he 
 added, before any one else could speak "Mr. Belmore 
 took us along because he wanted you in his boat, I 11 
 bet you!" 
 
 What rebuke is ever adequate for frenzying words of 
 this preternaturally regardless description from the mer 
 cilessly guileless lips of unpurchasable childhood ? Miss 
 Effingham attempted none, but turned dangerously 
 sparkling eyes and burning cheeks away from all who 
 could see them. The Lieutenant, rowing suddenly 
 harder, as for his life, fixed a stony look upon the top of 
 Miss Merton s straw "flat," and murmured something 
 wistful of deep-sea soundings for a "detestable little 
 beggar." The small-boy whistled indefinitely for a 
 moment over the ruin he had wrought ; and, then, find 
 ing a nail amongst the numerous other necessaries of 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 191 
 
 life in one of his pockets, was blighted into blessed 
 quietude, for nearly five minutes, by the despairing 
 hopelessness of obtaining a hammer to drive it into the 
 handiest wooden surface. 
 
 Where, at last, a landing was to be effected, the river 
 indented the shore in a softly surging pool, blackening 
 into vague dimness of outline in the shadow of dense 
 overhanging foliage. A tongue of land, carrying man 
 groves, jungle and wild pepper bushes, or vines, to its 
 very tip, traversed the arrested waters for a short dis 
 tance and was washed on the other side by a brook-like 
 tributary stream, winding through thicket and forest as 
 far as the sunlight could be seen upon it. Between the 
 extremity of the little cape and the converging opposite 
 bank, a great "boom" of tree-trunks, lashed together 
 with rattan and secured by ropes of cocoa fibre, had 
 once obstructed the Sarawak against the invading prahus 
 of head-hunting Sea-Dyaks ; while the six pounders and 
 swivels of a fort situated to command either side of the 
 headland were designed no less to repel possible internal 
 assailants from up the river, than the Illanaons, or 
 Giloloans, or Sakarrans, sallying in from the ocean. 
 
 Debarking at an opening that had been cut through 
 the jungle growth by the parang-latoks of Berner s 
 native pioneers, the boating visitors made their way, 
 between trees fairly webbed over by creepers, into what 
 had once been a stronghold of the bandhara Muda 
 Hassim s Malayan fighters. It was a quadrangular 
 clearing in the thicket, fifty feet across, inclosed to 
 about the height of a man s head in stout, piles, against 
 which the weedy turf and earth dug from the centre 
 had been packed in a smooth slant, save where shallow 
 embrasures were left for partly imbedding the guns. 
 Less than half a dozen years of abandonment had turned 
 this dismantled fortification of the headland woods into 
 
m THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 a symmetrically terraced hollow of matted grass, weed 
 and ground-vine, giving a grateful spring to the foot. 
 Encompassing the sides of the shelving green square 
 were palms, all varying in altitudes and umbrageous 
 contours, between which the water gleamed from three 
 points and the darkening vistas of the inland wood were 
 discernible at the fourth. 
 
 Mats from the boats were spread upon the grassy 
 slopes, and Berner and his men actually carried their 
 canoe from the water into the fort, where it served at 
 once for cupboard, wine-cellar and table. No one, how 
 ever, was immediately inclined to sit. The three married 
 gentlemen made early excuses to stroll out of a former 
 rear passage, or sally-port, with their guns, on the 
 chance of finding something interesting to shoot ; the 
 children lost no time in clambering to one of the em 
 brasures, and Lieutenant Belmore, left not reluctantly 
 to be the squire of dames, led the ladies by an easy 
 ascent to one of the merlons of the old battlement, 
 where, in safe view of Cherubino and Miss Nellie, a 
 favorable sight of adjacent and lower objects might be 
 obtained. 
 
 Mrs. Merton and Mrs. Yon Camp had seen the place 
 before ; but to the Effinghams this was their first near 
 acquaintance with a true Tropical wilderness. Abretta 
 and her mother gazed with eager interest at the dim 
 forest-opening so close at hand, and the older lady 
 remarked that it was curious to find a fort thus backing 
 upon a covert in which legions of enemies might crawl 
 safely to its very walls. 
 
 "Ah, that is because the whole fighting genius of 
 Borneo is seagoing," answered the sailor. "On land, 
 both the Malays and the Dyaks Laut are comically 
 miserable warriors ; they have no tactics as soldiers, 
 know nothing of military engineering, and European 
 
THE PIC-NIC AT THE FORT. 193 
 
 troops would have only to mow them down with grape- 
 shot and musketry ; but put twenty to fifty of them 
 into each of those prahus of theirs, give them their 
 sumpitans, spear-hooks, krisses and noisy tom-toms, 
 and they are formidable foes for either ship becalmed 
 or sleeping waterside village. A fort to repel them 
 needs only to be on guard toward the sea, and difficult 
 enough of access from thence to prevent any compact 
 rush of the landing pirates. In the jungle, amongst 
 the trees, between this and the water, in front and on 
 both sides, pointed bamboo sticks, called patobongs, or 
 ranjows, were planted thickly to cut the feet of advanc 
 ing enemies. Sometimes, too, holes, like those tiger- 
 pits we saw out of Singapore, are dug for the 
 entrapment of the besiegers, covered carefully with 
 weeds and having sharp stakes set upright at the bot 
 tom. But then, in a great majority of cases, if the 
 piratical ruffians know that there is any kind of a fort 
 in readiness for them, and they cannot pass it by water, 
 not much is to be feared from their attacks. I daresay 
 that, with the boom there used to be in the river, a 
 few awkward shots between the trees, from the guns in 
 these battlements, were enough to send fifty pirate pra 
 hus rowing back to sea." 
 
 " I have often wondered," said Abretta, " how these 
 pirates, in such boats and with such weapons, could ever 
 capture large commercial vessels with arms on board." 
 
 "Generally, they have succeeded by night-surprises, 
 or by pouncing treacherously upon ships disabled by 
 storm, or wreck," returned the Lieutenant. "The 
 two English sailors whose release we are going up to 
 Bruni to demand, were carried off from a wreck on the 
 northern coast by some of Pangeran Usop s miscreants. 
 Along the whole three thousand miles of this immense 
 island s coast the shore is virtually one great water- 
 
194 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 jungle, in which the pirate craft can lie securely hidden 
 and from which they can dart out at any passing prey. 
 If they find the latter prepared and too strong for them, 
 they may fire a shot or so with their antiquated bow- 
 chasers, or swivels ; but, generally, they row right away 
 against the wind, and so, of course, cannot be overtaken 
 by sail. Rajah Brooke s Royalist was fired on, one 
 night, as she went up to Bruni." 
 
 " No more such work as that, since our great Rajah 
 and Captain Keppel gave them a taste of English gun 
 powder last year and the year before," exclaimed Mrs. 
 Merton, patriotically. 
 
 " It certainly did them a world of good, Mrs. Mer 
 ton ; but it s to be feared that they ll require more, 
 yet, before those Arab shereef leaders of theirs realize 
 that their day is finally over." 
 
 "If the Eajah would only catch and execute a few 
 of those same shereefs," suggested Mrs. Yon Camp. 
 
 " Has Mr. Brooke ever ordered the execution of any 
 one, Mr. Belmore ?" inquired Abretta. 
 
 "No. Or, that is, not directly, I believe," replied 
 the young man. "He has in co-operation with him, 
 you know, the native magistrates called the Bandhara, 
 or officer of State, the Patingi, or officer of War, and 
 the Tumangong, or chief of Admiralty affairs. Until 
 he can complete a code of his own, he governs by what 
 is known as the Oudong-Oudong, or old written Native 
 law. Cases have come up under this law two or three 
 times, when, by the judgment of the magistrates, death 
 was the penalty. Not feeling justified in setting aside 
 the law, Mr. Brooke allowed it to take its course, and 
 the culprits were walked into the jungle behind your 
 present charming home, Miss Effingham that was 
 while it was the Government House and there krissed 
 to death." 
 
THE PIG-NIC AT THE FORT. 195 
 
 "Horrible!" murmured Miss Effingham, with a 
 shudder. 
 
 " I should not have told you that, perhaps," said Bel- 
 more, compunctiously. "But let me add, that the 
 prisoners were atrocious, irreclaimable wretches, and 
 that the punishment is really very merciful. The kris 
 is placed with the point over the heart, and a single 
 sharp blow on the hilt is said to produce death instan 
 taneously." 
 
 "We seem to have drifted into an unpleasant branch 
 of the subject chiefly through your too personal ques 
 tion, my dear," interposed Mrs. Effingham. " Are not 
 those our gentlemen below ?" 
 
 From the base of the green wall upon which they 
 were standing there was a slight descent to the edge of 
 the main woodland. Into the latter Mr. Effiugham and 
 his companions had penetrated as far as high military 
 boots and reasonably vigorous aggressiveness of limb 
 might assure progression ; but even the parang-latoks 
 of the attendant Dyaks could assist such laborious 
 travel only to a very limited extent. If mere jungle 
 gave way to the keen edges and powerful leverage of 
 these weapons, like grass under scythes, it was not so 
 easy to cut avenues between mighty trees, enormous 
 tree-bushes, and dense brakes of gigantic reeds, all in 
 such close proximity to each other, and so wound round 
 and round with endless ropes of creepers, that only a 
 large body of woodmen could have opened farther pas 
 sage through them. When it is necessary to clear a 
 space in a Borneon forest, no ordinary tree can be 
 brought down singly. After chopping partly through 
 a multitude of trunks with their peculiar little adzes, 
 the Dyaks select the tallest and stoutest tree to be 
 found on the outer edge of the designed clearing, and 
 make its resistless fall the means of bringing down the 
 
196 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 whole creaper-ensnarled system of lesser woods. So it 
 was that the three gentlemen got no deeper in their 
 sylvan stroll than to be more or less distinctly visible, 
 yet, to the group on the neglected battlement. "While 
 that group was descending to rejoin them through the 
 primitive sally-port, they went on with the conversa 
 tion that had begun at their enforced halt. 
 
 "To see the birds and beasts belonging here," Mr. 
 Von Camp was saying, from his general experience as 
 an Archipelago traveler, " one must come at about sun 
 rise, or near sunset. Excepting the wild hogs, and, 
 possibly, the cucans, or Malayan lemurs, the beasts 
 keep silent and out of sight for the main part of the 
 day, especially in the forest-edges likely to have human 
 visitors. At morning and evening, however, the birds 
 and monkeys set up a terrible hubbub, and can be seen 
 in flocks and troupes among the high branches." 
 
 "There are no orang-outans, I believe, in the whole 
 Sarawak valley," Mr. Merton observed ; "yet they are 
 plentiful to the west of us, in Sambas, and to the east, 
 along the Sadong." 
 
 "The reason for that was explained to me after I 
 had seen the amazing creatures in the trees of Simun- 
 jon," said Mr. Effingham. "The Malays of Songi 
 village, on a branch of the Sadong, told me that the 
 mias is found only in forests where the land is marshy 
 as well as level. The forests on the Simunjon river, a 
 branch of the Sadong, and over the whole twenty miles 
 between that and the seacoast, are low and swampy ; 
 in fact the same conditions prevail through that whole 
 mias country, for a hundred miles north and east of 
 Sadong. In the Sarawak valley the land is chiefly dry 
 and hilly. The animal, as I have been informed, also, 
 dislikes rising grounds. There are scattered hills in 
 his forests on which the Dyak villagers cultivate fruit- 
 
THE PIG-NIG AT THE FORT. 197 
 
 trees, and these he ascends in the night-time to steal 
 his favorite unripe durions. But only under stress for 
 food will he have anything to do with high lands." 
 
 " It is curious," philosophized Mr. Yon Camp, " that 
 the great man-apes of Asia and Africa have coats of 
 the same hues as the complexions of the human beings 
 around them. In Africa they are black ; in Borneo 
 and Sumatra they are reddish yellow, like the Dyaks, 
 or brownish black, like the Malays. If I remember 
 rightly, in South America the same rule holds good." 
 
 "You and Dr. Hedland should compare notes, Mr. 
 Yon Camp," said Mr. Effingham. 
 
 "Ah, by the way, you have seen the Doctor s famous 
 prize. What did you think of the creature ?" 
 
 " Oshonsee is a great, a wonderful curiosity. I never 
 before saw anything in brute form so humiliatingly like 
 our species." 
 
 The ladies and their naval escort now came picking 
 their way with some difficulty to the shadowy game- 
 preserve, and at once indulged in much pleasant banter 
 upon the failure of the gun-bearers to distinguish them 
 selves as sportsmen. Then followed an hour of such 
 very limited rambling as was practicable over ground 
 so stubbly and amongst growths so slightly penetrable. 
 Lieutenant Belmore gallantly exhausted his utmost 
 local information to entertain the fair patrons of his 
 pic-nic plot with objects previously known to him. 
 The parang-latok of one of the Dyak peasants was ex 
 amined, and shown to be something like a long razor, 
 tapering from tip to haft and bent to an angle with the 
 hilt. To cut crops, or jungle, and to sever a pig at one 
 blow, this sharp instrument was equally adapted ; differ 
 ing from the parang-ihlang, or Dyak war-sword, prin 
 cipally, in being rounded at the point like a knife-blade, 
 and having the angular, or razor-like, junction with the 
 
198 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 handle. Through intervals of other trees, Sago and 
 Areca palms could also be pointed out in the distance ; 
 the latter showing a handsome blossom, and yielding 
 an egg-shaped nut whereof the pulp is used in betel. 
 An object resembling a Titanic inverted bush, its 
 branches all bare and sticking into the ground, and its 
 roots elevated high in the air, with leaves upon them, 
 was explained as a fig-tree. The only floral displays in 
 any way brilliant, were those of a slender shaft, perhaps 
 thirty feet high and bushy at the top, with crimson 
 stars blooming in thick clusters all the way up the 
 trunk ; and of some genus of parasitical plant, hanging 
 from a low bough in long, swaying spikes of purple- 
 spotted orange-colored flowers. These were novel and 
 gorgeous enough in themselves, but far from being suffi 
 cient to realize the popular idea of an Equatorial 
 forest s splendor of blossom. 
 
 MissEffingham ingenuously exhibited her disappoint 
 ment at this shortcoming, and Mr. Yon Camp replied : 
 
 " There, my dear young lady," said he, " is where the 
 world s imagination persists in being wrong. In India, 
 in South America, in Mexico, in the West Indies, and, 
 I dare say, in the southern part of your own country, 
 the flowers of the forest are far more numerous and 
 lovely than any thus far seen in this so-called Garden of 
 the Equator ; while in a given number of cultivated miles 
 of either American, or English, or German soil, you 
 may find such riches of blooming plants as the most 
 luxuriant wilderness never presents. It is laborious 
 human cultivation that makes flower, as well as fruit, 
 an appreciable blessing to man. Why, look at fruit, 
 now," continued the Anglicized Dutch philosopher, 
 gazing round at his little audience. " In a civilized 
 land a homeless man can find in summer woods and 
 fields the berries, or grapes, or apples, or pears, or what 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 199 
 
 not, to be food for him in variety. But here, in this 
 region of endless summer, what does the needy native 
 traveler choose to eat amongst all the fruits and edible 
 growths of his vast forests ? Nothing, I assure you, 
 but palm cabbages, which he makes wholesome with 
 a little salt ! Everything else for which this climate is 
 famous, in the eatable and even potable line ; from 
 coffee, and nutmegs, and figs, and bananas, and mangos- 
 teens, up to cocoanuts, bread-fruit and durions ; must 
 be subjected to systematic human cultivation before 
 even the natives care to partake of it." 
 
 "Is the bread-fruit found on this island?" inquired 
 Mrs. Efnngham. 
 
 " I think not, madame. It is best known as coming 
 from Amboyna, a little island south of Ceram in the 
 eastern Moluccas. In talking of this climate, " added 
 Mr. Von Camp, " I mean that of the whole East Indian 
 Archipelago." 
 
 The ramble of the company was extended far enough 
 across the little headland for a view some distance up 
 the inlet entering on the farther side and winding into 
 the wooded obscurities of the island. In patches of 
 sunshine showing about the stream before it reached 
 the darker arches of the leaning trees of either bank, 
 brilliant flashes of color could be discerned traversing 
 the white air, and might have been mistaken for small 
 birds had not Mr. Yon Camp maintained that they 
 were ornithopterous, or bird-winged, butterflies. No 
 boat of white men had ever attempted to go up this 
 tributary thread of water yet ; and how far it pene 
 trated, and whether the wild hogs, deer and tiger-cats 
 of the region came to it at night, were questions the 
 gentlemen with the guns would have been pleased to 
 solve if time and the occasion had been more favorable. 
 
 Upon the return to the embowered fort it was found 
 
200 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 that Berner had gone nearly into apoplexy between 
 efforts to assure proper temperatures for the claret and 
 sherry, and, simultaneously, keep due watch and ward 
 over Nellie Merton and his juvenile master. Once, 
 only, had he ventured to turn his back wholly upon 
 the miniature flirtation in the embrasure, while giving 
 the final touches to his canoe-sideboard ; and during 
 that brief interval the comforting Cherub had suc 
 ceeded in plunging headlong from his height to the 
 ground beyond, in a proud young endeavor to destroy 
 Miss Merton s nerves by standing on one foot upon the 
 extremest crumbling verge of the parapet. A custom 
 of not crying in such crises, lest parental or other el 
 derly cognizance should tend to the lessening of imme 
 diate future enjoyments of the same kind, made the 
 contused lad able to refrain from alarming noises in 
 this instance, and the appearance of his head obliquely 
 girded with the far more agitated Swiss butler s hand 
 kerchief was the first notification to his guardians and 
 their friends that he had once more escaped the violent 
 death so alert to attend the simplest acrobatic diver 
 sions of children with whom it is hard for the world to 
 part. 
 
 There was a light luncheon, with the wine, on the 
 mats spread over the grass. Berner had in store 
 chicken and other cold viands, and the materials for 
 salads ; but, as dinner was to be eaten at home, so 
 soon, fruit was the refreshment chiefly in demand. 
 
 "By the way, I ve got a bit of a curiosity to show 
 you all," remarked Mr. Merton, receiving from one 
 of his boatmen something rolled in leaves. Throwing 
 aside the latter he exhibited an object resembling a 
 withered orange. " That," he continued, handing it 
 to be passed around, "is a fruit once so common in 
 Borneo that it gave the island its native name Pulo 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 201 
 
 Kalamantan. It is the Kalamantan, now found only 
 in the far interior, I believe, and said to be intolerably 
 sour eating." 
 
 " It is thought by some authorities to be the aborig 
 inal form of the durion ; a wilder species, I mean, than 
 the wild durion of the coast," Mr. Yon Camp said, not 
 willing to be eclipsed in a field he had so lately thought 
 principally his own. 
 
 "Have you learned how to eat durions, yet, Mrs. 
 Effingham ?" asked Belmore. 
 
 "No," said the lady, looking amused. "Peter 
 brought one to the house soon after our arrival and 
 we have never cared for another experience." 
 
 The two other matrons and their husbands laughed. 
 They knew how terrible is the odor of the great fruit 
 when first opened and also how easily European 
 palates can learn to delight in the durion taste. 
 
 " It must be confessed that the preliminary aroma 
 is a little trying," conceded the slightly disconcerted 
 young man: "yet people who would think it grossly 
 vulgar to partake of plain onions may become enthusi 
 astic durion-eaters. There are several such at the 
 Rajah s table ; and, really, you know, when you 
 come to try those positively beautiful ovals of creamy 
 pulp, in their five satiny-white sections, they do com 
 pensate for the preceding shock to the nostrils." 
 
 "And these very durions must be improved by cul 
 tivation before they are fit for any one s taste," said 
 Mr. Yon Camp, reverting to his hobby. " So it is with 
 the Amboyna bread-fruit. Bake it, in its cultivated 
 state, and it eats like batter, or Yorkshire, pudding ; 
 but in its wild growth the seeds about as large as 
 chestnuts are the best part of it. I ve heard that it 
 is the same with the nut-fruit of Brazil." 
 
 Assuredly the doings and conversations of these 
 
202 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 excursionists to the old Malayan fort were eccentric 
 for a pic-nic ; yet, in being characteristic of a little 
 band of educated people lingering in such a way on 
 the shore of a Borneon river, and naturally excited to 
 greatest interest by things belonging or relating to the 
 unwonted scenes around them, they did not affect even 
 the projector of the pastime disappointingly. If few 
 of the customary sentimental graces of pic-nicking were 
 practicable, the whole tendency of the innovation was 
 to make all the partakers seem and act like members 
 of the one family, drawn more intimately together 
 from the very unwontedness of everything about the 
 affair. Hence the naval officer was warranted at least 
 in a general filial and fraternal assumption, as congenial 
 to his inclinations as it would have been impracticable 
 within more conventional circumstances. To crown 
 all for him, the bruised condition of Cherubino led to 
 the placing of that imperishable lad under the partic 
 ular care of Berner for the homeward voyage, and little 
 Miss Merton had the inspiration to plead successfully 
 a place with her parents. This left Miss Effingham to the 
 exclusive oarsmanship of the Lieutenant what he had 
 been secretly pondering to bring about all the afternoon. 
 
 Thus it happened, that when the re-embarkation took 
 place, not only were youth and maiden alone in the 
 wherry ; but, as, by a little adroit management on the 
 part of the former, Berner s canoe was started first, the 
 wherry, by another artless touch of a similar policy, 
 was made to linger until the last. 
 
 " Sha n t we have this awning down now, Miss Effing- 
 ham ?" queried the schemer, in a tone of undisguised 
 satisfaction, as he suddenly rested on his oars in the 
 wake of the parental boat. " The hills keep off the 
 sun, you see, and you have your parasol. We can then 
 get a so much better view of everything." 
 
THE PIC-NIC AT THE FORT. 203 
 
 Abretta had a shy consciousness of there being some 
 art in the whole present arrangement, and looked girl 
 ishly startled at the cessation of movement attending 
 his proposition. 
 
 "Oh, yes: I sha n t mind it. But do, please be quick, 
 or they will all leave us behind," she said, uneasily. 
 
 "We can overtake them whenever we please," was 
 his bland answer, as he proceeded to remove their 
 canopy in very leisurely style. But the instinctive per 
 turbation in those innocent black eyes was too much for 
 his pretense of audacity, and, upon resuming the oars, 
 he humbled himself in frank confession. 
 
 "Don t be unhappy because I ve maneuvered a little 
 for one, last tete-a-tete," was his plaintive appeal, the 
 while he made no more exertion than was necessary to 
 keep the boat in its softly rippling course. " It provokes 
 me to think that I hadn t the courage to say at once to 
 your mother, when we started this afternoon, that my 
 true purpose in the whole boating arrangement was to 
 have you, especially, to myself, for a while. There can 
 be no earthly sense in all this cowardice and pretense 
 over an absolutely harmless and natural impulse of 
 friendship before a long separation. I m honest enough 
 now, at any rate, to tell you the full truth, and if you 
 can t forgive it, why, then, so much the worse for 
 me." 
 
 They were face to face ; and, as the young man leaned 
 toward her from the thwart, in his earnestness ; resting 
 upon his oars so long as the least impetus of the last 
 mechanical, noiseless stroke remained ; she drew back 
 closer to her end of the boat and cast another uneasy 
 look after the canoes. 
 
 " I ve never practiced any deception with my mother, 
 Mr. Belmore," she began, with ominous dignity, "and 
 cannot be pleased that any one should have done so. 
 
204 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 You may rest assured, too, that if, in her judgment, 
 there were any good reasons why we should not be left 
 to ourselves for a short time, you could not have in 
 vented the means of deceiving her into assent." 
 
 " You can t tell me that better than I know it myself!" 
 he retorted, penitently. " I ve said that I feel shamefaced 
 enough over the way 1 ve plotted for what I never could 
 have gained if you, and your mother and father both 
 did not regard me as too much of a boy to be minded ! 
 And I m so much a mere, moon-struck kind of tire 
 some youngster to you, yourself, Miss Emngham," he 
 continued with a sudden, resentful pull at the oars again 
 " I m so childish, in your estimation, that you have 
 not the remotest idea why I should have any dread of 
 anybody s opposition to my monopoly of you for a half- 
 hour s parting talk. I ve no very distinct theory of my 
 own about it, so far as that goes ; but this I know, and 
 confess I simply could not go away from Sarawak 
 without a good-by to you without witnesses ; and I could 
 not resist an overwhelming, unreasoning impression 
 that I must use artifice to get you into my boat alone." 
 
 If the speaker had possessed any clear sense of what 
 feeling it was that made him so gratuitously timid and 
 designing in the first place, and then drove him into 
 excuses which were but so many egregious self-accusa 
 tions, he could not have thus freely revealed the unmis 
 takable workings of that feeling to the girl by whom it 
 had been inspired. For, in very truth, both of these 
 wholesome and fresh young natures were as innocently 
 ignorant of passion as the morning dew is of the midday 
 thunder-shower. They only knew that there was both 
 a pleasure and a torment in their being together: a 
 pleasure explaining itself easily enough by an infinity of 
 familiar sensations, but a torment all the more perturb- 
 ingly unintelligible because it seemed to arise chiefly 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 205 
 
 from a perpetual instinctive eagerness not to be pleased ! 
 As the association had gone on, in the exceptional cir 
 cumstances of common sojourning in an uncivilized 
 foreign country, it had changed phase, gradually and 
 subtly, from the placid harmony of a congenial youthful 
 companionship to an obscurely disquieted nearer attrac 
 tion, in which was a certain irritable repulsion also. 
 At once far happier than before, and, for the first time, 
 vaguely unhappy, too, in each other s society, the in 
 genuous girl and the not much more sophisticated youth 
 became mutually fretting and bewildering by a conti 
 nual jar of seeming cross-purposes in this second stage 
 of their friendship. She developed an alertness of oppo 
 sition as foreign to her past manner as it was inexplicable 
 to herself in the present, and he took up a habit of feel 
 ing dimly injured by her almost every word and look, 
 and thinking that he must practice a sort of craven 
 stealthiness in his every manifestation of a preference 
 previously exhibited without a fear to everybody. 
 
 It must be added, however, that in becoming ashamed 
 he knew not at all why to show others than Miss 
 Effingham that he was particularly fond of her society, 
 the English sailor unwittingly drew nearer to a knowl 
 edge of the true feeling growing between them than 
 Abretta had yet come. She experienced timidity at 
 his approaches only from seeing that he, himself, was 
 beginning to show something like fear in them. Kot 
 altogether at ease in the case, she yet could not under 
 stand why she should feel uneasy ; nor, particularly, 
 why a companion whom her family and friends had 
 never shown the slightest sign of opposing, should sud 
 denly adopt an equivocation of manner as though both 
 he and she were surrounded by inimical characters. 
 
 " I do not at all see, Mr. Belmore," she said, in reply 
 to his last speech, " why I, or anybody else, must either 
 
206 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 regard you as a boy, or object to your exercise of the 
 common social privileges of a gentleman. Everybody 
 belonging to me is glad to know that you are so sorry 
 to leave us, and sorry for the occasion of such gladness. 
 I am sure no one would dream of preventing your say?- 
 ing good-by to each one of us in your own way ; and 
 Mamma, especially, has always so plainly shown her 
 high opinion of you, that it seems to me ungenerous in 
 us to appear to be evading her in any way. No, I am 
 not offended. Why should I be ? You say you really 
 do not understand yourself, and I am sure I do not un 
 derstand you. But please do not stop rowing ; we can 
 talk as well after we get home." 
 
 Palpable anger shone in Belmore s face, and he sav 
 agely tugged at his oars for several rushing strokes, as 
 though disposed to take the lady severely at her word. 
 But this was only the exasperated impulse of a moment, 
 and then he was leaving the boat to take care of itself 
 again. 
 
 " My farewell to you, Miss Effingham, must be spoken 
 before we leave this boat," he said, with dictatorial 
 sharpness. "Yesterday we laughed bravely at the 
 humorous idea of my coming to grief in the Bruni 
 cannonade ; but, for all that, I should not like my 
 friends to take my going into a battle as lightly as 
 though I had gone to a ball. Now here is the whole 
 secret of my scheming to have you to myself for a few 
 moments. I want to ask of you a great favor. Oh, 
 you needn t look so troubled again ; it is quite harm 
 less, even if you are pleased to refuse it. Your hair is 
 gathered in a ribbon. "Will you give me that ribbon as 
 a keepsake, and give it to me now ?" 
 
 In the alternating glow and pallor of Abretta s coun 
 tenance at this unexpected request, so almost imper 
 iously addressed to her, there was at first the nutter of 
 
THE PIC-NIC AT THE FORT. 207 
 
 an impulse of maidenly alarm. Her eyes fell as much 
 under his changed tone as under the unaccustomed 
 spirit of his searching gaze. Then, with character 
 istically quick recovery of natural composure, she 
 quietly unloosed the ribbon from her lustrous fall of 
 jet-black locks, and, meeting the young man s look 
 with one unshrinking and frankly kind, handed him 
 the simple keepsake without a word. 
 
 As unaffectedly and bravely he pressed her hand 
 before releasing it. This was their real good-by, and 
 both felt it too genuinely for any less generous self- 
 consciousness. The sailor folded the ribbon deliber 
 ately and placed it in his breast ; he drew the oars 
 through the w r ater slowly, and his features betrayed no 
 sign of unusual emotion ; but when, at last, he spoke 
 again, there was a faint tremor in the lowered tone : 
 
 " I thank you more than I can say." 
 
 "And now you will row a little faster ?" she insinu 
 ated, though ever so much more gently than before. 
 
 "Yes; I could part from you now without another 
 word !" 
 
 So the wherry moved on more steadily, though not 
 with a swiftness or sound to offend the majestic silent 
 solitariness of the shadowy vale of water. It made a 
 strange little floating picture in that Titanic frame of 
 mountains lessening downward all around, to inner rims 
 of jungle-netted shore, wherefrom mighty arabesques 
 of interlocking roots reached deep into the darkling 
 tide. Abretta, grave and thoughtful, leaned daintily 
 from the stern-sheets to trail one white finger-tip idly 
 in the mystic stream, as unwitting of the occupation as 
 of the opened parasol fallen to her opposite side. The 
 oarsman, swaying as lightly as slowly to the short, 
 smooth curve and dip of the oars, projected a shade, 
 coming and going, at his companion s feet. 
 
208 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " This being in Borneo seems all like a dream to me," 
 were the girl s next words ; " I cannot yet make it real 
 to myself." 
 
 " It will be only too much a lost reality for me, after 
 to-day," responded Belmore. 
 
 " Every scene here, and every sentiment it suggests, 
 seem to me different enough from all that I have ever 
 before known, to belong to a totally different world ; 
 and they appear particularly incompatible with any 
 thing so practical and passionate as war." 
 
 " So they might to me, Miss Effingham, if I had not 
 often seen the Cressy s guns thundering shot into 
 scenes as little warlike in their apparent sentiment." 
 
 " You have been in battle, then ?" 
 
 " If you can call it a battle. My ship was at Com 
 modore Napier s capture of Acre, near the close of the 
 Syrian war, five years ago. I m not very proud of 
 that war, as an Englishman, although I was only a 
 boyish middy then." 
 
 "It was one of the Eastern Question troubles, 
 wasn t it ?" 
 
 " That same old bother. Mehemet Ali, the most en 
 lightened Egyptian since the Pharaohs, was to be driven 
 out of Syria, and his magnificent soldier, Ibrahim 
 pacha, overwhelmed, because the cowardly Turks, with 
 three times as many troops and ships, could not take 
 care of their own province. So, my country, and Aus 
 tria and Prussia, must needs combine to restore the 
 balance of power. As it had been before, at Lebanon, 
 and Sidon and Beyrout, so it was at Acre. There were 
 the English and Austrian ships, marshaled abreast of 
 the old gray walls by the blue burgee of our uncouth 
 but brave old Commodore, raining shot and shell on 
 mosque and minaret for the sake of a parcel of infidel 
 dogs whom the great Ibrahim had driven before him, 
 
THE PIC-NIG AT THE FORT. 209 
 
 time and again, like sheep. No, I m not at all proud 
 of having been in such a war as that, Miss Effingham ! 
 If only the French had taken part on the other side, as 
 we thought and hoped they would, we should have felt 
 some credit in our work. As it was, the business was 
 like firing into some venerable church ! We could see 
 Mount Carmel in the distance, and the monks there 
 must have heard our sacrilegious guns." 
 
 " Such a w r ar, in such a cause, affects the imagination 
 like a profanation of the Bible," said Abretta, stirred 
 by the names of holy places. 
 
 "Even more than you d think," rejoined Belmore ; 
 u for Mehemet Ali has some of the highest Christian 
 qualities, if he is a Mahometan. Think of civilized 
 powers fighting for the Turk against a ruler who has 
 given to humane science the beneficent Medical School 
 and Hospital at Cairo, and made the famous French 
 superintendent of them, Dr. Clot, a Bey, without ask 
 ing him to change his religion !" 
 
 " Is he the celebrated Clot Bey, then ?" 
 
 "No other. The only Christian, too, ever made a 
 Bey, without change of creed." 
 
 " Was it in Syria you had the fever ?" asked Abretta. 
 
 The question was only innocently a suggestion from 
 the mention of the illustrious Plague curer of the East, 
 but the Lieutenant had a perpetual guilty suspicion 
 that his American friends were skeptical about his 
 invalid experiences. 
 
 "Tripoli was my sick-bay," returned he, with an un 
 easy laugh ; " though it seems so hard for people to be 
 lieve either in that, or in the sunstroke giving me my 
 present holiday. I only hope that none of you will 
 feel conscience-stricken if anything happens to me at 
 Bruni." 
 
 " Oh, do not joke about that again !" exclaimed his 
 
210 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 hearer, with an earnestness of look and emphasis ex 
 pressing much more than her words indeed far more 
 than she was conscious of betraying. 
 
 The eloquently grateful flash of the young sailor s 
 blue eyes made her aware of his quick appreciation, 
 and called a charming color once again to cheeks on 
 which rose and lily had else remained more equally 
 matched. 
 
 Little farther was said while the wherry drew near 
 to Kuchin ; prahus and smaller craft now showing here 
 and there around them, and human figures appearing 
 occasionally on the banks. They were re-entering the 
 world of unrhythmical prose, and the poetic spell of 
 harmonious isolation was as a soft, sweet song checked 
 at the earliest breath of dissonance. 
 
 But a graciously beautifying influence yet remained 
 from what was lost for all that came after, and the two 
 young voyagers felt no painful jar in emerging from one 
 into the other. It was a fairer common world to look 
 upon than ever, if only because the bolder revisitant 
 brought back to it the ribbon from a queen s hair, and 
 the gentler a tremulous instinctive thrill as from having 
 subtly neared a king. The light beating hazily down 
 the engirding Borneon peaks and cliffs, from the last 
 glittering crown thrown off by a sinking sun around 
 their palm-fringed temples ; ship, and junk, and prahu 
 tidal rock and wave-enamored stooping tree held 
 motionless by their own watery phantoms in it ; even 
 savage town and ruder jungled shore softening to grace 
 ful undulation and benign accord under the beadless 
 ripened wine of air such was the glory of the world 
 to eyes learning a new vision. 
 
 Their good-by had been spoken without words. Only 
 the faint ripple of the boat sounded in the last brief 
 reach between the anchorage of the waiting ship-of-war 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST. 211 
 
 and the destination where the sailor must turn back 
 from dove-eyed Peace to put on the grim harness of 
 battle. With grudging slowness he swept and dipped 
 the yet too hastening oars, his hungry gaze perfecting 
 the last picture he wished to bear away with him a 
 figure of exquisite youthful womanly loveliness, with 
 face half-averted and rested upon uplifted hand, and 
 eyes downcast in guileless maiden re very her shadow 
 coming after her over the passing water, like a reflective 
 silence following a beautiful thought. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST. 
 
 THE Eajah of Sarawak unquestionably possessed ex 
 perience and abilities to become a military character of 
 no mean order, had his moral genius involved the least 
 ambition for such an attainment. What Macaulay, 
 with true sedentary flavor, denominates the vulgar 
 courage of the common soldier," was his in a conspicu 
 ous degree ; and on every occasion when war had no 
 practicable alternative for him in Borneo he proved in 
 vincible as a commander. It was, then, no constitu 
 tionally effeminate shrinking from the fierce arbitrament 
 of the sword that restrained him from investing the 
 whole romance of his Oriental career with the heroic 
 glitter of armed conquest. A more manly exemplar of 
 his race ; a braver, higher-minded, loftier-spirited 
 Anglo-Saxon ; never bore the banner of civilization to 
 the walls of hostile barbarism. 
 
 Had he chosen to avail himself of the opportunity 
 when Muda Hassim, vizier and chief provincial gover- 
 
212 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 nor of the Sultan of Borneo proper, gladly resigned to 
 him the supreme command against a rebellion that the 
 whole sultanate was powerless to subdue, he might 
 easily have established a militant dictatorship of the 
 island, equivalent to that of the Dutch in Java. Later, 
 the seditious jealousy of Makota offered him yet readier 
 means of turning Borneo into a second Hindostan, with 
 himself to preside over another merciless and rapacious 
 East India Company. 
 
 But the first Englishman to sail up the pirate-haunted 
 Sarawak, and that, too, with no more imposing pomp 
 of outward circumstance than his own private yacht, 
 contemned the thought of grasping as a conqueror the 
 vast, dim region whose simple-hearted children had so 
 early hailed and implicitly trusted him as their Great 
 one, their Tuan Besar. The spirit he wished to emu 
 late was that in which Sir Stamford Raffles sought to 
 regenerate the down-trodden Javanese, thirty years 
 before, during the temporary British occupation of 
 Batavia. He could draw the sword to put down wast 
 ing and destroying civil war, and keep it unsheathed in 
 the cause of common humanity while his native land 
 lent him one corvette and a gunboat to chastise the piti 
 less pirates and slavers of a pestilent coast ; but after 
 that he wished to leave it wholly in the hands of his 
 country. 
 
 From her he desired personal countenance and aid 
 only so far as they would make him stronger, without 
 military conquest, to awe an oligarchy of Malay op 
 pressors into some respect for Christian justice, and 
 raise thousands ultimately millions of the true 
 owners of the soil, from slavery to freedom. To this 
 end he advocated a British occupation of the little 
 island of Labuan, off the coast not far north of the 
 mouth of Borneo river, whence piracy and slaving 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST. 213 
 
 could, alike, be held in check, and the legitimate 
 commercial opportunities of the situation controlled. 
 
 With this motive he accepted an appointment as 
 English Agent to the court of Bruni, to negotiate 
 and maintain a treaty, securing English sailors from 
 imprisonment and enslavement by treacherous Borneon 
 wreckers. And, in the highest sentiment of unselfish 
 ness, he was even willing to relinquish his Kajahship 
 itself to the Queen s government, and be himself a 
 mere lieutenant, if thereby that government could be 
 the more effectually persuaded to help, for once, in 
 gathering a land to Gospel-light without an established 
 ministry of cannon. 
 
 A rehearsal of these historical facts is requisite for a 
 just understanding of the temper in which Eajah 
 Brooke found himself once more upon the deck of a 
 British ship of war, in August, 1845, to approve acts of 
 sovereign war as the only means of compelling Ma 
 hometan Borneo to respect the rights of mankind. All 
 forms of expostulation had been unavailing to deliver 
 two of the seamen of a wrecked merchantman from 
 the slave-pen of the Pangeran Usop ; for the imbecile 
 Sultan bewailed to the English Agent, and Kear- Ad 
 miral, and his own bandhara, Muda Hassim, that he 
 had no power over that audacious prince ; and the lat 
 ter responded to the British demand by retiring to his 
 combined home and fortress on the hill above the city, 
 and pointing his guns at the squadron in the river. 
 
 Sir Thomas Cochrane s whole fleet was before Bruni ; 
 the Vixen, abreast of the recalcitrant pangeran s cita 
 del ; then the Agincourt, the Pluto, the Nemesis, the 
 Wolverine, the Driver, and others. For the first time 
 in history Pulo Kalamantan beheld within her coast 
 line a really formidable demonstration not by the East 
 India Company, but by the nation whose relentless 
 
214 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 power had made a trading corporation invincible over 
 the millions of Hindostan. Town and palace both 
 looked covertly forth upon the ominous naval pageant 
 with a dismay too fearful for any of the popular con 
 gregation in the public places, or on the shore, that 
 would have been natural in a civilized port thus visited. 
 Since the arrival of the strangers even the floating 
 market had disappeared. So unwonted, indeed, was 
 the aspect of depopulation in Bruni when the ships 
 took their positions, that suspicions of treachery were 
 rife in the squadron ; and when, during the night before 
 the ultimatum of Usop, the marine officer of the Vixen, 
 
 Mr. K , cried out in a nightmare, the whole line of 
 
 vessels was thrown into a panic, under an impression 
 that the Malays were characteristically coming on in 
 the darkness. 
 
 If any two Englishmen of contemporaneous fame 
 should have been qualified by uncommonness of respec 
 tive public careers to sympathize with each other, they 
 were Oochrane and Brooke : for if the latter had been 
 able to enlist his country s influence and aid only after 
 much futile appeal, the former knew the bitterness of 
 having been, for a time, actually driven into resentful 
 exile ; and restored, at last, not over-graciously. 
 
 And the Eajah and the Kear- Admiral did understand 
 each other well. On the August afternoon now reached 
 by our story they stood together on the poop-deck of 
 the leading man-of-war, anxiously watching the forti 
 fied house on the hill ; their only immediate companion 
 a very handsome young Malay prince in gold-laced tur 
 ban and crimson velvet jacket, blue silk sarong and 
 Turkish trousers and boots the Pangeran Budrudeen. 
 
 Usop s final answer was to be given at two o clock. 
 That hour was now distant only a few minutes, and the 
 guns of the British ships were all loaded and aimed in 
 
THE ADMIRAL, THE RAJAH, ANT) THE HANDSOME YOUNG MALAY 
 PHINCE STOOD TOGETHER ON THE QUARTER-DECK. p. 21%. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN A TIG UST. 215 
 
 readiness for any event. The sun-bronzed Admiral, in 
 full naval uniform, and the Rajah, in sun-helmet, sword- 
 belted blue blouse, and military boots over his blue 
 trousers, kept their glasses upon the house, over the 
 stockade and within the long veranda of which the red 
 jackets and feathered turbans of a host of Kadien Dyaks 
 could be seen. 
 
 "The fool is bent upon his own destruction, I be 
 lieve," said Brooke, at last, lowering his glass with 
 something like a sigh. "It is unmistakable that he 
 means fight." 
 
 " For my own part, I have never questioned that 
 issue since our last visit to the palace," assented his 
 English companion. "The black fellow means fight 
 and nothing else, and I have no hesitation in saying, 
 that the sooner it begins the better I shall be suited." 
 
 " Usop is not alone in this folly, I am sure," rejoined 
 the Rajah. " It must be as you say, my good friend," 
 he added, turning to the young Malay and speaking in 
 his tongue : " this is Makota s doing, and means more 
 than we see here." 
 
 "Makota, the Serpent!" exclaimed Budrudeen, 
 fiercely emphasizing a name popularly bestowed upon 
 that personage. " He is the prompter of Usop in this ; 
 and it is his treachery, too, that has led Shereef House 
 man, of Malludu, to defy the Sultan and yourself once 
 more. What cares the traitor for treaties ! He hates 
 you and your country, Rajah ; he hates my brother, 
 Muda Hassim, and myself, because you are our friend ; 
 and the war he dares not undertake, himself, against 
 us, he persuades others to wage." 
 
 "He is the rascal, too," put in the Admiral, in the 
 same language, " whom you, Rajah, and Keppel, let slip 
 through your fingers when he was your prisoner." 
 
 "Would you have had me hold him as a slave, Sir 
 
216 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Thomas? His execution would have been my only 
 alternative, in Borneo." 
 
 " "War is war," insisted the veteran ; " and when your 
 enemy is a traitor to his own sovereign, as well as to 
 yourself, he takes his life in his hands if he fights 
 against you." 
 
 " The Sultan would not have spared Makota," said 
 Budrudeen. 
 
 "But he was not avowedly acting against the Sultan. 
 It was against myself the foreigner he professed to 
 take part," argued the Rajah, frankly. "He said to 
 his followers : Look at Hindostan and Java ; they will 
 show you what the European sirani mean by their 
 friendship for Asiatic princes. This Tuan Brooke has 
 deceived Muda Hassim, and even our Lord who Rules 
 the Sultan into giving him and his Europeans a foot 
 hold in Pulo Kalamantan ; but I Makota the Learned 
 am wise enough to see that this English rajahship 
 means a second Java for us. This is why I must seem 
 to be an enemy even of the Sultan himself, for the sake 
 of our country. Such is the man s sophistry, and I 
 know well that he only assumes it as a cloak for nefari 
 ous, selfish conspiracy ; but how am I to prove this ? 
 Upon its face, the pretense has only too much justifica 
 tion in the history of European progress in the East 
 Indies ; and, so long as I cannot, by positive evidence 
 convict Makota of being the mere unscrupulous bandit 
 he certainly is, how can I treat him as a criminal con 
 sistently with the spirit of peaceful Christian friendship 
 for his unhappy country that I have so persistently 
 asserted since my first landing at Kuchin ?" 
 
 Curiously enough, this magnanimous speech found 
 far deeper appreciation with the Malay than with the 
 speaker s brother Englishman. Budrudeen s keen black 
 eyes softened to a positively affectionate look of admira- 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST. 217 
 
 tiou, while the Rear- Admiral s whole manner exhibited 
 impatience. 
 
 "I know of but one practical way of dealing with 
 mad dogs," said the sailor, " however their rabies may 
 have been originally produced. For your own com 
 monest safety you must kill as many of them as possi 
 ble, and particularly the one whose bite carries the 
 most infection amongst the others. What am I here for, 
 now, with my ships, but to enable you to punish the 
 dogs bitten by this same mad Makota ?" 
 
 " But not to revenge any private wrongs, of the Rajah 
 of Sarawak," retorted the Rajah, quickly. "With 
 you, Admiral, as with gallant Keppel, I am not a Rajah 
 of Borneo only an English citizen ; or, in the present 
 case, only an agent of Great Britain : serving practically 
 as a volunteer against pirates whose extirpation is the 
 duty of all Christendom. In no grievance of my own 
 shall I ever invoke armed aid ; when it comes to that 
 my career in Borneo will be ended." 
 
 " Tuan Besar loves Pulo Kalamantan so well, that 
 he cannot hate even Usop and Makota," said the 
 swarthy young prince, whose generous heart barba 
 rian, that he was could understand the high sentiment 
 of the Christian Rajah. 
 
 " Then, small comfort you will get from the present 
 ministry at home, Mr. Brooke," answered Cochrane. 
 "I understand your principles thoroughly, and honor 
 them ; but the tactics of John Company, and of the 
 Dutch at Batavia, are the only ones valued in Europe 
 when the East Indies are in question. You and I have 
 common reason to know how much an Englishman in 
 public place amounts to with his Government, when 
 he is in any trouble that gunpowder is not called to 
 remove." 
 
 At this moment the smoke and flash of a gun from 
 
218 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Usop s lofty stockade brought the colloquy to an abrupt 
 conclusion, and a six-pound ball, passing between the 
 topmasts of the Vixen, announced that the intrenched 
 rebel Pangeran accepted the dread issue of arms. As, 
 however, no second roar of defiance immediately fol 
 lowed, Sir Thomas hesitated before giving decisive 
 orders to his first lieutenant, who had approached him 
 on the quarter-deck. The drums had beaten to quar 
 ters, the men were at their guns, all was ready to 
 signal the remainder of the squadron as needed ; and, 
 while the two chieftains on the poop kept their glasses 
 leveled at the headquarters of the enemy, Budrudeen 
 hastily descended to a war-prahu filled with the Sul 
 tan s body-guard, that had put off from the palace 
 wharf at the ominous report of the cannon. 
 
 "Is that Malay to be wholly trusted?" asked the 
 Admiral, with a glance at the retiring prahu. 
 
 " Budrudeen is true as steel," was the terse response. 
 
 Under the searching glare of a mid-day sun, Bruni 
 and her barbaric surroundings had already an aspect of 
 savage desolation in the silent pause between the first, 
 uncertain note of hostility and the inevitably coming 
 storm. Usually at this hour of the day all the intricate 
 waterways of the tide-meshed pauper Venice were alive 
 with boats ; on the river-front swarmed the craft of the 
 noisy, floating market ; prahus of trade and war popu 
 lated the broad stretch of the harbor, and human 
 shapes, peaceful or warlike, moved between the huge 
 buildings of State on the surrounding hillsides. Now 
 the whole minor boating life had flown to hasty covert 
 in the jungle of the banks above the town ; the prahus 
 had withdrawn beyond the ruined stone fort ; pile-lifted 
 hovel and dingy white palace, alike, gave signs of 
 habitation only by some furtive, fantastic apparition 
 peering through roof-flap, or draped window ; and the 
 
WHA T HAPPENED IN A UG UST. 219 
 
 sole human potency of the scene appeared to have 
 concentrated finally in the gun-bristling eyrie of the 
 rebellious prince, and the stately line of tall British 
 men-of-war restraining their thunder for the sound of 
 another shot. 
 
 "Are we to expect a flag of truce, or a broadside, 
 next ?" muttered the Admiral. 
 
 " I have no hope of anything peaceful now," replied 
 the Rajah, closing his glass; "otherwise Budrudeen, 
 or Muda Hassim, would signal us from the palace. 
 That first gun was a characteristic bit of bravado. We 
 shall not have to wait long for the others." 
 
 After casting one more look of thoughtful scrutiny 
 over the suggestive prospect, the last speaker descended 
 slowly to the main deck, his aspect of troubled abstrac 
 tion securing him from address by any of the various 
 officers at their posts until he had reached the entrance 
 to the gun-room. A young man, in uniform, emerging 
 from thence, saluted him as they met, and his brow 
 cleared at the bright, familiar glance encountering his 
 own. 
 
 "Is this work too slow for you, Mr. Belmore ?" in 
 quired the Kajah, laying a hand kindly on the volun 
 teer s shoulder. 
 
 " I have certainly known shore-batteries to be livelier 
 than this one, sir, even in the East," responded Bel- 
 more. Then added, with increased animation : " But 
 we may have some music when it comes to landing, I 
 take it, sir. These Dyaks, they tell me, can make a 
 fight of it sometimes, when you have to go at them up 
 hill." 
 
 " The poor, deluded creatures are but sorry foes foi 
 English sailors. However, you may have enough fight 
 ing, my young friend, before we return to Sarawak ; 
 and I trust, Mr. Belmore, that, for your Uncle s sake, 
 
220 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 if not for your own, you will be led into no foolhardi- 
 ness. Bear in mind, that this kind Uncle has little more 
 than yourself to fill his heart in this world." 
 
 " And I love him, sir, like a son." 
 
 " As you may well do, for he has a father s tenderest 
 affection for you." 
 
 Here a deafening roar burst upon their ears, accom 
 panied by a significant, hurtling flurry of the air in the 
 rigging over their heads ; followed instantly by shrill 
 words of command and an answering prodigious crash 
 from the ports of their own vessel. Battle was upon 
 them at last ; and, waving permission for the eager 
 lieutenant to repair to his duty, the Kajah returned to 
 the companionship of the Admiral. 
 
 Then ensued the anomalous spectacle of a frigate and 
 a single house of a town engaging in a hot cannonade ; 
 the while the town itself and the imperial government 
 of which it was the capital were supposably in sympa 
 thy with the besieging force, though too weak to take 
 immediate part against their seditious prince. From 
 the guns planted on the stockade of the hillside seat- 
 of-war, and, at first, even from the field-pieces on the 
 high veranda, a fire was maintained with some steadi 
 ness for a time : but, in the usual awkward style of a 
 savage country, the whole battery had an elevation of 
 muzzles impracticable for any serious effect below the 
 yards of the vessel assailed, and its iron hail was the 
 most futile of defenses against the British gunnery. 
 
 This roaring exchange, reverberated in mighty rolling 
 cadences by the background of sullen mountains, was 
 not much more than leisurely practice for the blue 
 jackets of the Vixen. Soon, through rifts in the great 
 veil of pungent smoke, several breaches could be dis 
 cerned in the stockade ; and, finally, dropping off, one 
 by one, the intractable cannon in the air were heard no 
 
WHA T HAPPENED IN A UG VST. 221 
 
 more. Lessening her own fire, thereat, to an occasional 
 precautionary shot, the frigate signaled her nearer con 
 sorts to co-operate for a land-assault, and, with the 
 celerity of civilized discipline, a number of boats were 
 presently pulling to the shore with a strong detail of 
 marines for the completion of the afternoon s work. 
 
 The passage of this storming-party, in which Lieuten 
 ant Belmore held a subordinate command, was through 
 an end of the cowed city, to the foot of the steep ascent 
 to Usop s house. From the decks of the squadron ex 
 cited eyes looked after the boats entering the network 
 of fishing-huts and Malay dwellings, while now and 
 then the Vixen s gun-deck spoke a stern warning to 
 the barbarian who should dare to meditate an ambush. 
 But the battle was over. Charging up the difficult ac 
 clivity, with a cheer, the followers of the First Lieuten 
 ant and Belmore found no heroic foemen to oppose 
 them. Taking advantage of the smoke, the misguided 
 Pangeran had retreated, with his Kadiens into the fur 
 ther mountain-range, and in a few moments, dumbly 
 crouching Bruni, the craven Sultan s secretly-watching 
 court, and the people of the conquering ships, beheld a 
 pillar of fire arising from the doomed stronghold of the 
 fugitive prince. 
 
 Immediately successive events on the scene of this 
 summary vengeance for a disregarded humane Treaty 
 require but general mention here. The Sultan s barge 
 came out to the squadron with Muda Hassim, Budru- 
 deen, and the high officers of the palace, to bear the 
 congratulations of the lang de per Tuam to Tuan 
 Besar and the invincible sea-warriors of the Great 
 Queen. Sampans and canoes reappeared so swiftly in 
 the waters of the town that they might have risen 
 there from hiding in the mud. The floating market, 
 animated with chattering yellow crones and nymphs 
 
222 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 in the gayest of plaited conical hats, again danced on 
 the river, and sought custom from the foreign ships. 
 The townspeople Malays, Dyaks and Chinamen 
 emerged from their recent terror-stricken lurkings into 
 a fantastic holiday-celebration, with gongs and tom 
 toms ; and at night there was an illumination with 
 Chinese lanterns, and an exhibition of the "Mancha," 
 or native sword-dance, at the palace, in honor of the 
 victory. 
 
 Usop s punishment, however, was but a part of the 
 mission of the ships. In Malludu Bay, the pirate- 
 chief, Shereef Houseman, had forgotten the pretense 
 of reform forced upon his fears by the signal chastise 
 ments of his brother-shereefs, Muller and Sahib, on the 
 Sarebas and Sakarran rivers, and now boasted of his 
 renewed sanguinary atrocities upon trading prahus 
 along the coast, and insolently denounced the Kajah 
 and Sultan as "old women." To bring this blatant 
 villain to repentance was the next work for the retribu 
 tive squadron ; and, accordingly, anchors were weighed 
 to the good old naval tune of " Nancy Dawson," and, 
 raising clouds of snowy canvas, the British guardians 
 of the deep moved on to its accomplishment, under a 
 ragged salute of honor from the crazy guns of the 
 Sultan s stockade forts. 
 
 On the nineteenth of August ensued the battle of 
 Malludu, in which Cochrane s force of five hundred and 
 fifty blue-jackets and marines, in twenty-four boats, 
 destroyed two piratical forts and a fleet of " bankongs," 
 or war-prahus, and totally routed a thousand of the 
 Shereef s Sea-Dyaks. The ships could approach only 
 near enough to engage the land-batteries, which they 
 soon knocked into ruins ; but up the gloomy, palm- 
 arched reaches of water, where the pirate craft lurked 
 behind "booms" constructed to entangle as well as 
 
WHA T HAPPENED IN A UO UST. 223 
 
 obstruct all intruders, the pinnaces, cutters and gigs of 
 the squadron had to make their way in more equal 
 contest. Cutlassing through the rattan lashings of 
 whole groves prone in the dark stream, and through 
 thickets of wiry branch and thorny leaf, the musketeers 
 in the boats advanced but slowly under showers of 
 poisoned little darts from Upas-dipped * sumpitans," 
 and with frequent desperate passages at arms with the 
 half-clad savage spearsmen of rallying prahus. Never 
 theless, break through they did, without casualties 
 graver than flesh-wounds, and finally landed in good 
 order on the edge of a partly-cleared jungle, where the 
 Shereef and the flower of his army were rallying for a 
 last stand. Lighted by the blaze of a score of burning 
 pirate boats in the wreck of the "boom," the fighting- 
 men of civilization ; torn and bleeding as some of them 
 were ; gave one menacing glance at the swarm of wild, 
 yelling figures in the shadowy covert before them, and 
 then plunged forward with a hoarse hurrah. 
 
 Rajah Brooke was on his course back to Bruni before 
 this closing onset occurred ; a messenger, by swift- 
 flying prahu, from Budrudeen, having apprised him of 
 the sudden reappearance of Usop and his band on one 
 of the hills overlooking the capital, and besought him 
 to return immediately with at least one vessel. Too 
 politic to hesitate about complying with this prayer of 
 the noblest, stanchest Malayan friend he had found in 
 Borneo, the Christian ruler of Sarawak, assured that 
 the victory of Malludu Bay was gained, returned at 
 once, on the Driver, to the newly threatened town. 
 
 Justly incensed at the obdurate fatuity of the rebel 
 Pangeran, he would willingly have taken part? in the 
 conclusive overthrow of that enemy, more cruel than 
 the storm, to shipwrecked men. But this was not to 
 be. Usop, cunningly suspicious of what the messenger- 
 
224 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 prahu purported, made his descent before the foreign 
 help could come, and gave battle to gallant Budrudeen 
 and three hundred loyal Kadiens of his own Mahometan 
 tribe of Dyaks, amid the blackened ruins of the house 
 once his castle. It was a fierce, supreme struggle for 
 the princely traitor, and success for him would have 
 meant the downfall of the reigning sultanate and his 
 own seizure of the musnud. 
 
 In vain, however, was his fury against a brother- 
 prince, who, as history records, "fought like a Euro 
 pean." At the end of an hour such of his followers as 
 had not fallen victims to the "head-hunters" were 
 scattered in flight once more among the palms and 
 jungle of the mountains ; his own hairbreadth escape 
 to the coast and to Kimanis, and subsequent death by 
 the krisses of betrayers there, become the legend even 
 now heard by Borneon travelers. 
 
 Tidings of this decisive action intercepted the 
 Driver before her arrival, and she came up to the city 
 at last, not far in advance of the whole squadron front 
 Malludu, amid the tumultuous rejoicings of a populace 
 intoxicated with victory, and a river on which every 
 conceivable form of native craft was decked with end 
 less waving symbols of barbarian joy. 
 
 The Kajah and Budrudeen met on the Sultan s barge, 
 and the former, taking off his own signet-ring, placed it 
 upon a finger of the latter. 
 
 "Wear that, brave Pangeran," said the Christian 
 prince, "in token of your fidelity to your sovereign, 
 your good faith with my country, and your friendship 
 to me." 
 
 The handsome young hero, the Bayard of native 
 Borneon history, pressed the gift to his forehead, and 
 bowed his turbaned head in more than ceremonial 
 form. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN A UG UST. 225 
 
 " It shall never leave me, Tuan Besar, until I send 
 it back to show that Budrudeen has died for you !" he 
 exclaimed, with an intensity of feeling scarcely more 
 unlike the habits of his dark and cynical race than was 
 his every historic act. 
 
 Bruni heard the news of Shereef Houseman s destruc 
 tion with an access of delight ; and the palace, what 
 ever its secret diplomatic sentiment as to these 
 succeeding triumphs in the field by Muda Hassim s 
 friends, neglected no means of showing courtly honor 
 to the Agent and sailors of England. When Cochrane s 
 squadron came up, at nightfall, it found illuminations 
 and festal water-parties prevailing again, and the prim 
 itive forts saluted once more with hospitable clamor. 
 
 In the Sultan s audience - chamber, or "surow," 
 during a "Talambong," or spear-dance, where naval 
 uniforms were thick among the strange native court- 
 dresses, the Rajah of Sarawak found opportunity to ask 
 of one of the captains a question as to the fatalities at 
 Malludu. 
 
 " What noble English lives has this last victory cost 
 us?" 
 
 " One, only, that I know of, Rajah. Many, of course, 
 are more or less severely wounded ; but only poor Gib- 
 bard, of the Wolverine, was killed. He and another 
 young dare-devil, I hear, could not be restrained from 
 rushing on ahead of the line in the jungle-fight, and the 
 brave fellow was cut down in an ambuscade." 
 
 "Even one such life was a heavy cost for us, in a war 
 with such an enemy," said the Rajah, sadly. "But 
 the other did he escape ?" 
 
 " He is badly wounded ; on the Vixen." 
 
 " Do you recall his name ?" 
 
 "He was a volunteer with Sir Thomas. I think I 
 heard him called Belmore." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 
 
 IT is probably because the whole visible system of 
 vital Change has underlying it the inseparable princi 
 ple of Death, that the human imagination seizes so 
 eagerly upon any suggestion of unchangeableness in 
 Nature, to invest it at once with a grandeur and beati 
 tude far surpassing every charm of things familiarly 
 mutable. This it does from no power to conceive an 
 absolute immutability of existence for anything earthly, 
 but by a wild impulse of that instinctive recojl from 
 thought of mortal dissolution which finds, at least, a 
 lulling sophistry for the fancy, in whatever of the great 
 world s exceptional aspects make less obvious to mortal 
 senses the inexorable limitation of all earthly being. 
 The profoundest sentiment of mankind for Ocean and 
 Mountain is stirred by the seeming exemption of those 
 mighty objects from Time s obliteration ; the grandest 
 rivers may run dry, but there is the Sea as it was at the 
 Creation ; earthquakes may rend continents, and even 
 swallow hills, but the peak in the clouds towers yet as 
 in the immemorial Beginning. Thus, in a manner, the 
 common imagination worships the deadliest battle-field 
 of the Tempest, the treacherous temple of the cruel 
 Avalanche, for their superficial temporizing with its 
 blind hunger for whatsoever seemeth not in itself to be 
 passing away. 
 
 So, too, the idea of a perpetual verdure for wood and 
 field fascinates untrusted fancy like a possibility of all 
 that finite reason can realize of unending life. Though 
 
 the actual vovager to climates without either Winter or 
 226 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHON8EE. 227 
 
 Autumn, may describe ever so literally the savage deso- 
 lateness of Nature running rank with the fadeless vege 
 tation untended by man, the average reader catches 
 first therefrom the impression of a comparative immor 
 tality for objects of wordly growth, and is unconsciously 
 influenced by its subtle charm to imagine an Eden un- 
 fated by an Adam s fall. 
 
 The tendency to this instinctive idealization works 
 strongly in a civilized man at his earliest experience of 
 a forest in the Tropics. There, at last, he sees the 
 wooded wilderness primeval, to which the ages have 
 been but an unbroken summer, and all mundane history 
 a noiseless gathering of life unto life. Centuries, com 
 ing and going, have witnessed only vaster complications 
 of that illimitable empowerment of every massive and 
 slender, graceful and fantastic form an imperishable 
 vitality of columned brown and umbrageous green can 
 take. No visible death, nor illustrated principle of it, 
 is there ; for if trunk, or bough, or prodigious leaf, has 
 ever fallen from weight of too much newly-crowding 
 life, or from the energy of its own teeming roots to 
 press forth fresher heads, or even by the hand of savage 
 man its shape was quickly lost in the luxuriantly- 
 springing network of its own ever-bourgeoising para 
 sites. Nature is there without her wonted symbol of 
 the withering leaf; without the naked branch and 
 snowy shroud of winter ; and the unaccustomed human 
 heart gives a great throb at the suggestion. 
 
 But the supernal spell is only for a moment ; and 
 then, while the mind struggles vainly to combat it, 
 arises a sensation that is not fear, nor dislike, nor 
 troubled admiration; but a mixture of all. As the 
 bristling elf-locks of a savage, to the trained silken 
 tresses of a Christian maid ; as the dissonant chaos of 
 a brain gone mad, to- the harmonious beauty of a re- 
 
228 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 fined intellect ; so is this elfishly-entangled, riotous lux 
 uriance of Nature in her wilderness of endless summer, 
 to that gentler, tenderly-humanized aspect of herself in 
 which her orderly bridal glory of half the year is the 
 lovelier to man for her Autumnal [fading and Wintry 
 semblance of his own decline. 
 
 A feeling of perturbed desolation steals over the 
 spectator of a scene of neglected life that seems death 
 less because its God has left it. Nothing in all its chok 
 ing wealth of vernal monstrosities and infinitudes of dim 
 green recesses intimates familiar use or refuge for Man, 
 save as, in spirit like the brute, he may crouch in its 
 harsh jungle to strike down an unwary foe, or, in yet 
 grosser brute-likeness, disport, a hideous, hairy parody, 
 amongst the twining arches of the darkening leafy dome. 
 
 There is, distinctively, an effect of Unblessedness in 
 such a spectacle, for him who strives in vain to find in it 
 some sympathy with civilized humanity ; and this was 
 peculiarly realized by Doctor Hcdland, while, on an 
 afternoon in September, he stood some distance within a 
 forest near the Malay village of Songi, grasping a gun 
 with both hands, in recovery from the firing position. 
 
 Booted and bloused for the jungle ; his great Panama 
 hat pushed far back, and his countenance wearing an 
 expression of mingled perplexity and irritation ; the 
 naturalist kept his gaze yet fixed upon a point in the 
 lofty branches of some gigantic interlocking wild durion 
 trees, at which, scarcely a moment before, his weapon 
 had been leveled. Near him, stooping in the thicket, 
 were his native servant, Kalong, and a Sibnowan Dyak 
 in the bark turban and "chawat," or waist-cloth, of 
 his class ; both armed with spears and staring intently 
 upward, like their master. The latter s unexpected 
 immobility continuing, Kalong finally looked toward 
 him, and returned on a shrill whisper : 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 229 
 
 " Orang-outan, Tuan !" 
 
 Hedland s peculiar gaze dropped to the man s inquir 
 ing face for a moment ; then, without aim, the gun was 
 pointed aloft and instantly discharged. After a brief 
 interval of intense silence the durion leaves above 
 rattled and rustled, as from the slow movement of 
 some heavy bird ; a higher branch seemed to bend into 
 them, and, in its recoil, brought into momentary full 
 view a huge, hairy, frightfully man-like shape, hanging 
 by one long arm. Though the movement had little 
 appearance of haste, so smoothly swift was it, in reality, 
 that only a glimpse was caught of the broad, dusky 
 face, long, shaggy locks, and yellowish-red body, before 
 the second arm had extended to an adjacent bough and 
 the sinister figure vanished into another concealing 
 height of dense foliage. 
 
 "The mias has escaped," remarked the English 
 man, indifferently, handing his piece to the wondering 
 servant. " You may carry the gun back to the house 
 you and that other man and await me there." 
 
 Never before had these firm believers in the super 
 natural gifts of Pa Jenna s mighty Tuan witnessed a 
 failure of that weapon to conquer its selected prey, and 
 they obeyed the sententious command with a mute 
 exchange of surprised looks. 
 
 Left to himself, the missing marksman threw one 
 more glance toward the gloomy altitude where his 
 sardonic game had so deliberately swung from cover to 
 cover, and, as he pulled his broad hat down over his 
 contracted brows, gave a slight stamp upon the matted 
 sod. 
 
 "I can never shoot another of them while I live !" he 
 muttered, almost with a groan. "Heaven only knows 
 whether they are brutes or men !" 
 
 The aimless firing of his gun had not so much as 
 
230 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 brought down one twig or leaf from the tenacious per 
 ennial canopy ; no cry, or nutter, of bird, nor ruffle of 
 beast or serpent, had followed the echoing report. In 
 such shadowy density of growth upon growth, branch 
 lapping branch, and thick vines by the thousands of 
 feet binding all together in one vast trellis, no winged 
 or creeping creature of that Borneon wild, save butter 
 fly and beetle, could be stirred by any petty human 
 uproar to emerge from its hiding, between the morning 
 and evening choruses of the forest. Only the grim 
 " man-of-the-wood " made all hours his own, and even 
 his startling guttural strivings of speech were not heard 
 at noonday. 
 
 With elbows braced before him, the moody solitary 
 of science strode into the jungle at a sharp angle to the 
 path that had been taken by his attendants, and forced 
 his way through thickets breast-high, and over frag 
 ments of fallen rock from the hills beyond, with the 
 confidence and directness of one accustomed to the 
 place. No long experience of this mode of travel, how 
 ever, was necessary to bring him out, with scarcely an 
 interval of lessened shade, into the full sunlight of an 
 opening made by a crystal stream, whose either bank 
 sloped far enough at that point from the divided forest 
 to break a luminous gap in the arch of palms. This 
 was the tortuous little Songi river, winding its stealthy 
 way toward the Sadong, and one of the innumerable 
 snake-like links between one deeper stream and another, 
 whereby prahus, coming in from the sea, were enabled 
 to reach the most secluded villages of the woods. Seat 
 ing himself on a rock deeply-cushioned with minutely- 
 leaved parasites, Doctor Hedland drew a heavy breath, 
 and, bending his chin to the support of meeting finger 
 tips, gave way to sombre revery. 
 
 " Unblessedness " was the only name he could give 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 231 
 
 to the sensation so often oppressing him in these latter 
 days. To the first exhilaration of pride in an assumed 
 unparalleled scientific discovery, had succeeded a con 
 fusion of mental contradictions and moral uncertainties 
 disordering a whole lifetime s intellectual balance. He 
 apprehended that his spiritual, as well as reasoning, 
 nature had lost all firm poise. The education of uni 
 versities, and travel, and years of comprehensive 
 observation, revolted from the conviction that a few 
 months in these Borneon wildernesses had forced upon 
 him ; yet, despite every effort to be stubbornly skepti 
 cal, it was impressed upon his reason, beyond hope of 
 evasion, that he had found awful living disproof of 
 God s creation of Man in His own Image ! 
 
 Was he not the first civilized finder of a creature at 
 once brute and human, though of the same species with 
 the mocking woodland monster that he had not dared to 
 fire upon a while ago ? Could he deny the testimony of 
 his every intellectual faculty, that he now shrunk from 
 the slaughter of a mias as from Murder, though before 
 this, and in these very forests, he had ruthlessly 
 brought many a man-of-the-woods groaning and bleed 
 ing to the ground ! 
 
 What preposterousness, however, to deem murder a 
 crime outside of social conventions ; since, if mankind 
 is really but a higher evolution of Apedom, the ape 
 must logically be but an evolution from yet lower 
 Brutedom and that, perhaps, from inert matter : and 
 to shoot a man having no conventional human relations, 
 could be no more, in itself, a Sin, than the slaying of a 
 bird. What, indeed, was Christian society, with its 
 positive definitions of the things Man might and might 
 not do without offending against man s God, but a 
 supercilious conspiracy of intellectually-advanced apes, 
 who assumed for themselves a special Divine creation, 
 
232 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 in order selfishly to protect their own interests while 
 giving over to destruction the dumb progenitors of all 
 themselves could ever be ? 
 
 Was there really any philosophical truth in anything 
 Human ? Was not the whole moral system of distinct 
 ively Human life a vainglorious fiction ; well enough 
 for those who could win fortune and glory in it, but the 
 very idiocy of needless and crownless crucifixion for 
 him who suffered poverty and obscurity in sacrificing 
 himself to its prescription, for the hope of something 
 exceptional to all other animate creation after death ? 
 
 Thus the unhinged thoughts of this lonely sitter be 
 side an Equatorial forest-stream went wandering on 
 from one confusing, desolating speculation to another ; 
 enlarging disbelief without supplying positive faith for 
 any new creed, and degrading the distracted thinker s 
 manhood without elevating aught to help its redemp 
 tion. 
 
 Evening was at hand when the naturalist aroused 
 himself from this fit of gloomy abstraction, and, with 
 arms folded and look cast down, paced slowly along the 
 bank toward the cottage occupied by him while in that 
 region. Soon after his settlement in Pa Jenna s vil 
 lage he had selected the Songi neighborhood as most 
 eligible for his occasional excursions in pursuit of the 
 native fauna chiefly attracting his interest, and caused 
 a habitation of one room to be constructed there, for his 
 use, on the bank between the river s confluence with 
 the Sadong and an interval of the forest where the 
 Malay town rested on stumps in a marsh. At this 
 point recurred the swampy country of the mias, ex 
 tending thence, northwestward, through the flat woods 
 of the Simunjon and Sadong, to the seashore. Here, 
 also, could be found the curious lemur, tardigramus, 
 called the u Cucan" by the natives ; tiger-cats, squir- 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 233 
 
 rels, and even an occasional specimen ofNasalis larvatus, 
 or great long-nosed monkey; the green and yellow flying 
 tree-frog, and many magnificent varieties of butterfly, 
 including a rarely beautiful one of the ornithopterous 
 class, whose coat of black velvet has a collar of vivid 
 crimson and wing-bands of brilliant green dots. 
 
 To journey to this region from the Sarawak valley 
 wholly by water, instead of traveling partly by land, 
 as the Emngham and Williamson party had done, in 
 volved a circuitousness of route that would have been 
 too lavish in time and distance for a man of busi 
 ness. But Doctor Hedland delighted in prahu-sailing 
 beneath lofty roofs of leaves and branches, and had 
 patience for as many tortuosities of way as led him by 
 such weird channels. In a matting-cabined little craft 
 managed only by Kalong, he was wont to make his ex 
 cursions up the Sarawak to the Morotaba ; by the latter 
 to the Sadong ; and down that to the brook-like Songi. 
 
 As already intimated, his shelter during these visits 
 was a cottage sequestered on the waterside ; a square 
 basket, as it were, of bamboo poles matted together by 
 strips of the same giant reed : inclosed in a portico of 
 similar poles and basketed railings ; the steep roof of 
 Nypa "ataps" hooding the whole. It stood a short 
 distance back from the stream, where the prahu was 
 moored, in the lighter shade of a clump of creeper-cov 
 ered trees, with a short ladder of four steps between floor 
 and ground ; rude benches under the portico held the 
 dead birds and small game awaiting Kalong s articu 
 lating, or embalming, treatment, and in the one cham 
 ber of the airy interior were a hammock, several inverted 
 native " Tambok" baskets for chairs, a larger one for a 
 table, and the guns, hampers, nets and butte-cards of 
 the owner. 
 
 Into this structure the Doctor betook himself at the 
 
234 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 close of his meditative walk, and there Kalong and his 
 assistant presently served him with a true hunter s 
 meal of turtle s eggs, salt fish and tea. Listlessly toss 
 ing the Panama hat into a corner, and donning his 
 spectacles, he mechanically availed himself of one of the 
 improvised chairs and silently partook of the simple 
 fare. This done, he motioned for the strange Dyak to 
 remove the primitive table-appointments, and, upon 
 the ultimate withdrawal of that assistant-servitor, ad 
 dressed himself briefly to Kalong : 
 
 " Is Oshonsee yet in the durion ?" 
 
 "Yes, Tuan. He has been there since mid-day." 
 
 " You have cleaned my gun and pistols ?" 
 
 "Yes, Tuan ; as you told me." 
 
 "Then you and your comrade may go up to Songi, 
 and need not return until morning." 
 
 The civilized Dyak knew his master s positive waj T s 
 too well to make any other response than a low salaam ; 
 and, gliding out of the room and house in noiseless 
 obedience, was seen no more. 
 
 Assured that he was again alone, Doctor Hedland 
 drew from a pocket the black skull-cap and put it on. 
 A Judge about to pronounce sentence of death could 
 not have performed this operation over a countenance 
 more solemn. Next he took down, in succession, from 
 pegs in the wattled wall, a double-barreled fowling- 
 piece and a pair of heavy pistols, and carefully loaded 
 them all. Eeturning the gun and one of the smaller 
 weapons to their places, he held the remaining pistol 
 closely to his eyes for a moment, then sharply cocked 
 it and went hurriedly forth, carrying it, swinging, in 
 his right hand. A few steps from the portico brought 
 him beneath a tall durion tree, whence, with pistol 
 thrust behind him, he looked up into the dense mass of 
 leafage far above. 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 235 
 
 A pale, dying light rested upon the whole scene. 
 The coming-on of the wet-monsoon made the sky hazy, 
 so that sunset lost every tint in an obscuring film and 
 left nature without a shadow. Silence no longer 
 reigned, but in place thereof the cavernous forest- 
 depths gave forth fitful rustles and dreary, wandering 
 sounds, more isolating to human sensibilities than any 
 blank of voiceless solitude could have been. Hasping 
 chatters, hoarse single notes, distant screaming peals, 
 crooning, clucking bursts, so abruptly sharp that they 
 seemed to be in the jungle nearest at hand came at 
 irregular intervals from the encompassing wilderness. 
 Only two strains of the inarticulate tumult had any 
 steadiness of continuity or alternation ; the resonant 
 double gong-beat of a great, hawk-like species of pigeon, 
 and the moaning howl of some creature of the lower 
 monkey tribes, Now and then the dimming water 
 course splashed with the unseen plunge of aquatic non 
 descript. 
 
 " Oshonsee !" called his master. 
 
 At the summons there was a visible stir in the lofty 
 durion s thickest spread of foliage, and then, with an 
 unhurried swing from branch to trunk, by an arm, the 
 docile ape began descending as a practiced human 
 climber might have done. The sinewy nether limbs 
 pressed only close enough upon the smooth scaly bark 
 to give the knees firmness ; the clasping arms tight 
 ened, or relaxed, in graduation of the whole movement, 
 and Oshonsee came to the ground as lightly as though 
 he had flown. Though wearing no clothing save a 
 "chawat" at the waist, and showing his natural coat 
 of duskily golden hair, he had yet a perplexing sugges- 
 tiveness of humanity, as he stood there in man s up 
 right attitude, that might well awaken something akin 
 to fear in any civilized beholder. His face, on which 
 
236 THERE WAS ONCE A MAX. 
 
 the short, silky down was thin enough to reveal a light 
 flesh beneath, had features of no essentially brutal cast, 
 excepting only the straight mouth and heavy, protrud 
 ing jaw, and the eyes, large and inquiring, glittered 
 darkly beneath an upright semi-coronet of chestnut 
 locks, open at the temples. 
 
 As the ape advanced toward him from the foot of the 
 tree, treading confidently erect on the sod, Hedland in 
 voluntarily drew backward two or three steps, and 
 pointed at the house with his disengaged hand. In 
 customary prompt obedience Oshonsee turned in that 
 direction and moved a step thitherward ; but only to 
 face again upon his inscrutable master with indescrib 
 able quickness and fall groveling, shivering and moan 
 ing at his feet. Instinct had warned the poor creature 
 of his danger, and the change of position was accom 
 plished with such celerity, that the pistol swiftly aimed 
 at the back of his head exploded harmlessly above it. 
 Crash upon crash of echoes came back from the grim 
 woods around, with a momentary accession of every 
 discordant voice from bough and jungle. The man 
 dropped his smoking weapon, as though it had turned 
 into a snake ; and the ape, spasmodically clasping his 
 ankles, pressed a hairy cheek piteously against his 
 trembling knees. 
 
 " Lord forgive me !" came in hoarse accents from the 
 whitened lips of the naturalist. 
 
 Presently he stooped to the crouching figure, and, 
 having, by strong but gently exerted force, released his 
 feet, patted the wailing creature s shoulder and finally 
 lifted him to a sitting position. 
 
 "I was half mad, my poor Heaven knows WHAT 
 you are !" he muttered, caressing tne now upturned 
 hairy face as though it had been a child s. " Be you 
 Brute or Man, it was the devil s own dastard prompt- 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 237 
 
 ing that I should murder you poor, faithful wretch ! 
 to escape the torments of a mind miserably craven to 
 the truths you shame it with. Up, now, brave fellow, 
 and your durion feast shall be followed by a taste of 
 arrack. Do you hear, Oshonsee ? arrack !" 
 
 This last word, at least, Oshonsee seemed to under 
 stand and find magically reassuring ; for he leaped to 
 his feet at the utterance, and advanced so rapidly to the 
 cottage that the conscience-stricken Doctor was left 
 many steps behind. 
 
 On the portico, now retaining but a faint light, a long 
 blouse, like a gown, was put upon the ape, to protect 
 him from the chiller air of evening ; after which at his 
 master s command he brought two pipes from the room, 
 a tobacco pouch, the "besi-api," or fire-making tube, 
 and the Panama hat. It was amongst his latest accom 
 plishments to light and smoke a pipe, and when the 
 naturalist had filled the two bowls this gentle monster 
 struck fire for his own as well as the other, and retired 
 with it, puffing, to a mat within the doorway. Then 
 ensued a fulfillment of the " arrack " promise. Going 
 also into the room, the unquestionably human member 
 of the pair took down a case bottle of Javanese arrack 
 from a hanging hamper, poured a small quantity of the 
 liquor into a leathern cup, and placed the latter in an 
 eagerly outstretched hand of the ape. No drunkard 
 would have quaffed the gift with keener avidity ; no 
 words of acknowledgment could have been more bibu- 
 lously appreciative than the chattering " O-shon-see ! 
 O-shon-see ! O-shon-see !" of the squatting figure on 
 the mat. 
 
 Taking no draught himself, nor speaking again, Doc 
 tor Hedland returned to the portico, smoking furiously, 
 and began pacing forward and backward, there, in a 
 condition of obvious nervous excitement. He wished 
 
238 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 to walk off the sensation of having awakened at some 
 unrevealing hour of feverish dawn from a sick man s 
 panting dream. He wanted to reconcile himself finally 
 and unflinchingly to his inexorable duty as a faithful 
 follower of fearless science, lead it to what it might. 
 No cowardice be his, henceforth, at working to a decisive 
 solution the awful problem involved in the nature of 
 the phenomenal Living Thing he had that day been 
 frenzied to murder. 
 
 Pipe in mouth, Oshonsee was a shape growing less 
 and less distinct on the mat, though not an immedi 
 ately motionless nor a silent one, with knees drawn 
 nearly up to his chin, and long arms lapped around 
 them, he swayed rockingly from side to side, crooning 
 like a sleepy nurse whose lullaby has sunk into a mere 
 tuneless trail of soothing sound. This went on until 
 the extinguished pipe dropped to the floor, when, with 
 an abrupt cessation of the crooning, the ape fell over on 
 his side and was quite motionless. 
 
 When the night was black in a starless maturity, 
 Hedland stopped suddenly in his weary tramp, at sight 
 of a faintly luminous appearance down the river, 
 where the narrow stream bent, in its sylvan course, 
 around a little cape of palms and jungle, before enter 
 ing upon its straighter and broader reach to the Sadong. 
 The effect was like that of a fire concealed by the cape, 
 its light showing around the bend in growing bright 
 ness, but soon two or three flickering dots of flame 
 came into view in a broader illumination, apparently 
 moving forward in the air a few feet above the water. 
 
 Not waiting to see more at the moment, the naturalist 
 hastened softly into his house and cautiously bent over 
 the deeply slumbering Oshonsee. A brief period of 
 intent listening satisfied him that the sleep was pro 
 found ; after which, stepping noiselessly across the 
 
A CEISIS FOE 08HON8EE. 239 
 
 prostrate form, he quickly possessed himself of the 
 second pistol, and, thrusting it into the breast of his 
 blouse, went out from the dark and silent chamber and 
 portico to the rapidly lightening waterside. 
 
 A score of twinkling flames now shone over the glim 
 mering stream in an approaching stealthy train, and if 
 the spectator on the bank had not been prepared for 
 the lustrous visitation he might have been more wary 
 about exposing his figure to its intensifying radiance. 
 For these floating tufts of fire, coming on with such 
 spectral movement, soon defined themselves as the 
 torches of half as many prahus, paddled without sound 
 by wild-looking, half-naked figures. When the mid 
 night watches on ships traversing the Malay Archi 
 pelago beheld these lights passing silently between the 
 islets of any rocky cluster, from the savage Sooloos to 
 the fairy-like Tambelans, they knew that the Bajows, 
 or " Sea-Gypsies," of the Borneon coast were gathering 
 for some mysterious migration. Dr. Hedland was 
 aware that he looked upon a flotilla of this strange rem 
 nant of lostDyak tribes, who live wholly in their slight 
 prahus for years ; the combined glare, shadow, partly- 
 revealed human shapes and indistinctly-illumined boats 
 delighted his artistic sensibilities ; and when the fore 
 most ghostly craft glided like a smoothly-swimming 
 thing to the side of his own deserted little vessel, he 
 stepped forward to greet one who leaped ashore, with 
 an expression of admiration. 
 
 What a picture you are making of it, most brilliant of 
 the princes of darkness," he said, extending his hand. 
 
 The man standing before him in the ruddy torchlight, 
 pressing a small, cold palm to his in civilized salutation, 
 wore the turban, semi-Turkish garments and native 
 " sarong " of a Malay, though without the usual gold 
 embroidery of a pangeran s attire. 
 
240 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "If the wise Tuan Hedland is pleased," returned 
 this comer, " it is happiness enough for the poor prince 
 without a country whom he has allowed to come to him 
 like a hunted fugitive in the night." 
 
 All of the prahus were now motionless on the darkly 
 gleaming water ; their elevated flames at bow and stern 
 casting a mellow glow upon the figures on the nearer 
 bank, the forest edges of the farther one, and the 
 grouped Bajow crews, whose wet oars, metal spear 
 heads, and brazen ornaments on necks, arms and 
 waists, caught ever-varying sparkles. 
 
 "Ah, my friend Makota, did I not warn you and 
 Usop of what would come from that mad work at 
 Bruni ?" said the naturalist, shaking his head. 
 
 That is past. Allah willed it. " 
 
 " But you were not there, Pangeran." 
 
 "Usop 1 s cause was mine to make war, endless war, 
 against all who come to Pulo Kalamantan with lying 
 promises on their tongues and death in their friend 
 ship." 
 
 "And the end of it is, that Usop runs away to Ki- 
 manis, and I hear of you, once more, hiding with your 
 old comrade, Shereef Sahib, in the ruins of Patusen," 
 rejoined Hedland, impatiently. 
 
 " For a time, Tuan ; only for a time," answered the 
 Malay, in a passionately repressed voice. " Makota s 
 day shall come yet. The leeches of Malacca drop off 
 when they have drunk enough blood, and then a child s 
 naked foot may crush them." 
 
 " I m afraid the leeches will take flesh and bone, too, 
 if you Pangerans break many more English treaties," 
 growled the Englishman. "But my letter to you by 
 Pa Jenna was not on affairs of State," he continued, in 
 a friendlier tone. " You had told me to send for you 
 to meet me at Songi when I would, and as Pa Jenna 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 241 
 
 heard that his daughter, Amina, was with you in Patu- 
 sen, I took advantage of his going there, to hold you to 
 your pledge." 
 
 u And I am here, Tuan Hedland ; though I Mako- 
 ta ! must steal hither by night, with such guards as 
 these, and be out of the Sadong before the dawn, lest 
 the prahus of Muda Hassim, or Budrudeen, should 
 track me down like a skulking Bugis trader !" The 
 clenched hands and drawn lips of the dark-faced Ma 
 hometan bespoke a wrath beyond the power of words. 
 
 " You have manfully justified my confidence in you," 
 acknowledged the Doctor, soothingly; "and the fact 
 that even the Bajows remain your friends while the 
 Sultan joins your foes, is proof, in itself, that you are 
 yet a power. And now to the purpose of our meeting. 
 Shall we go to the house ?" 
 
 " There is no time. I must be in haste to return," 
 said the fugitive Pangeran ; who stood with one foot 
 advanced in an oddly constrained attitude. 
 
 "Then here be it," was the coolly philosophical 
 assent. "What I have to say to you, Makota, does 
 not require many words. You have deceived me about 
 the mias ; not from any unfriendly motive, I believe, 
 but because you have thought that the value of the 
 creature to me depended upon his belonging to this 
 island. With all the superiority of intelligence that I 
 know you to possess over any Malay I have ever met 
 before, you seem to be incorrigible in this misapprehen 
 sion. I tell you now, for the last time, that it matters 
 not to me whether the ape is Sumatran, or Borneon ; and 
 I tell you, also, that it is useless for you to insist upon 
 the old story. He did not come from beyond the Madi 
 mountains, as you have represented ; for it is proved to 
 me at last that his species has been known in the 
 Sarawak valley within six years. Yet that is not a 
 
242 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 mias country ; so, what miases have been there must 
 have been brought from elsewhere in captivity. Neither 
 I nor any other European can tell what animals may be 
 found in the far interior of your land ; but it is my 
 conviction that Oshonsee is no ape of Borneo." 
 
 u Tuan Hedland is neither Malay, nor Dyak, nor 
 Chinese ; but here he is in Pulo Kalamantan," hinted 
 his auditor, with a peculiar smile. 
 
 "And that Pangeran would be worse than a fool 
 who sought to convince his friend that I could be of 
 the same land with Asiatic men," said the contempt 
 uous naturalist. " Trifle with me no longer, Makota," 
 he continued, more peremptorily; "for, as you have 
 been told, I now possess proof positive, that the species 
 of this mias has been known in a part of the Sarawak 
 region where it was impossible for it to have been 
 native. Six years ago, Sejugah, a young Dyak of Pa 
 Jenna s village, loved a girl of that place, and was 
 scorned because he had not yet brought in a head to 
 show his prowess. Even at that time the business of 
 head-hunting had become difficult ; for, between the 
 sultan s army with you and Muda Hassim in Sarawak, 
 and the rebels of Siniawin, the amateur seeker after 
 such a prize stood an excellent chance of losing his own 
 skull. 
 
 "But Sejugah did bring in a head, one day; and, 
 without question, it was smoked, and danced over, and 
 hung up in the village head-house, by his simple-minded 
 brother savages. There it remained, long after the re 
 joicings and marriage, until, a short time ago, it 
 attracted the notice of a civilized friend of mine as 
 having a look different from the other heads. Then I 
 was persuaded to go once more into the hideous place 
 and scrutinize the head for myself. By the Orang- 
 Kaya s authority I had it brought down for me from 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 243 
 
 the rafters, though Sejugah sought, even by force, to 
 prevent ; and I found it to be the head of a mias.*- 
 But such a mias, Pangeran Makota, as neither you nor 
 I ever saw before Oshonsee. It is a head such as his ; 
 neither Pappan, nor Rombi, nor Kassar, nor any other 
 Borneon type ; some foreign and hybrid creature, I 
 could swear, and probably female. I believe firml} , 
 from every appearance, that it is the head of the 
 mother of the mias you procured for me ; and the 
 shame-stricken Sejugah has confessed that he killed 
 the creature, with his spear, at the foot of Tubbang 
 mountain, close to his own village ! 
 
 "It is useless, after this, Makota, for you to attempt 
 farther deception with me. I know that Oshonsee 
 came not from the Madi mountains, and that his race 
 could not have originated in this Island at all. You 
 can tell me the whole truth if you choose, and it is 
 essential to a great interest of my Science that you 
 shall no longer withhold it. By our friendship I charge 
 you, for the last time, to say all that you really know 
 of the history of this strange creature." 
 
 The slender figure of the Malay remained motionless 
 in the torchlight, while the stalwart frame of the earnest 
 Englishman swayed with many an emphatic gesture. 
 
 "I have deceived you," said Makota, slowly and 
 without emotion, "but only through knowing no more 
 than yourself about the birthplace of the mias. My 
 hunters brought the creature to me in Kuchin on their 
 return from a long hunt after pheasants. It was so 
 young then that it was put to suckle with the female 
 mias that Muda Hassim afterwards gave to the English 
 rajah. My people may have found it anywhere between 
 Kuchin and the Batang Lupar. I told you the Madi 
 
 * This whole passage is historical. 
 
244 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 mountains, because you knew that the mias was not a 
 Pappan of Sambas, or Simunjon. and I did not, myself, 
 know where such as he certainly belonged. By the beard 
 of the Prophet ! I swear that I can tell you no more." 
 
 Always willing to credit this most intellectual of the 
 native princes of Borneo proper with much more re 
 spectable moral qualities than ever found credence at 
 Kuchin, the disappointed Doctor doubted not that he 
 had now heard all the truth attainable, and paced back 
 and forth in abstracted thought, for a moment, before 
 speaking again. 
 
 a l am bound to believe you, Pangeran ; for your 
 misapprehensive deception has not been even so much 
 as I could have wished," he said at last. "This ape 
 must now remain an inexplicable mystery to the last, I 
 suppose a mere accidental monster, and probably the 
 last of an untraceable species. None the less, though, 
 half a Man ! I 11 maintain that, if the whole world 
 laughs at me !" This part of his remarks might as well 
 have been in English, for all that his stolid hearer un 
 derstood thereof, and he appreciated the fact sufficiently 
 to change the exhausted theme : 
 
 "Makota, I have none of the superhuman powers 
 your people of this Island insist upon attributing to 
 Rajah Brooke and all his countrymen ; but it may be 
 possible for me to befriend you, if you will be wise. A 
 relative of a man whom I greatly love was wounded at 
 Malludu, and the man has sent me a message to visit 
 Kuchin and give him the benefit of my skill as a physi 
 cian. I shall go, and it will be congenial to the real 
 friendship I feel for you, to be a negotiator there on 
 your behalf. You are well aware that I have no par 
 ticular personal affection for the Rajah of Sarawak ; 
 nevertheless, I see plainly that it is the most futile folly 
 for you to remain his enemy. In fighting him you are 
 
A CRISIS FOR OSHONSEE. 245 
 
 contending not only with your own Sultan, but also 
 with the whole might of the great English nation. 
 You see what Usop and the Shereefs have paid for their 
 childish whistling against the wind. Be wiser in this, 
 as in all else, than they, and let me mediate between 
 yourself and Tuan Besar for your restoration to loyalty, 
 to your true princely estate, and to the confidence of 
 civilized men." 
 
 Standing yet in that constrained attitude, the swarthy 
 Mahometan turned up his face, in the glinting light, to 
 that of his taller counsellor, with a look of concentrated 
 hatred upon it more frank than any expression it had 
 previously shown. 
 
 " You shall bear him a message from Makota : one he 
 has already heard," he said, slowly and significantly. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Let him look to his friends !" 
 
 u I do not understand that." 
 
 " Tuan Besar will understand." 
 
 " I shall say nothing, then, Pangeran. Obscure 
 menaces are neither for Christian men to carry nor to 
 heed. You refuse my good offices and choose to keep 
 your own w r ay. So be it." 
 
 " Has Tuan Hedland any farther command for his 
 poor, mad friend ?" 
 
 " No. We may part now." 
 
 Quickly drawing back the foot he had kept so stub 
 bornly advanced, the Malay lightly stooped : then arose 
 as lithely with some object in his extended hand : 
 
 "You dropped this, Tuan, coming out to meet the 
 pursued and friendless Makota !" 
 
 Mechanically the naturalist received the proffered 
 pistol that which he had discharged earlier in the 
 evening, and which had caught the keen eye of the 
 Pangeran at the latter s first step on the bank, Not 
 
246 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 until his ironical visitor had slipped noiselessly back 
 into the cabined prahu and waved a taciturn farewell, 
 did he fully realize that he had been suspected of pos 
 sible treachery. 
 
 " The hair-brained idiot !" he wrathfully muttered, 
 with a passing indignant impulse to fire the other pis 
 tol into the air, as a resentful taunt; "does he think 
 me as much an assassin as his heathen self?" 
 
 Not the faintest sound had come from the light-giving 
 prahus during the whole characteristic interview ; and 
 now, when the one bearing Makota shot out, with its 
 flaring torches, to take the lead down the forest-walled 
 stream, they successively resumed motion, as stealthily 
 devoid of so much hint to the ear as even plash of oar. 
 Most insidious of all the midnight prowlers of East In 
 dian seas, whether in depredatory approach or mocking 
 flight, those Bajow rowers could propel their ghostly 
 craft in a stillness as absolute as that kept by their 
 tongues. The luminous circle of fiery radiance drew 
 away from the bank and the figure upon it ; receding 
 down the narrow stream through continual pale appa 
 ritions and cloudy disappearances of arching tree- 
 boughs and flitting jungle, until the floating central 
 bits of fire went, dwindling, one by one, out of sight, 
 and once more there was but a spectral gleam around 
 the bend of the river. 
 
 Doctor Hedland remained watching the barbaric 
 spectacle to this point ; and then turned his back sharply 
 upon it, in something like the vaguely protesting spirit 
 of a man moving from one side to the other upon his 
 bed, at half-waking release from an ungracious dream. 
 The blank darkness in which he was left had a more 
 desolate effect of complete isolation, from his feeling 
 that even the semblance of his friendship with the sullen 
 Malay had ended, Not his the fault, nor the loss ; yet. 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 247 
 
 in a certain perverse way, he had warmly admired the 
 indomitable traitor prince, and felt the lonelier in the 
 world through knowing that even a hollow pretense 
 on Makota s side could be trusted no more. 
 
 It was, therefore, rather heavy-heartedly that he 
 groped his way back to the cottage ; though, perhaps, 
 with an even more softened sentiment than before for 
 the yet profoundly sleeping dumb familiar of his savage 
 exile. Only the measured breathing of the Ape, in 
 the thick gloom, gave evidence of a companioning 
 presence within that pigmy shrine of vaunting human 
 Knowledge, on the black verge of an untrodden world ; 
 but, without where all was one vast, veiling sylvan 
 temple to an unknown God the Pagan priesthood of 
 the palms rustled fitfully a wordless incantation to un- 
 lighted skies, and the myriad uninterpretable voices of 
 the trackless wild resounded like a choral dithyramb of 
 the Lost. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 AT MR. MEBTON S TABLE. 
 
 IN any part of the habitable globe the most useful of 
 roving titles for a man to wear is that of "Captain," 
 and it might have been Mr. Merton s, in Kuchin, had 
 he chosen to cherish the professional identity of his first 
 appearance in the East Indies. 
 
 It was as commander and part owner of a fine India- 
 man that he became acquainted, at Singapore, with the 
 noted Captain Van der Beck, whose greatly successful 
 transformation into planter and shipper on the island 
 of Ceram suggested to our English mariner that he, 
 
248 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 also, might profit by speculative individual adventure 
 in the Archipelago. "With no very definite idea of the 
 particular island he should ultimately select for his own 
 purpose, nor in what special products he should interest 
 himself, he impulsively decided to dispose of his owner 
 ship in the Indiaman, purchase a smaller vessel, and 
 compete in the coasting trade between the Straits Set 
 tlements and Celebes until opportunity of more ambi 
 tious investment should offer. 
 
 Bringing out his wife from her English home to 
 Singapore, at that time a lively new centre, yet, of 
 commercial enterprise, from the prosperous impetus 
 given to it by Sir Stamford Baffles earlier exaltation of 
 British prestige in the Java Sea, Captain Merton forth 
 with entered upon his project. In a schooner too well 
 armed and manned to dread piratical interference, 
 unless wrecked, he cruised from port to port as far 
 as the Banda Sea, and then back ; always alert for any 
 such local eligibility of power and thrift as Van der 
 Beck had discovered. He returned with the conviction 
 that there was only one thus eligible opening in the 
 whole Archipelago, and that the Dutch skipper had 
 availed himself of it. 
 
 Not caring after that to prosecute his trading rivalry 
 with the energetic Bugis, nor yet willing to go home 
 discomfited to England, he summarily sold his 
 schooner, and presently obtained an interest in an 
 experimental cotton plantation owned by a Dutch 
 gentleman named Yon Camp, in the province of Ban 
 tam, Java. The subsequent sale of this plantation, at 
 a supposably larger profit than might have accrued 
 from farther amateur working, was followed by the re 
 appearance of the Mertons in Singapore, accompanied 
 by the Yon Camps. Upon becoming a landed proprie 
 tor Mr, Merton had chosen to drop his title, and it was 
 
AT ME. MERTON S TABLE. 249 
 
 as "little Merton from Manchester" that his compa 
 triots of the Straits finally knew him, in his various 
 enterprises with Mr. Yon Camp. 
 
 When Rajah Brooke had made Kuchin a place of 
 mark to the whole world, the two friends were among 
 the first of Europeans to risk a residence there ; and so 
 they come into the present story ; both, indeed, at this 
 telling, being concerned with Mr. Emngham in projects 
 to establish Chinese coal-mining on the Simunjon, and 
 build in Singapore a factory for the preparation of Bor- 
 neon sago. 
 
 Our American family and these new acquaintances 
 having already been seen in friendly company together, 
 the foregoing sketch of a typical speculative career in 
 the Malayan Indies of forty years ago may serve to 
 give more distinct individual interest to the Mertons as 
 the hosts of a little dinner-party, whereat the Yon 
 Camps and the Effinghams were invited to meet the 
 Eajah, Mr. Williamson and Doctor Hedland ! 
 
 Kuchin had exhausted itself in every public device of 
 celebration at Tuan Besar s victorious return from 
 Bruni and Malludu. A triumphant escort of prahus 
 for H. M. S. Driver, from the mouth of the Sarawak to 
 the Rajah s wharf ; salutes, illuminations with torches 
 and Chinese lanterns, and a picturesque native cere 
 mony of heroic welcome by two charming daughters of 
 the magistrate known as the Tumangong, had been 
 successive forms of joyous greeting to an idolized 
 ruler ; and then to the patriotism of the foreign resi 
 dents were left such hospitable private demonstrations 
 as might be consistent with the fact that a young Eng 
 lish officer had been brought back severely wounded to 
 the Rajah s house. 
 
 Mr. Merton waited only long enough to be assured 
 that the stricken youth was convalescing, to announce 
 
250 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN 
 
 his modest entertainment. It was impracticable in a 
 cottage like his to attempt any banquet on a grand 
 scale, even had the social availabilities of the place 
 been such as to yield due proportions of the sexes in a 
 large party. Accordingly, after an invitation to the 
 Rajah, his immediate staff and guests, of whom but 
 the first, his aide, and the Doctor could return accept 
 ances, he besought the company of the two families 
 most likely to be congenial in the circumstances. In 
 deed, although it was now generally understood that 
 the savage blow from a " parang-ihlang " suffered by 
 Mr. Belmore had not fractured the skull, as was at 
 first feared, a peculiar regard for both the Lieutenant 
 and his Uncle . constrained the Rajah to abstain yet 
 awhile from any social attentions not of the quietest 
 order. 
 
 Hence, the gathering of eleven people, in the Mer- 
 tons family -room, preparatory to the dining, had any 
 aspect but that of a State affair ; and there was much 
 pleasantry amongst them at the difficulties they had all 
 experienced in trying, on different occasions, to main 
 tain the hospitable forms of civilized society amidst the 
 many awkward limitations of their present Gipsy kind 
 of life. As for the dresses of the occasion, they, too, 
 partook of its enforced simplicity ; the ladies wearing 
 plain summer silks and no ornaments beyond a few 
 natural flowers in their hair, and the gentlemen looking 
 practical in loose black coats and nether appointments, 
 and white waistcoats. 
 
 Coming thither from the usual daily session of his 
 court of justice, in which, with the native magistracy 
 ranged on either side of his chair, he awarded repara 
 tion to the wronged and punishment to the guilty, the 
 Rajah brought with him no other slightest sign of his 
 princely rank than the handkerchief almost perpetually 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 251 
 
 in his hand ; and this characteristic Orientalism was so 
 obviously without immediate consciousness on his part, 
 that it seemed rather an oversight than a mannerism. 
 After the first salutations he chatted with the ladies, in 
 groups or singly, upon such light local topics, or latest 
 bits of news from Europe, as they might be supposed 
 to care about, becoming taciturn only when anything 
 in the general conversation threatened to make the 
 Bruni expedition a subject of special reference. 
 
 Ko man ever won a great position in the world with 
 less pride over its conventional heroism and more jeal 
 ousy of its genuine moral integrity than James Brooke. 
 In the public duties of his anomalous Christian govern 
 ment of a Mahometan principality he could assume the 
 stateliest air of an absolute potentate, and convey an 
 impression of all the militant power of his rank ; but 
 when associating informally with people of his own 
 race, it was his wish to be simply an unaffected Eng 
 lish gentleman, engaged in an as yet undecided hu 
 manely regenerative mission ; and it gave him more 
 humiliation than complacence to be reminded of his 
 occasional compulsion to the sword. 
 
 It is difficult to idealize such a character in any effec 
 tive degree for abstract literary presentation ; yet even 
 as but an untitled member of a little party of educated 
 exiles from civilization gathered socially in a Borneon 
 house of bamboo, Mr. Brooke had a distinctive and 
 suggestive dignity of aspect by which the commonest 
 observation would have recognized him as one pos 
 sessed of an eminent personal history. The high fore 
 head, delicate temples, spirited sensibility of nostril, 
 and firm curve of shapely chin ; the eyes, at once keen 
 and benevolent, and twinkling with a latency of ingen 
 uous humor ; the mouth, as refinedly unsensuous as it 
 was decisively manly ; combined in an intellectual ex- 
 
252 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 pression both lofty and propitiatory ; to which the 
 erect bearing and graceful ease of movement induced 
 by years of familiar quiet command and ennobling 
 physical freedom, were the harmonious completion of a 
 personality the more impressively distinguished, from 
 appearing to gain without factitious appeal an instinct 
 ive general concession of tacit deference to it. 
 
 The Mortons and their friends inferred that the arrival 
 of Doctor Hedland at the government house, to con 
 sult with the official surgeon, Doctor Treacher, in the 
 case of the wounded lieutenant, had been followed by 
 some form of reconciliation between the Eajah and his 
 old comrade ; but they were somewhat surprised to 
 observe such evidence of fully restored friendship as 
 their acceptance of a social invitation together. The 
 naturalist was prepared to be regarded with some in 
 quisitive curiosity, and in greeting the Effinghans took 
 occasion to offer both an apology and an explanation. 
 
 " With all due appreciation of Mr. and Mrs. Merton s 
 polite hospitality, madame," he said, when presented 
 to Mrs. Effingham, "I might not have been able to 
 combat my unsocial tendencies sufficiently to avail my 
 self of it to-day, but for the particular temptation of the 
 opportunity to modify that unfavorable estimation in 
 which you and the other ladies of your household must 
 have held me since our first meeting." 
 
 "Do not mention that, sir," she responded, with a 
 smile. " The circumstances were so exceptional, and 
 your provocation was so great, that you might justly 
 have expected our feelings to be more apologetic for 
 ourselves than inimical to you." 
 
 " That is certainly a magnanimous way of putting it, 
 Mrs. Effingham, and I thank you, " the Doctor remarked, 
 with a bow and an answering smile ; " but as I am back 
 here again with old friends on my good behavior, I de- 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 253 
 
 sire to confess frankly that I am not the kind of man 
 with whom many can get along agreeably, unless by 
 making a very generous allowance for the irritabilities 
 of a temper that has not improved by average contact 
 with the world. We are so few white Christians, alto 
 gether, in this outlandish wilderness of heathendom, 
 that I am fairly sick of trying to find a comfort in hostile 
 independence, and believe that it is good philosophy to 
 avow my mistake and resume the bondage of mutual 
 social obligation ! I said to my old friend, Mr. Brooke, 
 beside the sick-bed of our gallant young patient : You 
 are such an exceptionally unsatisfactory person, Eajah, 
 to attempt to force into the attitude of an enemy, that 
 I renounce the delusive experiment. His incredibly 
 pitiless answer was as we shook hands that he had 
 never doubted my experience of untold torments in 
 trying vainly to persuade myself that I cared no longer 
 for our early friendship, and that there had never been 
 a moment since our parting at Singapore when he would 
 have been afraid to count upon me as, in reality, one of 
 the stanchest friends he could find in the world I" 
 
 Everybody in the room was compelled to hear this 
 unreserved confidence ; for the speaker seemed pur 
 posely to make all his confidants by particularly loud 
 and deliberate speaking. Mr. Brooke laughed at the 
 quotation from himself, and intimated that no one else 
 who knew the terrible Doctor had ever been the least 
 bit more credulous of his enmity. 
 
 "It is enviable, sir, to be the subject of such incre 
 dulity," said Mrs. Eflfingham, recovering from her mo 
 mentary embarrassment at seeming to be the interlocutor 
 in a public confession. 
 
 "I don t know about that, madame," returned Hed- 
 land, resuming his usual tone and manner. " There 
 are times when a human being of average spirit would 
 
254 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 like to be credited with a good, honest power of 
 hating." 
 
 "It does not seem possible to me that real hatred 
 can ever supplant real love," remarked the lady. 
 "Doubtless a course of bitterly hostile thought, and 
 even action, may result from affection repelled, or be 
 trayed ; but the very passion of such bitterness arises 
 from the affronted love yet underlying it. Jealousy s 
 utmost extravagance is not yet hatred ; for hate and 
 love cannot exist simultaneously in the same heart, and 
 the revengeful antagonism created by a sense of injus 
 tice in a loving nature is very different from the in 
 stinctive antipathy actuating all real hatred." 
 
 " Which I take to be a considerate way of saying that 
 I have been simply jealous of my friend Brooke and 
 perhaps you re right," said the Doctor, maliciously 
 enjoying the confession of the fair philosopher at his 
 blunt personal application of her theory. "At any 
 rate, madame, I hope that I have now made my peace 
 with yourself and all other friends in Kuchin. I knew, 
 when. I entered this room, that everybody here was 
 wondering how the Rajah and myself appeared to be 
 upon such good terms, and it seemed to me that my 
 sensible course was to confess in public at once, and 
 have the fool s play over." 
 
 Mrs. Emngharn greeted this characteristic summing- 
 up of the whole matter with a pleasant little laugh. 
 
 " I call that true moral courage, as well as excellent 
 common sense. May I ask you- now, as you have re 
 ferred to your patient, how Mr. Belmore is getting 
 on?" 
 
 " As well as the slow healing of a wound will allow, 
 in this latitude." 
 
 " His Uncle is with him ?" 
 
 " Yes ; since two days ago. The Colonel was stop- 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 255 
 
 ping in Sambas, as you have heard, I suppose, on his 
 way to Singapore, when Mr. Brooke s messenger over 
 took him with news of his nephew s mishap. He at 
 once dispatched runners to me, and then came back 
 here himself by prahu." 
 
 "We deeply sympathize with him in his anxiety," 
 said Mrs. Effingham. "When it was first reported 
 that Mr. Belmore s injury was dangerous our house was 
 as sad as though he had belonged to it. Both Mr. 
 Effingham and myself have acquired a very warm regard 
 for the young man." 
 
 While this conversation was progressing, the Kajah 
 had been drawn into a lively debate of the great Bor- 
 neon coal question by Messieurs Merton, Yon Camp, 
 and Effingham, the joint local business-enterprises of 
 those gentlemen enlisting his heartiest approval ; Mr. 
 Williamson had undertaken to describe to Mrs. Yon 
 Camp. Miss Ankeroo and the taciturn Abretta, how the 
 edible birds -nests were found and gathered in caves 
 along the coast ; and Mrs. Merton was absent upon an 
 inquest of the final preparations for dinner. 
 
 The plan of the Merton mansion included no halls 
 nor other spaces between apartments. The door from 
 the veranda opened immediately upon the family-room, 
 and one directly opposite to it in the partition of the 
 latter gave access to the dining-room ; the dormitories 
 being divided and doored from either end of each of the 
 two main interiors. When, therefore, upon summons of 
 a Portuguese butler, the principal guest offered an arm 
 to his hostess, and the others paired in due processional 
 order thereafter, an effect of comedy was produced by 
 the abruptness with which all emerged against the very 
 backs of the chairs they were to occupy at table. 
 
 But none of the embarrassments of civilized hospital 
 ity in a savage country involved any humiliation for the 
 
256 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 givers of the entertainment, inasmuch as they were 
 common to the domestic experience of every European 
 family in Borneo ; and the more unlike every detail and 
 episode was to that which would have been exigent in a 
 Christian land, the fresher was its zest as a character 
 istic barbarous sauce piquant. With all, too, the 
 Merton dinner, beginning with an unexceptionable soup 
 and ending with such a variety of fruits as few princely 
 boards can show, lacked only ices to be complete in all 
 the principal dishes and dainties of a London or New 
 York banquet. Fish of rare delicacy, native oysters, or 
 " tirarns," turtle, and chicken deliciously curried in the 
 inimitable Bombay style, preceded or alternated with 
 substantial mutton, beef and venison : the wines, espe 
 cially the India sherry, were good and plentiful ; and 
 the ornamentation of flowers was as brilliant as the most 
 sensuous taste could have devised. Given the endless 
 gustatory availabilities of the heart of the Tropics, with 
 Chinese servants facile to acquire the subtlest arts of 
 cooking and service which can be taught to them, and 
 an Apicius might be happy in Pulo Kalimantan. 
 
 Incidentally to this suggestion, and affably addressing 
 the table generally, Mr. Brooke presently observed : 
 
 "I am sometimes disposed to believe, that, in trying 
 to interest my fellow-countrymen, at home, in Borneo, I 
 would do well to expatiate more upon the delicious 
 things one may find here to eat. Diamonds, gold, tin, 
 antimony, rice, coffee, cocoanuts, and what not, seem to 
 appeal as familiar abstractions to the British mind. 
 Mention of them is always expected when one has any 
 thing to say about unpleasantly hot countries, and they 
 no longer fire the commercial imagination as in former 
 times. Become enthusiastic, however, over the pleasures 
 of the table to be enjoyed at the ends of the earth, and 
 forthwith you establish one of the strongest of all possi- 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 257 
 
 ble temptations for the average man to go thither some 
 time if he can." 
 
 "Possibly we are betraying a national secret to Mr. 
 Effingham," added Dr. Hedland, beaming amiably 
 through his glasses, "but I am sure you are right, 
 Rajah. The parts of the Globe to which Englishmen can 
 be the most easily drawn are those of which you can re 
 port that, however their minerals and other sordid at 
 tractions may disappoint, they are always to be trusted 
 for a good dinner. What curries and mangoes have 
 done for India, turtles and durions might effect for Bor 
 neo. The more you think of this idea," continued the 
 Doctor, more seriously, "the less farcical it will seem. 
 What European countries are the least popular with 
 dyspeptics even, but those in which the table-fare is 
 poorest ? Why is diamond-seeded Africa neglected for 
 illusive Asia, except because the African adventurer 
 must expect to forego all decent eating ?" 
 
 "Conceding that the argument is fairly logical," said 
 Mr. Merton, "it would scarcely apply beneficially to 
 Borneo ; where we do not at present need pleasure- 
 visitors, or colonists, so much as Spartan capitalists." 
 
 " That is, indeed, our great want individuals, or 
 Companies, of large means, to come to this vast, vir 
 tually unappropriated Island of untold riches, and 
 utilize its wonderful products to the civilized world," 
 assented the Rajah, with remarkable earnestness. 
 " Now cannot you ladies persuade Mr. Effingham to 
 remain with us at least another year ?" he went on, 
 appealing to that gentleman s family. "The United 
 States are exhibiting more interest for us now than I 
 can excite in my own nation. Only Great Britain and 
 the Dutch have had a greater number of ships at Singa 
 pore this year than the United States. I tell my own 
 countrymen, frankly, that if they persist in neglecting 
 
258 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 the present golden opportunity of reclaiming and con 
 trolling this second-greatest and richest Island in the 
 world, either the Americans or the Netherlander will 
 grasp the prize. As an Englishman I am jealous of 
 any form of Dutch expansion in the East Indies if 
 Mr. and Mrs. Yon Camp will excuse my plain speak 
 ing but, in default of English alacrity, I am anxious 
 to have Americans interested in Sarawak. Mr. Effing- 
 ham s sojourn here has given me great gratification, 
 and I am peculiarly pleased at what he and our friends, 
 Mr. Merton and Mr. Yon Camp, are doing for the busi 
 ness interests of Borneo. Ladies, you must help me to 
 persuade him to a longer stay." 
 
 " They have not yet learned to be as fond of the East 
 Indies as Mrs. Yon Camp and I," suggested Mrs. Mer 
 ton. 
 
 " Miss Ankeroo s school and mission should save her 
 from home-sickness, at any rate," insinuated Mr. Yon 
 Camp, bowing to that fair missionary. 
 
 u I am afraid my humble educational efforts will not 
 avail to detain my friends in a country where monkeys 
 are thought to be men," said Cousin Sadie ; and there 
 was general merriment at this irrepressible note of her 
 well-known intolerance for the theory of the naturalist, 
 Dr. Hedland laughing as cheerily as the others. 
 
 "I appreciate your Excellency s compliment to my 
 country and myself, interposed Mr. Effingham, inclin 
 ing his head ; " but it will be quite impracticable for us 
 to remain here longer than at first proposed. I am 
 fully impressed, however, with the truth of all that has 
 been said as to the undeveloped riches of Borneo, and 
 the ease with which they can be commercially utilized ; 
 and, upon our return to the United States, shall exert 
 myself to interest both the government and our mer 
 cantile classes yet more actively in this undoubtedly 
 
AT ME. MERTON S TABLE. 259 
 
 great field for both national and individual experiment. 
 By that time," he added, turning with a smile to 
 wards the Doctor, "I hope that our visiting Commo 
 dore will be able to act as his own interpreter." 
 
 "Ah!" cried Hedland, throwing up his hands in 
 mock dismay ; " there s another cut for the reclaimed 
 sinner ! But let me assure you, Mr. Effingham as I 
 seem to be in the confessional again ! there was no 
 treachery in the interpreting for your Constitution s 
 commander at Bruni. The Sultan had done me the 
 honor to ask my services in the case, and I merely in 
 terpreted as the parties spoke. I was blamed by your 
 side for not taking active part with it ; practically serv 
 ing as an American ambassador myself ; and that was 
 not at all in my province." 
 
 "When I came to know you, sir, I no longer enter 
 tained a question of the propriety of your reserve," 
 returned Mr. Effingham, courteously. 
 
 The Kajah s tact to avert possible awkward effects 
 from this turn of the conversation, was shown in his 
 prompt arraignment of himself for having introduced 
 heavy topics of State to the prejudice of the ladies 
 proper share in the table-talk. Upon this hint the sev 
 eral gentlemen devoted their colloquial attentions for a 
 while to their gentler companions, the usual light chat 
 of a dinner-party prevailed generally around the board, 
 and the Chinese servants poured the wines without fear 
 of interrupting critical speeches. 
 
 If there were exceptions to the spontaneous social 
 geniality of the cozy gathering, they could be found in 
 the radically contrasting demeanors of the youngest 
 and the oldest members of the company Miss Effing- 
 ham and the naturalist. Much girlish vivacity could 
 scarcely have been expected from the former, where all 
 were her elders, and the tenor of incident and remark 
 
260 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 naturally adapted itself to the presence of an important 
 personage ; but, even these subduing influences im 
 perfectly accounted for an apparently unconscious 
 isolation of manner, making her a mere passivity of 
 youthful beauty. Doctor Hedland s was the other 
 extreme ; his usual dogmatic style of address and 
 curtness of rejoinder had given place to a kind of 
 placatory and comparatively garrulous politeness, that 
 would have seemed a benevolent change but for a 
 certain uncomfortable suggestion of spasmodic effort 
 in it. 
 
 Conversational varieties ranged from congratulations 
 upon the mildness with which the wet-monsoon had 
 begun, to speculations as to the true value of the 
 enormous diamond said to have been obtained by the 
 Sultan of Matan from the Borneon Golconda of Mount 
 Landa. Miss Ankeroo s citation of some zoological 
 spelling from the Dictionary of Marsden led Mr. Wil 
 liamson into a sketch of that lexicographer s career in 
 the East India Company s Sumatran service ; and Mr. 
 Merton s appeal in a question of game-hunting to Mr. 
 Brooke, as to one who had shot woodcock in the ruins 
 of Ephesus and hares on the plains of Troy, drew from 
 the Rajah on account of the Dyak method of capturing 
 the native stag, or "rusa," by driving it into a snare- 
 work of rattan. The married ladies compared notes 
 upon the docility and quick understanding of China 
 men as household servitors, and the Doctor was voluble 
 to the mechanically attentive Abretta about Aru birds 
 of paradise and the mound-building hens of Lombok. 
 Only the Bruni expedition and orang-outans were ex 
 cluded from the locally suggested topics more or less 
 discussed. 
 
 When there was a concentration of subject again, it 
 arose from the Rajah s remark to Mr. Effingham, that 
 
AT ME. BRETON S TABLE. 261 
 
 he had felt surprised disappointment at the indifference 
 of noted philanthropists to his work. 
 
 " I am anxious to attract organized capital hither, it 
 is true," he went on; "for that is essential to the 
 development of the splendid material resources of this 
 Island at least into an equality with those of Java. 
 There can be no permanent civilization for Borneo 
 without this. No general truth could be more self- 
 evident ; and yet, because it is inseparable from any 
 argument I can address effectively to the Christian 
 nations whom I wish to enlist in the redemption of a 
 mighty land given over for ages to helpless barbarians, 
 even my own English people appear to believe that the 
 establishment of another East India Company is my 
 principal, if not sole, aim. 
 
 " This misapprehension is shown by my very friends. 
 They talk to me about making myself the richest com 
 moner in the world ; a second Arkwright as though 
 my motive in being here were that of a mere pecuniary 
 speculator ! I am reminded of the princely state main 
 tained by the brother of Doctor Hedland in Lombok ; 
 the splendor of Mr. Duivenboden, the autocratic Dutch 
 "King of Ternate," and the growing affluence of Cap 
 tain Yan der Beck in Ceram. 
 
 " But it has never entered into my thoughts either to 
 attain wealth by my position here, or share it as reaped 
 by others. I came to befriend and elevate a simple- 
 hearted race of men, who ask but the countenance and 
 protection of Christian benefactors to emerge thankfully 
 from heathen superstition, slavery and degradation into 
 any nobler state we may choose to fit them for. I hold 
 my rajahship of Sarawak purely to afford these poor 
 Dyaks the only measure of justice ever attainable by 
 them against the pitiless extortions and enslavements of 
 
262 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 their worthless Malay pangerans and shereefs, and 
 would willingly resign it to-morrow to have my Country 
 establish here her equitable laws and redeeming civili 
 zation. 
 
 "All this I have fervently reiterated to my country 
 men. Lord Aberdeen may correspond by the ream with 
 M. Dedel, the Netherlands minister, about the Treaty 
 of 1824 and how it may proportion the respective 
 trading prerogatives of their two governments in the 
 Archipelago ; but I want to see English philanthropists 
 like Sir Fowell Buxton, for instance taking a moral 
 interest in the matter and giving me at least their good 
 wishes." 
 
 As the speaker warmed with theme and sentiment 
 so dear to his heart, he seemed to forget where he was, 
 and attained an intensification of tone and glance mag 
 netizing his hearers into breathless attention. 
 
 "A nobler ambition could not possess the human 
 mind," responded the American merchant, with sym 
 pathetic fervor; "but you must reflect, sir, that it is 
 unfortunately anomalous in the history of European as 
 cendancy in the Orient. From commerce to conquest 
 has been the one unvarying tale of Christendom s deal 
 ings with indolent Asia ; and you can scarcely expect 
 the Buxtons and IVilberforces, whose credulity suffered 
 such a shock from the futile Niger Expedition, to be 
 lieve at once that a fellow-countryman is single-minded 
 in challenging their help against a worse than African 
 slavery in the ever-plundered East Indies. In fact, I 
 believe that I may say without national conceit, that 
 the true spirit of your actions in Borneo, Mr. Brooke, 
 is better understood in my country, at present, than in 
 your own. Both the government and the people of the 
 United States are familiar with the tenor of your work 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 263 
 
 here, and I am confident that you will yet receive signal 
 evidence of their high appreciation. "* 
 
 " Next to the sympathy and co-operation of Great 
 Britain, Mr. Effing-ham, I should value the friendship of 
 the one other great nation speaking the same language, 
 worshiping in the same religion and characterized by 
 the same indomitable energy. Let me frankly confess 
 to you, that in importuning the ministry of Sir Robert 
 Peel to avail itself of the present exceptional opportunity 
 here, I have mentioned the United States as being no 
 less likely than the Netherlands to seize the neglected 
 chance. It was an American missionary at Bruni, Mr. 
 Dickenson, who first called attention to Borneo s rich 
 ness in coal. Our vessels in these seas now use from 
 one hundred to three hundred thousand tons of coal a 
 year, all of which must be brought from home ; yet the 
 western coast of this Island, from Bruni southward, is 
 probably almost a succession of coal-beds. 
 
 "In this connection I have taken the liberty of 
 naming yourself, sir, in my dispatches to Lord Aber 
 deen, as showing, by your concern with Mr. Yon Camp 
 and Mr. Merton, what American judgment may see in 
 the commercial practicabilities of our Island. Proba 
 bly such a portent as the recent visit of the Constitu 
 tion to the Sultan will decide my government at least 
 to plant its flag on Labuan, as I have suggested, and so 
 put itself into a position to dominate, ultimately, the 
 whole northwestern coast. You see, therefore, that I 
 already owe much to American enterprise, and have 
 good reason to thank your President Tyler s late admin 
 istration. Is the same policy likely to be followed by 
 the present cabinet ?" 
 
 * Five years after this conversation a special Envoy from Washington 
 carried a letter of congratulation to the Rajah of Sarawak from the 
 President of the United States. 
 
264 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Mr. Effingham s manner was a shade less cordial in 
 his answer to this question. 
 
 "President Polk," he said, "was not the candidate 
 of the political party to which I belong, and I am not 
 prepared to say how far he may adopt the foreign 
 policy of his predecessor. Yet there is not much likeli 
 hood of any very radical departure from a course dic 
 tated by the paramount commercial interests of the 
 country." 
 
 " Pardon me if I ask, sir, to which party do you 
 belong I" interposed Doctor Hedland, suddenly, with a 
 touch of his old, unceremoniously domineering air. 
 
 An amused look in the Rajah s eyes invited his Ameri 
 can friend to humor this diversion, and Mr. Effingham 
 turned his own dignified glance to the florid counten 
 ance of the last speaker. 
 
 " I have the honor, Doctor Hedland, to be a member 
 of the party whose political principles and average 
 associations are the more congenial with the judgment 
 and tastes of American Gentlemen." 
 
 The naturalist perfectly appeciated the intention of 
 this peculiar answer to waive a subject too immediately 
 personal for the occasion, but a reckless spirit of per 
 versity had full possession of him. 
 
 "Am I to understand, then, that affiliation with 
 political parties in the United States is a matter of 
 social selection ?" he inquired, with an aspect of sur 
 prise. 
 
 "With all but the professional politicians," was the 
 cool and sweeping response. 
 
 "Live and learn !" ejaculated the Doctor, shrugging 
 his broad shoulders. " Here is an aristocratic principle 
 that exceeds anything known to us in Europe." 
 
 "Yes if you misapprehend, or only partly under 
 stand it, sir." 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 265 
 
 "Excuse my obtuseness ; but how can there be a 
 more extreme system of class-distinction in the popula 
 tion of a country than that which you have asserted 
 for your republic ? An aristocrat by politics sounds to 
 me like the aristocracy of France before the Revolu 
 tion." 
 
 " ^Nevertheless, Doctor Hedland, such is the aristoc 
 racy of my country." 
 
 " Well, I was once there myself," sneered the Doctor, 
 " and certainly witnessed some phases of social assump 
 tion about equal to that standard !" 
 
 Mrs. Effingham looked startled at this reminiscence, 
 and tried to catch the eye of her husband ; but that 
 gentleman, who was regarding his catechist with unruf 
 fled composure, did not care to be admonished. 
 
 " Foreigners visiting the United States are apt to be 
 surprised," he said, "at finding the same social order 
 as in their own monarchial countries, when they had 
 expected to have their vanity propitiated by the greet 
 ings of a universal democracy. For instance, an Eng 
 lishman of the middle-class of English society discovers, 
 that, while the educational and pecuniary standards 
 of the best social class recognizing his eligibility are 
 obviously above those of his own average equals at 
 home, he is yet as far from the cognizance of a certain 
 higher, if much smaller, circle of American society, as 
 from that which is hereditarily inaccessible to him in 
 his own country. Thus, while the grade into which he 
 has been received is of greater comparative pretentious 
 ness than anything in his normal social availabilities in 
 his native land, the gain in this respect makes even the 
 more bitterly disappointing to him the inexorable denial 
 of farther aspiration, and he goes back across the At 
 lantic an eternal hater of everything American. There 
 was your Charles Dickens phenomenal in literary 
 
266 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 genius as he is, who, under the common delusion of 
 the largest class of our foreign visitors, became pre 
 maturely intoxicated by the exceptional homage of all 
 American classes to his just fame as a writer, and un 
 dertook to march into the Presidential Mansion itself, 
 with a sort of hail, fellow, well met! freedom, to 
 teach Executive and cabinet that the international 
 copyright scheme of the author of Pickwick must no 
 longer be disregarded. Well, at that point he was 
 himself taught, and sharply, that even a u Boz " might 
 presume too far upon the social equalities of a republic. 
 So, upon going home, he berated us hysterically in 
 Martin Chuzzlewit , not to mention his American 
 Notes. 
 
 "Now, Doctor Hedland, I put it to your own sense 
 of justice is it fair for you, Europeans, to assume, 
 gratuitously, that we, Americans, have less sense of 
 degrees in social refinement than all the remainder of 
 mankind ; and so accuse us of false pretense, because 
 you see, upon coming amongst us, that the assumption 
 has egregiously misled you ?" 
 
 Hedland was too acute not to realize that he was 
 being sarcastically arraigned, by implication, as a mid 
 dle-class English representative who had found his 
 undue social expectations to be a fallacy in America 1 
 The profoundly silent attention of the company; the 
 irrepressible twinkle in the Rajah s eyes, and the now 
 intensely animated expression of Abretta s listening 
 face; did not tend to make him more philosophical 
 under the lecture he had wantonly brought upon him 
 self. 
 
 "We have digressed from the real point at issue be 
 tween us, Mr. Effingham," said he, in supercilious 
 dismissal of the general question. " You have asserted 
 that adherence to party in American politics is decided 
 
AT MR. MEETON S TABLE. 267 
 
 by social preference. I have replied that such a prin 
 ciple is more essentially aristocratic than any perma 
 nent phase of European aristocracy. You seem to 
 concede as much; and now I am trying to ascertain 
 from you, wherein is the consistency between such a 
 state of things and the pretension to democratic equality 
 upon which the whole distinctive national character of 
 the United States is avowedly based ?" 
 
 "I will do my best to demonstrate that consistency 
 to you, sir," resumed the merchant, coolly deliberate as 
 before. "The first principle of our republican theory 
 of government is, that all men are born free and equal ; 
 in other words, that a democracy is the aboriginal con 
 dition of the whole human race. To construe this liter 
 ally, would be to abrogate every form of individual 
 authority ; since no one individual could then govern 
 any other save by usurpation, either direct or construc 
 tive. It must be qualified, therefore, by practicability, 
 to mean, that, although no man has any inherent su 
 periority over another by the circumstances of birth, 
 every man has an equal right with his neighbor to gain 
 what ascendancy he can by the free development, exer 
 cise and cultivation of his any, or every, natural 
 capacity for it. 
 
 "If he is virtuous, industrious and honorably ambi 
 tious, while others are vicious, indolent and groveling, 
 the logic of natural law will give him consideration, 
 acquisition and moral predominance. If he labors to 
 be wise, while others are content with foolishness, his 
 gravitation to power, in one form or another, will be as 
 sure as that of the others to subjection. If he cultivates 
 a noble pride in himself, to master the refinements of 
 education, cherish an abhorrence of all meannesses of 
 action, speech and thought, and habituate his mind to 
 moral heroism and his heart to Christian courtesy; 
 
268 THEEE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 while others elect to remain s%lf-indulgently ignorant, 
 coarse, morally unstable and boorish ; he will become 
 Nature s aristocrat as distinguished over Nature s 
 democrats. He has only done with his natural gifts 
 what all the others might, by equal pains, sacrifices and 
 self-discipline, have done with theirs ; (for in every 
 human composition not abnormally perverted there is 
 some good potentiality susceptible of culture into emi 
 nence by sufficient honesty and industry of endeavor ;) 
 and is entitled, by Heaven s first law, to be greater 
 than the rest. 
 
 "Starting from the proposition that all men are, as 
 you may say, born democrats, and that each and every 
 one may properly wish to elevate themselves honorably 
 into Nature s aristocracy, the republic of the United 
 States places within the reach of its meanest subject 
 the means of making the most of his every moral, intel 
 lectual and social instinct and capacity of self-elevation. 
 
 " A certain proportion of the population has chosen, 
 through all its generations, to make the most of these 
 means and this is the American aristocracy. Another 
 proportion has been later, less energetic, in the same 
 course ; and this is the American middle-class, a high 
 element of which is perpetually assimilating to the 
 former. Third and last come those who are the latest 
 and slowest ; recruited chiefly from the lowest foreign 
 emigration ; yet even amongst these the spirit of self- 
 elevation is never without some illustrations. 
 
 "Now what I call our aristocracy and our middle- 
 class are always more numerous, in combination, than 
 the third division ; and, as they retain their relative 
 proportions through all the national growth, have it 
 permanently in their power to decide the fates of politi 
 cal parties. Farthermore, of the two great parties 
 always to be found in the United States, neither ever 
 
AT ME. MERTON S TABLE. 269 
 
 has its root in the lowest social class, although the lat 
 ter enjoys all the political privileges of the highest, and 
 often holds the balance of power. While Democracy is 
 the undisputed parent of both parties, with whatever 
 subdivisions itself, occasionally, may have, and both 
 exist upon fundamentally democratic principles, it is by 
 an instinctive tacit agreement of the lowest and highest 
 social strata that the transitional middle-class invaria 
 bly dictates the practical formulation of either. In 
 this great class, at its one extreme assimilating stead 
 ily, if slowly, with the higher segregation, and at the 
 other as constantly receiving gradual assimilations from 
 the lower, lie the average political knowledge, sagacity 
 and trained familiarization, which can be most safely 
 trusted alike for the consideration due to the just inter 
 ests of the humblest voter, and the intellectual and 
 moral propitiation of the most dignified. 
 
 "Here we arrive, Doctor Hedland, at the principle 
 of social selection we were talking about. The two 
 parties arising under these conditions are simply parts 
 of the one primitive American democratic body politic, 
 differentiating in accordance with the respective educa 
 tional and associative predilections of the two extremes 
 of the middle social class. One party looks chiefly 
 downward, with a jealous care to the preservation of 
 the original broad foundation of American democracy ; 
 the other as habitually looks upward, in restless intel 
 lectual and moral aspiration to something ever higher 
 in the nation s superstructure. The two, together, 
 equally assure national stability and national growth ; 
 but they interchange social affiliations according as one 
 or the other is the more immediately identified with 
 what the highest national intelligence esteems to be the 
 most pressing present interest of the Republic. 
 
 " Thus, in periods varying from ten to twenty years, 
 
270 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 you may see the choicest social element in the United 
 States practically all of the class of highest culture 
 and three-fourths of the middle class transferring 
 itself from one of these parties to the other ; in effect 
 so denuding that which it has left of all respectability 
 as to make farther individual adherence to it a positive 
 social reproach. Thence arises the proper distinction 
 of the party of Gentlemen ; the political organization 
 immediately favored, not alone by the wealth, but, by 
 the noblest intellect, grandest moral sentiment, and 
 most refined social instinct of the country. 
 
 "But, really, your Excellency, and our good friends 
 all around, I must crave pardon for such scarcely man 
 nerly prolixity," apologized Mr. Effingham, suddenly 
 realizing that he had been betrayed by his patriotic 
 energy into an astounding disregard of time and the 
 polite conventions. 
 
 " You are much more than excusable sir : indeed on 
 my own behalf I thank you for favoring us with so 
 comprehensive an insight of the philosophy of republi 
 can society and politics," replied the Rajah, as sincerely 
 as courteously. "Doctor Hedland," he added, amia 
 bly, "has made us all his debtors by inducing you to 
 give us light on a subject that certainly seems to have 
 suffered grievously from the world s prevalent misun 
 derstanding of it." 
 
 " Well, but, gentlemen and ladies, do you know I 
 cannot yet see clearly where the particular social selec 
 tion principle has been demonstrated by our American 
 friend? He has shown how intellectual and moral 
 preferences have their influence in American, as in all 
 civilized, politics ; but I don t grasp his logic of an 
 American aristocracy in politics," persisted the nat 
 uralist, who had listened to the whole argument with 
 curious attention. 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 271 
 
 "The term aristocracy was your own, sir," Mr. 
 Effingham reminded him; u and I adopted it merely 
 because you seemed tenacious of it. My purpose was, 
 after premising that any citizen of the United States 
 can elevate himself to the highest social grade, if he 
 chooses to employ the ample available means therefor, 
 to show that the best class of American society is per 
 petually a political force rectifying ultimately whatever 
 is seriously unsound in our party-life, and that it 
 always maintains its cohesion in one party or the 
 other, to make that the party of gentlemen. 
 
 u Once be the organization distinguished as such to 
 popular apprehension, and, whatsoever its past minor 
 ity, no law of nature is surer than that it will gradually 
 attract, even by instinctive social affinity, all the finest 
 thinkers, truest moralists, and most refined domestic 
 characters in American life. The well-bred son of a 
 cultured family belongs to it before he is old enough to 
 judge between political issues for himself, because it is 
 the party of his kindred and associates ; the educated, 
 socially aspiring scion of unpolished parents turns to it 
 for the company most congenial to his bettered intel 
 lectual and social capacities ; even the matured nature 
 innately superior to its customary conditions of educa 
 tion and society, is glad at last to experience the 
 enhanced private consideration incident to a public 
 identification with it. Then comes decisive victory at 
 the ballot-box ; a grand, peaceful revolution, to be fol 
 lowed by signal reinvigoration of every nerve of national 
 prosperity and national greatness." 
 
 "And then ?" pursued the Doctor, obstinately. 
 
 "After a period of beneficent ascendancy, this party 
 declines in moral vigor if its leasehold of power is too 
 easily retained, and its integrity becomes more and 
 more impaired by the accession of whosoever are un- 
 
272 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 scrupulously ambitious and greedy for political prefer 
 ment. Then begins its rapid decline ; one after another, 
 men eminent in private station are known to have 
 fallen quietly away from it ; its veteran early leaders 
 withdraw slowly into voluntary retirement before its 
 new partisans ; the names of all notorious political 
 adventurers begin to be associated with it. In short, 
 there has ensued an amalgamation of the baser ele 
 ments of the two parties. The result is practically a 
 new party of mere spoilsmen, and to confront it arises 
 a reorganization of the high element it has alienated, 
 with the purest portion of the former general opposi 
 tion. There is always short thrift in the United States 
 for a party of this description. Seldom does it survive 
 to a second battle of the ballots, never to a third. 
 Again the best social sentiment shows its power by 
 destroying what had finally abused its making, and 
 brings to redeeming supremacy the fresh political force 
 it has regenerated." 
 
 Besides what interest they were able to take in a 
 topic so uncomfortably weighty for table-talk, the little 
 party at Mr. Merton s board found a certain exceptional 
 zest for it in a common perception of Doctor Hedland s 
 seemingly wanton disposition to atone to himself for 
 his newly placatory spirit toward the Kajah and others 
 by being almost rudely aggressive in his manner to the 
 American gentleman. From the chief guest down 
 ward, nobody was sorry to have the captious dogmatist 
 fairly talked out of argument on ground of his own 
 perverse insistence. Therefore, even the ladies had not 
 the sense of conversational exclusion they might other 
 wise have been disconcerted by, and Mr. Brooke and 
 his friendly staff scarcely disguised their quietly amused 
 content at the naturalist s self-provoked visitation of 
 American republicanism. 
 
AT MR. MERTON S TABLE. 273 
 
 The Doctor himself was conscious enough of being 
 the conspicuous social failure of the evening, and felt 
 anything but indifferent to that fact ; while the good, 
 practical sense always underlying his petulant con 
 trarieties of demeanor, made him clearly aware that he 
 had trenched upon the patience of the merchant and 
 whole company nearly to the verge of boorishness. 
 Taking time to realize this, he was not the man to spare 
 himself in confession of it. 
 
 "With the permission of the Rajah and our friends, I 
 must shake hands with you, my dear sir," he exclaimed, 
 rising to offer that manual greeting across the table to 
 the nowise reluctant Mr. Effingham. "Thank you. I 
 don t know that you ought to regret, much, an oppor 
 tunity for vindicating your country so effectively 
 against much ignorant criticism ; but I surely do 
 regret, for myself, that I secured every sympathy for 
 you, at my own just expense, by my manner of chal 
 lenge. The fact is, friends all," he continued, bowing 
 gravely around as he resumed his chair, "I am nothing 
 if not apologetic to-day. .This whole life of ours in 
 Borneo is becoming more and more a nightmare to me, 
 in which one hour finds me half disposed to turn good, 
 honest savage at once, and the next brings me to intol 
 erable self-disgust that I seem to myself so near that 
 consummation already." 
 
 An applausive, reassuring ripple of friendly laughter, 
 and a general proffer of the courtesies of wine by the 
 gentlemen, pleasantly concluded this episode. Then 
 general conversation held sway again until it was time 
 for the company to disperse. 
 
 No separate withdrawal of the ladies occurred until 
 that unwillingly ushered by Mrs. Merton for the 
 resumption of hats and wrappers, when the front of the 
 house and the trees on the descending path to the 
 
274 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 river s bank were seen to be picturesquely illuminated 
 with Chinese lanterns. Soon the gentlemen joined 
 them on the glowing veranda ; whence, after due part 
 ing compliments to his hosts and the others, the Rajah 
 and his two friends started to go down to the waterside 
 between rows of obsequious native torch-bearers. In 
 bidding good-night to Mrs. Effingham and her daughter, 
 Doctor Hedland took occasion to remark, confidentially 
 and significantly : 
 
 " I can report to our young patient at the Grove, 
 ladies, that I have never known how to appreciate your 
 country justly until to-night. Miss Effingham, you 
 have good reason to be proud of your father, as I see 
 that you are. Madame, your husband is the most genu 
 ine aristocrat I have ever met. Your servant, Miss 
 Ankeroo ; and, ladies, good-night. 
 
 With this partly enigmatical speech he turned 
 sharply away to follow to the Rajah s boat ; leaving 
 mother and daughter confused to decide whether such 
 an angular mortal could really pay an earnest compli 
 ment, or had been true to his average sardonic vein to 
 the last. 
 
 It took not long for the remaining family-prahus to 
 receive them and the other departing guests ; and the 
 rowers at either end pushed off into their fitfully gleam 
 ing, plashing homeward way, to the cheery farewells of 
 the hospitable Mertons. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 COLONEL DARYL S DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 
 
 IN the American household there had been gradually 
 evoked from the domestic materials at command a sys 
 tem of family-life at once orderly and unconstrained, 
 practical and ideal. As a garden of tasteful plan and 
 rare beauty of arboreal and floral combinations now 
 occupied the formerly rank enclosure fronting the man 
 sion ; created, with wonderful celerity, by an intelligent 
 and graceful exaction of all possible cultivated effect 
 from Nature s wildest indiscrimination of fertility ; so 
 within the house an instinctively adaptive civilized in 
 telligence had steadily and quietly disciplined the most 
 primitive and unaccustomed of subjective agencies into 
 the harmonious machinery of a well-appointed, system 
 atic, and even measurably luxurious, Christian home. 
 The Chinese servants, at first so unpromising to Ber- 
 ner s Lutheran prejudices, that the old major-domo 
 could not be persuaded permanently from shipboard 
 until Cousin Sadie and Mr. Brooke s veteran, Peter, 
 had somewhat Anglicized their speech and manners, 
 were now models of mechanical efficiency in their 
 various duties, and frequently developed valuable inge 
 nuity therein. One of them, indeed, whom the quickly 
 converted Swiss soon selected to be his chief confiden 
 tial coadjutor, in place of Ambrose relegated to the 
 gardening, became so expert in resources for any domes 
 tic emergency, whether of larder, laundry, or scullery, 
 that his reflective " Me can do," or "Me can no do," 
 was always accepted as decisive of the utmost human 
 practicabilities of the occasion. 
 275 
 
276 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 A similar process of comfortable adjustment, from 
 primarily difficult circumstance to ultimately smooth 
 development of the best of everything, went on 
 throughout the whole household economy. Life in the 
 family rested not at mere placid facility of exotic exis 
 tence, but matured equably to what vitality of charac 
 teristic individual endeavor and collective social 
 beneficence was possible for it even in such a 
 limited situation. Husband, wife, daughter and 
 cousin had respective potential activities for each 
 day, to contribute to the common relief; and were 
 in unison for whatever outward good could be ac 
 complished by them as a household. 
 
 After the gardening operations of Ambrose, and the 
 Chinese vegetable-planting, had made the immediate 
 grounds of the mansion unfit for miscellaneous intru 
 sion, a new cottage was constructed outside of the 
 palisade, on the slope toward the native town, for 
 Miss Ankeroo s mission-school, and therein the lady 
 pursued her, chosen vocation with unflagging zeal. 
 But even she held no higher place in the affectionate 
 reverence of the poor, crowded souls of the "cam- 
 pong" than the Rana Sirani Christian princess as 
 they named Mrs. Effingham, who not only heeded 
 their every appeal at her gates, but had practicable 
 paths made that she might go to the old and helpless, 
 in their own quarters, on occasions of special distress. 
 
 Thus the family were leading a life of which they 
 might become very fond in time ; in fact much enjoyed 
 already ; and the elder members, at any rate, did not 
 contemplate the approach of its conclusion with any 
 disposition to hasten the latter. Mrs. Effingham, it is 
 true, had begun to experience some anxiety at a certain 
 languor of manner lately coming over her daughter ; 
 nor was she quite at ease in observing that the amend- 
 
COLONEL DARYUS DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 277 
 
 merit seemingly given to her husband s health by their 
 earlier experiences of the genial climate, no longer 
 went on. The child inherited some of the constitu 
 tional predispositions of the father, and the wife and 
 mother felt frequent unspoken misgivings for them, 
 when remembering what she had read and heard of the 
 insidious properties some had found in the balmy lassi 
 tudes of the Tropics. 
 
 "My dear," said Mr. Effingham, coming into her 
 room, on the afternoon following that of the dinner 
 party, with several opened letters in his grasp and a 
 troubled look on his face, " my dear, do your letters 
 say anything about the fire in New York ?" 
 
 His wife, who had been reading her own latest mail 
 from relatives and friends at home, gazed at him inquir-i 
 ingly and shook her head : 
 
 "No ; not a word of such a thing. Has there been 
 a fire there ?" 
 
 " Yes ; and a very large one. What is the latest date 
 you have there ?" he asked, taking a chair and glancing 
 over her shoulder. 
 
 " Ada Benton s is the latest July fifteenth." 
 
 " Ah ! that was several days before the occurrence," 
 commented the merchant. " In forwarding our mail, 
 Dodge writes to me that he has just seen a clipper cap 
 tain straight from New York, who reports, that, on the 
 nineteenth of July, a great fire burned five millions 
 worth of property in Broadway, Exchange Place, Stone 
 and Broad streets." 
 
 "Some of it was yours !" exclaimed the lady, reflect 
 ing his perturbed aspect and tone. 
 
 "Yes, my .dear, I. am a loser ; very seriously, too, if 
 any of the insurances default in the general calamity." 
 
 "Richard, let us return at once." 
 
 The husband could appreciate this immediate wifely 
 
278 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 readiness to consider nothing but his own possible 
 impulse to hurry forthwith towards the scene of his 
 reported misfortune. 
 
 "Not quite at once," he said, his countenance relax 
 ing under a gratified smile; "I think we may venture 
 to stay the remaining time allotted, as that will not be 
 very long ; and, after all, the loss of a few buildings 
 need not bankrupt me." 
 
 "But it may be serious, you have said," continued 
 the sympathetic wife. "If we were not here with you, 
 would you not be anxious at least to get within shorter 
 mailing distance of your agents, without delay V I am 
 sure you would. Then why stay here, in needless sus 
 pense, when we are so ready to start at any moment ?" 
 
 " At any rate, we can wait for another mail, Julia," 
 rejoined the merchant, lightly " unless, " he added, 
 with a questioning inflection, "you are at last growing 
 tired of living in a summer-house in a botanical garden ?" 
 
 " On the contrary, it is pleasanter for me every day," 
 she replied, earnestly. "But, Kichard, you do not 
 seem so well as you did, and Abretta is not like her^ 
 self. Perhaps this place is not good for either of you." 
 
 Mr. Effingham looked more grave again ; but rather 
 with doubt than anxiety. 
 
 "I think Borneo agrees with me very well, my dear, 
 and so it seemed to do with Abretta until that hand 
 some English playmate of hers came back a wounded 
 hero. I suspect that the child is giving way to a bit of 
 schoolgirlish romantic sentiment. Not a very alarm 
 ing case, probably, but one that we must not encourage 
 to become so. You and Sadie cried a little with her, I 
 recollect, w r hen the report was that the young man had 
 been killed. That w r as but natural and right he had 
 been like our own boy amongst us. We would prefer, 
 too, that our girl should be open and honest with all 
 
COLONEL DARTDS DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 279 
 
 her feelings, and not affect a mature coquette s airs of 
 indifference to masculine fates. But as our remaining 
 sojourn in the East is to be so short, and it is not cer 
 tain that we shall ever meet any of these foreign friends 
 of ours again, it may be wise, perhaps, for you, my 
 dear, to see that the boy and the girl do not imagine 
 themselves quite broken-hearted at parting." 
 
 Mrs. Emngham glanced alternately from his face to 
 her letters while he spoke, with some appearance of 
 nervous apprehension. When he paused, however, her 
 eyes instantly resumed their ordinary tranquil expres 
 sion, and sought his, responsively. 
 
 "Your idea may be only a continuation of mine, after 
 all," said she. "Physical enervation, in a degree, 
 makes any one more sensitive to the slightest emotional 
 influences, and perhaps Abretta s has a tendency to ex 
 aggerate, in her, every newly-touched sensibility." 
 
 "Your womanly experience, Julia, should qualify 
 you to judge of that, much more comprehensively than 
 I. It was a great surprise to me when our girl 
 exhibited such very strong feeling at the first news 
 from Bruni. As you say, it may have been because 
 her nerves were not in their usual elastic health. Your 
 judgment shall be mine, and I ll not disregard your 
 doubts of the fitness of the climate for Abretta. After 
 the next American mail we will prepare to leave 
 Borneo without delay." 
 
 As he finished speaking, the merchant left his chair 
 and moved towards the door by which he had entered. 
 
 "I must answer some of these letters for the 
 schooner returning to Singapore," he explained. "Do 
 not be worried, my dear, about our share in the fire. 
 At the largest, it will merely oblige me to invest some 
 thing the less, at first, in the North-Borneo Company 
 I hope to organize on our return to New York." 
 
280 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Then he went out ; and the wife, no longer heeding 
 her Correspondence on the table, rested an elbow upon 
 the latter and bowed her forehead to the support of a 
 shading hand. Did her husband think more on a cer 
 tain subject than he had yet confided to her ? Had 
 she, herself, any ever so indefinite intuitions of it which 
 she neglected to realize ? She was conscious of there 
 being something voluntary in the hazy vacillations of 
 her mind relative to the whole sequence of the meetings 
 with Belmore in Batavia and his uncle in Kuchin ; for 
 of the ensuing familiar acquaintance and its episodes 
 she had chosen to be scarcely more than a passively 
 friendly observer. She had not tried even to see below 
 the sunny surface of their present aspects ; much less 
 to conjecture future results for them. Was it a prompt 
 ing of unrecognized instinctive purpose, or merely a 
 weak unsettlement of mental energies, that had caused 
 her to drift so insensately with the current since those 
 days in Singapore ? 
 
 Berner knocked at a door, unheard, and then came 
 in, cautiously : 
 
 " Colonel Daryl begs to see Madame." 
 
 " Say to him that I will come out immediately." 
 
 The Swiss bowed and withdrew. Madame looked 
 into a small mirror on the partition for a moment, and 
 then followed to the room in which Mr. Dodge and 
 Cousin Sadie have once been seen together. 
 
 I must apologize for an unceremonious afternoon call, 
 Mrs. Effingham ; unless you can find enough excuse for 
 it in the irregular weather of the wet monsoon, and the 
 limited leisure of an invalid s nurse," said the Colonel, 
 after a stately handshaking, and betaking to chairs. 
 
 " You are welcome, sir, without qualification, both in 
 your own person and as bringing us news good news, I 
 hope, of your nephew." 
 
COLONEL DARYDS DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 281 
 
 "Ah, thank you. Edwin is convalescing as youth 
 only can, and I am the bearer of his compliments to 
 your family, with grateful acknowledgment of the 
 friendly interest you have all shown for him in his 
 mishap." 
 
 "We have been most anxious about him." 
 
 " He fully appreciates your great kindness, I can 
 assure you. May I be allowed to express the hope that 
 Mr. Effingham, your daughter, and Miss Ankeroo re 
 main as well as my friends of the Grove had the 
 pleasure of believing them to be last evening at Mr. 
 Merton s ?" 
 
 Mrs. Effingham felt like smiling at this pomp of polite 
 ness in her military brother-in-law, but answered him 
 sedately in his own vein : 
 
 "They will be nattered to hear of your remembrance 
 of them. My husband is at urgent letters of business ; 
 my cousin may, probably, be found yet in her school- 
 house ; and Abretta is on a call at Mrs. Yon Camp s. A 
 dinner-party in Kuchin does not entail such fatigue for 
 the next day as would one in London or New York. 
 But we had not the pleasure of meeting you at Mr. Mer 
 ton s, Colonel Daryl." 
 
 "It would have gratified me to be there, madame, 
 had I been longer returned to Kuchin, and more confi 
 dent that Edwin s urging did not exaggerate his fitness 
 to be left alone. From talk at the breakfast-table, I 
 infer that your dining resolved itself into a kind of 
 international debate." 
 
 The lady laughed pleasantly, and the Colonel s griz 
 zled brows lifted slightly with an expression of whimsi 
 cal humor. 
 
 " When we were not Orientalists we were politicians, I 
 am afraid that is, the gentlemen were ; and as for the 
 ladies, most of them were old and grave enough rather 
 
282 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 to enjoy the novelty of not being expected to withdraw 
 from the ta,ble so soon as the gentlemen were ready to 
 discuss matters not wholly trivial. 1 " 
 
 " The Rajah and Mr. Williamson show a disposition 
 to compliment my friend, Hedland, somewhat ironi 
 cally, upon his success in calling out the conversational 
 powers of Mr. Effingham," said the Colonel, smiling. 
 
 "My husband saw that he w r as bent upon mistimed 
 finical controversy, and deliberately averted endless 
 irritating dialogue by summary monologue," said Mrs. 
 Effingham, with a shade of haughtiness. 
 
 " To be strictly just to a man like Doctor Hedland," 
 returned Colonel Daryl, coldly grave again, "we must 
 judge him by no common standard. Habits of wander 
 ing about the world without social object have made 
 him an uneasy subject for conventional society. Such 
 a man s personal likes and dislikes are not always to be 
 inferred from his apparent suavities and pugnacities. 
 Indeed, he is quite too independent to assume either 
 manner toward those whom he dislikes. Of them he is 
 practically oblivious ; so, if you hear him talk, at all, 
 either of, or to, any person, no matter how harshly, you 
 may take it as a sure sign that he does not wholly dis 
 like the one in question. Now he positively admires 
 your husband, madame. He intended it as a high com 
 pliment when he said to me, only this morning : That 
 American is the proudest man in the world. . Mono 
 logue, on any given subject above the commonplace, is 
 his own cherished method of crushing out all contro 
 versy. To use it successfully against himself w r as to 
 gain his highest respect. There is not the slightest 
 invidiousness in his characteristic tribute to Mr. Effing- 
 ham ; for it means no implication of unwarranted 
 assumption. It is his way of describing a dignity of 
 private character so well-founded and justly self-as- 
 
COLONEL DARYVS DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 283 
 
 sured, that it never dreams of needing factitious pre 
 tense to command immediate recognition and respect." 
 
 His listener had an intuition that he was in some 
 manner emphasizing the subject beyond its mere pass 
 ing relation ; although his words, in themselves, gave 
 no clue to a reason therefor. 
 
 "My husband," said she, "is certainly not proud in 
 any arrogant sense of the term. He considers an 
 American gentleman the peer of any social character 
 in the world, and has required all his patience to meet 
 the real, or assumed, misapprehensions of foreigners, 
 and especially Englishmen, regarding distinction of 
 classes in the United States. Generally assuming, that 
 educated Europeans are as well informed about us as 
 our average school children are about them, he is often 
 forced unwillingly into an aspect of affronted pride by 
 such questions as Doctor Hedland s. Even I have been 
 sometimes impelled to patriotic vindication, by the 
 curiosity of some English squire s daughter to know, 
 whether the army of Washington was wholly composed 
 of Indians ; and the equally vexatious idea of many a 
 more pretentious London lady, that the best society of 
 our country is that to which belong the showy and 
 phenomenal American wealth-makers, whose vulgar 
 ostentation obtains far more distinguished social esti 
 mation abroad, than it ever knows, or can buy, at 
 home." 
 
 The color heightened on Mrs. Effingham s cheeks; 
 her eyes lighted and her breath came faster ; as she for 
 got to extenuate farther her husband s pride, in recall 
 ing what had aggrieved her own. 
 
 "For foreign injustice of that description there are 
 occasional exemplary reprisals on your side, my dear 
 sister-in-law," observed the unbending soldier, with a 
 momentary look in which might have lurked a meaning 
 
284 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN 
 
 not so suavely gentle, in all respects, as his language. 
 The gleam lasted only for an instant, however, and was 
 lost in an expression of equable dignity as he went on : 
 " Perhaps you are wondering whether I am here for no 
 other purpose than to gossip of yesterday s dinner 
 party ? It is a fact, that the motive for my call grew 
 out of that unique episode in Sarawak social life ; for I 
 hear that the approaching departure of your family 
 was mentioned with regret, and this reminded me that 
 I should not have many more opportunities to see you." 
 
 "I hope, Colonel Daryl, that our acquaintance need 
 not end with our Borneon sojourn," faltered the lady ; 
 troubled by his air of beginning something not easy, 
 nor wholly pleasant, to say. 
 
 "Mrs. Effingham, we must not even pretend to our 
 selves, that my nephew and myself are likely ever again 
 to have the happiness of meeting yourself and your 
 family after our parting on this Island. It can scarcely 
 be hoped that you will return hither ; certainly Edwin 
 and I have no more hope of seeing your country, for 
 many years, at least ; nor of returning sooner to 
 Europe. I have paid my last visit to Sambas, in pur 
 suit of a now virtually extinguished solution of the 
 hereditary problem that once held out some possibility 
 of the re-establishment of our family fortunes in Eng 
 land. If I ha$ not been recalled, to my nephew s bed 
 side, I could have gained nothing more in Sambas. 
 Amongst the shifting savageries of that Dutch-be 
 witched Dyak-land no more trace has been left by the 
 poor, demented purloiner of our patrimonial patents, 
 than a drowning sailor leaves in a storm. The young 
 Lieutenant and the old Colonel are destined to stay long 
 in the China seas and India ; the one to carve out 
 slowly a fortune for himself, if he can ; the other to 
 give his remaining years to obscure and uninspiring 
 
COLONEL DARYL S DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 285 
 
 soldierly duty. You must see, then, dear madame, 
 how unlikely it is that we can ever meet with you and 
 yours again, after our farewells here." 
 
 " If this must be so, you and Mr. Belmore will do us 
 the justice of believing, that we regret it as sincerely 
 as your most partial regard for us could desire." 
 
 "And we shall regret it ; none the less, I fear, that, 
 for both of us, any other event would have been a 
 pleasure extended, only to be the more perilous in the 
 end." 
 
 Mrs. Effingham looked the question her lips did not 
 ask. 
 
 "Speaking selfishly for myself, first," he went on, 
 recognizing the mute appeal and unconsciously leaning 
 toward her, with every lineament softening as he spoke ; 
 "I will trust the fine intuition of your sex to detect 
 something very different from rudeness in the confes 
 sion, that my unexpected meeting with yourself has 
 been an unmanning pain to me! Yes, the more ex 
 quisite a pain for being kept devouringly alive by the 
 insidiously-delusive pleasure of it. Your woman-heart 
 can surely interpret aright the seeming paradox. I 
 took you for Caroline Dornton your voice is hers 
 your eyes, your air ! Struggle with myself as I may, 
 every new sight of you brings your sister again before 
 me, to blot out everything in twenty years of my life 
 but the unrecognized wild Hope that had been the 
 secret perennial vigor of carking Despair, and to kill 
 that Hope at the instant of its revelation to me to kill 
 it and leave the Despair to run yet its normal course. 
 You bring me the ghost mocking and torturing me 
 so ; but, for all, a Spirit so sweet to my regenerated 
 memories, that it will hold me in paralyzing thrall so 
 long as you, its gentle priestess, remain where I must 
 sometimes hear and see you." 
 
286 THERE WAS ONGE A MAN. 
 
 Tears welled to the eyes of his hearer, and she made 
 no attempt either to repress or wipe them away. They 
 did not even disturb that compassionate, steady gaze 
 into his sadly stern face which, withal, had a certain 
 covertly pleading suggestion. 
 
 "I understand you, thoroughly," she said, slowly, 
 and with pathetic emphasis ; "and all that you gener 
 ously do not say, I understand, too. You will know 
 my meaning, as clearly, when I declare that it has 
 been far more grief than happiness to myself to find 
 you the worthier of having been my dear sister s hus 
 band, in being incapable of feeling compensation for 
 her loss from the utmost expiation of a great wrong to 
 you that her sister has been able to offer. If you had 
 loved less, the softening and reconciling experiences of 
 twenty years would have made your judgment more 
 lenient to a mother-love, fighting frenziedly only to 
 retain an object so lovely that your .own heart broke 
 because you could not take it away. If you had loved 
 less, my likeness, in your eyes, to Caroline, with the 
 spirit I have confessedly shown, to propitiate humbly 
 your kindlier judgment of Caroline s mother, would 
 have enabled me to give you, at least, some atoning 
 reassurance for your justly angered, manly pride. But 
 I have not been able to hide from myself, from the 
 first, Colonel Daryl, that, with the -certainty of Caro 
 line s death, renewed bitterness of feeling towards our 
 mother has come to you. Your jonsiderate appearance 
 of relenting, on occasions, has not blinded me ; and 
 while, knowing w r hat you have endured, I cannot blame 
 you, the fact has imposed it upon my commonest filial 
 instinct to show you even less unreserved sympathy 
 than I have felt." 
 
 The Colonel heard her with bowed head ; finely sen 
 sitive to what it must cost such a woman to speak in 
 
COLONEL DARYUS DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 287 
 
 this way, and secretly uneasy at seeming to exact what 
 from her, at all events, was an ideally generous repara 
 tion. 
 
 "Were you the less nobly forgetful of my selfishness 
 and weakness, madame," he rejoined at last, raising 
 his look to her sorrowful face again, " I should feel un 
 speakably humbled in your sight for having allowed you 
 to suffer so much, undeservedly, from their assertion. 
 If your Mother gave me, as I thought, much less than 
 justice, you give me so much more, that I am really 
 shamed to put yet one farther unmerited burden upon 
 your generosity." 
 
 Once more her gentle eyes looked the question that 
 her lips did not speak. 
 
 "You are aware, dear Mrs. Effingham, that Edwin 
 Belmore is like a son to me ; a legacy to my lonely, 
 starved affection from a dying sister. You have seen 
 what he is a pure-hearted, unaffected, honest boy, 
 with all his troubles -before him and no worldly knowl 
 edge to teach him that they must come. He renders to 
 me the trust and obedience of a son, and it has been my 
 fault that his happy idling here has gone on so long. 
 From week to week, before the Bruni expedition, I de 
 ferred too indulgently to his inclinations, because that 
 undertaking seemed to offer the earliest means of facili 
 tating his return to duty without specific constraint of 
 my authority. I will not say that my wisdom was at 
 fault in the matter ; for it perpetually reminded me 
 that I was acting unwisely ; but my heart was tender 
 for the fatherless boy, so innocently joj^ous in his first 
 real taste of the sweetest luxury of youth, and, in my 
 own as self-indulgent lingering, I could not bear to 
 shorten his guileless summer day. Now, instead of 
 being with me at Singapore to rejoin his ship while I 
 resume my command, he is back in Kuchin ; with 
 
288 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 me recalled to be again his sponsor ; and the yearning 
 recollections and tender fancies of a humored invalid 
 are not likely to make my last task with him less diffi 
 cult than the first might have been. My dear Sister-in- 
 law, you must know what I mean, and you will not 
 refuse to help me ?" 
 
 Mrs. Effingham s expression of countenance had 
 something like fear in it. 
 
 " How can I help ?" 
 
 " Soon Edwin will be strong enough to leave the 
 house ; then he will come here. You have a treasure 
 that is not for him, and he must be made to realize the 
 truth before he goes back to his appointed place in 
 life." 
 
 " Colonel Daryl, I cannot pretend to misunderstand 
 you. Must it be so ?" 
 
 The Colonel raised his eyebrows in surprise at an 
 inquiry that seemed to him indicative of an incom 
 pleteness of perception he would not have expected. 
 
 " There is no alternative, madame ; for I fear that my 
 nephew is already seriously attracted to your lovely 
 daughter. She, I presume, has had the safeguard of 
 your motherly vigilance ; but my poor boy has been al 
 lowed, by a less faithful guardian, to trifle with the 
 peril that he knew not of. If, on his next visit here, a 
 considerate kindness does not make him understand, 
 beyond all question, that only friendship is possible for 
 him from this home, he may carry away with him some 
 delusion to make his disillusionizing maturity the deso 
 late waste his Uncle s has been !" 
 
 At the last clause, in which an afterthought seemed 
 to assail herself, the lady assumed the first air of repel- 
 lant pride she had ever shown to the speaker since their 
 first interview. 
 
 " Excuse my slowness of apprehension, sir," she an- 
 
COLONEL DAttYVS DUTY AS AN UNCLE. 289 
 
 swered, mechanically; "Mr. Belmore stands too high 
 in the affectionate regards of all in this house, to make 
 any request in behalf of his interests unwarrantable. 
 It shall be my care to observe your wishes in that 
 relation without farther question." 
 
 "I perceive that it is my misfortune to offend you, 
 Mrs. Effingham. Will you not allow the difficulty, as 
 well as the painfulness, of the duty I am performing, to 
 plead somewhat for me? How futile would be an 
 attempt to conceal from you, that my own experience 
 is the occasion of this fearfulness for my boy ! But 
 for that, and your knowledge of it, I should not pre 
 sume to be here on such a peculiar mission. It is 
 trusting and confiding in you as one might in a sister, 
 to approach you with a request of so unusual and oner 
 ous a nature, that ordinary usages would justify you in 
 resenting it as a gratuitous impertinence. Pardon me, 
 madame, if I have presumed too far in this." 
 
 "There should be no question of presumption, 
 Colonel Daryl, in any appeal you could make to the 
 friendship of Caroline Daryl s sister." 
 
 Never before from human lips had he heard his lost 
 wife mentioned by his own name, and it thrilled the 
 man like the sound of a sweet voice he had thought 
 stilled forever. Kising abruptly to his feet, he grasped 
 both of the lady s hands impulsively, and, for a mo 
 ment, looked intently down into her calmly upraised 
 face without speaking. 
 
 Then he said, fervently : "Be those, Sister, your last 
 words for me to-day. 
 
 She arose, also, her countenance beautifully express 
 ing the fullest apprehension of the finely unspeakable 
 sentiment inspiring his request. Inclining his head, he 
 raised her right hand reverently to his lips ; bowed, and 
 withdrew without another word. 
 
290 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 A moment she remained motionless where he had 
 thus left her, abstracted in far-reaching thought ; then 
 moved slowly to a window and gazed out, over veranda 
 and garden, to the river dimpling with a gentle rain. 
 Consciousness of failure made her heart heavy ; for the 
 interview had taught her, conclusively, that the wrong 
 she had humbly confessed for a dead mother, and, as it 
 were, submissively offered all that she could, of her own 
 feelings, as a sacrifice for, remained yet a keen and 
 subtle weapon in the hands of its unforgetting suf 
 ferer, only rendered the more trenchant, perhaps, by all 
 that she had done. Delicately courteous as her sister s 
 robbed and spurned bridegroom ever was to herself; 
 loftily chivalrous even, in gratefully assuming unworthi- 
 ness of her individual graciousness ; none the less he 
 had imperiously dictated to her that she must finally 
 become a servile instrument of his resentful pride ! A 
 peculiar irony of assumption suggested itself in his un 
 prefaced interposition to rescue his nephew from a 
 cruelly misplaced trust, before that unconscious youth, 
 or any other earthly being, had revealed, by word or 
 action, the slightest actual proof of such a danger. In 
 effect, if not in terms, he arbitrarily forced the emer 
 gency, with an air of tacitly recognizing it as already 
 an inevitable existence ; thus seeming to plead for his 
 beloved one against assuredly predestined fate, while, 
 in reality, dictating the whole issue himself, even to its 
 very hour, and making Caroline s sister the helpless 
 minister of his contemptuous will ! 
 
 Mrs. Effingham realized this vividly. It gave a sense 
 of impotent humiliation to Colonel Daryl s uniform and 
 frankly appreciative homage to her own distinctive per 
 sonality. Suddenly throwing her hands above her head, 
 and clasping them passionately there, she put her troubled 
 mind s one, scarcely trusted hope into the question : 
 
 " May I ever tell him all ?" 
 
CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 " THE GROVE," as our Rajah called his latest official 
 residence, has been described as standing, under arches 
 of palms, upon a gracefully-swelling mound, or knoll, 
 not far back from the water s edge. Behind and partly 
 around it hills lapped upon higher hills, and these upon 
 yet loftier, until the distant umbrageous wilderness was 
 lifted to the azure-softened eminences of a mountain- 
 range. From the immediate palisaded grounds of the 
 Government-house, a road, or, in effect, a broad green 
 alley, had been cleared through the jungle to the sum 
 mit of a gradually rising farther acclivity, on which a 
 beautiful natural bower, supplied with primitive seats 
 and a hammock, commanded unimpeded views of the 
 native "campong," the river, the European cottages of 
 the flanking heights, and the luxuriant retreating up 
 lands of either bank of the Sarawak. Up to this elevated 
 retreat was the favorite morning and evening walk of 
 Rajah Brooke. Unattended, save by the special pets of 
 his little indigenous menagerie which were trained to 
 befit the indulgence a meek-eyed doe, or "kijang," 
 the mias "Betsy," a bear-cub not larger than a cat, 
 and a black Bugis monkey and by his old English 
 bull-dog, "Billy," to maintain zoological decorum it 
 was his wont to trudge sturdily to the height at sunrise, 
 or near the close of sunset ; often with the Bugis on 
 one shoulder and a parrot on the other. 
 
 A sweetly capricious day of arbitrary passing flirts of 
 huge rain-drops and as playful surprises of dazzling 
 291 
 
292 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 sunshine, was closing with such a magnificent confusion 
 of rich colors in its cloudy fleece as only the fervid 
 Tropical sun can mantle upon the vaporous canopy of a 
 spot of earth so temperately aired as the cool, green 
 Sarawak valley. Orange and rose were the hues chiefly 
 contending in the parting light around the bower on 
 the Rajah s Hill, where two men, seated near each 
 other and smoking after-dinner segars, looked forth 
 between the shading palms upon the tranquil picture 
 beneath and around them. 
 
 " Yes, this is my ambition," one of the two was 
 saying, in continuance "to see these hills covered 
 with the plantations and homes of an industrious, 
 thrifty, regenerate people ; to see schoolhouse and 
 Christian church arise in Kuchin, and busy factory 
 and storehouse on the banks of a commerce-crowded 
 Sarawak." 
 
 "May you live to witness the beneficent consumma 
 tion !" was the hearty responsive aspiration. 
 
 " Ah ! but shall I live so long, Hedland ? The ques 
 tion is one I often ask myself. That wound in the 
 lungs at Rungpore was permanent inroad upon a life 
 that would not have lasted until now, but for the sea 
 faring and invigorating occupations of all my subse 
 quent years. Now that my physical activities are 
 limited, I find myself not so strong as before." 
 
 "You could not be persuaded, I suppose, to go back 
 to England, on a visit, when I return there ? The 
 moderation of the climate here is deceptive. I find it 
 slowly debilitating." 
 
 "Perhaps you are right; and I may try a home 
 ward trip, two or three years from now. My presence 
 may be necessary to induce our Government at least to 
 occupy Pulo Labuan." 
 
 "Don t be too sanguine of much help from Parlia- 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHIL 08 OPHER. 293 
 
 ment and the ministry, Brooke," said the naturalist, 
 skeptically. "Bemember Raleigh, and Hastings, and 
 poor, neglected Eaffles. Conquering soldiers are the 
 style of men England appreciates for any part of the 
 world. Daryl tells me that your agent, Wise, thinks 
 you will be knighted. You would accept the Bath 
 because it would be of moral advantage to you in your 
 dealings with the Orientals ; but which do you suppose 
 will weigh the more in securing it for you your ser 
 vices to mankind in Borneo, or the fact that you had 
 an ancestor Sir Bobert Yyner who was a baronet 
 and Lord Mayor of London in the time of Charles the 
 Second ?" 
 
 "It will be a matter of purely diplomatic value to 
 me, however it comes," replied the Rajah, indifferently. 
 " Do you know, Hedland, that prahu of yours, down 
 there," waving a hand toward the river "is almost 
 exactly upon the spot where we first anchored the 
 Royalist, six years ago ? We gave Muda Hassim 
 twenty-one guns, and the good old fellow answered 
 with eighteen from the stockade around his house. 
 Then we went ashore in the Lily gig and the Skim- 
 along you remember the boats ? and had tea, and 
 cigars a foot long, with Muda and his brothers, to the 
 music of deafening tom-toms. The house was a long 
 shed in palisades, on that mound, over there, next to 
 the hill where I afterwards put up the house now so 
 handsomely kept by the Effinghams. The rock you see 
 showing at this tide, to the left of the old Rajah s 
 wharf, is the one on which the frigate Samarang 
 unexpectedly tilted over, two years ago. All her stores 
 were lying loose on the shore for weeks, with native 
 throngs continually around, and yet not an article was 
 stolen. What does that say for the honesty of my poor 
 Dyaks ?" 
 
294 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " The rich Dyaks, like the rich Malays, are the ones 
 whose plundering proclivities you have to guard 
 against," said the Doctor, dryly. 
 
 " Excepting Usop and Makota," returned the Rajah, 
 " even the Malay pangerans have much more honesty 
 than I had expected to find in them. Muda Hassim 
 has been generally as true as steel to his English pro 
 fessions, and as for Budrudeen I could trust him like 
 a brother." 
 
 The old friends sat gazing, together, over the palms 
 and roof of "The Grove," into the river-holding valley 
 below them ; undulating vernal descent, " atap " house 
 tops showing between trees, Indian schooners, prahus 
 and sampans upon the placid stream, the old, yellow 
 native town, and the picturesque cottages crowning, or 
 climbing their respective wooded knolls all taking the 
 sun s departing benediction with the grace of the 
 languid East turning softer to the fiery West. It was 
 a scene profoundly suggestive for thoughtful men ; so 
 little relieved from humble primitive barbarism, and 
 yet, withal, having delicate vital touches of a new his 
 tory wherever the eye sought continuity of the old. 
 "Within that single reach of watery mountain-pass, less 
 than forty miles from its ocean-entrance, could be 
 found the highest type of Christian civilization ever 
 known to Borneo, at the farthest point of geographical 
 advance yet made by civilizing agencies into the vast 
 Island s Continent-like depth and width of unexplored 
 savagery. 
 
 "It is the old body, with another soul," remarked 
 the Doctor, at last. 
 
 " But such a weak, uncertain young soul, as yet I" 
 sighed its creator. 
 
 "I can see vigor in it," maintained the other. 
 "There, for instance, is your own pleasant home, down 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. 295 
 
 yonder, taking the place of that heathen Makota s 
 gloomy den. Such a change, in itself, means much. 
 
 " So, you have dropped Makota, at last ?" 
 
 "Or, rather, as I told you in our first talk about it, 
 the yellow-faced scamp has dropped me. That was a 
 clever piece of acting his finding the pistol on the 
 ground and handing it to me with such a speech ! I 
 was puzzled to understand his true motive until your 
 surgeon told me of Amina s coming secretly here, to* 
 him, for arsenic. The swarthy wretch is ill-treating 
 the girl, of course, and thought he would anticipate the 
 falling out we were sure to have when I should hear 
 of it." 
 
 "Doctor Treacher informs me, Hedland, that you 
 favored the Pangeran in his suit for the hapless young 
 creature." 
 
 "I simply did not oppose. It was policy for me to 
 become ]N"iau, or heart -s-friend, with Pa Jenna, by 
 the old Kayan ceremony of the transfusion of a drop of 
 blood from each into the arm of the other a kind of 
 sentimental vaccination. Consequently, he does noth 
 ing without my sanction ; and when the quite willing 
 girl was offered the extraordinary honor for a Dyak 
 maiden of a place in the harem of a Malay prince, he 
 applied for my assent. Why should I have opposed ? 
 The Pangeran had always treated me handsomely ; 
 Amina longed to repeat the destiny of her sister, Inda, 
 Budrudeen s wife ; and, although Pa Jenna is the rich 
 est Orang-Kaya in Borneo, and of the proud Illanaon 
 caste, he keenly coveted the distinction of having both 
 of his daughters at court. I knew his wishes and the 
 girl s ; there was no reason why I should offend 
 Makota ; and so I merely did not interfere." 
 
 ""Was that the noblest course for a Christian Eng- 
 
296 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 lishman, Lawrence ?" asked the Kajah, mildly, but 
 with a significant look. 
 
 "It was the true, philosophical course, at any rate," 
 was the response. 
 
 "That term, philosophical, is made often to cover 
 such acts of unscrupulous selfishness, or moral indo 
 lence, as any barbarian might blush to excuse!" 
 exclaimed his friend, vehemently. "What has come 
 over you, Hedland ?" he went on, his tone changing to 
 a kind of remonstrative entreaty. "You were always 
 a contradictory mortal, and yet it seems to me that 
 even your consent to be reconciled with myself after 
 a grievance wholly of your own imaginative creation 
 may be only the freak of a greater perversity." 
 
 The philosopher smiled, but not at all genially, and 
 carefully knocked the ash from his segar. 
 
 "I suppose I m what they call an eccentric 
 Brooke," he said, with peculiarly cool deliberation 
 " as you are, yourself, in a measure ! You know 
 what you have named your new boat ? The Jolly 
 Bachelors. Well, how much sense is there in that 
 name ? Are uncompleted men : confirmed bachelors , 
 like you and me : ever jolly ? This scheme of yours 
 for the moral regeneracy of Dyak-land is an eccen 
 tricity ; and my hermitage amongst apes and head- 
 hunters is another ; and I do not believe that either of 
 us would be here at all if we had married ! 
 
 "Nature has certainly appointed woman to be the 
 essential complement of man, and their joint cultiva 
 tion of domestic life to realize the only normal fulfil 
 ment of man s rational destiny. If, from any cause, an 
 individual departs from the proper social continuity of 
 development of his kind, and fancies that he can put 
 intellectual singularity in place of symmetrical com- 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. 297 
 
 monalty of physical genius with his neighbors, that 
 singularity soon shows itself to be a forced abnormal 
 ism : a degree of insanity : neither wholesome for the 
 world, nor a pleasure to himself. 
 
 "Old bachelors, old maids, childless parents, and 
 even particularly mismated married people, all become 
 more or less mentally malformed, in time ; because, 
 physically, or psycho-physically, they have been but 
 partly developed ; certain essential elements of their 
 intended growth into the full roundness of a complete 
 human existence being allowed to wither in the germ ; 
 and their mental characteristics mature into correspond 
 ing one-sided deformities of reason. You and I have 
 often felt a superior sort of compassion for the poor old 
 solitaries of both sexes whose pitiful withered lives are 
 made burdens to themselves, and unpleasant repulsions 
 to every one else, by their morbid conceits of perpetual 
 physical ailments ; we have impatiently deplored the 
 perversion of nervous spinsters and childless wives 
 doting on pestilent cats and dogs, or if they are vul 
 gar making continual nauseating advertisement of 
 their fancied bodily disorders and mania for drugging ; 
 and yet the moral Borneo is your old-bachelor morbid 
 ailment and metaphorical cat and dog ; and my in 
 sensate celibate moping and drugging are the discovery 
 of primeval man amongst the tree-tops ! 
 
 "In our cases Nature is revenging, as she always 
 does, a half developing manner of existence ; only, you 
 and I may happen to possess a little more brains than 
 some other lop-sided men-growths, and our mental 
 abnormalisms produce eccentricities of a more spe 
 cious intellectual order. Your missionary crusade, 
 here, is another form of the constitutional religious 
 craze of the more tolerable of old maids and disengaged 
 elderly women generally ; and I show the irritability 
 
298 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 and scandal-love of the intolerable ones in quarreling 
 even with you, and encouraging a Makota to tell me 
 how he hates my best friends !" 
 
 Dr. Hedland s delivery of this extraordinary physio 
 logical discourse so clearly evinced, by its personal 
 manner, that he was self- contemptuously lashing him 
 self rather than any one else, that the man whose noble 
 career he had classed with his own in such reckless cyn 
 ical discourtesy, was too magnanimous to be offended. 
 
 "As you generously take to yourself the more malig 
 nant phases of mental abnormalism, 11 as you call it," 
 said the Eajah, leaning back against a tree, with a for 
 giving laugh, "I ought not to complain, I suppose. 
 But, not to question your argument, Hedland, are 
 you aware that a curious change has come over you 
 since we parted at Singapore ? With the freedom of 
 an old friendship never interrupted by my own will 
 I shall venture to describe it as an apparent loss of your 
 pride in yourself your self-respect ! Always impetu 
 ous and plain-spoken, you now seem to me to include 
 yourself in the sweep of your passionate intolerance ; 
 for you sometimes have an air of wantonly provoking 
 others, merely to prove your reckless indifference to 
 any ignominious repulse you may bring upon yourself. 
 That wholly gratuitous onslaught upon Mr. Effingham, 
 for instance suppose he had treated it with the sur 
 prised disdain that the circumstances would have justi 
 fied ?" 
 
 "Instead of which he patiently muffled me from 
 head to foot in the American Flag and I respect him 
 for it I" confessed the naturalist. " And so you think, 
 Eajah, that my tone of personal dignity is lowered ? I 
 don t know but you re right. How much dignity will 
 be left for manhood in general, if I can make it plain to 
 the world, that the ape returned by me to my prahu, 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. 299 
 
 down yonder, this afternoon, supplies unanswerable 
 proof that we are all no more than intellectually- 
 advanced monkeys ?" 
 
 "The same amount of dignity, my friend, that 
 belongs properly to manhood now ; that which is 
 vested in its mental, moral and spiritual superiority 
 over the highest possible development of the next order 
 in animal nature, whether it has remote kindred with 
 it, or not." 
 
 "Now that is sophistry, Brooke," retorted the Doc 
 tor, not sorry to be upon his hobby again ; "you can 
 not dismiss the question with a nourish of abstract 
 sentiment. The basis of all original human pride in 
 human nature lies in the belief that it is immeasurably 
 removed from any natural ties with brute-nature ; that 
 Man had a special creation as consummate Man only. 
 Upon this fundamental pride I call it presumptuous 
 vainglory you may build up any superstructure of 
 mental, or moral, or spiritual arrogation that you 
 choose ; but knock that foundation forever away with 
 an Oshonsee, and what becomes of your edifice ?" 
 
 "Even with such a foundation torn away, if it has 
 been honestly and nobly built there-above it need not 
 necessarily fall into ruins ; but, rather, it may, without 
 losing its essential integrity, sink to a new foundation 
 of its own unquestionably demonstrated primary supe 
 riority to whatsoever is ungoverned by reason and 
 moral principle ; and so, while sacrificing some pride 
 of mere altitude, acquire a finer dignity of proved 
 superstructural strength." 
 
 The burly naturalist shrugged his shoulders, and 
 smiled grimly. 
 
 "I don t think," said he, "that you appreciate the 
 proportions of the foundation to be knocked away ; for 
 they certainly constitute a good half of the whole 
 
300 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN, 
 
 edifice. If you and I are only the shaved, bleached 
 and educated descendants of a Simian Adam, our sup 
 posed moral and spiritual attributes are of no higher 
 origin than might be claimed as the Orang-outan s 
 motive for not attacking men, and for fighting hard 
 against the agony of death. They become the mere 
 instinctive selfish conventions of personal immunity 
 and temporization with vital dissolution. We are 
 moral, because our surest average safety lies therein, 
 and we are spiritual because we want some special 
 system of thought whereby to cope or fancy that we 
 are coping with normal life s ineradicable terror of 
 death. As for our educational attributes : which really 
 originate and control what our vanity would make us 
 think are the divinely dictated forms of the others; 
 they are indeed our great distinction from and perma 
 nent superiority over the inarticulate lower animals, 
 which cannot alternately condense and diffuse such 
 wisdom as may be amongst them sagacity, we call 
 it by the intercommunications of speech. It is edu 
 cation only, as it forms the common mind, that would 
 not be forlornly racked to pieces in your edifice of self- 
 conscious human dignity, by a collapse of the founda 
 tion laid in pride of species ; and education, alone, is 
 not sufficient to maintain the essential integrity of a 
 superstructure so undermined." 
 
 With unchanging serenity of look and manner the 
 auditor of the discouraging philosopher received this 
 rhetorical display of logic, and answered it practically : 
 
 " It seems to me, Hedland, that you are a little mad 
 in all this. I don t mean in the argument you rear 
 upon the assumption that your phenomenal mias com 
 pletes the chain between man and ape ; but in the 
 assumption itself. To me, Oshonsee is yet an inarticu 
 late brute creature. My every instinct, no less than 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHIL OSOPHER. 301 
 
 my reason, fails to discover in him any nearer identifi 
 cation with the human race than is casually suggested 
 by the commonest mias of the Sadong, or Sambas. 
 Granted, that his physical conformation is more like 
 man than orang-outan ; granted, that he seems to add 
 to the imitative facility of his kind, the reflective 
 sagacity of the elephant, the emulative ambition of 
 the horse, the loyal domestic affection of the dog and 
 the constructive aptitude of the beaver what are all 
 these phases of dumb instinct but poor, automatic 
 copies of the humblest expressions of human reason ? 
 Supplement them even with the speaking-powers of 
 parrot and magpie, and how much nearer do they 
 come to any intellectual or moral equality with the 
 acted and spoken intelligence of the least cultivated 
 human mind ? Because Oshonsee, by some freak or 
 exceptional circumstance of nature, is so formed that 
 he can walk erect ; because some peculiar past impres 
 sions upon his brute-instinct of self-preservation have 
 prepared him to exhibit a few dim similitudes of dis 
 criminating reason under your unremitted observation ; 
 you rush to the conclusion that he is something more 
 than anthropoid ape ; an ape changing to man, and 
 so proving that every lofty intuition of a divinely dis 
 tinctive creation, in the human soul is a pitifully false 
 .conceit." 
 
 Doctor Hedland was as unmoved at this arraignment 
 of himself as his friend had been in listening to his pro 
 vocation of it. 
 
 "You mistake the platitudes of hereditary mental 
 habit for the independent deductions of your own un 
 prejudiced observation," he returned, with an air of 
 necessitated indulgence. " The vanity of mankind has 
 established a system of pretended insuperable distinc 
 tions between man and ape, that the strongest un- 
 
302 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 scientific mind by mechanical custom adopts. Even 
 scientists themselves have not been above pandering to 
 it ; as when Curier gave designation of the four- 
 handed or quadrumana, to all otherwise humiliat- 
 ingly man-like denizens of the primeval forest, 
 because, from living chiefly in trees, their nether 
 extremes have been forced into manual functions, 
 whereby the ankles are curved outward and the 
 great-toes compelled to do duty as thumbs. 
 
 "Fancy a second Deluge, and the human survivors, 
 at the period of its subsidence below the highest tree- 
 tops, obliged to live in the latter for generations. Say 
 that such conditions of life lasted for a hundred, or even 
 fifty, years ; with successive generations clinging to the 
 boughs by their feet, and constrained to almost per 
 petual crouching postures by the low limits of their 
 shelter : and how much less quadrumanous do you 
 suppose they would ultimately become than are our 
 Borneon miases ? How much longer, or straighter 
 from the hip, would their legs be ? Fancy them in 
 all that time not only debarred from all clothing save 
 the leaves Scripturally assigned to Adam and Eve, but 
 with leaves, simply, to shelter their whole bodies from 
 the weather ; and, supposing the climate not perpet 
 ually warm, or temperate can you doubt that Xature 
 would finally supply them with hairy coatings ? Then 
 imagine, farther, the eternal intellectual insanity of 
 such an existence, with the corresponding natural de 
 preciation of the faculties of the brain : how much 
 more mind would your ultimate aborealized human 
 being possess than orang-outan, or chimpanzee ?" 
 
 "But this argument applies to the degeneracy of 
 man ; not to the regeneracy of ape," remarked Rajah 
 Brooke. 
 
 " I ve heard that criticism before, and will answer as 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHIL OSOPHER. 303 
 
 before," was the impatient rejoinder ; "It is Unthink 
 able, practically speaking, that credible natural cir 
 cumstances could ever so combine as to reduce man to 
 apehood ; but to concede the possibility of them even in 
 theory, is to allow the Thinkableness of the converse of 
 the proposition. We may easily suppose natural oc 
 currences to drive the anthropoid apes from a certain 
 forest to life on a plain, and a co-operation of condi 
 tions of subsistence and self-preservation, there, to 
 induce, gradually, in their progressive generations, a 
 habit of erect walking and an adaptation of the lower 
 limbs to that method of locomotion. If, in his present 
 estate, the orang-outan covers himself with bedclothing 
 of pandanus leaves in wet weather, why should he not 
 make some sort of leafy hut, to the same protective 
 end, as a dweller on the ground ? A common monkey 
 removed to a cold climate will soon, without human 
 instruction, gather any convenient bit of cloth around 
 his shoulder, for its warmth ; why, then, should not the 
 erect-walking and hut-building mias, or chimpanzee, 
 take finally to clothing himself. And as a housed and 
 clothed creature, it would not be an unlikelihood of na 
 ture for his hirsute covering to depart, as no longer 
 necessary, in the course of a few generations. Well, 
 you see how far our ape is already advanced in the 
 human scale by perfectly Thinkable I may say practi 
 cally Knowable conditions. Your ow r n mind can fol 
 low out the remaining evolutions into our kind of 
 manhood, as the gradually increasing and refining 
 physical capacities and sensibilities formulate speech, 
 and tend to the cultivation of instinct into reason." 
 
 "And you believe," said the Kajah, "that your 
 Oshonsee is a living demonstration of this advancement 
 from one type to another by process of natural evolu 
 tion?" 
 
304 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Emphatically, I do ! If you ask me to define specifi 
 cally the conditions developing this particular mias into 
 such an advanced form of being, I must answer that I 
 have no longer even a local theory about them ; for I am 
 satisfied that Makota was truthful at last about the 
 capture of the creature itself, not only in Borneo, but 
 even in the common mias country between the Sarawak 
 and the Sadong. Furthermore, I have secured the 
 skull of an animal of like development, but female (I 
 think), reported to have been killed at the foot of Tub- 
 bang mountain, in our very Sarawak valley! This 
 overthrows my Sumatran theory. With all his diver 
 gences from our Simunjon Pappans, Oshonsee is cer 
 tainly not wholly of a different species ; so I may 
 retain the idea of his hybridism, and believe that on 
 one side he sprang from Pappan stock. But where shall 
 I look for the other factor of his parentage in a region 
 not only now without orang-outans, but wanting the 
 marshy character of soil that, at any period, must have 
 been requisite for any known species ?" 
 
 " You mention Mount Tubbang ; do you know that 
 there is a cave in that mountain ?" asked the Rajah, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " I have been over the mountain often," replied the 
 naturalist, in some surprise; "but never found, nor 
 heard of, any cave." 
 
 "As I remember it," pursued the other, "its en 
 trance is through a hole like a shallow well. Probably 
 it has been concealed, for some purpose." 
 
 "That is something I shall certainly investigate," 
 declared Hedland. "The caves and tertiary deposits 
 of this Island may yet reveal something of human his 
 tory never before dreamed by the boldest speculation." 
 
 "Am I to understand your conclusion about Oshon 
 see to be, that he is a Hybrid of Simunjon Pappan and 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. 305 
 
 some greatly advanced unknown species ; and that one 
 <5f his parents may have belonged in the Sarawak 
 valley?" 
 
 u What else am I to think, Brooke, with the imper 
 fect knowledge at my command, and after finding and 
 tracing the significant skull I have mentioned ? You 
 have my theory of the conditions by which the human- 
 ization of such an ape as the supposable more advanced 
 progenitor of Oshonsee may have been progressively 
 effected ; yet, I am wholly at a loss to know how such 
 a creature could have originated in, or come into, any 
 explored part of Borneo. "* 
 
 "Now, one more question, my old friend," said the 
 Rajah, laying a hand upon the nearer knee of the 
 naturalist, and questioning as much with look as voice : 
 "are you, in any respect, a happier man, for having 
 secured the awfully momentous scientific prize you 
 take this mysterious Oshonsee to be ?" 
 
 The Doctor brought his own right hand emphatically 
 down upon his friend s, and kept it there while answer 
 ing : 
 
 "God knows I am not! The thing works in my 
 intellectual nature like a poison, bringing a kind of 
 delirium at one moment, and a leaden dulness of dis 
 gust with everything in human life myself chiefly ! at 
 the next. I tried once, as I ve told you, to shoot the 
 devilled ape ; and that action followed close upon the 
 revolt of my every moral faculty against killing a com 
 mon mias in a tree ! It was, as I said a while ago, an 
 unsocial mental abnormalism that led me into this 
 accursed study, and gave me a supernaturally malev- 
 
 *The critic of Doctor Hedland s scientific uncertainties and occasional 
 seeming inconsistencies, must be reminded, once more, that Darwin s 
 theory of natural Selection, Evolution and Survival was not then 
 known ; nor were Haeckel s and Wallace s elaborations of it. 
 
306 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 olent spite in it. If I had not perversely contemned 
 my kind ; if I had taken a suitable wife, and reared 
 children, and given my life its full and free natural 
 expression ; all the enthusiasm for science in the world 
 could not have inspired me so to consort with barbar 
 ism, and become myself a moral and spiritual barbarian, 
 for the sake of proving that men are but monkeys of a 
 vainer growth!" 
 
 "And do you realize, Hedland," spoke the Kajah, 
 with a remonstrating solemnity of inflection, " that if 
 you can convince men of this, you will also be destroy 
 ing their faith in the immortality of the human soul 
 the fundamental principle of all religion and Christian 
 civilization ?" 
 
 Nervously rising to his feet, and abstractedly thrust 
 ing his hands into his pockets, the fitful misanthropist 
 betrayed his mind s fretful unrest by pacing the few 
 feet of space available between the trees of their 
 elevated retreat. 
 
 " That part of the business," he answered, hurriedly, 
 with his eyes uneasily averted, "belongs to the 
 theologian ; not to me. There is chaos in my own 
 mind on the subject; and yet" with some resump 
 tion of his former vivacity "why should there be? 
 Is anything ever annihilated in this world either the 
 body or soul of once-living thing? Death is but a 
 change in the forms of matter ; not their destruction. 
 No atom of the world s composition since the creation 
 has ever been annihilated ; all is here yet, and must be 
 somewhere in the universe to all eternity, whatsoever 
 the mutations of its infinite forms and attributes. 
 Man s body dies, as we call it, and is disintegrated 
 into its original constituent physical elements ; but 
 with no absolute extinction of anything. The vital 
 essence, or the mind, or the Soul, as we may choose to 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHIL OSOPHER. 307 
 
 term it, can be none the more annihilated. Keleased 
 from the body, to which it has been at once the in 
 dividualizing force of segregate physical cohesion, and 
 the subtle preservative and motorial intelligence, it 
 returns to be a part again of the intangible vivifying 
 force of the whole universe perhaps as what we so 
 indefinitely style Electricity ; to shine supernally in 
 the thunder-storm and Aurora Borealis Heaven ! or 
 to terrify in the earthquake and volcano Hell ! or to 
 enter some new incorporation of living matter Metem 
 psychosis ! This horror of death that men feel is an 
 inheritance from the lowest, blindest brute-instinct ; 
 the intimations of immortality, timidly attributed to 
 the human soul, should be rightfully understood as 
 refined, educated and finally unblinded instinct s re 
 cognition of Immortality in every atom and essence of 
 Nature !" 
 
 The friend regretfully hearing this half-soliloquized 
 degradation of the system of the Universe into mere 
 endlessly-revolving machinery, scarcely knew what an 
 tidote could be in the least effective against such obsti 
 nate and sweeping materialism. 
 
 "All this means virtual atheism," he said, with a 
 mixture of impatience and indignation. "You are 
 miserably changed, indeed, Hedland, to find in your 
 own soul no undying contradiction of your scheme to 
 make it only one of the mechanical forces of nature. 
 There can be no moral, much less spiritual, responsi 
 bility in a soul like that, save to the other, sordid parts 
 of the machine it belongs to. Do you realize that your 
 theory implies the hopeless falsity of every noble, 
 saintly aspiration that ever glowed in a bosom wor 
 shipful of a Divine Fatherhood?" 
 
 "Don t be so unjust to me as that !" exclaimed the 
 naturalist, quickly. "Fichte treats the Universe as 
 
308 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 simply the logical process of the Divine mind ; Schell- 
 ing finds all nature full of God : what you denominate 
 my atheism makes these two to seem one. From the 
 beginning of all things I see the unbroken, unexcep 
 tional workings of a mighty system of Law, as devised 
 and enforced at the creation by an Omnipotent and Just 
 Divinity ; and in its every aspect of material develop 
 ment shines a reflected image of the Divine Mind, sus 
 taining and growing steadily clearer in it. Instead of 
 being a jumble of unrelated, casually-exigent crea 
 tions, all living substances and forms, from the minutest 
 spontaneous generation to consummate Man, are suc 
 cessive links in the one great chain of progressive being, 
 running from God s own Hand to God s own Hand. 
 All is consecutiveness, and order, and Law immutable ! 
 Is God the less to be recognized and adored as the Su 
 preme Author, because we find His marvelous Work 
 unfragmentary, coherent, and inexhaustible in every 
 part ? Is man less really the highest material develop 
 ment of Divine Law, from the proved consecutiveness 
 of his ascent to that eminence V" 
 
 "Material development!" repeated the Kajah, em 
 phasizing the adjective, contemptuously. He, too, now, 
 arose to his feet, and spoke more nearly face to face 
 with Oshonsee s pervert. "You are reasoning away 
 the Soul of man altogether ! Hedland, I reproach my 
 self for having allowed the conversation to reach such 
 a tenor. I do honestly believe that you are mad on this 
 subject made so by a fancied astounding scientific dis 
 covery ; and I also believe that your old good sense will 
 yet return for your cure." 
 
 "Fancied discovery !" echoed the other, in his turn. 
 "Why, look you, Kajah of Sarawak ! it may not impos 
 sibly follow from the same fancied discovery, that this 
 Borneo of yours will have an even chance to be accepted 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. 309 
 
 as the scene of man s origin ! All history, tradition 
 and fable seem to assign primary human nativity to 
 southern Asia. Geology teaches that the eocene and 
 miocene stages of the globe s tertiary period beheld a 
 solid Europe, Iceland, Greenland and North America 
 all linked in one land. These East Indies were then 
 undoubtedly united to the Asiatic continent ; as witness 
 the comparative shallowness, yet, of the fifty to ninety 
 fathom seas between them and lower India. Thus, 
 only Behring Strait, if even that thirty odd miles of 
 watery interval could then have existed broke the 
 continuity of dry ground all round our planet. 
 
 " We will suppose that sometime in the secondary 
 period of the creation, before the Age of Stone, the 
 mammalia had developed from the marsupials, and the 
 quadrumana (our monkey-friends perhaps those of 
 Africa and South America without thumbs on their 
 fore-hands) from the then next-highest order of mam 
 mals. Then came the tertiary period s morning, or 
 eocene stage, when the North and West were torrid in 
 climate ; with palms and Tropical forests in the now 
 England and between Western Europe and the present 
 United States ; and a cold, wet, unfructifying climate 
 prevailed in our Tropics and southward. 
 
 " It may be naturally supposed that the development 
 of the then highest order of mammals, all over the 
 world the most man-like : the so-called quadrumana : 
 from marmoset and lemur upward progressed more 
 rapidly in the comparatively temperate than in the 
 torrid regions. For instance, in this very Borneo, and 
 on its line within the Tropics through Africa and South 
 America, beings structurally approaching the orang- 
 outan, Buffon s Pongo ape, and the chimpanzee may 
 have been developed, while in northern Asia, Europe 
 and North America roamed the mammoths of creation, 
 
310 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 In the uoonday, or miocene, stage of the long tertiary 
 period, the heat of the North and West moderated, and 
 the southern hemisphere grew warmer ; whereupon 
 there must have been great migrations of beast and 
 bird ; and as the Tropics had then begun to show palm 
 and jungle, the Siberian elephant, the Manatee, or sea- 
 cow, of Behring s waters, and other giants, may have 
 started Southward and Eastward. Probably the quad- 
 rumana of the highest development had thus far been 
 found in the cool, marshy Equatorial belt, and some of 
 this grade now moved Eastward and Northward. In 
 the last, or pliocene, tertiary stage, the Americp-Euro- 
 pean land barrier dividing the Atlantic and Arctic 
 oceans sank away, and the sea rolled freely from Pole 
 to Pole between two finally separated parts of a 
 world. Simultaneously the climate above and below 
 the Tropics was temperate, while that of the Tropics 
 turned torrid ; the animal life distributed in the former 
 finding every combination of natural conditions to 
 accelerate its noblest development, while that in the 
 latter was proportionately retarded. 
 
 " Say that a creature like your Bugis monkey, Brooke, 
 was the nearest approach, at that time, in the Tropics, 
 to human development, and say, that, in the ages of 
 the disappearance of the quadrumana elsewhere into 
 the Man type, the species left in the East Indies, India, 
 Africa, South America and the "West Indies, developed 
 no higher than orang-outan, baboon, chimpanzee and 
 other anthropoids where could you expect so certainly 
 to find the nearest approximation to man in the indige 
 nous ape, as in this exceptionally temperate Borneo ?" 
 
 Such a peroration to all the geology and biology of 
 the speech struck the Rajah so ludicrously, that he 
 could not refrain from laughter. 
 
 "Ah, it amuses you, does it!" snapped Doctor Hed- 
 
CHRISTIAN AND PHIL OSOPHER. 31 1 
 
 land, quite in the manner of his old, testy self. " Do 
 you know what is the exact structural difference 
 between yourself and any common mias ? Well, he has 
 one more wrist-bone than you that s all ! Is his head 
 not shaped favorably for intellectual development ? 
 Well, any phrenologist will tell you that the human 
 infant s head is far more symmetrically porportioned 
 in that superficial respect than the human adult s ! 
 Cannot the Borneon man-of-the-woods be developed to 
 walk easily erect, and make a fire ? Look at Oshonsee I 
 
 Once more the Rajah laughed with an unconstraint 
 fearfully derogatory to princely dignity ; at the same 
 time glancing towards the Doctor s prahu far down on 
 the darkening river, as though amiably willing to 
 " look," literally, upon the phenomenal ape, if he could. 
 
 "As they used to say of Hegel," he banteringly re 
 plied, "you seem to think in substantives, and one 
 cannot argue theoretically against your positivisms. 
 I suppose you rank Mr. Oshonsee next to the African 
 Bushman in the humanizing scale ?" 
 
 " There is another toadyism of time-serving science 
 the designation of the black Bushman as the lowest 
 standard of human development ! There are white- 
 skinned bipeds, and in present Europe, too, of more 
 brutal type than he." 
 
 " Oh, in a couple of hundred years from now there 
 will be plently of finely brutalized human specimens 
 all over the world, if you can convince mankind that it 
 is only monkeyhood shaved, walking erect and talking." 
 
 " In that you hit me nearly, Brooke. As mankind 
 has been educated, the truth devolving upon me to de 
 monstrate must have a tendency to that insidious result, 
 in the common mind at least. I am taught that, by the 
 confusing effect upon my own mental system. Reason 
 as I may, I find my self-appreciation dolefully degraded. 
 
312 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Why, Brooke, the occasion of my reconciliation with 
 you is my loss of pride in self ! Otherwise, I could never 
 have forgiven you, in the world, for refusing to be 
 offended at me when I was so anxious to offend you !" 
 
 Here was the old Lawrence Hedland, after all ; to 
 forbear with under every provocation, because he had 
 the justest and warmest of hearts under the perversest 
 eccentricities of speech and action. 
 
 The two friends had advanced, as they talked, from 
 the gathering gloom beneath their hill-top canopy of 
 palm-leaves into the declining outer light of the hedged 
 path down the hill. Rajah Brooke, thrust an arm 
 within one of Hedland s, and as the contrasting figures, 
 thus amicably linked, started upon the descent, he an 
 swered the naturalist s last reactional confession : 
 
 " No matter what brought you back to us ; since you 
 have actually come ; and not only forgiven me for re 
 fusing to quarrel with you, but positively paid compli 
 ments to those pleasant Americans ; I shall not bother 
 myself about the cause. If you must return to your 
 Dyak village this evening, let it be with a manful der 
 termination to turn your hybrid monster loose in his 
 native wilds again. If you do not take my word for it, 
 dear Lawrence, he will turn your brain." 
 
 The admonition was spoken in a tone of beseeching 
 affection that even the irritable philosopher could not 
 resent. 
 
 " I dare not do that," said the Doctor, in a subdued, 
 halting voice. 
 
 "Dare not ? Have you learned to love the creature 
 so well ?" 
 
 "No ; that is not it. I have an affection for him, as 
 he has for me ; but he inspires me as much with fear 
 as with love." 
 
 " Then why do you not dare ?" 
 
EDWIN S DUTY AS A NEPHEW. 313 
 
 "Because," exclaimed the master of Oshonsee, turn 
 ing to glare into the face of his friend, as they strode on 
 " because, I 11 swear that he s A MAN 1" 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 EDWIN S DUTY AS A NEPHEW. 
 
 LIFE at " The Grove " was of the medley character to 
 have been expected in a great household conducted 
 wholly without the domestic genius of woman. From 
 top to bottom of the family scale everything was mas 
 culine ; and while a certain official system gave sufficient 
 order to the routine business of public and private ser 
 vice, the social air of the establishment suggested 
 rather a select East Indian hotel for gentlemen than a 
 permanently concentrated home. Indeed, the primitive 
 style of domestication yet prevalent in Kuchin, and his 
 own hospitable spirit, constrained the Eajah to keep 
 open his doors to all transient European visitors of his 
 capital, whether from English man-of-war, or Singapore 
 schooner ; so that the company gathering at table was 
 often a true travelers mixture of ranks and characters. 
 The combination of Governmental residence and judi 
 cial offices with this generous Bachelors Hall did not 
 lessen the suggestion of exceptional, temporary abid 
 ance to guests having their first experiences there ; yet, 
 withal, one soon found a peculiar charm in the generous 
 freedom and gracious equality of the place, that grew 
 more congenially homelike every day. 
 
 Except in the few hours of the afternoon when the 
 large central room was used for court-audience, no part 
 
314 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 of the great house outside of the Kajah s library and 
 dormitory, and the offices of his staff, had exclusion for 
 friend or visitor. Everybody shared the privilege of 
 roving, resting and associating as he chose. The long 
 veranda was seldom without its chatting group, or scat 
 tered single figures ; in white linen and straw hats by 
 morning, and in darker coats later on ; idly overlooking 
 the river through cigar-smoke, or enjoying the shade of 
 the hills at the warmer times of the day. Windows 
 here and there looked in upon pairs conversing lazily 
 over the Oriental equivalent of brandy-and-soda, or in 
 dividuals writing, reading, or luxuriously drowsing. 
 Xo ceremony was exacted, save at breakfast and dinner 
 in the main room ; when, with the Eajah at the head of 
 the board, his principal latest guest on his right hand, 
 and the staff and other guests ranging according to 
 rank on either side, the admirably cooked, well-served 
 meal was discussed with due conventional forms of 
 etiquette. 
 
 This was the manner of life familiar to Colonel Daryl 
 and his nephew in Sarawak, and, in sickness as in 
 health, the younger man, at least, had found its seduc 
 tiveness very hard to be renounced. Belmore s conva 
 lescence from his martial wound did not depend alone 
 upon geniality of climate and youth s recuperative 
 buoyancy for its enjoyability. H. M. S. Driver, an 
 chored almost at the front door, assured to him the 
 sympathetic and lively company of a number of young 
 men in his own profession ; his room was never neg 
 lected by his kind older friends of " The Grove ;" the 
 most devoted of uncles studied his every whim ; and 
 then there had been flattering messages of inquiry, and 
 divers edible delicacies brought, from time to time, by 
 Berner not to mention Mr. Effingham s several per 
 sonal calls. Thus the invalid Lieutenant progressed 
 
ED WIN S D UTY AS A NEPHEW. 315 
 
 from couch to easy-chair, from the latter to walks on 
 the veranda, and from those to a row on the river, 
 without an incident to detract from the most luxurious 
 delight of getting well again. 
 
 But, one morning, at breakfast, his uncle, who had 
 not seen him before since his betaking to boat early on 
 the preceding evening, noticed that Edwin seemed un 
 usually languid and abstracted. Others observed it, also ; 
 and to them he made the excuse, that a little cold and a 
 poor night s rest were "the matter with" him. 
 Colonel Daryl ventured no remark ; for he knew better 
 than this, and suspected that some of the company 
 knew as much. It was generally known that the young 
 gentleman s post-prandial excursion on the day before 
 had been one of good-bye to his American friends, 
 prefatory to his appointed departure with his uncle for 
 Singapore, and the Colonel, at any rate, was perfectly 
 aware of the circumstances which must have given him 
 such an unrefreshed face for the breakfast-table. 
 
 At the conclusion of the meal, upon pretence of let 
 ters to write, Belmore declined the usual sociable morn 
 ing walk and smoke, evaded Doctor Treacher s friendly 
 solicitude as to his pulse, and returned listlessly to his 
 own chamber. Throwing himself heavily into the easy- 
 chair by a window there he saw that Colonel Daryl 
 had followed him, and was seeking his eye with an ex 
 pression of questioning anxiety upon his own counte 
 nance. 
 
 " You do not feel ill, my boy ?" 
 
 " Oh, no, Uncle Will. A little out of sorts ; that s all. 
 
 " Did you have a bad night ?" 
 
 "Not much sleep. But never mind me, Uncle ; I 
 shall be all right presently." 
 
 " Whom else in the whole world have I to mind but 
 you, Edwin ?" said the Colonel, with an eloquent tremor 
 
316 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 in his voice. He took a chair beside that in which the 
 young man was sitting, and, with a timidity of move 
 ment infinitely pathetic, placed a hand upon his neph 
 ew s enfevered brow. " Whom else in the whole world 
 have I to mind but you, Edwin ?" he repeated. 
 
 " You mind me very much more than I am worth," 
 replied the nephew, smiling faintly, and shyly drawing 
 back his head ; " I m ashamed to receive such perpet 
 ual indulgence and kindness from you, and only add to 
 your cares and anxiety in return." 
 
 "Your affection and confidence, my dear boy, are all 
 that I ask ; and those are surely mine." 
 
 "I should be ungrateful, indeed, if they were not, 
 Uncle Will." 
 
 Sitting thus closely together, their respective coun 
 tenances informed by the same feeling, senior and junior 
 resembled each other quite strongly enough to have been 
 father and son. The invalid experience of the younger 
 man, by banishing temporarily from his complexion its 
 wonted purpureum lumen juventce, had assimilated his 
 face more nearlvto that of his Uncle ; and now the 
 heavier cast of mental dejection imitated the settled 
 gravity, if not the sternness, of the older man s expres 
 sion. In the darker brown hair of the senior an admix 
 ture of grey, and in the deeper blue of his eyes a colder 
 gleam, preserved yet the unchangeable distinction be 
 tween rebounding youth and passively self-recording 
 middle years ; but, for all, there was a certain general 
 look about Belmore, at present, in which a critical ob 
 server might have detected a suggestive incipience of a 
 maturer aspect ominously similar to his Uncle s. 
 Colonel Daryl saw his own likeness growing stronger 
 before him, as he scrutinized the face half turned away 
 against the high back of the easy-chair. He also per 
 ceived that the intentness of his regard disturbed the 
 
ED WIN S D UTY AS A NEPHE W. 317 
 
 weakened nerves of the youth, and both relaxed his 
 gaze and softly withdrew the caressing hand. 
 
 " You took leave of the Effinghams last night," the 
 Colonel said, in an ordinary tone. 
 
 " Yes ; I called, and we said good-bye," was the an 
 swer, rather mechanically returned. 
 
 " You saw all of them, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; even that little beggar of a Cherub was in 
 the room. It must have been by an oversight that the 
 Swiss butler did not appear in the group." 
 
 Not for an instant did the Colonel misapprehend the 
 cause of this ironical touch. Pretending not to observe 
 it, however, he went on : 
 
 " So much for being popular with a whole family. I 
 can believe that you were very sorry, all around, at 
 parting." 
 
 " I was less sorry, myself, than I had expected to be, 
 I must say," returned the nephew, temper suddenly 
 sparkling in his eyes. 
 
 "Sorrow, like joy, always loses something by transi 
 tion from anticipation to reality," his uncle rejoined, 
 quickly, with the air of having heard nothing out of the 
 commonplace. " You and I have greatly admired this 
 interesting foreign family, my boy, and felt grateful for 
 their charming courtesies to us ; but, after all, they are 
 foreigners ; not exactly our own kind : and it is natural 
 that the crucial test of a final farewell should positively 
 surprise ourselves by its revelation to us of the differ 
 ence between a reasoned sentiment and an instinctive 
 feeling. For my own part, I never met a more thor 
 oughly admirable woman than Mrs. Effingham ; yet, in 
 bidding her adieu, my regret was rather like what I 
 should have felt in looking for the last time upon a sin 
 gularly sweet picture, than like what we should expect 
 to feel in losing a cherished, familiar associate. "With 
 
318 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 all their unstudied kindness of manner, the people of 
 this family never bring themselves actually so near to 
 you as the superficial seeming is ; nor do you identify 
 yourself so closely with them as your occasional sensi 
 bility of particular attraction might lead you to believe. 
 When a test such, for instance, as parting arises, you 
 are inclined to be angry with yourself for not being more 
 deeply moved. I understand exactly the sensation you 
 have described, Edwin ; but must warn you that the 
 natural excitement of the occasion probably deadened, 
 or, at least, distracted, your sense of loss, somewhat, at 
 the time ; and that you are likely to regret your Ameri 
 can friends and particularly that lovely girl far more 
 acutely a week hence than you do now." 
 
 With the wisdom of a good moral surgeon, he deemed 
 it best to probe boldly the wound to which he had ad 
 dressed himself, while yet it was new ; though, at the 
 same time, observing a due caution of gradual penetra 
 tion to its more critical depths. He would watch the 
 deepest pulse and be not altogether regardless of the 
 mute wincing ; but as for the patient s verbal signs; 
 well, some of them, certainly, must be passed over quite 
 unheedingly. 
 
 That patient, however, did not appreciate the matter- 
 of-course acceptance given to words by which he meant 
 to express an unusual grievance, and protest against it. 
 
 " I was not so sorry at the parting as I had expected 
 to be," saidBelmore ; " because I felt disappointed and 
 angry at being suddenly treated with ceremony and on 
 such an occasion, too ! where I had always before 
 found an unreserve almost as complete as though I be 
 longed to the family. It provoked me ; but, all the 
 same, I wish I d never come back here from Bruni ! " 
 
 " They were not so ceremonious with you when you 
 left them to risk your life ? " 
 
EDWIN S DUTY AS A NEPHEW. 319 
 
 " I did not give them the chance then. There was an 
 opportunity to say the good-byes that were hardest for 
 me before the general leave-taking came." 
 
 " Ah, I see : it was hardest for you to bid farewell to 
 Mrs. Emngham and her daughter ; so you said your 
 special parting words to them, individually, in advance 
 of the usual family form of good speeding." 
 
 "Well yes," said the young man, hesitating wear 
 ily, "that was about it, I suppose." 
 
 " You were not treated coldly last night ? " 
 
 " Why, no, Uncle Will, not coldly not at all coldly : 
 everybody was kind. But but that family form 
 you speak of : it struck me as being especially adopted 
 to keep me strictly to the flattest commonplaces, just 
 when I was heartsick to be humored to the last degree. " 
 With an impatient movement the speaker straightened 
 in his chair, and glanced out towards the sunny veran 
 da, where two or three figures were passing at the mo 
 ment. 
 
 I take it for granted that there was some observ 
 ance of prescribed ceremony in your introduction to this 
 family in Batavia," hinted the Uncle, relapsed now into 
 a wholly unemotional demeanor. 
 
 "Oh, that, of course." 
 
 " Then, Edwin, I must reprove you for being both 
 unreasonable and unjust in looking for so wide a differ 
 ence between the formal beginning of the acquaintance 
 and its formal close." 
 
 The youth started and turned paler ; but simply 
 looked earnestly at his uncle, without speaking. 
 
 "You must bear in mind, my dear boy," pursued 
 that mentor, in the same even tone, "that people 
 esteeming themselves as possessed of a certain unques 
 tionable social superiority, resort to ceremony with 
 casual associates only at the beginning and the end of 
 
320 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 the association ; because, regarding those associates as 
 casual only, it does not occur to them that any cere 
 monious forms can be "requisite to deter them from the 
 presumptuousness of fancying themselves eligible for a 
 permanent intimacy. It is incumbent upon the well- 
 bred to yield exact politeness to everybody ; to resort 
 to ceremony simply when others are justified in expect 
 ing it ; and it is not politeness to a respectable passing 
 acquaintance, to take final leave of him with an uncere 
 monious disregard of the considerate forms which had 
 practically been his guarantee of temporary uncritical 
 affiliation at his introduction. If, at the beginning of a 
 steamer-voyage, I receive any stranger casually intro 
 duced to me with the form of respect due to an attested 
 gentleman, I am bound, if he does not wittingly offend 
 me, to forget no gentlemanly form in taking leave of 
 him on our separation at the journey s close. Other 
 wise, I indicate that he has given me some cause to 
 hold him in less respect than at our first meeting. The 
 Effinghams are too well bred to have shown you that 
 slight." 
 
 A dazed expression came over Belmore s counte 
 nance ; and a flush, too, as though he resented as much 
 of the speech as he could clearly understand. 
 
 I might fancy you were talking of some affable 
 royal family condescending to a garrulous wayside 
 peasant!" he exclaimed, a little irritably. "Such in 
 sufferable assumption would be impossible to people 
 like the Effinghams. I know nothing more of their 
 social quality at home than you have told me, yourself; 
 but I am sure that not one of them knows what it is to 
 have an arrogant sensation." 
 
 " No : not arrogant. They are too proud, my boy, 
 to be either vain, or arrogant !" retorted the uncle, 
 smiling at his simple-mindedness. " So experienced 
 
EDWIN 8 DUTY AS A NEPHEW. 321 
 
 and shrewd an observer as Doctor Hedland finds Mr. 
 Effingham one of the most thorough aristocrats he has 
 ever met. I have extracted from the Eajah and Mr. 
 Williamson the substance of the American s dinner- 
 table essay on his country, that impressed the Doctor in 
 this peculiar manner, and can see how it was calculated 
 to make such an impression on such an acute mind. 
 
 " From my own not wholly pleasant recollections of 
 the United States I am able to confirm the assertion, 
 that affiliation with political party, there, is more pro 
 nouncedly a matter of social selection than in any other 
 nation on the globe. In the Southern States of the 
 Union, where slavery supplies the whole laboring class, 
 and the indigents who are not slaves are contemned 
 political nonentities there is only one party for all 
 times that of the planting autocracy. In the three 
 other great sections of the mighty republic there is, as 
 practically, but one party of Gentlemen, as Mr. Effing- 
 ham says, however it may transfer its inevitably decid 
 ing power from one scale of the national political bal 
 ance to the other, as one or the other alienates its moral 
 and social sympathies. 
 
 " A visitor having any just knowledge of the respect 
 ive social averages of the two immediate parties, can 
 pick out of an ordinary American social assemblage, in 
 ten minutes, the members of either organization. Both 
 have wealthy, educated and morally unimpugnable 
 affiliants : but there is always a certain permanent 
 social superiority of personal suggestion, no less than 
 an obviously higher intellectual quality, to distinguish 
 the one affiliation from the other. I have heard stories 
 of American sons and daughters being disinherited and 
 disowned for marrying out of their political castes, and 
 you can judge for yourself how easily they may have 
 been true. 
 
322 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "Doctor Hedland regards such a system as stimu 
 lative of an aristocratic spirit, equalling that which 
 preceded the French Kevolution. He infers and I 
 agree with him that when a man like Mr. Effingham 
 cites this system to prove that his country s political 
 destinies are ideally at the command of that country s 
 highest type of cultivated and refined Anglo-Saxon 
 human nature ; with the implication that he, as a mat 
 ter of course, belongs to that type ; he illustrates about 
 as much pride as it is pleasant to encounter in an in 
 dividual." 
 
 "But why are you explaining all this to me, Uncle 
 Will?" queried the younger man, looking more and 
 more unhappy. "What pride have the Effinghams 
 ever shown to us, at any rate ? What occasion have 
 we ever given them to exhibit anything of the kind ? I 
 don t believe that they have a bit more than you and I. 
 That long dinner-table speech was a kind of parliamen 
 tary device, I am sure, to suppress Dr. Hedland s cross- 
 grained catechising. Mr. Williamson thinks so, too. 
 It is of little account to me, now, whether the Effing- 
 hams think much or little of themselves ; but it seems 
 to me impossible for people to be more free from every 
 form of ostentation." 
 
 "Ostentation?" repeated Colonel Daryl, raising his 
 grizzled eyebrows. Oh, no ! theirs is not the class to 
 need that. It is a class distinctively unostentatious at 
 home ; not the one, by any means, made notorious by 
 phenomenal wealth and coveting titled foreign alliances ; 
 and when you meet its representatives abroad, they 
 are quietly dignified, finely educated, peculiarly well- 
 dressed men and women, to whom the best English and 
 Continental circles are opened as a matter of course, 
 and who never dream of being less than the peers of 
 the best who can entertain them." 
 
EDWIN S DUTY AS A NEPHEW. 323 
 
 "I had formed a different idea of Americans," said 
 Belmore, rather listless again. "The newspapers of 
 the United States which I have seen at Singapore and 
 other ports, have a tone in speaking of social matters 
 that seems as though society there must be different 
 from ours." 
 
 "Your mistake is common to all Europeans who 
 know the States only by that criterion," answered his 
 uncle. " The proprietorships of American journalism 
 rest almost wholly in the lower rank of the great mid 
 dle-class of society ; because that class, chiefly, origin 
 ates both of the principal political parties, and the 
 newspapers are but subordinate political agencies. 
 You might as well gauge the highest metropolitan 
 society of England by the social tone of the average 
 provincial Parliamentary committee. In no other great 
 country of the world are journalists and journalism so 
 socially insignificant ; and as newsmongering is but a 
 trade for a living, like any other, it may be that this 
 limitation for it is the philosophically true one. 
 
 "At any rate, my dear boy, the American society 
 of American newspapers is not the grade with which 
 you and I have had to do. The American gentleman 
 who holds himself as good, socially, as any European 
 nobleman of endless pedigree, has need to show an 
 ancestry of only four or five educated and independ- 
 ently-estated generations, and scorns to go back into any 
 foreign genealogy for the guarantee of equality with the 
 world s highest that he deems sufficiently assured by 
 his own proud nationality. If you can understand the 
 commonest springs of human emotion, Edwin, you must 
 perceive that an individual pride thus imperiously 
 grounded in an assumed exceptional prerogative of na 
 ture, as it were, is the last to be safely mistaken for dem 
 ocratic insensibility." 
 
324 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 The nephew, heavy-hearted and restless, did not yet 
 perceive that all this unwonted avuncular expatiation in 
 social philosophy was an artful drawing of a net closer and 
 closer about himself, so that when he did at last become 
 aware of it he could struggle to but little effect. He 
 had, however, a vague sense of something in it that 
 gave to his parting with the American family a fateful 
 meaning growing more significant to his apprehension 
 every moment. 
 
 " I thought, Uncle, that Mrs. Efnngham. particularly, 
 gave no reason to you, at least, for considering the 
 family a very haughty one, " he said, for want of stronger 
 argument. 
 
 " She is thoroughly a lady, by instinct as well as edu 
 cation, and would not stoop to the pretension that my 
 past relations with a member of her family did not 
 entitle me to her peculiar consideration. To have acted 
 differently, would have been to give me an advantage 
 of moral dignity over her, and those of her name, in 
 the matter concerned." 
 
 "But /had no past relations to make them all so 
 freely kind to me," urged Edwin. 
 
 " You had only your own seeming as an educated, 
 gentlemanly young man, in an honorable profession, 
 and they relaxed to you as an agreeable fellow-traveler 
 whose merely passing association called for no conven 
 tional formalities nor precautions." 
 
 " Precautions !" echoed the young man, his counte 
 nance changing as he began to catch at last the true 
 drift of the talk. 
 
 " That was my term," replied the Colonel, with con 
 tinued cool precision. " If you had been introduced to 
 them at their home, with a prospect of any permanent 
 association, they might have thought it necessary to put 
 some precautionary restrictions, for instance, upon your 
 
ED WIN 8 D UTY AS A NEPHEW. 325 
 
 attentions to their charming daughter. I dreaded, 
 Edwin, that my too long indulgence of your disposition 
 to make the most, here, of your new friends, might be 
 fraught with a cruel danger for you in that quarter. I 
 can not express to you the relief I feel in knowing that 
 you had too much manly English pride to fall into a 
 folly whose fruit would have been sure disappointment 
 and lifelong indignity." 
 
 Leaning back in the easy-chair, with hands clasped 
 across his face, Belmore made no sign of a wish to speak. 
 His uncle watched him, with a curious mixture of com 
 passion and satisfaction in his look, and went on : 
 
 " But as I am not disposed, myself, to leave any pos 
 sible implication of a lesser pride than that, for our 
 selves, behind us, I preluded your farewell call at the 
 house with a special visit of my own, to request that 
 you should be treated with the parting ceremony to 
 which you have taken exception." 
 
 " You did that, Uncle ?" exclaimed his nephew, 
 aghast, starting to arise. 
 
 "I did that," assented the Colonel, gently pushing 
 him back into the seat," and I did it to spare you and 
 myself the humiliation of seeing the same course inev 
 itably pursued, without our having had the advantage 
 of dictating it for ourselves." 
 
 " Then you have sacrificed me, if not another, also, 
 to your own pride, sir !" was the fiercely passionate cry 
 of the unhappy youth ; now sitting bolt upright, and 
 facing his unwilling tormentor defiantly. 
 
 " That is a hot-blooded accusation not likely to be 
 maintained by your cooler reflection, my poor boy," 
 said Colonel Daryl. 
 
 " Uncle Will, forgive me," pleaded Belmore, in quick 
 revulsion of feeling ; u I did not mean that. But you 
 surely misjudge Mr. and Mrs. Effingham, and have 
 
326 THERE WAS ONGE A MAN. 
 
 obliged them to do that which now that I understand 
 it all is likely to break my heart. 
 
 "I know them well, Edwin," returned his Uncle, 
 sternly emphasizing each word. " To prove that I do, 
 you shall be taken into my confidence as no less an exi 
 gency would make suitable to our respective years and 
 relations. You see what I am : a middle-aged old 
 man, without ambition, settled home, or care for any of 
 the prizes of life. You find me practically an aimless 
 lingerer here, in this savage remoteness from my coun 
 try and all family ties ; making pretext of search after 
 a mad runaway plunderer of papers, long since dead 
 and turned to undistinguisable dust, though that is only 
 a pretense of definite aim to save myself from the com 
 plete inanity of an unmanly despair ! Unmanly it is 
 I know and avow it ! But I am a broken man, Ed 
 win, and so have been for twenty heavy years. Even 
 to your inexperienced youthful judgment I cannot be 
 without indication of capacities for something far differ 
 ent from this. And have you ever guessed why I am 
 what I am ? The secret shall be revealed to you in full 
 now : my life was wrecked twenty years ago by the 
 pride of Mrs. Efnngham s family." 
 
 "I know," assented the young man, inclining his 
 head, sadly. 
 
 " A part not all," corrected the Colonel. " It has 
 been no slight humiliation for me, Nephew, to be re 
 garded by yourself and others as the moody and em 
 bittered, lifelong victim of a common sentimental 
 disappointment. Has it never jarred with your gen 
 eral conception of my dominant traits, to see me 
 enduring, rather than living, my life, apparently 
 because a woman whom I had greatly admired in 
 my youth could not be mine ?" 
 
 " I may confess to you, Uncle, since you ask me, that 
 
EDWIN S DUTY A8 A NEPHEW. 327 
 
 I had suspected some more unusual cause for your un- 
 likeness to other men of your energetic years, before 
 you told me of your tender memory of a sister of Mrs. 
 Effingham." 
 
 "I am glad to be assured, my dear boy, that your 
 partiality invests me with virile qualities of mind incon 
 gruous with such an effect from such a cause only. You 
 think that you are, yourself, a present sufferer from an 
 adversity somewhat in the same line. I will not dis 
 guise from you, Edwin, that your feelings relative to 
 Miss Effingham are perfectly well known to me ; nor do 
 I underestimate the misery of hopelessness that this 
 very conversation of ours is making the more immedi 
 ately poignant. But, believe me, you will overlive this 
 trouble ; because its occasion has been merely the denial 
 of an aspiration you were really not conscious of having 
 definitely entertained until you saw that it was denied. 
 
 "So. too, if fortuitous circumstances had allowed 
 your association with this lovely girl to reach the inev 
 itable decisive interposition of insuperable parental 
 objection, your sore hurt, aggravated, albeit, by some 
 humiliation thank me for sparing you that ! would 
 yet have been healed by time. Even had rejection 
 been yours from the rosy lips you had fondly thought 
 propitious to your dearest hopes, you would have found 
 an ultimately comforting reassurance even in the reflec 
 tion, that, perhaps, those same impetuous hopes had 
 caused you to misinterpret the simply natural gracious- 
 ness of amiable girlhood. 
 
 " Love s injuries, in man or woman, are repaired the 
 sooner for a consciousness that our own wilful misap 
 prehensions, and not the disdainful coquetries of others, 
 have precipitated their infliction. Death itself, how 
 ever harrowing in time and circumstance, can not so 
 wring the devoted heart bereaved, that years of manful 
 
328 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN 
 
 courage and duty should not bring it final acknowledged 
 compensation." 
 
 Colonel Daryl was now sitting with his body inclined 
 slightly forward, a hand resting heavily on either knee, 
 and his eyes downcast. After a short pause he went 
 on, without change of attitude or look : 
 
 "No ordinarily sensitive human being, however 
 youthful and elastic, is ever exactly the same in dis 
 position and character after an intentional, or a reck 
 less, deception of the deeper affections. Such experience 
 impresses even volatile natures with an insidious lesser 
 faith in the honest genuineness of average human char 
 acter, that coarsens the grain of all future passionate 
 affinity, and more or less harshly distorts the finest 
 natural rhythm of a life. The jilted man or woman 
 is never so spontaneously good thereafter, and may 
 even turn from good to bad. 
 
 "You see, Edwin," the Colonel continued, slowly 
 raising his eyes once more to his nephew s gravely 
 attentive face, "I make every allowance for the de 
 scription of wound oftenest bewailed as the cruelest by 
 poets and romancers. Its peculiar cruelty lies not in the 
 mere disappointment of tenderness it involves, for that 
 might be bravely overlived but in the irretrievable 
 lowering it gives to every delicate proud instinct of self- 
 respect. Yet there may be a wound even crueller to 
 the loving heart than that ; a wound as terrible as Dis 
 honor, to a high nature, though not conventionally dis 
 honoring ; a wound implying all the ineffaceable 
 indignity of love s betrayal, though without even the 
 temporary relief of that just, revengeful rage which out 
 raged faith may make a retribution for its outward 
 humiliation. That wound has been mine, Nephew ; 
 is mine now ; for twenty years have wrought no cure 
 and it was given by the only woman I ever loved." 
 
EDWIN S DUTY AS A NEPHEW. 329 
 
 Edwin Belmore gazed questioningly into the stern 
 face, grown more eloquent to him than ever before of a 
 profoundly rooted wrong. 
 
 " I hardly know that I understand you," he said. 
 
 " You have been told that I greatly admired a sister 
 of Mrs. Effingham, in my youth, and that she died soon 
 after my return with Doctor Hedland from the United 
 States. It remains for you to be informed that Miss 
 Dornton became my wife." 
 
 "Your wife!" ejaculated his nephew, starting elec 
 trically, and turning deathly pale. 
 
 " For an hour scarcely for one hour. And then, at 
 the bidding of an imperious mother, she discarded me 
 with contumely !" 
 
 "Can this can this be so, Uncle?" exclaimed the 
 young man, with half-incredulous wonder, his face now 
 flushing hotly, while his uncle s whitened. 
 
 Leaning farther forward, Colonel Daryl impressively 
 laid his right hand upon the youth s nearer arm : 
 
 " My nephew, I have been spurned by a wife ; not 
 for any offense as a husband, but because a proud 
 mother had taught her so soon to repent bitterly 
 that was her own word ! having given her hand to one 
 so poor and lowly as a Daryl." 
 
 "My dear Uncle Will !" cried Belmore, catching the 
 extended hand between both of his own ; his eyes 
 flashing and nostrils dilating "did those Americans 
 dare to treat an English gentleman so infamously ?" 
 
 The Colonel reflected his indignant look with a mo 
 mentary proud satisfaction. It was, however, an 
 evanescent emotion : the old, drawn lines of gloomy 
 thought came back to his face, as, with a parting 
 pressure, he withdrew his hand, and continued : 
 
 " You must not be unjust, my dear boy : the family- 
 feeling in the matter had some justification, as you may 
 
330 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 judge from what I have yet to tell you. My chief 
 acquaintance with Miss Dornton was in New York 
 society, during a visit she was making at the home of 
 friends in that city. Circumstances allowed us to see 
 much of each other in a comparatively short period of 
 time, as I visited, also, at the mansion where she was 
 staying, and enjoyed the esteem of the family. The 
 story shall be short for you, Edwin : we fell madly in 
 love, and when the time for her return to her own 
 suburban home approached, our common childish ter 
 ror of possible parental interference with our romance 
 drove me to propose, and her to consent, that we should 
 slip into a parsonage, at the close of an hour s prome 
 nade, one day, and be married. A few hours later, my 
 bride s mother, alarmed at what she had heard of our 
 frequent companionship, carried her back to her home ; 
 being informed of the marriage, on the way. 
 
 " You may believe that I lost no time in following : 
 not for the purpose of any immediately peremptory de 
 monstration as the possessor of a husband s legal 
 authority, but to appeal solely to my young wife s 
 reciprocal love for the strongest plea we could unit 
 edly make for what we had so impulsively done. I 
 expected, and realized that I deserved, the severest 
 parental reprobation. I was even honest enough in my 
 conscience to confess to myself, that the strongest 
 family influence and legitimate control could be justi 
 fiably exerted against a claim I had so exceptionally 
 established. What I depended upon, solely, for ulti 
 mate pardon and acceptance, was my wife s unshaken 
 confidence in my love and her own. We could bear 
 temporary condemnation even probationary separa 
 tion, with that supreme plea for final justice. 
 
 "I saw Mrs. Dornton, and was not surprised, nor 
 indignant, at her sternly haughty repulse ; but when 
 
EDWIN S DUTY AS A NEPHEW. 331 
 
 my bride appeared, and, with face buried on her moth 
 er s bosom, bitterly renounced me, disregarded my 
 every passionate appeal as an honorable man I could 
 do no less than release her at once from a pledge that 
 had brought to me such crowning indignity I" 
 
 "And that was the woman to whom your life has 
 been a sacrifice ! " said Edwin. 
 
 "She was constrained to it, irresistibly, by the will 
 of a terrible mother," rejoined his Uncle; "and paid 
 the penalty with her soft young life ! Purer, sweeter, 
 more innocent, girlish soul never knew mortal tene 
 ment. But that mother ! She is dead, too ; God 
 forgive her ! Her selfish idolatry of the child nearest 
 to her proud heart might have been pardonable, even to 
 me, had it taken any less sinister revenge, than to com 
 pel my degradation to the shame of a discarded hus 
 band by the lips of my own wife ! You can now under 
 stand, Edwin, the conciliating gentleness of a woman 
 like Mrs. Effingham to you and myself. Her fine, just 
 sense of the undeservedness of that shame, has instigat 
 ed her filial duty to this casual atonement, even at the 
 peril of leading you, my poor boy, into a fatally delu 
 sive paradise." 
 
 Some indignant fire yet shone in the blue eyes of the 
 young sailor, whose own pride felt a sharp sting from 
 what he had heard. 
 
 " Let us get away from this place, at once, Uncle 
 Will ! " he exclaimed, impatiently ; leaving his chair, 
 as by an impulse to begin preparation for such depar 
 ture on the instant. 
 
 "That is the wise course for both of us," returned 
 Colonel Daryl, following towards the door. " Governor 
 Bonham s friendship must be taxed no further to ex 
 empt you from your duty on the Cressy, and I should 
 have rejoined my command a month ago. We will take 
 
332 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 the schooner for Singapore this very day. But, tell me, 
 dear boy," placing an arm across Edwin s shoulders 
 " are you very unhappy ? " 
 
 Edwin did not evade his gaze of anxious scrutiny, 
 though there was a slight, suspicious twitching of his 
 upper lip, as he bravely answered : 
 
 "I think that I can learn to bear my cross, sir. 
 Thanks to your watchful kindness, dear Uncle, it is the 
 first I have ever known, and now that I fully under 
 stand what you have suffered, it shall be my effort not 
 to impair the dignity of such an irreparable sorrow with 
 the pettiness of my own broken illusions." 
 
 "Every heart knoweth its own bitterness," said 
 the Colonel, moodily shaking his head. " Your trial 
 is no light one ; but stand it as resolutely as you can ; 
 and trust to me for all the help that affection and 
 sympathy can give. Now I must go and see about our 
 schooner. We shall soon be out in the world again, 
 together ; and more to each other, dear nephew, than 
 ever before." 
 
 On being left to himself, Belmore sought temporary 
 distraction in a needlessly hurried gathering of his va 
 rious scattered property, in the room where even sick 
 ness had not been without its dreamy pleasures for 
 him. He was in the condition of one who, after a night 
 of wearing, haunted fever, takes some energizing drug 
 to arouse his deadened faculties, and finds in the forced 
 stimulation only a kind of mechanical excitement, 
 through all of which lingers vaguely yet, the weary 
 heaviness of the fever s course. The confidence re 
 posed in him by his Uncle had stirred his thoughts to a 
 sympathetic and resentful activity, under which their 
 foregoing dejection was in a measure forgotten ; but the 
 reaction was too abrupt to be long sustained. Through 
 every intervening diversity of emotion, the heartsick- 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 333 
 
 ness of the preceding evening s then scarcely definable 
 disappointment came drearily back to him again, and 
 the affronted pride of the Daryls did not suffice to with 
 hold from it the- tribute of a sigh. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT NOT COUNTED UPON. 
 
 WITH no extraneous irritant to affect his mind, a man 
 of Doctor Hedland s temperament might have been en 
 viably contented in the village of Pa Jenna. A white 
 skin, and the credit of belonging to the same nation 
 with the invincible Tuan Besar of Kuchin, were, of 
 themselves, qualifications to command from the unsophis 
 ticated Dyaks all the reverential deference and unques 
 tioning obedience due to a superior being. Individual 
 force of intellect, and the wide knowledge of human na 
 ture acquired by extensive travel, enabled the scientist 
 to deepen this popular prepossession into an almost ab 
 ject personal subservience. From the half-civilized 
 Orang-Kaya himself, down to the lisping child, every 
 soul in the village revered and held him in unspeakable 
 awe as a possessor of supernatural powers ; and his com 
 plete sway over the superstitious imaginations and child 
 ish fears of the untutored creatures could not be other 
 wise than grateful to his true Anglo-Saxon egotism. 
 Even such familiar association with this simple people 
 as he found consistent with convenience and good 
 policy, had none of the disadvantages which would 
 have been incident to colloquial intimacy with as great 
 an inferiority of intelligence in his own land and tongue. 
 
334 THERE WAS ONCE A MAtf. 
 
 Any continuous verbal freedom of an educated man 
 with illiterate speakers of his native language tends, 
 gradually, to the depravity of his own lingual usages, 
 and a corresponding relaxation in his habitual dignity 
 of thought. And this insidious intellectual unrefme- 
 ment is in proportion to the scarcely cognizant victim s 
 magnanimity of social instinct. If he is too generously 
 considerate to make his humble associates perpetually 
 conscious of their contrasting ignorance, he will wit 
 tingly adopt their own rude, careless forms of expres 
 sion, in ordinary conversation with them ; and thus, 
 unwittingly, contract meannesses of speech calculated 
 to infect average silent thinking with the same coarse 
 degeneracy. But with a foreign language as the me 
 dium of colloquy, and foreign customs to be familiarly 
 tolerated, there are an inevitably natural guardedness of 
 diction and a graduation of familiarity, whereby edu 
 cated mental habit is rather heightened than lowered. 
 Thus, the English naturalist could affiliate domestically 
 with a community of amiable barbarians, without de 
 preciation of his finest civilized intellectualities. 
 
 Indeed there had been only too much danger, that 
 the mental effects of such a life would be a quite insuf 
 ferable confirmation of the Doctor s already sufficiently 
 domineering intellectual arrogance. His scientific iso 
 lation, optional personal relations, and habituation to 
 unquestioning submission, were not likely to soften his 
 normally imperious dogmatism of spirit ; and a despotic 
 terror to common minds he might really have become, 
 but for the retributive humiliation invoked by the 
 temerity of his own vaunting science. From the time 
 when the idea had begun to grow upon Hedland, that 
 the ape, Oshonsee, was an indisputable solution of 
 Nature s mightiest problem a key incarnate to the 
 whole profound system of creation he lost more and 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 335 
 
 more of his overbearing positiveness of self-assertion ; 
 changing gradually from petulant impatience under 
 any mention of his simian phenomenon, to a kind of 
 desperately sullen doggedness of persistence in a 
 theory that certainly exerted a most disconcerting 
 influence upon himself. 
 
 To theorize slashingly at one s ease, from the speci 
 mens and library of some great European museum of 
 natural history, upon the fallacy of a special genesis for 
 the so-called human species, is a light and airy literary 
 amusement, in comparison with the sinister discom 
 posure of a conscientious naturalist forced to contem 
 plate a miserably living apparent integer of continuity 
 between brute-like Man and man-like Brute. In the 
 one case your dashing savant is in rather a more 
 vain-gloriously complacent humor with himself over 
 the learned ingenuities of reasoning wherefrom vast 
 consternation may be expected for the ingenuous un 
 scientific herd ; in the other, all the sophistries pos 
 sible to the mind of man can not prevent the human 
 soul s sinking aghast, in absolutely confronting some 
 thing at once Man and a Soulless being ! 
 
 Doctor Hedland s changes of moral aspect must be 
 read by the light of these reflections, in order to be 
 justly understood. The ape-man purchased by his 
 gold from the dark Makota was surely, if slowly, per 
 verting him into that sordidly despiritualized mere me 
 chanic of reason, a Godless thinker one who took no 
 cognizance of the cause of things beyond the last-as 
 certained point of its demonstration in tangible matter. 
 He was not really yet aware of the extent of this per 
 version in himself ; only feeling its desolating influence 
 in the rapid decline of his every impulse of high-mind- 
 edness, and a peevish disgust with all human aspir 
 ation. 
 
336 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 The home of this materialistic philosopher has been 
 described as elevated upon lofty piles of its own, a short 
 distance around one of the lateral bends of the common 
 gallery, or veranda, of the uplifted village on the hill 
 side ; connecting with that veranda by a Y-shaped 
 bridge of bamboo. Near the farther end of the primi 
 tive footway last mentioned, upon one of the several 
 oddly rattanned, but by no means uncomfortable home 
 made chairs of his earlier devising, our naturalist sat, 
 puffing his pipe, one morning, with outstretched, slip 
 pered feet braced against the rude outer railing of the 
 veranda. 
 
 Day was far enough advanced for the village to be 
 almost wholly deserted by its active out-of-door work 
 ers, or daily rovers abroad, both male and female. At 
 any hour there was comparative retirement for him 
 around his remote corner of the literal highway, where 
 he now took the air ; and neither human shape nor 
 sound interrupted such abstract or concrete musings as 
 gave involuntary time and measure to the pearly little 
 clouds emitted at intervals from his bearded mouth. 
 Overhead was an etherial canopy very similar in gen 
 eral texture to these same fragrant fumes of the cogita 
 tive weed a misty fleece tempering the Equatorial sun 
 to a demure coquetry with a veil of rain yet to be 
 wrung-out and the atmosphere around volumed cool 
 and aromatic with the breath of the nether river and 
 the low-hanging odors of mountain woodlands. On the 
 threshold of the detached house, across the quaint 
 foot-bridge, cuddled the wonderful ape ; his knees 
 drawn up, his elbows resting upon them, and his 
 hands supporting jaws whence protruded a lighted 
 pipe like unto his master s. Attired, too, somewhat 
 similarly to that master, in blouse and trousers of faded 
 blue twilled cotton, only a Panama hat, or even a black 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 337 
 
 silk skull-cap, was needed to make him a humiliating 
 smaller parody of the sage on the tilted chair. 
 
 And the Doctor, staring at nothing in particular, 
 pondered over his latest discovery in what he was surer 
 and surer must be this human parody s province of rea 
 son. In exploring the lower apartment, or enclosure, 
 formerly Oshonsee s dormitory, for some small article 
 astray, he had found, carefully concealed beneath the 
 sleeping-rnat of the mias, a number of pieces of written 
 paper parts of letters and rejected leaves of his scien 
 tific diary which he had missed, from time to time. 
 They were of no value ; but to recover them thus 
 argued that the purloiner must have feared detection 
 in their conveyance. When he exhibted them to the 
 culprit, the latter crouched chattering at his feet, in 
 obvious deadly fear, exactly as when the pistol went off 
 in the forest of Songi. When, after a moment s silent 
 conjecture, he placed the papers within the breast of 
 his coat, by way of experiment, and spoke caress 
 ingly, the animal quickly recovered his natural de 
 meanor. From thenceforth, however, Oshonsee resisted, 
 with loud cries and desperate struggles, every effort to 
 consign him to the lower apartment at night. The one 
 spot where he chose to spend the dark hours thereafter 
 was at the foot of his master s couch, and there he was 
 finally allowed to sleep. 
 
 Now what process of unreasoning instinct could be 
 imagined to account for it ? Say that the creature pil 
 fered by mischievous instinct, and instinctively feared 
 punishment upon discovery therein ; where was the in 
 stinctive sequence of the subsequent strange conduct ? 
 Apparently there was a peculiar attraction in the bits 
 of paper for the ape, and where they were he wished to 
 be, also. 
 
 In ascertaining finally that Oshonsee was a mias of 
 
338 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Borneo, from a region untraversed by Europeans until 
 the English Rajah s visit, t*he naturalist was obliged to 
 relinquish all his theories of the experiences with Eng 
 lish-speaking hunters in Sumatra, which might have 
 impressed upon the creature that terror of English 
 sounds and aversion to anything like military accoutre 
 ment, so violently shown by him in his captivity. 
 There was also a yet unsolved mystery in the episode 
 of the harlequin-like assault on Mr. Dodge. Further 
 more, Oshonsee s occasional vocal demonstrations were 
 more like human inarticulate notes than the Doctor had 
 cared thus far to assert in public, and the very "cough 
 ing and pumping " utterances from which the name had 
 been made did not accord satisfactorily, to his ears, with 
 those he had heard from the Simunjon miases. 
 
 " Tuan Hedland, may I speak to you ?" 
 
 Down went the slippered feet from the bamboo rail 
 ing, and around whisked the chair, as this voice at his 
 shoulder recalled the Englishman from his confusing 
 speculations. 
 
 " Ah, is that you, Pa Jenna ? I thought you started 
 down the river long ago. What is it ?" 
 
 " I have waited for Sejugah to go first, with the 
 young men, to look for trees they can climb tonight 
 after honey. Tuan, you must beware of Sejugah ! 
 His heart is black against you, since you made known 
 that it was the head of a mias he brought as his trophy, 
 when the maidens had laughed at his empty space in 
 the head-house. He is in disgrace with the village ; 
 the girls and the children imitate the voice of the mias 
 when he passes them ; and some of my people tell me 
 that he has sworn to do you harm if he can." 
 
 " Thank you for the warning, my good Orang-Kaya," 
 answered the naturalist, exhibiting no particular emo 
 tion. " I shall not place the head-hunting youth s own 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 339 
 
 head in the head-house unless he does more than 
 swear. But, now that I think of it, Pa Jenna, can you 
 tell me how Sejugah could find a mias to kill in such a 
 place as the foot of Gunong Tubbang ? I should not 
 have believed the sly fellow s tale, if I had not discov 
 ered that the head must have belonged to a different 
 kind of mias from that of the Sadong and Simunjon." 
 
 "How should I know, Tuan?" said the Dyak, un 
 easily, and with a marked change from his usual tone 
 of unreserved confidence. "It was long before you 
 came here." 
 
 " I see that you do not wish to tell me," went on the 
 Doctor, indifferently. " At the first convenient oppor 
 tunity I shall have Kalong row me up to the mouth of 
 the Stabad, and I 11 take a closer look at Tubbang, for 
 myself. The mountain is so steep that I ve never tried 
 to climb it. Next time, however, climb it I will, you 
 may be sure, and look for that cavern which the Rajah 
 of Sarawak has told me exists there." He scarcely be 
 lieved that the Orang-Kaya really possessed any trust 
 worthy information of the subject in question ; hence 
 it was with no little surprise that he observed the hand 
 some barbarian s increasing perturbation of manner. 
 
 Pa Jenna approached him more closely, at the same 
 time casting a quick, wary glance around. 
 
 "Babi-outan the wild wood-hog might escape more 
 easily the spears of Sakarra," he said, in a low, hurried 
 voice, "than Pa Jenna s secret the all-wisdom of the 
 Tuan sirani. It is true that Sejugah s impious hand 
 slew the Eana-Antu the Spirit-Queen of the sacred 
 cavern of Gunong Tubbang. It is true that the mad 
 boy closed up the mouth of the cavern, lest his crime 
 against Jovata* should be known to our people. They 
 
 * Dyak and Hindoo name for Deity. 
 
340 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 believe that Rana-Antu closed it herself while she went 
 a journey, and that her son, the Antu prince, keeps in 
 it a watch for her return." 
 
 " And why have you not told me this before ?" asked 
 the naturalist with angry eagerness. "Have you not 
 known my great wish to trace the mias head captured 
 by Sejugah, to the body it was taken from ? You have 
 played the knave with me, Pa Jenna with me, your 
 niau your blood-friend !" 
 
 Abjectly hanging his own head at this accusation, 
 the Orang-Kaya humbly replied : 
 
 " Sejugah is the son of my father s brother, Tuan 
 Hedland. Vile as he is, I could not denounce him to 
 death." 
 
 Doctor Hedland reflected a moment before rejoining : 
 
 "That is some excuse. But now, Pa Jenna, you 
 must conceal nothing more from me. You say that the 
 Antu prince is yet shut-up in the cave. Was he ever 
 seen?" 
 
 "More than once, by Makota s nakodaps, in their 
 hunting, Tuan, before our great Rajah destroyed the 
 rebels of Siniawin. His mother played with him on 
 the mountain-side. 
 
 A swift, odd look darted at the yet huddled and 
 smoking Oshonsee, was the Doctor s first commentary ; 
 then he gave his right knee a resounding slap, and arose 
 so sharply from his chair that his Panama hat fell off 
 and his very spectacles seemed to be jarred awry. 
 
 "Enough, my good friend, enough !" he exclaimed, 
 with an energetic waving motion of both hands, as in 
 impulsive dismissal of one who could tell him no more. 
 
 " I am beginning to see light now ! Makota s follow 
 ers, you said ? Ah, the black-faced rascal ! Go you, 
 now, Pa Jenna ; this makes me more your friend than 
 ever." 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 341 
 
 " Tuan pardons me V" queried the Dyak, not knowing 
 whether to be reassured or alarmed at this to him 
 incomprehensible outbreak. 
 
 " Yes. "We shall never quarrel again." 
 
 "And Tuan Hedland will beware of the mad Seju- 
 gah ?" 
 
 " Trouble yourself not about that, Pa Jenna ; a Mal 
 acca cane, soundly laid on, is what the English sirani 
 give to mischievous boys. Be off to your prahu, friend, 
 that you may return by nightfall." 
 
 With a gesture of mute submission the Orang-Kaya 
 withdrew to the nearest ladder opening in the veranda ; 
 thence descending with practiced agility to the first of 
 the series of slender bamboo rungs on the tall piles, 
 and so on down to the jungled hillside and the water. 
 Through intervals of the palm-leaves the naturalist saw 
 him get into his prahu, and marked the departure of 
 the boat in the direction of Leda Tanah. 
 
 At this time the whole village had an aspect of com 
 plete desertion beyond the detached " batang" house, 
 or bridged mansion, of our Englishman ; who, turning 
 the corner around which his quarters lay, started upon 
 his favorite frequent walk on the long aerial gallery 
 there beginning its curious, deck-like prospective. The 
 children, the old people and the sick kept closely within 
 the windowless range of houses, now that the air was 
 chilly and rain likely to fall ; not even the hanging mats 
 of the rude doorways being drawn aside. ]STo human 
 eye seemed to observe the meditative pedestrian, strid 
 ing thither and back, with hands linked behind him and 
 head thoughtfully inclined ; no other living figure broke 
 the stretch of his airy road along the tree-tops ; no 
 sounds came to his ears but those made by the swaying 
 of the huge Nypa fronds and an occasional hoarse bird, 
 or snarling wild dog, in the nearer hills. 
 
342 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Pa Jenna s crude legend of the mountain cave and 
 its "antus" had set the Doctor s head whirling in a 
 train of new and not yet very coherent ideas. The 
 mias s head, so like Oshonsee s, had, then, been taken 
 from an animal not only of the Sarawak Valley, but 
 more astounding yet a cave-dweller ! It was, indeed, 
 the head of a female ; and the legend told, also, of a 
 young mias, that had been seen by Makota s hunting- 
 parties. What other could Oshonsee be than the off 
 spring of the slain "Rana-Antu," believed by the 
 simple villagers to be shut up yet in the cave ? A wilder 
 jumble of contradictions in natural history could not 
 have been presented to the naturalist ; yet he never 
 doubted for a moment that they were practical truths. 
 If so, Oshonsee belonged to a species of hitherto un 
 heard-of cave-dwelling apes was, in fact, farther ad 
 vanced into Human rank than the African Bushman, or 
 the so frequently rumored Borneon Panam ! How it 
 had been possible for only a mother and child of such a 
 race to appear in Sarawak, was one of those many mys 
 teries of missing links which Science coolly treats as of 
 no particular consequence, when Theology occasionally 
 retorts her lofty accusations of blind credulity. 
 
 The peripatetic philosopher of the veranda was in 
 full fever of this last distraction of his theorizing ; 
 quite careless, if even conscious, that rain was begin 
 ning to patter around him ; when, chancing to glance 
 down towards the river, at a turn of his walk, he beheld 
 a strange canoe paddling gently to the village landing- 
 place. It was apparently a youthful Chinaman who 
 handled the paddle, standing outside of the peaked 
 little cabin of matting usual to such native craft, and 
 when the prow touched shore he was followed up the 
 bank by a figure in flowing robes and a curious head 
 dress, coming from within the cabin mentioned. A 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 343 
 
 suggestion of stealthiness in the general manner of the 
 boat s approach did not lessen the curiosity of the 
 observer above, and he kept vigilant watch of t he pro 
 gress of such unwonted intruders, between trees and 
 through thicket, to the ladders. Up these they came 
 with the same familiar and noiseless directness that 
 had marked their first step ashore. 
 
 Doctor Hedland was at but a short distance from the 
 bridge to his own house when the strangers reached the 
 veranda, and the Chinaman led the way thitherwards 
 as immediately as though he and his fantastic com 
 panion were summoned to some urgent interview. 
 The conical hat, long, braided queue, loose blue blouse 
 and trousers of this individual, attracted but for a mo 
 ment the attention of the naturalist, who had recognized 
 the more important personage in robes which he now 
 knew to be those of an Arab moullah, or priest. The 
 latter : a man of medium stature and wiry frame, with 
 complexion dark almost as an African s, a thickset 
 graying beard, and the great beak of the sacred rhi 
 noceros hornbill fixed barbarously in the front of his 
 dingy turban : made a gesture of deference as he drew 
 near, and was the first to speak : 
 
 " You are a hakim ?" 
 
 " They d call me that in Stamboul, I suppose, as I have 
 practiced the healing art," replied the puzzled Doctor. 
 
 U I am Medlani, a priest, come from Patusen to con 
 sult the wisdom of Tuan Hedland in a private matter," 
 said the enigmatical figure, bowing again. 
 
 Whatever this mode of address might mean, it would 
 not be hospitable to continue the conversation in the 
 rain, and, with a wave of a hand towards the bridge, 
 the Englishman indicated that he was to be followed to 
 his house. At the door he turned for a moment to 
 inquire, with a glance at the mute Chinaman, 
 
344 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Is this youth your servant ?" 
 
 "My friend," was the terse answer. 
 
 "Ah! To your mat, yonder, Oshonsee I Enter, 
 then." 
 
 The Arab involuntarily stared for a moment at the 
 clothed ape, rising in their path and walking erect be 
 fore them into the room; but quickly recovered his 
 composure of look, and gravely sank cross-legged upon 
 a divan of mats hastily extemporized for him by his 
 yet wondering host. The Chinaman remained stand 
 ing, though motioned to a chair, and then the Doctor 
 himself took a seat. 
 
 "So you come from Patusen," began Hedland, 
 " where Pangeran Makota " 
 
 If he had been puzzled before by this incongruous 
 visitation, he was now thoroughly startled at being in 
 terrupted by the sudden prostration of the Chinese 
 youth at his feet, abjectly and with face downward. 
 
 " Why, what absurdity is this ?" he exclaimed, draw 
 ing back angrily. 
 
 " Oh, Tuan, do you not know me ?" sounded a voice 
 not unfamiliar to him, and pitifully pathetic in its 
 entreaty. 
 
 The amazed naturalist stooped to scrutinize the now 
 upturned face, scarcely noticed by him previously, and 
 saw, through its staining of turmeric, an expression 
 he could not mistake. 
 
 "Amina!" 
 
 " Yes, the miserable Amina I" was the passionate 
 answer, while both of his hands were tremulously 
 grasped and pressed to a young face streaming with tears. 
 
 That a daughter of Pa Jenna should appear to him in 
 such a disguise, with such a companion, and in a mood 
 so contrasting with her former high spirit, seemed to 
 Doctor Hedland the strangest of improbabilities. By 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 345 
 
 every tradition, law and usage of the country, Moham- 
 etan or savage, death was the penalty of her act. He 
 looked at Medlani for at least some significance of coun 
 tenance to aid his conjectures ; but received no answer 
 ing sign. The eyes of the priest sought the floor when 
 not furtively regarding the ape, and it was plain that 
 he chose to take no further immediate part in the con 
 versation. 
 
 "My poor child," said the Doctor, kindly and firmly, 
 "you must arise instantly from that unbecoming pos 
 ture, and tell me why you have done this wild, danger 
 ous thing. There ; get up ; so. Now, what is the 
 meaning of this disguise, and this mad journey ? " 
 
 The fugitive s hat had fallen off; and as she stood 
 before her questioner like some shamefaced boy, for 
 lornly masquerading, the philosopher was prompted to 
 continue in a different tone : 
 
 " But I see that you already realize your folly, and 
 will do what I can to help you in repairing it, when I 
 shall have heard what has tempted you thus to risk the 
 anger of the Pangeran and your father s certain con 
 demnation." 
 
 " Tuan will plead for me with my father ; for that I 
 come to him first," replied the girl, in a low tone. " He 
 will tell Pa Jenna that his daughter has been placed 
 amongst Makota s slaves, because she is a Dyak. Did 
 the Pangeran ask me of my father to be his slave ? " 
 she continued, her voice rising, and a fierce glitter com 
 ing into her large black eyes. "Is my sister Inda the 
 bondwoman of Pangeran Budrudeen ? The blood of 
 the Illanaon is as good as that of the Sultan ; and yet 
 this Malay traitor dared to make me toil with the house 
 hold slaves taken by him in war ; and, when I protest 
 ed, had me beaten I " 
 
 " What ! the cowardly ruffian ! did he dare to do 
 
346 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 that ? " cried Hedland, at once losing his judicial air in 
 a burst of sympathetic wrath. 
 
 "I was beaten! yes !" resumed Amina, clenching 
 her little hands and breathing quickly, " beaten until 
 I fainted, Tuan ! It was then that I went in disguise 
 to Kuchin, while the wretch was away at Bruni, to beg 
 of Tuan Besar s hakim the white powder that is dead 
 lier than the upas. Makota heard of the journey, 
 though he knew not what it was for, and would have 
 killed me if the kind Medlani had not helped my 
 escape." 
 
 " I, too, have heard of your secret visit to Doctor 
 Treacher for the arsenic,"* interposed the naturalist, 
 with a reproving shake of a forefinger. "That was 
 wrong. Why did you not fly at once ; why not come 
 to Leda Tanah, since you were in Sarawak ?" 
 
 " I feared my father, Tuan Hedland." 
 
 " His wrath will be great now." 
 
 "Not after Tuan has told him that the Malay kris 
 would have drank his daughter s blood if she had stayed 
 longer." 
 
 The Arab priest now spoke : 
 
 "She would not have been krissed, Hakim, but 
 whipped to death by slaves ! Because I knew this, 
 I forgot that I was a priest of Allah, when Amina 
 appealed to me, and remembered only that I am a 
 man. The Eajah sirani of Sarawak has been niy 
 friend since he first came to Pulo Kalamantan, I 
 blessed his expedition against the Sakarrans and to 
 him I would have taken the woman had she not wished 
 to be brought to you." 
 
 The conscience of Doctor Hedland was not without 
 reproach, in his secret thoughts, for his not having op- 
 
 *Tlie incident was historic. 
 
THE DOCTOR HAS A PATIENT, ETC. 347 
 
 posed Pa Jenna s ambition to see this hapless young 
 creature a sharer in her sister s princely bestowal ; and 
 he knew it was something like jealous resentment in his 
 own lonely heart that had been at the bottom of his 
 seeming indifference when his favorite, Inda, showed 
 pride in the idea of going to Bruni. Pa Jenna could 
 certainly be influenced by him to approve his daughter s 
 critical defiance of Makota s wrath, even to the extent of 
 warring against the treacherous outlawed prince ; and 
 what good reason had he to maintain a farther policy of 
 conciliation towards one who had gratuitously rejected 
 his friendship ? 
 
 " The Eajah of Sarawak should certainly have been 
 appealed to in this case, rather than I," he said, after a 
 moment s deliberation ; "in his court both protection 
 and justice would be assured. However, I will do the 
 best I can. Retire you, Amina, to the shade of that 
 corner, over yonder, and renew your acquaintance with 
 Oshonsee. I hear some one coming." 
 
 It was Kalong, the Dyak attendant, who gazed in 
 through the doorway, with some natural curiosity, at 
 the strange guests, but evidently had no suspicion of 
 the Chinese figure s true identity. When he had been 
 dismissed, with orders to prepare coffee, Amina came 
 forward again and, with a semblance of her old, child 
 like freedom, whispered in the Doctor s ear : 
 
 "Makota has taunted me about the learned antu 
 of Tuan Hedland. He told me he had lied to you in say 
 ing that his nakodahs had found him, he knew not 
 where. It was on Gunong Tubbang they surprised him, 
 on the ground and nearly starved he was so young then. 
 Makota has been as false to you, Tuan, as to me." 
 
 This confirmation of his inference from the Orang- 
 Kaya s confession left no further question on that point 
 in her hearer s mind. 
 
348 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "I know already," was his reply, "that the Pan- 
 geran deceived me there. He shall have no chance to 
 mislead either of us again, my poor child ; from hence 
 forth we must count upon him as an open enemy." A 
 look of perplexity came over his countenance as he 
 surveyed her, in her strange attire : "What am I to do 
 with you until your father returns ? Some of the 
 people are already back from work, on account of the 
 rain, and it will not do for them to see you on the 
 veranda in a man s dress." 
 
 "They would not know me; you did not," she 
 answered, quickly and confidently. "lam not afraid. 
 Kalong was deceived by the dress and my turmeric 
 staining. Let me sit in the doorway (I shall be 
 taken for the servant of your guest) and watch for my 
 father." 
 
 " The hakim s wisdom may tell him that the Dyaks 
 are simpler than children in such matters," remarked 
 the priest, quietly. 
 
 "They are indeed the readiest of dupes to some 
 ridiculous impositions," assented Hedland, thinking of 
 the mias s head and Sejugah. " Have your way, then, 
 Amina." 
 
 The latter seated herself on the threshold, whence 
 she could see a portion of the veranda ; and the Doctor, 
 turning his attention to the Arab, perceived that Med- 
 lani was once more absorbed in contemplation of the 
 ape lounging sidelong upon his mat against the wall. 
 
CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 A MISSING LINK IS SUPPLIED. 
 
 WHEN, on the fifth day of August, in the year 1844, 
 fourteen months after the expedition against the Sare- 
 bas pirates, Rajah Brooke started once more from his 
 capital, in warlike array, to chastise Shereef Sahib and 
 his hordes of the Sakarran, a characteristic episode of 
 the enthusiastically loyal demonstration at Kuchin was 
 the blessing formally pronounced upon the Rajah, Cap 
 tain Keppel, H. M. S. Dido, and the attending steam 
 gunboat, Phelegethon, by a Mahometan santon, or 
 roving priest. This was Medlani, of the same Arabic 
 blood with the wild and lawless shereefs, but held in 
 great reverence, from the Sooloo to the Java sea, as a 
 character at once devout and astute. Belonging to 
 a privileged order, that, while qualified to officiate in 
 the mosque, had also the wandering prerogatives of 
 dervish, hermit, and santon of the desert, the priest in 
 question chanced to be with the Sultan s bandhara, 
 Muda Hassim, in Sarawak, when the great Englishman 
 arrived there, and from thenceforth gave to the latter a 
 hearty moral support, as heartily appreciated by him. 
 
 Doctor Hedland was aware of all this, and, in realiz 
 ing that the same Medlani was now his guest, counted 
 upon finding in him an intelligence much more compan 
 ionable than his fantastic head-dress and immobile face 
 might otherwise have promised. "When Kalong had 
 served the coffee, the naturalist lost no time in opening 
 a conversation, and, as the stranger had betrayed a 
 peculiar silent interest in the ape, directed it at once to 
 that chief object of his own thoughts. 
 349 
 
350 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " I observe," said he, " that while Amina and I were 
 talking, you gave your attention to the mias. May I 
 ask if you see anything remarkable in the animal ?" 
 
 "You call him Oshonsee ?" was the questioning 
 answer. 
 
 " Yes, for want of a better name." 
 
 " Is it a Christian word ?" 
 
 "Not exactly. When the mias is excited he utters 
 sounds forming something like that name." 
 
 " Other miases do not." 
 
 " Why there you touch a matter that has puzzled me 
 not a little," rejoined the Doctor, with vivacity. "The 
 sounds uttered by Oshonsee are not the same as those 
 I have heard from the wild mias ; but I think they may 
 be taken for exaggerations of them. It is hard to de 
 scribe the cry of the common animal ; we can only say 
 that it is a mixture, or alternation, of coughing and 
 pumping sounds. Oshonsee gives more articulate char 
 acter to them." 
 
 "I notice the peculiarity particularly," said the 
 priest, now speaking pure Malayan, "because it shows 
 that your Antu must be of the sacred race of Sam 
 bas." 
 
 "My Antu ! " echoed the Doctor, his disgust at the 
 superstitious term overpowering every other emotion. 
 " Can it be possible for a man of your knowledge to be 
 lieve in the familiar-spirit bosh of the poor Dyaks?" 
 
 "Allah consults not the wisdom of man in his crea 
 tions," returned Medlani. " When that wisdom grows 
 proud to sin against him, he takes it away, and puts in 
 its place a sacred fire that makes holy its possessor." 
 
 The naturalist was discouraged. He could make 
 nothing of this. 
 
 " Am I to infer that you are one of the possessors of 
 the sacred fire ?" he asked, ironically. 
 
A MISSING LINK IS SUPPLIED. 351 
 
 " Allah leaves me yet my wordly wisdom, worthless 
 as it is," returned the Arab, with a faint, momentary 
 smile. "Those whom he treats otherwise you, Chris 
 tians, put into prisons and bind with ropes ; but the 
 Prophet s followers know that it is Allah who has gifted 
 them with prophetic sight and unknown speech, and 
 they offer them gifts instead of bondage." 
 
 " H m ! you re talking of mad people," grunted the 
 enlightened philosopher. " I 11 not dispute that theory 
 with you, my friend : life is too short. But what has 
 this to do with c Antus ?" 
 
 " I use the word of the Dyaks for beings with super 
 natural powers, Tuan Hedland. It is said in Sambas, 
 that such a creature once appeared there, many years 
 ago, bearing a talisman and speaking an unknown 
 tongue. Inda has told me of the mias, here ; that he 
 walks erect and hates the voice of the sirani. This 
 holy man of Sambas was hairy, though he wore gar 
 ments, and fled with loathing from the speech of the 
 English. I have heard the fame of Oshonsee, and 
 think that he may be of this holy race." 
 
 With hands thrust deeply into his pockets, and body 
 thrown stiffly back in his chair, Doctor Hedland stared 
 down at the cross-legged oracle, in a bewilderment of 
 fragmentary, half-relative recollections and startled ex 
 pectancy. The name of Sambas seemed to find some kind 
 of familiar echo in his brain, as thus mentioned, though 
 he knew not exactly why ; and this characteristically 
 Oriental figment about a holy man in the wilderness 
 spurred his curiosity like a newly-discovered fact in 
 science. 
 
 Apparently heeding only his lately replenished coffee- 
 cup, the dusky-visaged devotee gave no sign of noticing 
 the effect produced by his words. A certain occasional 
 rolling movement of his eyes suggested a covert noting 
 
352 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 of various objects around the room the rude standing- 
 desk, the low table, the canework chairs, the matted 
 couch, the arms and butterfly nets against the wall, and 
 other appointments of the place but neither the quiet 
 ape nor his temporarily mute master shared in the fur 
 tive scrutiny. 
 
 " If your memory, Medlani, carries the whole story, 
 yet, of this santon of Sambas," the Doctor said, at last, 
 with propitiatory mildness, " I should be pleased greatly 
 to hear it. "We Europeans are fond of anything that 
 illustrates the character of a people different from our 
 selves. Thus, the story-tellers of your country have 
 great fame with us for their tales of love and magic, 
 which show the Eastern mind more truly than graver 
 history." 
 
 Again the semblance of a smile flitted over the dark 
 countenance of one too astute not to understand this 
 attempted sophistication of Anglo-Saxon curiosity. 
 
 " Tuan Hedland shall hear the story as it has been 
 told to me by some of the old people of Sambas," replied 
 Medlani, with an inclination of his turbaned head; 
 " the power is Allah s to make it true or false to his 
 wisdom. In the time when a great war of the siranis 
 brought many of their ships with guns to these seas, 
 and the Dutch usurpers of Java trembled for the hour 
 when those of your nation, Tuan, should drive them 
 forth, a prahu came to Sambas from Batavia with a 
 message to the Dutch settlement on Sambas river. 
 After the messenger and the sailors had stepped to the 
 shore, there sprang up out of the prahu s depths, where 
 coffee and fruit alone had been before, a strange man s 
 shape, with hairy face and neck, and eyes of fire. He 
 wore the Dutch dress ; but spoke what neither Dutch, 
 nor Malay, nor Dyak could understand." 
 
 " I see," remarked the naturalist, with a nod ; "he 
 
A MISSING LINK IS SUPPLIED. 353 
 
 had secreted himself in the boat s cargo, and might 
 well look and talk wildly after such a voyage. Some 
 deserter from an English ship, I 11 wager." 
 
 "There were speakers of your language on a trading- 
 ship then at Sambas, and they knew not the tongue he 
 spoke," resumed the priest. " Indeed, he shrieked at 
 their speech, and would have fled from it if they had not 
 detained him." 
 
 "That was strange," commented the Doctor, thought 
 fully. 
 
 "JSTone had seen him enter into the prahu ; none had 
 seen him while they sailed." 
 
 "Because he was hidden in the cargo, to steal a 
 voyage." 
 
 " What am I, that I should know, Tuan ? I tell only 
 as I was told. The sirani sailors said that he was a 
 man whom Allah had smitten, and should be chained in 
 a prison-cage ; but the Malays believed it was a santon 
 a holy man that had come amongst them, to pro 
 phesy the downfall of the Dutch usurpers. They sur 
 rounded and held him, gently ; seeking to lead him to 
 the Sultan s surow ; but, when near to the palace, the 
 sight of a Pangeran in red velvet jacket and carrying an 
 English sword, so filled him with abhorrence, that he 
 broke from the fearstricken people, and, uttering his 
 strange speech, fled swiftly to the nearest jungle." 
 
 "Let me interrupt you again why should the red 
 Pangeran and his sword have been so abhorrent ?" 
 queried Hedland. 
 
 "The hairy santon loved peace, and hated the signs 
 of war," returned Medlani. 
 
 "Ah! well, goon." 
 
 " There was great tumult in Sambas then, between 
 the Dutch, who knew not what time the war-ships of 
 your nation might come there, also, and the Malays, 
 
354 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 who were growing bolder for the same reason. Pursuit 
 of the santon was soon given up, and he next appeared 
 in a Dyak village on the Simpang-Kira river, nearly 
 naked, and footsore. In this village was a woman of 
 the Panams, taken in battle from a wandering party of 
 the great Kayan tribe, and believed to be an Antu, or 
 familiar forest-spirit." 
 
 " Now tell me about these Panams," interrupted the 
 Englishman again ; " I have heard much of them from 
 the Malays. You appear to assume that such degener 
 ate human beings do really exist." 
 
 "I know but what I have heard thousands of times 
 from Dyaks coming to the coast from the interior great 
 mountains of Anga-Anga that the Panams are crea 
 tures in human shape, living in trees, like the mias, and 
 hunted and eaten by the Patakan cannibal tribe. To 
 the Kayans, and some others, they are Antus, as I 
 have said." 
 
 "Doubtless there is an interior Dyak tribe called 
 Panams," muttered the Doctor, doubtfully, " and they 
 may be next-door to brutes. However, let us hear more 
 of your santon." 
 
 " The Panam Antu had not brought a good rice- 
 harvest to the village yet," proceeded Medlani, un 
 moved by either interruption or criticism, " and the vil 
 lagers believed that the santon was sent to correct her 
 failure. Now that his clothing was so much torn away, 
 it could be seen that he was hairy, almost, as a mias, 
 and carried upon his breast, by a cord about the neck, 
 an Antu s charm, or talisman. The old men of the 
 village describe it as having looked like an English ship- 
 soldier s box for cartridges, wrapped in a shining silk. 
 They never dared to touch it, though carrying the holy 
 man, as they deemed him, before their Orang-kaya. 
 This chieftain and his followers took the new t Antu 
 
A MISSING LINK IS SUPPLIED. 355 
 
 forth to the rice-fields ; and then returned with him in 
 triumph ; assured that their harvest was now secure. 
 It did not turn out so, however ; the rice was blighted. 
 In their rage at what they considered the malevolence 
 of another evil Antu, the villagers fastened a Dutch 
 ship-chain to the waists of the santon and the Panam 
 woman ; a native priest killed two fowls above their 
 heads and sprinkled them with the blood ; and, thus 
 married according to Dyak rites, the two poor Antus 
 were carried in great state, by a fleet of prahus, up the 
 Simpang-Kira river, and cast loose in the mountains 
 eastward of Simunjon." 
 
 Countless stories such as this, of good and bad familiar 
 spirits, and their propitiation or casting-out by the 
 Dyaks, are always current in the agricultural villages 
 of Borneo, and may be heard by any sojourner there. 
 Superstitious to the last degree, the aborigines of Pulo 
 Kalamantan, and especially those of the "Darrat," 
 or inland, tribes, attribute supernatural qualities to any 
 living object differing materially from the types familiar 
 to them, whether human or brute. A white man visit 
 ing a village is importuned at least to slay a fowl with 
 his own hands and sprinkle the blood on the lintels of 
 the doors and out of a window, that health and good 
 crops may be assured to the credulous community. If 
 a deformed, or imbecile human creature, or even a mias 
 of unusual aspect, falls into the hands of the simple bar 
 barians, an u Antu " is at once recognized; to be ab 
 jectly feared, or formally exorcised, according as public 
 good, or evil, follows the advent. Medlani s narrative 
 was in the vein of a hundred legends familiar to the 
 jaded contempt of the naturalist ; yet the latter had lis 
 tened to it given, of course, with much more Oriental 
 technicality of phrase than here recorded like a man 
 hearing the most significant truths of his own destiny. 
 
356 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Simunjon ?" he repeated, mechanically, " Simun- 
 jon? That may account for much much! But" 
 with a kind of desperate clutch at anything to sustain 
 the proper skepticism of civilization " I have heard 
 that the human shapes assumed by Antus are gener 
 ally without heads." 
 
 "They have pointed heads," answered the Arab, 
 quietly. " The long red hair and great beard of the 
 santon of Sambas made his head seem pointed, and 
 the Panam skull is like an egg." 
 
 " The head taken by Sejugah was like that !" solilo 
 quized the spell-bound Doctor. 
 
 "I have said that Tuan Hedland s mias may be of 
 the same race with the holy man of Sambas," contin 
 ued Medlani, with a glance at the motionless (what 
 now ? Ape ?) Oshonsee. " This is my reason : Three 
 years after the Antus were cast loose in the moun 
 tains, they were heard of in the mias region of the 
 Sadong and Simunjon, as inhabiting there the root- 
 opening of a great fig tree, and having with them a 
 younger creature of their own kind. None dared to 
 disturb OB hunt them ; for their chain was thought to 
 have been placed on their bodies by Jovata, the Hindoo 
 god ; and bird-nest hunters of Songi, who saw them 
 occasionally from their boats, believed them to be An 
 tus of the miases. Years after that, Tuan, the people 
 who then lived in this very village of Pa Jenna, discov 
 ered a female Antu and a little one near the mouth 
 of Stabad river, at the entrance of a cavern in Gunong 
 Tubbaug." 
 
 "The chain is complete!" broke in the Doctor, 
 springing to his feet, with both palms at his throbbing 
 temples. " I see it all now blind idiot that I have 
 been !" He fairly stamped in his ecstacy of excite 
 ment ; and the priest, not" knowing how to understand 
 
A MISSING LINK IS SUPPLIED. 357 
 
 such an abrupt demonstration, drew back in some 
 alarm. 
 
 " Tuan is not offended ?" 
 
 " Only with myself, friend ; only with myself that I 
 did not see, before, what your words have made clear 
 to me," rejoined the Englishman, hurriedly yet, though 
 with an obvious effort to resume self-possession. 
 " All my wisdom, Medlani, has been brought to naught 
 by this Antu story of yours, for you have given me 
 the true species of the creature I have thought to be 
 I scarcely know what! Yet, tell me," glaring down 
 upon him over folded arms " how is it that none of 
 the Europeans at Kuchin have ever heard of the wild 
 man of Sambas?" 
 
 " Tuan forgets that the tribes near the coast were 
 continually changing from one village to another, be 
 fore the invincible Rajah of Sarawak came to destroy 
 the Shereefs whose prahus spared no unprotected place. 
 Twenty different tribes have been on the Simpang-Kira 
 and here, since the santon came from Java, and only 
 two or three old men, whom no stranger would see, or 
 be likely to hear of, remember the Antu marriage." 
 
 "That may be," began the naturalist, when a light 
 touch on the shoulder checked his utterance, and, turn 
 ing sharply about, he encountered the frightened face 
 of Amina. 
 
 u My father! he is here!" the trembling girl had 
 barely time to whisper, as she glided on farther into 
 the room, before the early-returning Pa Jenna stepped 
 over the threshold from the bridge, carrying several 
 fishes which he had taken, while away, with his tri- 
 pronged spear. 
 
 The Orang-kaya had been prepared by Kalong to 
 find Medlani and a companion in the Doctor s house. 
 He recognized the priest with a profound obeisance, be- 
 
358 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 stowed only a passing glance on the Chinese figure, 
 whose face was not towards him, and then presented 
 his glittering present to the naturalist, who acknowl 
 edged it appreciatively. 
 
 " You are here, again, sooner than I expected, my 
 good friend," said Hedland, in a mood to accomplish the 
 task now incumbent upon him as quickly as possible : 
 " but not, I hope, so soon as you could have wished to 
 return, had you known what I am about to tell. Your 
 daughter has left the traitorous Pangeran Makota ; 
 fled from him the coward ! because he treated her as 
 a slave : yes, Pa Jenna, even degraded the child of your 
 blood with blows ! And would have had her whipped 
 to death at last, had she not escaped from his rebel 
 den at Patusen, with the generous Medlani, here !" 
 
 This headlong presentment of the case surpassed any 
 possible temporizing diplomacy for exciting in the 
 Dyak chief the fierce feelings which the speaker de 
 sired first to awaken. Pa Jenna recoiled as from an 
 angry buffet on the breast, and with eyes sparkling and 
 hand instinctively clasping the hilt of his Malay kris, 
 looked furiously from Hedland to the Arab. 
 
 " Tuan has spoken truly," assented the latter, rising 
 to his feet. "Makota, the Serpent, has done all this. 
 He spurns the blood of the Dyak, and would have 
 Amina only as his slave." 
 
 "My kris shall find him if he were the Sultan him 
 self, shouted the infuriated Orang-kaya, who, like all 
 Illanaons, boasted an antiquity of race extending back to 
 " the days of the Hindoos," and was passionately sensi 
 tive to any indignity upon it. The tempestuous rage of 
 the moment made him unmindful of having heard that 
 his daughter was a fugitive ; and now, when the sup 
 posed Chinese youth came forward with an inarticulate 
 cry, and fell prostrate at his feet, he stared blankly. 
 
A MISSING LINK IS SUPPLIED. 359 
 
 "It is Amina," said Doctor Hedland, himself stoop 
 ing to raise her. "This disguise and the brave 
 priest s protection, have enabled her to come thus 
 safely back to her father and her father s friend." 
 
 Pa Jenna surveyed the yet shrinking figure from 
 head to foot, and finally extended his right hand, for 
 her to bow unto and touch with her lips. 
 
 " She is disgraced amongst her people," he said bit 
 terly ; " she will be the scorn of the Malay, until I bring 
 Makota s head to hang in the place of Sejugah s mias." 
 
 " I will go with you and her to your house, Orang- 
 kaya," said Medlani, " before your people are returned, 
 and you shall listen for a time to what the poor priest 
 of Allah can counsel." 
 
 "The thought is wise," added the Doctor, quickly. 
 " There must be no folly of running a mok amongst 
 the krisses of the scoundrel s fellow-traitors at Patusen, 
 Pa Jenna. You cannot take Amina with you, and 
 Makota will surely follow her here, with his pirates, for 
 revenge, if not to recapture her. Medlani will tell you 
 that you must remain here for her protection ; the more 
 so that, I, myself, must go away to Kuchin to-morrow, 
 and from there to Singapore." 
 
 "Tuan is going so soon, and so far?" queried the 
 Dyak, with a scowling air of disappointment. 
 
 "Yes; I go to see Tuan Colonel, who was once 
 here ; but shall return quickly. Remain you to defend 
 Amina, if the Serpent comes, and let me impose upon 
 your friendship the protection of Oshonsee, also, whom, 
 for the first time, I shall leave behind me." 
 
 "Allah wills it so," said Medlani, leading the way to 
 the threshold. 
 
 Pa Jenna realized that a peculiar honor was being 
 shown to him by his great English friend, in this en 
 trusting of the cherished " Antu " to his potent guardi- 
 
360 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN: 
 
 anship, and, despite his vengeful aspirations, he softened 
 to the compliment. 
 
 "Tuan Hedland has said already, to-day, that we 
 should be better friends than ever," he answered sub 
 missively ; "he forgave me a fault, and I will not com 
 mit the wrong of opposing him now." Amina s hand 
 was already in his, and he led her forth after Medlani, 
 without farther words. 
 
 It was not to be doubted that serious events would 
 result from this escapade of Makota s victim. The 
 Pangeran s jealous, deadly hatred of the Englishmen 
 of Sarawak, no longer excluding even the naturalist, 
 had, unquestionably, been the instigation of his brutal 
 mistreatment of the girl. Her sister was a consort of 
 Budrudeen, the stanch friend of the English Bajah ; 
 her father exhibited an uncompromising partizanship 
 on the same side ; and to subject her to ignominy was 
 one of his few immediately practicable means of a grati 
 fying a madly revengeful spirit against all of the for 
 eigners. To have Amina not only escape from him in 
 Patusen after he had condemned her to death, but also 
 in company with a man priest though the latter was 
 called would stir him to a climacteric frenzy of vio 
 lence from which any headstrong outrage might be 
 expected, at any time, by those to whom Pa Jenna s 
 daughter had fled for protection. "Her father must 
 take her with us down to Kuchin, to his sister there, 
 to-morrow," reflected the naturalist ; "that she may be 
 under the immediate care of Kajah Brooke. To keep 
 her here, would be inviting for us a murderous piratical 
 attack, on some dark night, when our reclaimed head- 
 hunters of the village could offer about as much defence 
 as so many sheep." 
 
 Thus Dr. Hedland dismissed from his mind, for the 
 time being, a subject naturally secondary therein, even 
 
A MISSING LINK IS SUPPLIED. 361 
 
 at this crisis, to the amazing revelation coming to him, 
 that day, in the last matter he had believed to be 
 susceptible of farther illumination from unscientific 
 sources. Between sunrise and sunset, what had be 
 come of all that carefully constructed theory of an ape- 
 Man developed by provable degrees from the Borneon 
 mias ? Only a pair of ludicrous legends of native 
 superstition, repeated by a reformed Dyak marauder 
 and a vagabonclish Mahometan priest, had been requi 
 site to shatter it beyond repair and, more than that, 
 to prove its very converse true ! Suppose that he had 
 communicated to the learned societies of his member 
 ship, in Europe, the fondly fancied momentous Discov 
 ery, and all those pages of confirmative observations in 
 the cumbrous scientific Diary on yonder high desk 
 what pity of the erudite and derision of the vulgar 
 would now be his ! Those pages must be condemned, 
 and torn out, as no better than a maundering record of 
 the most fatuous of delusions ; and Oshonsee might 
 steal them away, if he chose. The philosopher was 
 humiliated beyond expression ; not for worlds would he 
 have had one of his fellow-countrymen to confront at 
 the moment ; yet, with it all, his heart was lighter than 
 before ! If this contradictory accusation could be un 
 derstood as something like the much-tasked spirit s 
 relief when a long suspense is ended even by decisive 
 failure, it was none the less a grateful change at first, 
 and Hedland felt surprised at the tranquility with 
 which he was able to look upon the yet reclining, 
 dumbly watchful, Last of the Sambas Antus ! 
 
 Presently he wandered out across his little bridge to 
 the long veranda, and to the near-by turn of the latter, 
 where its whole greatest perspective as a roadway in 
 the air came fully into view. The village was alive 
 again with the return of its sailors, fishers, bee-hunters, 
 
362 THERE WAS ONCE A HAN. 
 
 peasants and fruit-gathers from their daily dispersion 
 in the valley of the Sarawak ; and at irregular intervals 
 before the now open doorways of the houses were fam 
 ily-groups, whose varied semi-civilized combinations of 
 the Dyak with the Malay costume, and glint of brazen 
 ornaments in ears and around wrists and ankles, gave 
 striking effects of unrelated color and fitfully twinkling 
 movement to the scene. Clouds yet mantled the moun 
 tain-pillared arch of the sky; but from somewhere 
 behind the hills in the west a warm red glow made the 
 palms on the heights stand blackly out, like skeleton 
 pavilions against a receding fire, and fell upon the 
 street amongst the tree-tops in a softer-hued reflection. 
 While the solitary civilized spectator gazed, a momen 
 tary stir along the whole peopled vista, and then, an as 
 dramatic stillness, directed his attention to the Orang- 
 kaya s mansion, before which the Arab priest could be 
 seen bowing, with face towards Mecca, in the attitude of 
 devotion. Here and there a villager also sank pros 
 trate ; for followers of the Prophet could yet be found 
 in the Dyak community ; and prayers went up to Allah 
 as the sun went down. 
 
 Hedland was in a temper to be touched by such a 
 spectacle ; the feeling of unblessedness seemed lifting 
 lightly from him, however soon it might return, and a 
 sudden exaltation possessed his spirit, to make him 
 murmur, impulsively, with uplifted look and arms un 
 consciously extending: " Sit nomen Dominilaudabile, 
 ab Oriente ad Occidentum" Praised be the Name of 
 the Lord, from the East unto the "West ! 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 
 
 Two members of our American family in Borneo 
 have not, perhaps, individualized themselves so promi 
 nently in the developing action of the story as a novel- 
 reader might have expected from certain circumstances 
 of their first appearance in it. No peculiar sagacity 
 was needed to foresee, that the merchant s daughter was 
 destined to have a romance with the young naval 
 officer ; nothing could be more reasonably in accordance 
 with the commonest of precedents, than to anticipate 
 for a spectacled and yellow-haired New England kins 
 woman of such a family some colloquial conspicuous- 
 ness, at least, in the general narrative. Yet Miss Effing- 
 ham and Miss Ankeroo have certainly played the 
 quietest, most passive parts, apparently, in the given 
 social drama. It would be a grievous and unchivalrous 
 mistake, however, thence to infer, that the two charac 
 ters in question lacked either youthful sensibility, or 
 mental energy, to equal any of their numerous literary 
 prototypes in sentimental demonstrativeness and strong- 
 minded aggression. It has never been true of the bud 
 ding womanhood of the socially -refined grade in Ameri 
 can life, any more than of that in the corresponding 
 grade in England, or any other Christian country, that 
 it renounces at once every fine observance of filial subor 
 dination and maidenly reserve at the first impression of 
 a tender passion. No truer is it, that the hereditary, 
 feminine vivacity of New England runs to bustling 
 obtrusion and pert chatter, whether the occasion is fit- 
 363 
 
364 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 ting, or not. Forty years ago, the delicate timidity 
 of a well-bred girl under her earliest experience of 
 masculine devotion, and the but timely forwardness of 
 a keenly intelligent woman upon occasions worthy of 
 her effective action, or speech, were, possibly, even 
 farther removed from the startling passionate displays 
 and insufferable pertinacity of self-conceit so frequently 
 attributed to their supposed types in popular fiction. 
 
 Abretta was as much a child, yet, to her own appre 
 hensions, at the beginning of the family life in the East 
 Indies, as the most protracted spirit of parental absolu 
 tism could have desired. Her filial sentiment being 
 really that of love, she felt no eagerness for a lessened 
 sense of dependence upon the two human beings repre 
 senting to her heart all that was most lovable and 
 admirable in the world ; and it even gave her a more 
 luxurious freedom in her youthful gayety of spirit, to 
 believe that the time had not come when the latter could 
 be justly criticized and restricted by the conventional 
 criterions of full-blossomed young-ladyhood. While 
 maturing every day in the flower-like dignity of a nature 
 innocently unconscious of anything that should make it 
 afraid, she had no affectations of self-sufficient woman 
 hood yet. Whatsoever came to her experience was 
 second-hand, as it were, from the trial and approval of 
 father and mother ; to be enjoyed to the utmost with 
 out fear or calculation, and retained or resigned as 
 parental will and convenience tacitly dictated. The in 
 troduction to the young Englishman at Batavia began 
 the awakening of a new element in her life ; but she 
 did not know it. The ensuing perilously informal 
 association in the primitive Sarawak home, led both of 
 the youthful souls at least within the portal of a domain 
 from whence not even the most dependent of human 
 natures can ever return wholly to consanguine depend- 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 365 
 
 ence again ; but the fresh-hearted girl never dreamed 
 of her gain and loss until, first, the coming back of 
 the wounded youth from Bruni, and then his con 
 strained farewell, made her openly unhappy. Now, 
 indeed, she dreamed for, so far, it was no more 
 definite than dreaming, that something she had not 
 even recognized while it was with her, was at once hers 
 and refused to her ; and that what before was all- 
 sufficient to her nature, now only vexed the dreary 
 vacancy it could not fill. Abretta was openly unhappy, 
 because yet too childlike in her simplicity of character 
 to think of practicing concealment in anything ; but 
 she was silently so : speaking to no one of the first 
 heartsickness of her life ; nor trying to understand it 
 all herself; half-ashamed, half-fearful of it ; and 
 secretly miserable with self-reproach that she dared 
 not cry for a while on her mother s bosom. 
 
 Neither the uncertainties nor the humility of imma 
 turity repressed Miss Ankeroo from vindicating her 
 curious and active mind by such vigorous enlistment of 
 it in all the living interests of her immediate situation, 
 as might have been expected of her in a civilized land. 
 In fact she took a most efficient part, as has been inti 
 mated, in the organization of the transplanted house 
 hold, was alive equally to the private phases of domestic 
 life around her, and the shocking heresy of Doctor 
 Hedland s theories, and toiled indefatigably in her own 
 missionary adventure. But in this latter undertaking 
 the good soul presently found conviction that she could 
 not reap either the comprehensive success or the intel 
 lectual satisfaction upon which she had too sanguinely 
 calculated. While her school was a novelty, the native 
 population could be drawn to it, in any desired num 
 bers, for primary acquisition of both secular and spirit 
 ual enlightenment. When, however, this first charm 
 
366 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 began to pall, her native scholars fell away, except as 
 they were virtually bribed to loyalty by frequent 
 material benefactions ; and then the plump, not un 
 womanly little woman from New England, began to 
 realize how impossible it was for a missionary of her 
 sexto hold such erratic sheep of the wilderness in any 
 permanent fold. A lady could not go out to the moun 
 tains after them, as they strayed, and preach them 
 back again ; nor could she wield anything of a man s 
 coercive influence in a land permeated with the Ma 
 hometan idea of woman s mental insignficance. To 
 sum it all up in a sentence : Miss Ankeroo found that 
 only a man could have any hope of succeeding ade 
 quately in the great task she had essayed. An appeal 
 to the Kajah s friendly offices might have insured tem 
 porary help, but her pride would not allow her to make 
 it ; so her sense of failure was kept a secret, and its 
 burdensomeness accounted for a simultaneous decline of 
 her usual self-assertion in things general. 
 
 " You and Abretta are both so quiet in these days," 
 said Mrs. Effingham to Miss Ankeroo, in the course of 
 a conversation starting from some ordinary topic, in the 
 latter s room, "that I scarcely know whether to think 
 that you are offended with each other, or have a com 
 mon grievance against Richard and myself." 
 
 "Then set your mind at rest, Cousin Julia," re 
 sponded the spectacled one, looking up from her sewing 
 with a laugh ; " for if Bretta and I ever take to nag 
 ging each other, or feel ourselves greatly injured by 
 Cousin Richard and yourself, you will not find me, at 
 any rate, a silent martyr." 
 
 " You certainly are much less lively than you used to 
 be," Mrs. Effingham continued, in a slightly complain 
 ing tone : " and as for Abretta, she is scarcely any 
 company for me at all, any more." 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 367 
 
 "We are both about ready to leave this dead-and- 
 alive place, I fancy," said Miss Ankeroo, acrimoni 
 ously. " Enough is as good as a feast, and we have* all 
 had enough of Kuchin, I should say. Can you expect 
 a young girl to be satisfied forever without any society 
 of her own years, or anything to break the awful mo 
 notony of hills, and water, and palms, and stupid yellow 
 heathen ? For my own part, I m sick of it all. Chris 
 tians were never intended to vegetate in this life-wasting 
 style." 
 
 We shall be going, now, soon. I did not suppose 
 that you were so impatient, Cousin Sadie what is to 
 become of your mission-school ?" 
 
 "The Rajah expects a Scotch missionary and his 
 wife here, some day. I can give my school a vacation 
 until then, without much serious detriment to the edu 
 cational interests of Borneo." 
 
 Mrs. Effingham, who was standing, preparatory to 
 departure for another room, looked down in some sur 
 prise at her cousin s momentarily enigmatical counte 
 nance. 
 
 " Then you are losing faith ?" she said. 
 
 " I undertook a man s work, and a man will have to 
 finish it : that s the plain truth !" was the half-defiant 
 answer. " Perhaps it is true, after all, that women are 
 but poor creatures when the lord-and-master s left out. 
 I shall never think so much of myself again, Cousin 
 Julia." 
 
 "You ll never be anything but the most helpful of 
 creatures to your sister-women, at any rate, responded 
 the older lady, with feeling. " I can t say, either, that 
 I am sorry to find you not so much in love with this 
 kind of life that it will pain you greatly to leave it. 
 Eichard and I both think, now, that Abretta should 
 have an early change of scene. That was our principal 
 
368 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 reason for accepting Dr. Hedland s invitation, when he 
 stopped here yesterday, to go and see him in his village, 
 after his return from Singapore. It will be a diversion, 
 and help to bridge over the time until the vessel is ready 
 to take us home. Cousin Sadie, I am going now to 
 talk seriously with Abretta in her own room. Has she 
 told you anything about herself, that might prepare you 
 to judge what would be my wisest way of seeking her 
 confidence ?" 
 
 The discouraged little missionary clasped her hands 
 upon the needlework on her lap, and upturned her spec 
 tacles to the other s inquiring face with business-like 
 directness of look. 
 
 " Bretta," she began, " does not know what ails her 
 selfthe poor, innocent child ; but you and I know 
 what it is, Cousin Julia, perfectly well. If you and 
 Cousin Richard did not want this very thing to come 
 about, I don t see why in the world you allowed the 
 two young creatures to have so much of each other s 
 society. Children can t be children forever. I could 
 read in the handsome boy s face, when he found us all 
 so equal in polite regret at his last leave-taking, that he 
 thought himself cruelly misused, and Bretta has 
 moped like a sick bird ever since. The girl talks no 
 more to me than to you about it ; but she hasn t the 
 art to hide her feelings from anybody, even if she thor 
 oughly understood them, and you musn t try to make 
 me believe that you are in doubt about what they are." 
 
 "I am sorry to say that I have no doubt on that 
 point," said Mrs. Emngham, gravely. 
 
 " Then if you are going to talk to Abretta on the sub 
 ject, I would advise you to show her at once that you 
 know all about her trouble, and encourage her to think 
 that she has your sympathy. I know enough of girls 
 like her to feel sure, that, until she has spoken freely to 
 
MOTHER AND DAU GHTER. 369 
 
 somebody, her heart will be the heavier from failing to 
 comprehend, really, what it is that so affects her at the 
 mere going away of a very pleasant traveling-acquaint 
 ance. It is better that she should learn to understand 
 herself, in this particular, through confidence with you, 
 than by the longer process of self-finding-out and a 
 probable wish to conceal it then. 
 
 " For my own part," continued Cousin Sadie, with a 
 vexed, impatient movement of her head, "I can t see 
 what sense there has been, at all, in such dealing at 
 last with the poor young people. Why couldn t the 
 young man, after seeming like one 6T the family, have 
 been allowed to say good-bye, without all of us march 
 ing with him to the veranda, and shaking hands solemn 
 ly in line, as though to say : we re all extremely sorry ; 
 but, really, this must be the very last of it! Oh, he 
 understood it all ; and she imperfectly ; and you, and I, 
 and all of us, perfectly well !" 
 
 "There was no disguise of the intention," assented 
 Mrs. Efiingham, showing little disposition to amplify 
 the subject farther. " It had been dictated by an au 
 thority not to be disputed." 
 
 " Some of Cousin Eichard s dilatory fatherly prudence, 
 I suppose." intimated Miss Ankeroo. 
 
 "I believe that you have advised me wisely," re 
 sumed Mrs. Effingham, leaving the intimation unan 
 swered, "and I shall try to persuade Abretta, that, 
 whatever her feelings may be, she can not find a more 
 sympathetic confidant of them than her mother." 
 
 From the apartment of her sage counsellor, the lady 
 passed through several intervening rooms to the one 
 now used as the favorite retreat of her daughter. Since 
 occasional absolute solitude had become an instinctive 
 necessity for Abretta, she passed many hours daily in 
 this remote little chamber, supposably in drawing, or 
 
370 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 painting, or perhaps reading ; and her mother now 
 found her absorbed in the task of water-coloring a 
 stormy sky in a landscape sketch. 
 
 "What a gloomy scene you are making of that, my 
 dear," was the maternal introduction, as the speaker, 
 whose entry had been noted by a brief, undisturbed 
 glance, bent over the stooping shoulders of the young 
 artist. 
 
 "Oh, yes; it is a failure, I know," said the girl, 
 drawing back from the sheet, with an air of tired dis- 
 heartenment. 
 
 "I didn t mean that," observed her mother, gently ; 
 " those clouds are admirably done, I should think ; but 
 the subject is so uncheerful." 
 
 "It is so stupid to have nothing but sunshine in 
 everything !" Abretta said, keeping her eyes upon the 
 sketch. 
 
 " When we were at home, in this season of the year, 
 you often wished that you could live in a country where 
 there were no storms." 
 
 "Well, I am punished for that now, Mamma," Ab 
 retta murmured, absently. 
 
 "Has it been such a punishment for you, then, my 
 dear, to live for awhile in this sunny part of the world?" 
 asked Mrs. Effingham, drawing a chair to the side of 
 her daughter s, and meeting the girl s eyes in thus 
 coming nearer to her. 
 
 " But now the weather even here is often so dreary," 
 was the discontented, half-mechanical rejoinder, with 
 look averted again. "Unpleasant days seem so much 
 longer away from home." 
 
 " I suppose I should not blame you for homesickness, 
 when I find even Cousin Sadie complaining of it." 
 
 " Oh, how soon shall we go ?" exclaimed Abretta, 
 turning quickly to her mother, with a feverish eagerness 
 
THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 371 
 
 of expression suddenly possessing her whole sensitive 
 young face. " Do persuade Papa to hurry ! I sometimes 
 feel as though I could fly, when I think that we must 
 stay weeks here, yet I" 
 
 "My child, how changed you are!" ejaculated the 
 mother, impulsively reaching an arm about the waist of 
 the abrupt young suppliant. 
 
 " It is so dull here !" went on the latter, in a strange, 
 tremulous kind of excitement : " everything the same 
 the same day after day and day after day ! I am so 
 so" 
 
 Without finishing the hurried sentence, or even catch 
 ing her mother s startled look, the girl sank into the 
 arms where all her lesser troubles had found loving 
 refuge, and burst into an agony of sobs and tears. 
 
 Some alarm was in the gaze of yearning motherly 
 solicitude downcast to the beautiful head, so seeking the 
 tenderest support of maidenly weakness. There is a 
 certain pained unrest, almost a shocked misgiving, for 
 the heart of a mother, at even the most delicately in 
 effable first warning, that yesterday s perfect assimula- 
 tive oneness of the whole child-heart with it, is subtly 
 ended, and forever. In this culminating unspoken 
 confession from her weeping daughter, that a not yet 
 self-conscious womanhood s individuality of moral being 
 had so far superseded childhood s implicit dependence, 
 as to make momentarily instinctive recurrence to the 
 latter a torture of despairing tears, Mrs. Efnngham saw 
 that she had not before half realized how much the pre 
 viously unexercised traits of Abretta s inner nature were 
 like her own. Here were the first wild, unguided steps 
 of an unwittingly freed young human soul in a separate 
 destiny; and the mother, helpless to recall, or absolutely 
 direct, could no more than plead to be not put off 
 utterly, and tremble for the untried womanhood s 
 
372 MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 
 
 hereditary peril of mistake and sorrow in woman s in 
 evitable lot. 
 
 Moments passed silently while maternal love and 
 filial abandonment thus made a pathetic group, in the 
 little room hung round with the varied fancies of youth 
 ful art, and looking out, through vine-arched windows, 
 upon the deathless desolation of a soulless wilderness. 
 Girlish shame followed the short tempest of girlish 
 passion, and when Abretta had regained control of her 
 self sufficiently to sit erect again, the attempt to laugh 
 through the lingering tears at her own nervousness, 
 was pitifully deprecatory of even a mother s indulgent 
 eye. 
 
 "Now, my precious child, you will be your old self 
 once more at least with me," said Mrs. Effingham, 
 her own cheecks showing tearful traces. "This has 
 been good for both of us ; for you know now do you 
 not ? that your mother understands and sympathizes 
 with you in the first unhappiness of your life. Do not 
 fear that I shall be impatient at what you feel, or make 
 it a matter of reproach to you ; for I know too well 
 what an nndisciplined heart can suffer from the fateful 
 ordering it feels no right to question and has no thought 
 to resist." 
 
 "Dearest Mamma," returned Abretta, with a poor 
 assumption of reviving gayety, "I am only shame 
 fully, ungratefully homesick and nervous ; that is all. 
 I scarcely know what to say for myself giving way so 
 childishly ; but you must not think me such a baby as 
 to be really unhappy because Papa does not start with 
 us for New York the very moment he sees that I have 
 the blues. " 
 
 "You are not honest with me yet, Abretta. I ask 
 no unwilling confession from you, but cannot leave you 
 to suppose that I am ignorant of the real cause of your 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 373 
 
 recent dejection. A certain dear young friend has been 
 lost to your society here, my poor girl 
 
 Abretta involuntarily shrank from her mother with 
 paling cheeks, and the look of a momentary fearful 
 impulse to fly, in her dilating black eyes. 
 
 "You have no right to think that, Mamma ! I have 
 never " 
 
 "No, you have never thought, or said, or done an 
 unmaidenly thing, my dear ; of that I need no assur 
 ance. "YVe have all lost, then, the society and pleasant 
 attentions of a young man who had been so much like 
 one of ourselves, that we may naturally feel grieved at 
 the uncertainty of ever meeting him again. The ex 
 perience is not unfrequent even in everyday home-life, 
 and must be expected often in protracted traveling. 
 Peculiar circumstances made us more familiar with Mr. 
 Belmore than if his uncle had not been known to my 
 father s family, and his amiable qualities were well 
 calculated to make us take an unusually warm interest 
 in him. As we all felt inexpressively shocked at hear 
 ing that he had been wounded at Bruni, so it was and 
 is a real bereavement for us to have him at last 
 obliged to bid us farewell ; and you, having practically 
 nothing to divert your mind, may naturally feel and 
 show the keenest immediate sense of trying deprivation. 
 
 "I thought that you at least, I thought Papa I 
 mean that it seemed to me that all of us were were 
 rather c-o-l-d to him at last," murmured the girl, 
 falteringly ; a deep flush rising on her face. 
 
 " If that was your impression, my dear, you will not 
 be surprised to hear that it was his, too. After his 
 good-bye and departure, that night, he sent a messenger 
 back from The Grove, with a note for you. Berner 
 handed it to me, and I opened it, and saw that Mr. 
 Belmore complained extravagantly at having been 
 
374 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 allowed no opportunity to say a single parting word to 
 you by yourself, and begged, in return, a single line to 
 say that you would not forget him. Under this request 
 I wrote, myself, with my initials, " Best not," and sent 
 back the note by the same messenger." 
 
 A hand that had been resting in her mother s clasp, 
 was slowly withdrawn by Abretta during .this avowal, 
 and the luxuriantly-tressed, young head sank eloquently 
 down upon the white-sleeved arm on the drawing-table. 
 
 "Yes, it is true, my daughter," Mrs. Effingham went 
 on, in a low, steady voice, " that I felt justified in re 
 sorting to such final means of assuring this imprudent 
 young man, that Miss Effingham could not be addressed 
 by him under any exceptional form that would warrant 
 the supposition of more than a passing, formal acquaint 
 ance." 
 
 "Well, it is over, Mamma," came wearily from the 
 hidden face. 
 
 " But I have something more to tell you, Abretta. 
 Mr. Belmore may have believed at first that he was 
 treated with unkind suspicion, and that your mother 
 was disdainful of him. I am confident, however, that 
 his uncle did not allow him to go back to his ship, with 
 out explaining that he had, himself, requested me to 
 encourage no hope of a further association with us." 
 
 The daughter s head was raised high enough by this 
 time, and a pair of sparkling eyes looked the indigna 
 tion of youthful pride affronted. 
 
 " Did Colonel Daryl presume to insult you to insult 
 all of us by such a request V" 
 
 "Could it be construed exactly as an insult, my 
 daughter, for this gentleman to assume, that you could 
 not supposably dream of reciprocating the particular 
 sentiment that he believed his nephew to be capable of 
 cherishing for you ; and to ask of me, upon this assump- 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 375 
 
 tion, my best efforts, as a real friend, to save the uncal- 
 culating young man from the misery of false hopes ?" 
 
 "I think it was insolently presumptuous for him to 
 concern himself, at all, with an assumption so wholly 
 gratuitous !" exclaimed Miss Effingham, every trace of 
 her recent dispiritedness gone, and her whole attitude 
 contemptuously resentful. "What have I ever done, 
 or said, that Colonel Daryl should trouble himself in 
 any manner about me ?" 
 
 Mrs. Effingham paused reflectively before responding 
 to this. At last she said, as though half communing 
 with herself : 
 
 "It is so difficult for me to show you why Colonel 
 Daryl might have thought himself to possess, in a 
 measure, some exceptional warrant for acting as he did, 
 without first telling you something of him unknown to 
 you before, that I shall no longer leave you in ignorance 
 of a fact I had hoped it might not be necessary for you 
 to know until you were older. This gentleman was 
 your Aunt Caroline s husband." 
 
 "Mamma! what are you saying? Can it be pos 
 sible ?" 
 
 "It is the truth. You have heard that he greatly 
 admired my sister ; and imagined, perhaps, that there 
 was some little romance in the matter. The reality 
 was, that he and your Aunt Caroline entered into a rash 
 clandestine marriage while your Aunt was on a visit to 
 Ada Yon Gilder in New York, and that they were in 
 stantly thereafter separated by our mother, who carried 
 Caroline back to Dornton Manor. Colonel Daryl, who 
 was then a young lieutenant and poor, (as his nephew 
 now is,) made but one effort to regain his wife. He 
 came manfully to Dornton Manor, confessed frankly to 
 our incensed mother that he had deserved her bitterest 
 censure, and professed himself willing to abide abso- 
 
376 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 lately by Caroline s final decision in the matter. The 
 end was, that he retired from a painful interview, with 
 the despair of a peremptorily discarded husband of an 
 hour. Soon afterwards he returned to England, and 
 your Aunt died. So, Colonel Daryl has some reason, 
 you see, my dear, for assuming rather more of our fam 
 ily possibilities of disappointment to one of his blood, 
 than could be excused in another man." 
 
 Somewhat mechanically as the story was rehearsed 
 by her mother, Abretta heard it with lively alternations 
 of amazement, sympathy and vague regret ; her intent 
 face betraying each emotion as it followed the other. 
 
 u Thank you for telling me this, Mamma. Now I 
 can understand several things which puzzled me before. 
 Was Colonel Daryl much like Mr. Belmore, in his 
 youth?" The question was asked rather timidly. 
 
 " I had never seen him before we met in this house, 
 though I was at Dornton Manor when he came there to 
 plead his cause. Our Mother had summoned me, from 
 my husband s home in the city, to help her in persuad 
 ing my very unhappy sister to what she deemed rea 
 son. I recognized the name of Daryl when Mr. Bel- 
 more mentioned it in the family -history he gave us at 
 Singapore. When the Colonel came here, that first 
 evening, with the Kajah, he mistook me, at our in 
 troduction, for your poor Aunt Caroline ; and I knew 
 him, only too well, for the man who had received in 
 my early home what my conscience has always told me 
 was an injustice, as cruel as it is irreparable." 
 
 " That is the reason why you have treated him so 
 so differently from a stranger, Mamma." 
 
 " You have noticed that, Abretta ?" 
 
 " It seemed to me so." 
 
 " Your Aunt Caroline died broken-hearted for him. 
 Our mother treated him like an unprincipled, fortune- 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 377 
 
 hunting foreign adventurer, who had taken audacious 
 advantage of an inexperienced girl s generous heart ; 
 when he was surely guilty of nothing more calculating 
 than a passionate lover s headstrong folly. I was any 
 thing but guiltless, myself, of believing the very worst 
 of him, and took a part that I shall regret to my dying 
 day ! Then, when he met us here, and I realized that 
 his whole life had been ruined by that miserable tragedy 
 of twenty years ago, it was my irresistible, pitying I 
 may say even remorseful impulse, as a Dornton, to 
 offer what poor atonement I could for the great wrong 
 he had endured." 
 
 u Yes; I can understand it now," said Abretta, 
 looking down. " Does Mr. Belmore know all this ?" 
 
 His Uncle told him only so much as you knew your 
 self, while they were coming here together. Perhaps 
 he knows more now." 
 
 Mrs. Effingham studied her daughter closely while the 
 latter made capricious marks with a drawing-pencil 
 upon a sheet of Bristol board on the table. Counte 
 nance and attitude indicated growing listlessness, or 
 abstraction, or both ; or perhaps the suggestion was of 
 some unspoken private feeling using these appearances 
 to conceal itself. Once more the mother placed an arm 
 around the girl s waist. 
 
 "There shall be perfect confidence between us from 
 this time forth, my darling shall there not ? Trusting 
 in your intelligence, no less than in your affection, I 
 have talked to you as though we were equals in years, 
 and withhold nothing that could help you to the best 
 and most becoming government of your own feelings. 
 We must bear in mind, Abretta, for the sake of our 
 proper pride, that, under a specious appearance of con 
 siderately anticipating for your father and myself a 
 painful act of parental duty, Colonel Daryl has really 
 
378 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 imposed upon us his own dictatorial will. He does not 
 forgive my poor dead mother ; I am to him Mrs. Dorn- 
 ton s representative in this later life, and you are my 
 daughter. He will give us no chance to say, finally, 
 whether he and his nephew shall remain permanently 
 our friends or not, but, under the thin guise of a chival 
 rous humility, dictates to us a helpless obedience to his 
 most despotic pride ! Do you not see the subtlety of 
 such a revenge, my dear ?" 
 
 " It has been an unspeakable humiliation for us ever 
 to have known these English people again !" exclaimed 
 Abretta, her grand eyes rekindling, and this time with 
 a deeper fire, of steadier meaning, than before. "Aunt 
 Caroline s husband had a harsh injury to remember, it 
 is true and has bravely chosen to avenge it upon a 
 woman upon you, Mamma, who have stooped to en 
 treat him so gently ! And because I am your daughter 
 he subjects me to the unmanly indignity of an imputa 
 tion of sentiments which were necessary to be assumed 
 for the imposition of his arrogant authority upon you ! 
 Mamma, is there no such being in the world as an Eng 
 lish gentleman ?" 
 
 "My daughter! my daughter I Colonel Daryl had a 
 moral right to do all that he has done. Reparation 
 was his due, and when I tacitly confessed the debt, 
 even as though I had been a principal debtor myself, he 
 simply chose the form of payment most compensatory 
 to himself. I do not, I cannot complain ; it is but an 
 inadequate retribution upon me for the injustice of my 
 youth ; but for you, dear child your looks and manner 
 lately have made me wretched with a fear that you, too, 
 must suffer." 
 
 "Dearest mamma!" cried the girl, throwing her 
 arms passionately about her mother s neck, and kissing 
 the tremulous, kind lips, "you make me heartily 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. 379 
 
 ashamed of myself for having caused you that anxiety. 
 Only you and Papa have ever had anything really to do 
 with my happiness. But I am homesick in this de 
 pressing Borneo. Let me be babyish in this, for I can t 
 help it." 
 
 "You shall be indulged, then," said Mrs. Effingham, 
 with an attempt to smile a full credence of the plea ; 
 "only, my dear Abretta, it would reassure me more if 
 you would not stay so much by yourself, away in the 
 back of the house here, during the short time we have 
 yet to remain in Kuchin. After this open talk we have 
 had together, you surely will not want to run away 
 from me ?" 
 
 Thus mother and daughter were one again as com 
 pletely as it would be possible for them thenceforth, in 
 this life, to be ; yet in such unity the perfect earlier re 
 lation had been insensibly modified to something of a 
 more Sisterly type. Implicit confidence ? Yes ! But 
 if in the maternal mind there was a discretionary war 
 rant of nature for keeping back from too immature 
 years at least one vivid recollection essential to the 
 motherly confession, where was the corresponding pre 
 cedent in childhood s instinctive unreserve for Abretta s 
 silence as to a certain missing ribbon that had once 
 bound her raven hair ? 
 
CHAPTEE XXII. 
 
 IT IS HARD FOR A MAN WHOLLY TO DISAPPEAR. 
 
 "THE Scientific Party has arrived, you say?" re 
 marked Mr. Felix Dodge to the office-clerk of the 
 United Straits Hotel, at Singapore, after that portly, 
 mutton-chop-whiskered, English subordinate Hodge 
 by name had concluded a summary of the events of 
 the house during the few hours absence of his chief. 
 
 " Came ashore from a schooner about Three o clock, 
 sir. He asked, first, whether Colonel Daryl was in 
 town, or at Pearl Hill ; and when I told him that the 
 Colonel was, probably, at the Fort, he wrote a note to 
 be sent to the Hill, and then asked for you, sir." 
 
 " Asked for me, eh ? Did he have any monkeys with 
 him, Mr. Hodge beasts of any kind ? " 
 
 "Not that I observed, sir. I sent a bath-tub up to 
 his room, as he wished ; and since then he s had a 
 broiled chicken and coffee." 
 
 Mr. Dodge looked as though he could not possibly 
 reconcile this absence of a zoologic suite with the new 
 guest s polite recognition of his own continued existence. 
 
 "Must be wandering in his mind, to be so agreeable," 
 he said, musingly. " I think I 11 step up and see the 
 Scientific Party, then." 
 
 Without more ado, the vivacious host of "the Straits " 
 betook himself to a staircase near at hand ; and up this 
 to a gallery-like quadrangular hall upon which opened 
 the apartments of the second floor ; and along that un 
 til he reached the room of his destination. A knock 
 upon the door, nicely graduated between the impera- 
 380 
 
IT IS HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 381 
 
 tive sharpness of eminent landlordly domain and the 
 deprecatory inquiring tap of deferential intrusion, was 
 promptly answered by a muffled " Come in ! " Accord 
 ingly, in walked Mr. Dodge, to behold Dr. Hedland 
 tilting comfortably in a chair by a window, his impos 
 ing outer man refreshed in a suit of spotless white 
 linen, and his black hair, massive beard, florid face and 
 magisterial spectacles presenting their usual effect of 
 scientific intimidation. 
 
 Ketaining in his left hand the local newspaper he had 
 been reading, the naturalist from Sarawak extended the 
 right, as he slowly arose, to his friendly caller, and was 
 even cordial in the grasp with which he returned the 
 other s greeting of welcome. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Dodge. I am not sorry, myself, to 
 have another look at something like genuine civilization. 
 I have a matter of business here with my friend Daryl ; 
 but as he is not yet down from the Hill, over yonder, I 
 took the liberty of leaving my name for yourself." 
 
 " That ape is certainly for sale, at last," reflected his 
 hearer, " or he d never be so unmalevolent. " Then he 
 replied, with diplomatic caution : " It really affords me 
 great pleasure, Doctor, to be so kindly remembered by 
 one to whom some of my past pecuniary propositions 
 have surely been respectful, even if casually reckless." 
 
 " Pecuniary propositions, sir ? " 
 
 " Financial temptations they might be called in ref 
 erence to that scientific monkey," explained Mr. Dodge ; 
 who, from mere force of athletic habit, had lifted a 
 heavy traveling-bag from the floor and was dexterously 
 casting it from hand to hand behind his back. "Per 
 haps I ought to inform you at once, Doctor, that apes 
 are going begging in America just now. A red-hot 
 Revival in the rural districts, with one minister to 
 play the accordeon while another takes-up a collection, 
 
382 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 has made the business of moral wild-beast exhibitions 
 very sick, for a time." 
 
 " Oh I " exclaimed the new comer, with an apprecia 
 tive laugh ; " I see that you suspect me of an insidious 
 design to avail myself of your past munificence of dis 
 position in regard to the mias. No, no, Mr. Dodge 
 won t you take a chair ? such is not at all my merce 
 nary purpose. The truth is, I am conscious of having 
 been scarcely mannerly with you, on some occasions ; 
 and as I shall not be in Singapore more than once again 
 before returning to England, it occurred to me that not 
 much time was to be lost if you were to be shown how 
 much I have really appreciated your amiable forbear 
 ance with my acerbities." 
 
 This farther and conclusive evidence of mental decay 
 actually grieved Mr. Dodge, to whom the previous 
 ursine irritability of the scientific sage had been a comic 
 feast, from which he never could arise without a pro- 
 founder delight in the exquisite aggravatability of el 
 derly unmarried human nature. 
 
 "Upon my word, sir," was his judiciously tempos 
 izing manner of reply, " you owe me no acknowledge 
 ments for my having been amuse I mean very agree 
 ably affected by your frequent abstinence from the 
 heartsickening genialities of the the unscientific 
 herd." 
 
 " Heartsickening genialities is good!" observed 
 Dr. Hedland with another incredible laugh. 
 
 " Why, there s more in that than you might think," 
 pursued the active American, who, having at last re 
 linquished the traveling-bag, was now sitting critically 
 balanced upon the high back of the chair he had been 
 invited to occupy more conventionally. " I never could 
 stand your genial customer the geen nial Mister 
 Mivins ! he s always such an everlasting fool I" 
 
IT 18 HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 383 
 
 The hot energy of this characterization was eloquent 
 of many an hour s frightful suffering from the gratu 
 itously emollient pertinacities of the impeccable social 
 type described. 
 
 " I must take it as a compliment then, I suppose, 
 that you have such an unfavorable opinion of the cast 
 of masculine character usually thought to be diametri 
 cally the opposite of my own," said the naturalist with 
 humorous complacency. 
 
 " I never object to a man because you can strike fire 
 in him without treading on his corns," returned the 
 host of " the Straits," not yet by any means wholly at 
 ease under this continued absence of all erudite irasci 
 bility. Then added, as by a happy inspiration for the 
 sure provocation of the sadly missed irateness : "You 
 haven t brought the monkey ashore with you, Doctor." 
 
 " Nor even to Singapore, Mr. Dodge." 
 
 " Excuse my levity of bearing then, sir. When did 
 he die ?" 
 
 " He is alive and well." 
 
 "Dear me! you don t say so," muttered Felix, the 
 gymnastic, so discomfited that he involuntarily dropped 
 into his chair like any unelastic mortal. " Then I take 
 it that he doesn t turn out to be as near the average 
 foreign arrival in New York as your theory had sup 
 posed ?" 
 
 "My theory, you say ?" retorted the Doctor, looking 
 curiously at him ; "Now will you be good enough to 
 tell me what you ve understood my theory to be ?" 
 
 "Certainly; though you must make some allowance for 
 the fact that I m as unscientific as any saint you ever 
 heard of, sir. "We, in town here, judging f.im all the 
 stories afloat, understand your theory to be, that all 
 creatures animated enough to wiggle, from eels up to 
 elephants, or from minnows up to men, are only so 
 
384 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 many later spring styles of each other ; tbd monkev 
 without a tail being the next-to-last full-dress-for-cl in 
 ner-parties before we reach the human swallow-tail. 
 JVexi-to-last, I say, because there is one link mi^sinor 
 in the chain here, exactly as there is between monkeys 
 with and without tails ; and between them and the 
 next grade of incipient American aldermen below 
 them, and so on. Now, sir," continued this frank con 
 fessor of his own scientific ignorance, grown greatly 
 interested therein, u let us ask ourselves, boldly : what 
 is a chain ? From the specimens I have seen, it is a 
 succession of little oblong holes in space, surrounded 
 by consecutive material links. As we in Singapore ap 
 prehend your chain of natural history, intended to con 
 nect mammoth, man, monkey, and so on down to 
 mouse, minnow and marine moss, that chain is abso 
 lutely complete in one respect at least : every one of 
 the holes in it is inconfutably demonstrated to exist, 
 and all that remains for Science is to discover the links 
 to go around them. Am I right, sir ?" concluded 
 Mr. Dodge, shrill with atheistical excitement "am I 
 right ?" 
 
 "So right (I m afraid)," assented the phenomenally 
 
 tient philosopher, with an oddly sad meekness 
 1 that n, certain fair acquaintance of ours at Kuchin, 
 Ankeroo, would think nothing more wanting to 
 iver ^Qological side of the argument perfect." 
 
 Ah-- - nkeroo," said the other, his volatile 
 
 mind leaping easily to a new train of suggestion, 
 \s a long-headed woman for you, Dr. Hed- 
 lancH" 
 
 " L, . ory favorable to me, I fear," laughed the 
 Doctor. "You ll be somewhat lonelier here, when 
 the family goes back to the States. By the by, Mr. 
 Dodge, as it is, unfortunately, impracticable for me to 
 
IT IS HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 385 
 
 transfer Oshousee to you, on any terms, why do you not 
 try to procure a wild mias for your zoological employer? 
 I am satisfied, from personal observation, that the ani 
 mal can easily be found all along the coal regions of 
 Borneo, from Bruni down to the most southerly spur 
 of the Kamiutong Mountains, always excepting Sara 
 wak. It would cost you comparatively little to obtain 
 two or three half-grown specimens alive, and I suppose 
 that a single one transported safely to America would 
 be a fortune there." 
 
 Such recurrence to the practical commercial aspect of 
 the great Orang-outan question restored Mr. Dodge to 
 something like his normal mental condition, and a 
 peculiar, whimsically slanting light shone in his hazel 
 eyes. 
 
 " Miases affect the coal regions, do they, sir ?" 
 
 " Yes ; so far as Europeans can see. Borneo s coal- 
 beds seem to run almost all the way around the coast, 
 and marshy country near the mouths of rivers appears 
 to be the chosen region of the miases." 
 
 " Then, of course, the animals must be rather dan 
 gerous to take alive !" 
 
 " Oh, I don t know ; how do you mean, Mr. Dodge ?" 
 
 " Why, if you find them and coal together," ex 
 plained the tall gentleman of the reddish locks, an in 
 describable look stealing over his equivocating counte 
 nance. "Don t you see, that if they belong in the 
 coal-beds they must be bite-you-minous apes ?" 
 
 A gloomy expression came into the florid face of the 
 shocked philosopher ; but before he could say anything 
 a servant arrived to announce Colonel Daryl, and was 
 immediately followed into the chamber by that friend 
 himself. 
 
 " Really, Hcdland, this is an unexpected pleasure for 
 me," remarked the Colonel, shaking hands very heartily 
 
386 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 with his old crony ; while Mr. Dodge took advantage of 
 the opportunity to -withdraw from the scene with an en 
 gaging nod of good-day. 
 
 To the Doctor, as to the Bajah, Daryl was a very 
 different person from the austere-looking, formal ma 
 turity of military dignity presented by himself to ordi 
 nary society. His deep-set eyes of blue became fairly 
 gentle ; his very shoulders relaxed somewhat of their 
 professional stiffness, and his voice mellowed agreeably. 
 Accepting now the chair lately occupied by the proprie 
 tor of the house, and dropping his light straw hat care 
 lessly to the floor, he was yet, indeed, a soldierly figure, 
 even in .loose dark coat and sailor-like nether appoint 
 ment of white duck ; but, withal, a genial, fraternizing 
 kind of Colonel, made glad by a good comrade s 
 presence. 
 
 "Here I am, Will, unquestionably," said the natur 
 alist, blinking kindly at him while polishing his specta 
 cles with a generous silk handkerchief. " Here in such 
 haste, too, that no time was to be wasted in writing 
 to you beforehand. Knowing that you frequented 
 this house " 
 
 "Yes, I fell into the habit while Edwin was here 
 with me. This is his favorite inn, it appears, and the 
 reading-room is well supplied with European news 
 papers." 
 
 " The boy is off again, eh ?" 
 
 Tor a short time, only. The Cressy is likely to 
 reappear here in the roads at any hour, and may even 
 go to Sarawak." 
 
 "I can believe, then, from what some of them at 
 The Grove seem to think, that the young man will be 
 wanting to invalid himself once more at Singapore 
 until his ship comes back. Poor lad ! Blighted hopes 
 again, eh, Will ?" 
 
IT 18 HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 387 
 
 "Judicious anticipation of them, rather," intimated 
 Daryl, with a faint smile. 
 
 "Lightning shouldn t strike twice in the same 
 family," resumed the Doctor, wonderfully garrulous 
 on such a subject. " Your boy has too much of the 
 true-born English gentleman in his spirit to hanker 
 long after riches. You remember what Juvenal says 
 about the intolerableness of a rich wife : Intolerabilius 
 nihil est, quam foemina dives. Pity you didn t take 
 some comfort for yourself from that consideration, long 
 ago, Will Daryl." 
 
 "We can t all be philosophers, Lawrence," the Col 
 onel reminded him, with tone and manner suggestive of 
 little inclination to pursue that social question. 
 
 " Don t think that I want to make one of you, either, 
 my dear fellow. I m rather sick of philosophy, for a 
 time, myself. But, Daryl, you may as well know, at 
 once, that I am here after you especially to recall cer 
 tain bygones of yours, upon which I hope to be able to 
 throw some new light. Can t we go somewhere else for 
 a private conversation ? This room is rather stuffy, 
 as they say at home." 
 
 "The evening is fine ; we might stroll down to the 
 Parade, if you like, and be as safe from disturbance 
 there, in a cool seat under the trees, as in any place I 
 know of. Are these bygones you are to illuminate, so 
 tedious in character that we must forego dinner for 
 them?" 
 
 " We can return hither in time to dine, I fancy," re 
 plied Hedland, extracting a dark coat from his traveling- 
 bag, and proceeding briskly to don it in place of his 
 white one. " Let us be off to your public privacy as 
 soon as you please. I ve become such an out-of-door 
 character in this part of the world, that a common room 
 suffocates me." 
 
388 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 In accordance with this prompt agreement upon des 
 tination the two friends descended harmoniously to the 
 street ; the soldier pondering silently what new whim 
 had possessed the other, to come melodramatically 
 mystifying him in this way ; and the philosopher 
 indulging in a sprightliness of remark upon every 
 passing object, from hallway to portico, that made 
 him seem less his wonted, domineering East Indian 
 self than ever. 
 
 A street in Singapore during the later hours of day 
 light, when a cooling atmosphere allows and invites 
 European, as well as native, to take the air, presents 
 much the same spectacle of curiously miscellaneous 
 Asiatic personal aspects grafted haphazardly upon 
 Western military and commercial exotic growth, as can 
 be seen in any of the larger cities of India, or even in 
 Gibraltar. In miniature, it is true ; but the reduced 
 limits give an effect of concentration, so that the Ori 
 ental, traits of the picture seem to be Brought nearer to 
 the visitor from abroad, and all their varied characteris 
 tics of nationality and dress appeal more actively to the 
 imagination than if the canvas were a more extended 
 one. When Hedland and his companion strolled down 
 from the hotel to the main thoroughfare of the town, 
 and, turning to the left, started on their way to the ap 
 pointed place of conference, they became figures in a 
 street-scene as picturesquely incongruous as any invad 
 ing camp. For a short distance there were houses of 
 European appearance on either side of the way, 
 though on the right hand they were but a single line, 
 with only a short interval to the waters of the bay, 
 while on the left they arose behind each other in gradu 
 ated terracing, until some distance up the green hill 
 crowned by the imposing Government House. 
 
 Protestant and Catholic churches exhibited their re- 
 
IT 18 HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 389 
 
 spective architectural tokens among the mansions of 
 civilized life on the terraces, and the spars and funnels of 
 the stately shipping of Christendom could be seen above 
 the descending roofs on the seaward side; yet the 
 average peopling and activities of the highway thus 
 Europeanized were almost wholly Oriental. Chiefly 
 composing the slowly moving human tides on either 
 verge of the perspective were swarthy Malays, in their 
 blue, or black, embroidered jackets, striped sarongs, 
 and sailor-trousers ; almond-eyed Chinamen, in white 
 blouses and with braided queues to their heels ; stoical, 
 dark-hued Arabs, in turbans, and robes falling below 
 the knees ; dignified Parsees, in pointed caps and flow 
 ing dress ; Jewish-looking Klings, from India, with 
 striped scarf around the head, and Bengalese grooms 
 in red caps and jackets ; Portuguese, in shirt-sleeves ; 
 half-naked Coolies, and Dyak prahu sailors, and Bugis, 
 in their barbarous native costumes. Between these 
 borders of many-tinted and oddly contrasting pedes 
 trians, the thrifty, round-faced Chinese merchant, hat- 
 less and bland, drove his respectable English gig, the 
 European exporter, srnug and supercilious, guided his 
 lumbering hack, and the garrison officer curvetted with 
 his professional charger. 
 
 Only these two latter types, and an occasional sol 
 dierly red-coat and marine-blue jacket on foot, repre 
 sented the civilized link connecting such an Asiatic world 
 as this with the primly ranked, decorous Christian dwell 
 ings, churches, shops and hotels overlooked by the Brit 
 ish Government House and fortress. Articulate voice 
 was given to the strangely mixed scene in the chattering 
 of peripatetic peddlers of fruit, water, vegetables, and 
 agar-agar jelly ; cookers of shellfish, rice and sweet 
 potatoes at little portable furnaces ; and Chinese bar 
 bers who depilatated ears, as well as skulls and chins, 
 
390 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 It was but a short walk, however, for the friends, 
 through the crowd and din, before they emerged upon a 
 well-made though somewhat winding road along the 
 beach-front of the city, where all consecutive buildings 
 disappeared in a grove of palms on the land-side, and 
 the fine roadstead and its islands and shipping stretched 
 out in unobstructed beauty of view towards the Java 
 Sea. Here was at once the military Parade-ground and 
 the beginning of the fashionable drive of the town, 
 where, on occasions, the band from the fort discoursed 
 martial music. Scattered under a long, skirting, double 
 row of grand old trees were benches for the idle, or 
 weary, whence could be enjoyed at leisure the cool 
 breezes from the harbor, and the moving panorama of 
 gigmen, horsemen, and scattered pedestrians on the 
 drive. 
 
 A shady seat, so far towards the easterly ending of the 
 wayside grove that no loiterers had yet favored its 
 vicinity, was the one to which Colonel Daryl finally led 
 the way. When his friend and himself were comforta 
 bly settled there, the inevitable smoking accompani 
 ment of all Eastern conversation was introduced, and 
 then, with segars aglow, the gentlemen found them 
 selves at once secure in practical privacy, and under as 
 practical public protection. Mountainous undulations 
 of showery grey clouds shut out the sun ; faint shim 
 mers of lightning playing fitfully in their valleyed 
 shadows near the horizon, while along the snowy sum 
 mits a ragged band of livid gold intensified the fleckless 
 blue of the higher sky. All the glare and glitter of a 
 Tropical day were gone ; but there remained a clear, 
 still fulness of light, in which roadway, beach, waters 
 of glassy indigo, the confronting verdurous shore of the 
 island of Battan, and the scattered silhouettes of vessels 
 extending indefinitely towards the dimming East, had a 
 
IT IS HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 391 
 
 fair, cool definition of surface and minuteness of out 
 line luxuriously restful and propitiatory to the jaded 
 eye. 
 
 " There is no other spot like this in the Indies," said 
 Doctor Hedland, respiring heavily, as though willing to 
 make the most of the atmosphere as well as of the 
 scene. "Ah ! what large ship is that, just below the 
 Dutch steamer ? She was not there when our schooner 
 came in, this afternoon." 
 
 "The Cvnianche, they call her," replied Daryl, in 
 differently; "an American craft that brought Mr. 
 Effingham and his family this way." 
 
 "And in which, of course, they expect to leave us, 
 presently, added the wearer of the Panama hat. Who 
 could have imagined that I should ever be in love with 
 Yankees, Will ? Do you know I have actually made 
 them promise to go up to my village for a day, or two, 
 before leaving Borneo ? The ladies have known noth 
 ing yet of Dyak life beyond Kuchin, and it will be the 
 first time that civilized members of their sex have seen a 
 mid-air town." 
 
 How do you expect to elevate your fair guests to 
 such high society? " asked the Colonel, rather flippantly 
 for him. "They can never climb all those vertical 
 notched posts and rickety ladders. Shall you have 
 them hoisted with cocoa ropes and chairs ? " 
 
 " Nonsense ! My own house, you may remember, has 
 good ladders, at easy slants, through three enclosed 
 storeys, from the ground up." 
 
 " That is true : I had forgotten it. Lawrence, you 
 seem positively to be coming out as a squire of dames ! 
 What has caused these amazing changes ? In Sarawak, 
 the other day, there was a certain desperately reckless 
 spiritlessness about you, that, upon the whole, I did 
 not like half so well as your ordinary dictatorial ram- 
 
392 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 pancy with others, I mean, of course ; never with me, 
 I must say ; and now I find you grown really affable ! " 
 The Colonel half laughed as he caught his friend s eye, 
 inquiringly. 
 
 "My vanity has been chastened grievously chast 
 ened," began the philosopher ; but, seeming to change 
 his mind suddenly, he threw off the penitential air and 
 struck abruptly into another vein : " To business, now, 
 Daryl, before any more loungers come out this way. 
 Have you made any kind of a guess, as the Yankees say, 
 as to the particular page in your past history that this 
 visit of mine concerns ? " 
 
 " Guessing has never been my infirmity. I am wait 
 ing, with exemplary patience, for you to enlighten me 
 without that," said the Colonel. 
 
 The Doctor s spectacles were directed to his unmoved 
 face with tremendous intensity, and the Doctor s broad 
 right hand came down upon his left knee with tingling 
 emphasis. 
 
 "I ve traced that missing man of yours in Sambas. 
 What do you think of that ? " 
 
 Momentary blank surprise appeared in the soldier s 
 changing countenance, and then followed an in 
 credulous smile. 
 
 "You were very considerate, Hedland, to take up 
 the wild chase, just when I had given it up forever. If 
 Science can discover what finally became of poor, 
 demented old Euadh, I shall have a new respect for it 
 after this." 
 
 "Leave Science alone, if you please. You tracked 
 the man to Sambas ; didn t you ?" 
 
 " And there he disappeared as absolutely as a vapor 
 before the sun. 
 
 " It is hard for a man wholly to disappear, my friend. 
 By a common socialized instinct of self-preservation, 
 
IT IS HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 393 
 
 all of human kind on the face of the earth tacitly and 
 unceasingly work together against the consummation. 
 The uttermost wilderness, or desert island, of the 
 Globe has no more absolute certainty of final disappear 
 ance from human cognizance for the most unrelated of 
 mortals, than the crowded city s by-way, or the un 
 frequented village footpath. Fly whither he may; hide 
 how he can ; die, even, as remotely as it is in his 
 stealthy eagerness to contrive ; and he shall be known 
 of, sooner or later ; alive or dead ; in the flesh, or as a 
 whitened skeleton ; of some human parts yet compact, 
 or remaining only in a single bone that tells as unerr 
 ingly that once a man was there. Again I say, it is 
 hard for a man wholly to disappear. Were it otherwise, 
 where would be the limits to the murders by revenge, 
 avarice, jealousy and ambition, and the suicides by 
 proud despair ? The best earthly assurance of safety to 
 your life and mine ; whether from others slaying hands, 
 or our own ; lies in the awful fact, that, for man, not 
 even the grave is a perfect hiding-place save by the 
 common assent of all created men." 
 
 An involuntary demonstration of growing restlessness 
 on Colonel Daryl s part, made the Doctor aware, that 
 he had been led into too much abstraction for the en 
 joyment of the unphilosophical. 
 
 " I believe I shall become the most incorrigibly 
 garrulous of mortals," he continued, apologetically. 
 " Now let me get back to where I started. The man, 
 Euadh, as you call him, was a lunatic was he not ? 
 when leaving Batavia." 
 
 "Undoubtedly. Not a violent madman, however, 
 but possessed of a delusion keeping him in continual 
 terror. Am I to be cross-examined, Larry, before hear 
 ing anything definite about your miraculous recovery of 
 the Ions-lost scent ?" 
 
394 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " If you 11 be so kind, Will. I want a little detailed 
 information for my own private purposes, no less than 
 to make me surer of the identity of the Sambas fugitive 
 who has been traced. You never saw this Ruadh your 
 self?" 
 
 " No : his flight took place before my time, you know. " 
 
 " But your father, of course, knew him ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; and often described his half-savage pecu 
 liarities of appearance and manner." 
 
 " Then you can give me some clear idea of the man s 
 looks and nature," said Hedland, earnestly; "and I 
 want you to do so, if you will ; and also to sketch for 
 me, once more, the general history of the theft of the 
 Will and other papers, and what could be ascertained 
 thereafter of the runaway s travels." 
 
 "I ll do my best for you," answered the patient 
 Colonel, drawing his segar to a fuller light, and resign 
 ing himself to the ordeal. "My half-uncle, Roderick, 
 brought Ruadh back with him to Surrey from one of 
 his Irish hunting trips. The story was, that he had 
 saved the man s life from the revengeful rage of his own 
 countrymen ; the simple-minded creature being sus 
 pected of informing a disliked landlord that some of his 
 tenants had a scheme for shooting him from behind a 
 hedge. Often have I heard my father describe Ruadh 
 as the wildest-looking, hairiest human being that he 
 ever saw. Red-headed, and red-bearded from his very 
 eyes, his whole sinewy body was also clad in a natural 
 hirsute attire ; the chest, particularly, being shaggy 
 like a dog s coat. In stature rather below the average, 
 prognathous of skull, and very short and thick in the 
 neck, he had broad, powerful shoulders, and could carry 
 great weights." 
 
 "About how old was he at that time?" asked the 
 naturalist. 
 
IT 18 HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 395 
 
 " Probably twenty, or twenty-five. He could not tell, 
 himself, and it must have been no easy matter to judge 
 by ordinary standards. He might have been older or 
 younger. As for his intelligence, it seemed to be equal 
 only to the telling of his own name, the performance of 
 such simple labor as depended chiefly on his strength of 
 body, and a silent, dog-like affection first for his young 
 benefactor, and then for the latter s father : my grand 
 father. It is useless to attempt any explanation of his 
 gratuitous aversion to my father, and his brother, Ed 
 win Belmore s grandfather. He seemed both to hate 
 and fear them from some perverse instinctive jealousy 
 of their consanguine nearness to the two beings of his 
 particular devotion. Out of this aversion appeared to 
 grow a fear to be far out of the presence of my grand 
 father while Eoderick was an exile from his father s 
 temporary anger in Amsterdam. A wrong instinct it 
 certainly was, and not reason, that made this devoted 
 creature regard my father and his brothers as inimical 
 to the hereditary rights of their erratic step-brother. 
 You remember, I suppose, Hedland, what I have 
 several times told you of the flight of Euadh, with the 
 last-signed Will from the table, and the title-deeds, 
 sovereigns, and half-sheet of Eoderick s Amsterdam 
 letter from the broken secretary on the day, perhaps 
 in the very hour, of my grandfather s sudden death? " 
 
 " Yes ; those details are clear enough in my recollec 
 tion," said the Doctor, puffing his segar reflectively. 
 "The Will carried off disinherited the offending Eoder 
 ick in favor of your father and your nephew s grand 
 father ; the earlier Will left behind by chance, in the 
 secretary, disinherited your father and his brother in 
 favor of Eoderick. When the latter died so soon after, 
 in Amsterdam, all would have been right for your side 
 of the house, after all, if an Irish widow and infant of 
 
396 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 your late, exemplary half-uncle had not come upon the 
 scene, and, by insisting upon the whole estate, or none, 
 thrown the case into the limbo of chancery. I recall, 
 too, that your devoted wild Irishman, by getting some 
 one to read the abstracted part of Roderick s letter for 
 him, ascertained whither he must go to find his first 
 master again; and, accordingly, fled on to Holland, 
 only to find that Roderick was dead. Instinctively fear 
 ful yet. of pursuit, he sailed from Amsterdam to Java 
 as a Dutch officer s servant ; and in Batavia this guilty 
 terror, augmented by rumors of the coming of a British 
 fleet to the city, drove him mad and into the military 
 hospital. Very well : you tracked him to that hospital : 
 now tell me what record they have of him there." 
 
 The energy of the naturalist s rapid speech and in 
 quisitive manner, and the old associations revived by 
 the subject under discussion, could not fail to have an 
 animating affect upon Colonel Daryl, who now respond 
 ed like a witness conscious of some personal concern in 
 his testimony. 
 
 " In the hospital register of entries and observations 
 Ruadh s name and nativity are given according to his 
 own statement of them ; and he is set down rather as 
 a harmless monomaniac, with occasional paroxysms of 
 terror, than as a dangerous lunatic. His dress is de 
 scribed, his age conjectured as about thirty, and men 
 tion is made of a flat, oilskin-covered object, or package, 
 held by a stout cord around his neck and concealed 
 under the clothing of his breast. As the patient was a 
 Roman Catholic and so low in the scale of human intel 
 ligence, this object was supposed to be some greatly 
 valued talisman, or charm ; especially as he became 
 violently excited, and vehemently made signs of the 
 cross over it, when any one offered to touch the object. 
 Consequently they allowed him to be undisturbed in its 
 
IT 18 HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 397 
 
 possession. When surprised, or startled, or irritated, 
 he had a fashion of reiterating his own name with great 
 emphasis ; any mention of England, or the English, in 
 his presence, threw him into convulsions of terror ; and 
 at sight of a red article of apparel, a sword, or a mus 
 ket, he would make frantic efforts to escape by the 
 nearest opening door, or even window. He had no 
 particularly vicious traits ; but if a cane, or any kind 
 of stick, was given to him, the slightest pretext of 
 offence was sufficient for his excitement into a kind of 
 frenzied glee, in which he would nourish his staff wildly 
 around the nearest head, until restrained." 
 
 " By the Great Mogul !" ejaculated Doctor Hedland. 
 "Excuse me . . . goon." 
 
 The Colonel waited a moment for some explanation 
 of this irrelevant interruption ; but as his friend merely 
 puffed vigorously and stared persistently out at the road, 
 he proceeded : 
 
 " When the coming of our ships to Batavia, in resent 
 ment of Holland s submission to Bonaparte, was immi 
 nent, it was impossible to keep the hospital free from 
 the city s general panic. Keepers and nurses shared 
 the common perturbation, and the Irish patient over 
 heard their gossip about the dreaded red-coats. Dis 
 cipline was relaxed in the institution and, one day, 
 Ruadh escaped. I don t know that it is necessary for 
 me to go any further with the story," concluded the 
 Colonel, with an inquiring look at his companion ; " you 
 must remember all about the hiding in the Sambas 
 prahu." 
 
 "Perfectly, Will. The poor creature came up out of 
 the prahu s hold in Sambas ; of that you had report 
 from the prahu rajah himself ; and from that time forth 
 you had neither sight nor tidings of him. How long 
 ago was that ?" 
 
398 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Between thirty and forty years." 
 
 "Very well. I have already insisted that it is prac 
 tically impossible for a man wholly to disappear from 
 the knowledge of his kind, whether above or below 
 ground. Now, then, let me tell you what I have very 
 unexpectedly heard about the farther adventure of your 
 Irish Esau, or Orson, from that unlikeliest of mortals, 
 a vagrant Arab priest." 
 
 Whereupon, after casting the remnant of his segar 
 into the grass, Hedland related to his amazed auditor 
 the substance of Medlani s narrative ; reserving only 
 the portions from which he had drawn inferences affect 
 ing a matter of his own private scientific interest. 
 
 " The identity is unmistakable!" exclaimed Colonel 
 Daryl, eagerly : " though the general story sounds so 
 much like some of the superstitious fabrications of the 
 Dyaks. I must make immediate preparations to go to 
 Sambas again. When shall you return, Lawrence ?" 
 
 "I must go to-morrow morning. This escapade to 
 us of Makota s wife may bring trouble to the village, if 
 I am known to be absent." 
 
 " I cannot go quite so soon as that, but shall take the 
 first Dutch mail. Is there anything to detain us now 
 from returning to your hotel to dinner ? I can t part 
 from you to-night." 
 
 " The tale is told, I believe," replied the naturalist, 
 as both arose from the bench to begin their short walk 
 back to " the Straits " ; " only, my dear boy, instead of 
 going to Sambas you must come first to my village. I 
 shall explore for the closed opening to that cave, in 
 Mount Tubbang, where the Antu Queen and her 
 offspring are reported to have harbored a few years ago ; 
 and from there we will go up to Songi and towards the 
 Simunjon, and then southward and backward, by way 
 of the Simpang-kira, to Sambas." 
 
IT 18 HARD FOR A MAN, ETC. 399 
 
 " I shall resign myself wholly to you in the matter," 
 assented the Colonel, lightly. " Whether I find, or do 
 not find, anything of importance to my material interests, 
 it will at least be worth while to take up this curiously 
 recovered clue, and see how much nearer it can be run 
 to earth." 
 
 Upon regaining without notable incident the hostelry 
 of Mr. Dodge, our two friends betook themselves to 
 dinner in a private apartment, at which Dr. Hedland 
 figured chiefly as a half-abstracted spectator of the 
 Colonel s thoroughly English achievements. 
 
 "Now that I think of it, Daryl," said the Doctor, 
 when the cheese was on the board, " those Dutchmen[at 
 the Batavia hospital must have been puzzled over the or 
 thography of your will-stealer s odd name. Did they 
 come near enough to the right spelling for legal pur 
 poses, in case the identity should be disputed in court ?" 
 
 " That, and the personal description, together, make 
 the identification simply indisputable," returned his 
 epicurean companion, confidently. "As I have told 
 you, it was a peculiarity of the poor creature to chatter 
 his name over and over again, when in the least excited. 
 It would be O Shawnessy ! O Shawnessy ! O " 
 
 " How s that ? O Shawn what are saying, Daryl ?" 
 cried the suddenly bewildered philosopher. 
 
 "Why, you see, that was his patronymic," laughed 
 the Colonel, who seemed to be growing young again. 
 "Another glass of wine, Larry. He was so exclu 
 sively Ruadh the Ked to all of our family, that I don t 
 think one of us ever called, or mentioned, or thought 
 of him by any other designation. I doubt if my 
 nephew realizes, to this day, that the evil genius of our 
 hereditary fortunes rejoiced in the cognominal polysylla 
 bles they managed to get down so recognizably on the 
 hospital register." 
 
400 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "O Shawnessy !" repeated the Doctor, in a dazed, 
 mechanical way. " O Shaw-ness-y," he reiterated, 
 more slowly, staring blankly across the table. 
 "O SHAWNESSY!" he almost shouted, half rising 
 from his chair, falling sharply back into it again, and 
 bringing down a fist with reckless violence upon the 
 board : "I tell you, sir, that settles it ! I could swear 
 to the whole thing now ! Oh, the idiot that I ve 
 been !" 
 
 The manner in which he slapped his forehead at this 
 incoherent peroration, and looked as though inclined to 
 tear his hair also, really alarmed the astonished be 
 holder for his friend s wits. 
 
 " Why, Hedland, what is all this excitement about ? " 
 queried Colonel Daryl, with uplifted eyebrows. 
 
 Smiling with much ghastliness ; his large face ruddier 
 than ever and his spectacle-glasses shining fantastically 
 in the candlelight ; the materialist of Science leaned 
 forward upon the table on his folded arms, and empha 
 sized the following question with a pointed forefinger : 
 
 "Will Daryl, have I ever seemed to you like a one 
 sided, opinionated, obstinate, wrong-headed, dogmatical 
 donkey of a man ? " 
 
 " You put it so very strongly, my dear friend," be 
 gan the perplexed Colonel 
 
 "No: be honest, now haven t I often struck you 
 as being ; 
 
 " You have always had the courage of your convic 
 tions," interrupted Daryl, hastily. " Perhaps you ve 
 been a little extreme, at times." 
 
 "It amounts to the same thing : of course I have," 
 resumed the self accuser, in a tone of satisfaction. 
 "Now, then, I ve got just one thing to add, after 
 which, if you please, we 11 talk of other subjects : 
 When you come to Pa Jenna s village, and we go to- 
 
A SIGNET-RING RETURNED. 401 
 
 gether to Tubbang cave, I think that I can give you 
 ample proof that I have been the most egregious scien 
 tific failure on the face of the earth I" 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A SIGNET- RING RETURNED. 
 
 IN the Imperial palace at Bruni was an apartment 
 known as the Hall of the Sacred Jars, to enter which, 
 or even approach beyond a certain outer boundary, was 
 death for any other person than the Sultan, and the 
 hereditary half-priestly officer of the household having 
 it in charge. It was a long, narrow room, wholly with 
 out windows, deep in the interior of the building ; 
 floored with heavy Turkish mats and completely walled 
 and ceiled with yellow silks. On a long shelf, or divan, 
 also silk -covered, extending up either side, were 
 ranged a number of rudely fashioned and vari 
 ously colored Eusa jars ; so called from the figure of a 
 rusa, or stag, represented in some contrasting tint upon 
 the side of each. An immemorial superstition, whether 
 of Mahometan or Hindoo origin, attributed supernat 
 ural qualities to these jars ; such as the power of sup 
 plying indefinitely anything once placed within them 
 rice, or wine, or even treasure. Traditions of the 
 palace asserted that they had more than once exerted 
 these marvelous virtues in remote reigns ; when, prob 
 ably, any ingenious follower of the court having an 
 ambitious end to gain from his credulous sovereign, 
 needed not so very much artful contrivance and con 
 nivance to make the magic vessels appear to yield some 
 
402 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 imperially favorite tipple, or emollient rupees, inex 
 haustibly. But for nearly a century the fitfully bounti 
 ful Rusas had held secondary place to a larger object, 
 standing, between two perpetually-burning suspended 
 lamps, on a species of pedestal, or altar, hung with 
 gold-embroidered crimson velvet, at the farther end of 
 the tomb-like apartment. This was the great, talking 
 Gusi Jar of Bruni ; an ungraceful, bulky specimen of 
 Oriental pottery, (presumably Chinese), olive-green in 
 color, and having stags and dragons painted upon it. 
 Throughout Borneo the Gusi was renowned for having 
 uttered cabalistic speech at divers crises of the State, 
 when reverently consulted by the lang de per Tuam, or 
 Sultan, and was believed always to wail like a creature 
 in torment when a death was impending at the palace. 
 
 Every day, before entering his surow to give public 
 or private audiences, it was the custom of the present 
 ruler of Borneo Proper to enter the Hall of the Sacred 
 Jars : having left his slippers and attendants at the 
 door ; and there, kneeling at some distance from the 
 dimly illuminated Gusi, await any supernatural sign 
 that might be forthcoming within a reasonable space of 
 minutes. Absolute silence being the necessarily usual 
 effect of this ceremony, the Sultan commonly emerged 
 from it with a comfortable belief that his serene wisdom 
 would require no magical instruction, or warning, for 
 the ensuing twenty-four hours. Nevertheless, his dire- 
 fully fear-stricken ears had heard the mystic Jar both 
 wail and speak : once, when a favorite Sultana had been 
 poisoned by one who wished to succeed that hapless 
 female, but had a rival more astute than herself ; and 
 once, when the ghostly assurance, "Makota is thy 
 Friend !" left him no choice but to grant some request 
 lately urged by that highly-befriended Pangeran. 
 
 On the day after the latter restless prince s reappear- 
 
A SIGNET-RING RETURNED. 403 
 
 ance in Bruni from Pat u sen, vowing vengeance for the 
 irreparable dishonor of Amina s flight to the Sarawak 
 sirani, the Sultan paid his visit to the Gusi in a state of 
 visible trepidation ; the bold return of the seditious parti 
 san of the wild Shereefs having impressed his ever weak 
 and wavering mind with a dread of new perils for his 
 always precarious hold on the musnud of Borneo. A 
 deer s cry had been heard during the night on the hill 
 where stood the blackened ruins of Usop s house, and this 
 Dyak omen of coming evil was not without its effect upon 
 the superstitious old Malay. When, with bared feet and 
 hesitating step, he entered the vault-like chamber of fate 
 on this occasion ; closing the door behind him as obligated ; 
 it might have been either his quickened hearing or ner 
 vous imagination that intimated to his fears a faint noise 
 from the Gusi Jar. Dropping instantly upon his knees, 
 and then bowing his face to the floor, the terrified Com 
 mander of the Faithful listened blindly and breathlessly. 
 
 By the feeble rays of the two earthen lamps swing 
 ing on either side of it, the wonderful Jar was visible 
 only in the brighter colors of its fantastic decorations, 
 which had the weird appearance of inscrutable symbols 
 poised in darkened space. 
 
 "Will the Spirit of the Gusi speak to its slave?" 
 quavered the prostrate Sultan, after some tremulous 
 waiting for a sign. 
 
 Breathless stillness returned for a period that seemed 
 long to the fearful suppliant, and then a smothered 
 voice came from the Jar : 
 
 " lang de per Tuam, possess thyself of the Ring. It 
 is thy safety." 
 
 The turbaned figure upon the floor grovelled there in 
 an agony of fright at the sound, not daring to look up ; 
 and it was some moments before his lips could form 
 the entreating words : 
 
404 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " What King, Spirit of the Gusi ?" 
 
 But there the supernatural utterance ended. A repe 
 tition of the question evoked no further speech from 
 the oracle ; and at last, with moisture beaded upon his 
 swarthy temples, and limbs scarcely able to support 
 him, the Sultan staggered to the door, and came out 
 amongst his waiting attendants with face and bearing 
 which revealed to every eye that the Gusi Jar had 
 either wailed or spoken. 
 
 Within an hour palace and town knew something 
 more or less indefinite of the miracle ; and Makota, 
 who suddenly appeared amongst guards, slaves and 
 chattering idlers in the very heart of the imperial resi 
 dence, without any one knowing how he had got there, 
 proclaimed in a loud voice, that he must have private 
 audience immediately with lang de per Tuam. 
 
 The presumptuous clamor with which this demand 
 was made found no one bold enough to offer any imme 
 diate answer, until a richly-attired Pangeran stepped 
 out from the adjacent curtained portal of the surow, or 
 audience-room, and angrily approached the intruder. 
 
 " What means, Makota, such conduct as this, almost 
 in the presence of his Sublime Highness ? Do you dare 
 to bring your treason here, again, when Usop no longer 
 lives to save you with his renegade Kadiens ?" 
 
 "You are a boy, Budrudeen ! " retorted Makota, 
 contemptuously. Then, as upon second-thought : "But 
 you have eyes to see ; and see you shall, how a wronged 
 man dares to come back to the Sublime Master whose 
 face has been set against him by the lies of the Chris 
 tian dogs and false Malays, Look 1" 
 
 He pointed, with a lean brown forefinger, through a 
 window in the ante-chamber commanding a view of 
 the hill-slopes behind the palace ; and the young 
 prince and others, involuntarily gazing thither, beheld, 
 
A SIGNET-RING RETURNED. 405 
 
 to their astonishment, that the green heights were 
 swarming with wild figures in the full warlike array of 
 Illanaon Dyaks. 
 
 "Infamous traitor !" exclaimed Budrudeen, tearing 
 his kris from its scabbard, with an obvious intention 
 to throw himself bodily upon the darkly smiling out 
 law. "Why do you prevent me, brothers ?" he pro 
 tested, struggling with the Pangerans who had grasped 
 his arms. "Do you not see that he has brought his 
 sea-robbers to the very doors of the Sultan, while we 
 have been sleeping ? Will no one dare to strike down 
 the audacious rebel ?" 
 
 "You are a boy, Budrudeen!" repeated Makota, 
 coolly indifferent alike to the kris and the denunciation. 
 " You should have kept your loyal Kadiens on the 
 hills, instead of guarding their prahus, if Bruni was to 
 give no welcome to my brave Illanaons, who needed not 
 come here with sumpitans and shields before the sirani 
 harbored in Sarawak. 
 
 " Seize him ! " cried Budrudeen to some of the steel- 
 corseletted body-guard, who were now wonderingly and 
 not very boldly at hand. 
 
 "Follow me, all of you, to the presence of our lord, 
 the Sultan, was the answering command of the arch- 
 plotter ; who forthwith strode composedly through the 
 shrinking ranks of guards and courtiers into the surow ; 
 even his exasperated, young enemy being constrained 
 to silent acquiescence by the decisive movement. 
 
 Already it had become known in the chamber of 
 audience that palace and town were suddenly beset by 
 Illanaons, who had come over the mountains by night, 
 and every one in authority was nerveless to suggest 
 any effective measure of defence. When the lawless 
 leader of this summary invasion bowed himself, with 
 aspect of loyal humility, before the musnud, all was in 
 
406 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 confusion about the Sultan, and that hapless potentate 
 could only stare around him in pitiable alarm. 
 
 " Let not our Lord who Rules be troubled because of 
 what he sees and hears," said Makota, with a specious 
 air of deferential reassurance. "While his Pangerans 
 talked foolishness with their women, or hunted turtles 
 eggs in their pleasure-prahus ; trusting to the war-ships 
 of the Sarawak sirani to defend the musnud ; Makota 
 has gathered true warriors to the standard of the 
 Prophet, and brings them here to guard more securely 
 their sublime Sultan, whose slaves they are." 
 
 While yet the impotent representative of Borneon 
 sovereignty was hesitating for an answer to this enig 
 matical address, there moved forward from the cowed 
 group of princes and officers around the imperial 
 divan a short, gravely visaged middle-aged man, 
 whose turban and jacket bore the golden ornaments of 
 high rank. 
 
 "Do the loyal subjects of His Sublime Highness 
 enter Bruni like thieves in the night ?" asked this per 
 sonage, sternly regarding the rebellious Pangeran. 
 "The Sultan wants no protection from such as you; 
 and I, as his Bandhara, command you to dismiss these 
 sea-robbers at once, or stand accused as an enemy." 
 
 " Had I come as an enemy, Muda Hassim, would not 
 Bruni now be mine ?" was the taunting reply. " Where 
 are your loyal Kadiens, who were lately so brave against 
 Usop, when the sirani s ships were here ? In the forts ? 
 As well might they be on Pulo Labuan. In their 
 prahus ? Illanaon warriors know the paths of the hills 
 as well as the tides of the river." 
 
 "Then let them know that there is a ship of the 
 sirani now at Pulo Combong," exclaimed Budrudeen, 
 impetuously, "and one of my sampans can summon it 
 hither in an hour !" 
 
A SIGNET-RING RETURNED. 407 
 
 "That would be too late, Pangeran," said Makota, 
 with ominous confidence. In fact, the apparently fear 
 less calmness of the traitor in a scene where nearly all 
 the other participants were supposably his deadly foes, 
 must have been surprising to those who were not aware 
 that he was in secret collusion with no less a familiar of 
 the palace than Mohammed, the Keeper of the Sacred 
 Jars, and had partisans covertly distributed around the 
 musnud itself. 
 
 " lang de per Tuam, it is with your sublime High- 
 ness, and not with the friends of the Sarawak sirani, 
 that I have business," continued Makota, inclining his 
 head again at the speechless Sultan s feet. " I come to 
 you, as a misjudged and wronged Malay prince, for your 
 sublime permission that I may pursue the Dyak dogs 
 who have wiled away a woman of my harem and covered 
 me with dishonor. With my warriors I might have 
 gone to Pa Jenna s village without coming first to 
 Brurii ; but I am a Prince of Borneo ; your sublime 
 Highness s loyal subject, whatever the usurping sirani 
 and his minions may say ; and I come to you humbly, 
 with an army as my offering, and ask, only, that, with 
 a few prahus, I may go to seek what is my own." 
 
 "He speaks well," muttered the Sultan, finding 
 power of speech at last and glancing at Muda Hassim. 
 
 "He speaks falsely, your sublime Highness it is but 
 a traitor s pretence !" broke in Budrudeen once more. 
 " His Illanaons hold the hills, and we are in his power, 
 if a sampan is not instantly sent to call Tuan Besar s 
 ship from Pulo Combong." 
 
 " Tuan Besar !" echoed Makota, with a wicked glit 
 ter in his snaky eyes. "You are brave, Pangeran, 
 because you wear upon your hand the charmed ring of 
 the sirani s Kajah." 
 
 "Ring !" ejaculated the Sultan, excitedly remember- 
 
408 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 ing the words of the Gusi geni. "What ring is that, 
 Budrudeen?" 
 
 "It was given to me by Tuan Brooke, your sublime 
 Highness, on the day of Usop s battle with the ships." 
 
 " Give it to me !" exclaimed the Sultan, his voice trem 
 bling with eagerness and a hand childishly outstretched. 
 
 "I can not I dare not, lang de per Tuam," returned 
 the young Pangeran, shrinking in surprised dismay at 
 the unexpected command ; " I have sworn by Allah 
 that it shall not leave my hand in life." 
 
 "It is a talisman of the sirani, and keeps its pos 
 sessor in safety," sneered the cunning rebel-chief, well 
 knowing what the Gusi Jar had spoken. 
 
 "It is mine!" screamed the superstitious imbecile 
 of the musnud, now half-distracted at the idea of being 
 refused what his ignorant fancy recognized as the talis 
 man of his own safety. " Seize him, guards, and tear 
 it from his hand !" 
 
 In a moment the whole audience-chamber was in 
 commotion. White-turbaned body-guards, with their 
 spears, made a tardy movement towards the astounded 
 wearer of the ring ; while Muda Hassim, waving them 
 off and appealing passionately to the Sultan for a far 
 ther hearing of the matter, interposed between his 
 brother and themselves. 
 
 "Seize the traitor!" Makota shouted, repeating the 
 order of which he had so lately been himself the sub 
 ject, and springing forward with drawn kris. 
 
 As though his words had been a signal previously 
 agreed upon, a number of hitherto quiet figures in the 
 surow displayed their weapons at the sound, and 
 crowded upon Muda Hassim aud Budrudeen with men 
 acing gestures. Through either fear or treachery the 
 guards of the Sultan seemed paralyzed, and there 
 would have been bloodshed on the spot had not a group 
 
A SIGNET RING RETURNED. 409 
 
 of Pangerans who were in sympathy with the Band- 
 hara and his gallant brother, gathered about the two 
 devoted men, and hurried them backward from the 
 surow into the anteroom, where their nakodahs were 
 in waiting. 
 
 Makota s characteristic conspiracy to bring destruc 
 tion upon the English party in the Borneon capital was 
 now in full tide of accomplishment. By the wiliest, 
 find, at the same time, boldest of machinations, the 
 weak-minded Euler of Bruni had been brought to a 
 violent open rupture with the favorite brother of his 
 chief minister and rightful successor; and the arch- 
 conspirator had also prepared his means to take instant 
 and merciless advantage of this breach. It was his 
 policy to pretend loyalty to the musnud throughout his 
 whole career of outlawry ; always asserting that his 
 apparent seditions were really in behalf of a sovereign 
 temporarily deceived and betrayed by the English and 
 their corrupted Malay allies. On this occasion, while 
 practically master of the city, the pretext was that 
 Muda Hassim and his party were purposely leaving 
 Bruni unguarded to any foreign ship that might arrive 
 perhaps even to H. M. S. Hazard, now at anchor 
 off the island of Combong, down the river and that 
 only a native force, brought thither as he had brought 
 one, could avert the final extinction of Mussulman rule 
 in Borneo Proper. 
 
 Budrudeen, the Bandhara, and their friends and fol 
 lowers, bewildered at first by the fatuous imperial 
 wrath and overpowering hostile demonstration so sud 
 denly precipitated upon them, no sooner reached the 
 outside of the palace than they realized that they must 
 fight for their lives. Not only was the building sur 
 rounded by the Illanaons, but in the watery streets of 
 the town below, and on the river, war-prahus from the 
 
410 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Sarebas and Sakarran could be discerned, crowded with 
 the semi-nude freebooters of Shereef Sahib. Kajah 
 Brooke was far away in Sarawak, unconscious of the 
 peril of his friends. The victims were taken in a trap. 
 
 With one accord, Muda Hassim, Budrudeen, and 
 their little band of broth er-Pangerans and nakodahs, 
 drew their krisses and, without heeding the swarm of 
 murderous enemies following them from the disordered 
 palace, charged headlong upon the Illanaons obstruct 
 ing their way down the slope to the Sultan s wharf. 
 Their desperate hope was, to reach boats by which they 
 might essay an escape down the river, with a chance 
 for some of them, at least, to gain the protection of 
 the English vessel. Makota, leading on a swiftly in 
 creasing horde of pursuers, detected this purpose at 
 a glance, and, when his destined prey were fairly at 
 the water s edge, surrounded them anew with his 
 own immediate followers. The Bandhara had even set 
 foot in a sampan, when half a score of the assassins 
 overtook him, and plunged their krisses into his heav 
 ing breast. 
 
 Budrudeen, fighting like a lion, and w T ounded in 
 many places, heard the death-cry of Muda Hassim 
 without power to save. Several faithful Pangerans and 
 nakodahs had fallen around him ; rescue could come from 
 no quarter : longer to accept the heroic sacrifice of this 
 handful of gallant friends would but insure their slaugh 
 ter in a hopeless cause. For a moment the impetuous 
 assaults of his frenzied defenders had opened a way 
 through the foes clustered above them on the acclivity, 
 and, without a word to explain his purpose, he suddenly 
 bounded singly into this gap and went climbing back 
 ward in his own track, as though to regain the palace. 
 So quick and unexpected was the movement, that 
 friend and enemy, alike, stood transfixed in hesitation, 
 
A SIGNET-RING RETURNED. 411 
 
 until, by a sharp turn across* the face of the ascent, the 
 fugitive betrayed his intention. 
 
 "He flies to his house !" shouted Makota, furious at 
 the momentary diversion : "After him, my friends I" 
 
 The savage rabble, without discipline or organization, 
 but leaping and howling like so many wolves towards 
 any given point where the scent of the doomed lay 
 freshest, took up the pursuit with increased ferocity at 
 this incitement, and swarmed up the hillside to inter 
 cept the fleet runner. 
 
 But in the surprise momentarily arresting their at 
 tack, Budrudeen had gained a start enabling him to 
 reach the hill upon which stood his mansion, before 
 kris, spear, or sumpitan of the nearest pursuer was 
 within wounding distance. Another moment saw him 
 within the armed stockade of his last refuge ; and, with 
 the cries of the Illanaons ringing in his ears, a bleeding, 
 reeling martyr at bay in his own house. 
 
 Never bold to attack even the simplest fortifications 
 in daylight, or by land, the hordes of the sea-robbers 
 halted at some little distance from the stockade, through 
 which the muzzles of a number of small brass guns 
 protruded. The hunted Pangefan knew that they 
 must soon become aware of what he had himself de 
 tected in his first, despairing glance, that the fated 
 house was deserted by all who should have remained 
 for their master s defence. Martial retainers, and slaves 
 and women all alike had fled at the earliest, quickly- 
 spreading rumor of the strange, wild scene in the im 
 perial surow ; all save one woman, and a Malay boy 
 who would not leave her. 
 
 "Inda! Japper !" exclaimed Budrudeen, recogniz 
 ing these two, as they fell at his feet with protestations 
 of devotion ; " why have you waited here ?" 
 
 "To fight for you ; to die with you !" was the quick 
 
412 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 reply of the kneeling Dyak girl, grasping one of his 
 hands and pressing it to her forehead. 
 
 "This must not be, star of my life," returned the 
 wounded prince, speaking hurriedly through his labored 
 breathing. " Japper, as you love me, I charge you tc 
 take her the way the others have gone into the hills 
 before these dogs outside have grown brave enough tc 
 surround us. The way behind the house is yet open, 
 he continued, moving painfully towards a window look 
 ing upon the mountains. 
 
 " Come with us, Pangeran," entreated the boy. 
 
 " I will not go," said Inda, quietly. 
 
 "It is my command, beloved of my soul!" insistec 
 Budrudeen, with a passionate wave of his arms ; tumul 
 tuous cries from without proclaiming that his savagt 
 hunters were discovering that his stockade was un 
 manned. "A moment help me here, Japper," IK 
 added, in a shrill voice, grasping at one of several cask* 
 ranged near a wall, and rolling it to the center of the 
 room. " Quick ! bring another hither !" 
 
 The youth mechanically obeyed ; Inda looking or 
 unmoved ; and with the celerity of desperation thcii 
 master beat in the head of the first cask, with a heavj 
 sword he had grasped from a table, and poured the 
 gunpowder from it around the second. This act accom 
 plished, Budrudeen tore from a finger of his right hand 
 the signet-ring that had been used so treacherously foi 
 his downfall, and thrust it into Japper s passive grasp. 
 
 " When it is night, take a canoe and goto the English 
 ship at Pulo Combong you and Inda," he said, vehem 
 ently. " Tell the Tuans of the ship what has happened 
 to-day, and beg them to carry you with the tidings to 
 Kuchin. Give this ring to the Rajah of Sarawak, and 
 say to him that Budrudeen, like Muda Hassim, has 
 died, his friend, and the friend of his Queen." 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 413 
 
 Weakened as he was by exhaustion, excitement and 
 wounds, the speaker had scarcely panted the last word, 
 before, with a swift rush, he half-encircled both the boy 
 and the woman in either arm, and was forcing them 
 irresistibly through a doorway leading to the veranda 
 behind the house. Japper he hurled bodily over the 
 railing of the latter into the jungle beyond, and was 
 gently, but resolutely, releasing himself from the 
 frantic hold of the imploring Inda, when an outburst of 
 triumphant yells from the front made him throw off 
 the clinging hands as though they had been a child s, 
 and bound back into the building with a last, defiant 
 cry. In an instant his fire-kindling besi-api was spark 
 ling over the powder ; and even as an agonized shriek 
 sounded at his elbow, and a host of fierce, yellow-faced 
 barbarians at last poured in through the door and case 
 ments in front, the funeral pyre of Budrudeen and 
 Inda was lighted in earthquake and thunder. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 
 
 WHEN Doctor Hedland, pausing in Kuchin, on his 
 way to Singapore, urgently invited the Effingham 
 family to visit his Dyak village before their depart 
 ure from the East Indies, he was simply yielding there 
 in to the sway of a rapidly augmenting impulse of 
 propitiatory kindness for the whole human race. It 
 would have puzzled himself to analyze the process of 
 the change in his disposition as a social being since the 
 last interview with Makota, when that tortuous barba- 
 
414 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 rian s confession of his deception as to the mias, and 
 final relinquishment of all farther friendly pretension, 
 had impelled him to accept the first opportunity for a 
 reconciliation with Rajah Brooke, and even find a cer 
 tain contradictory comfort in being ostentatiously 
 apologetic to representatives of a nationality for 
 which he had previously entertained the most intol 
 erant dislike. This first extravagant reaction of a 
 naturally domineering spirit, was now being supple 
 mented, after Medlani s revelation, by a kind of 
 indiscriminate and deprecating good-will for all man 
 kind. Profound intellectual humiliation was unques 
 tionably the basis of the change. His elaborate and 
 startling theory of the origin of the human species, 
 deduced from a supposedly convincing ethnological 
 discovery, and maintained to the last extreme oi 
 supercilious arrogance, had collapsed pitiably and 
 utterly under the punctures of a few local facts 
 which any ordinary mind might have traced, or sus 
 pected, long ago. This was enough to account for the 
 really ingenuous naturalist s first rather dazing parox 
 ysm of intellectual self-contempt, and consequent impa 
 tience of any farther pretence of pride with his 
 previously somewhat contemned fellow-creatures; but 
 now, in his latest condition of positively generous 
 urbanity, he realized, without stopping to reason why, 
 that if he was immeasurably a meeker man than before, 
 there had come, also, with the humility, a curious, an 
 indescribable, a subtle feeling of mental and spiritual 
 disenthrallment, so luxuriously pleasant in the experi 
 ence as to surcharge his general nature with the 
 utmost complacency for everybody. 
 
 It was in this state of amiable exaltation that the 
 Doctor said to Mr. and Mrs. Efnngham : "You and 
 your family must surely be my guests, for one night 
 
UNWONTED QUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 415 
 
 at least, in Pa Jenna s village, before you leave Borneo. 
 Having been courageous enough to come as a household 
 to a savage spot of the world so little known, the ladies 
 are in duty bound not to miss seeing how the Borneon 
 aborigines live in mid-air. The distance from here is 
 insignificant ; our villagers have attained sufficient civ 
 ilization in manners and dress to be not impracticable 
 neighbors for a short time ; and my own semi-detached 
 house is so exceptionally arranged, with easy ladders 
 from story to story, that ladies may ascend to the village 
 without difficulty. I can appropriate two cottages, in 
 the vicinity of my own, to your exclusive use ; putting 
 a bamboo railing across the public veranda on either 
 side of them to assure your greater privacy. It may 
 be well for you to bring your cook, and two or three 
 other servants, as my Dyaks are but barbarous table- 
 livers yet. That you can easily do, and, with such 
 attendance, you need undergo no particular hardships." 
 
 Mr. Effingham, having already been a visitor to the 
 lofty human nest thus commended, and remembering 
 the decorous orderliness of its every aspect, saw no 
 strong reason why he should not accept, for his so soon 
 emigrating family -party, this hospitable invitation to the 
 most interesting of parting calls. Dr. Hedland s wholly 
 unexpected and peculiar courtesy in the matter was 
 characteristic of the oddest of mortals ; but as it was 
 obviously proffered in perfect good faith, and afforded 
 the ladies a chance to enjoy a rarely picturesque specta 
 cle, never before looked upon by civilized members of 
 their sex, the indulgent husband and father promptly 
 decided to avail himself of it. 
 
 " The temptation is too great to be resisted, Doctor," 
 he replied, after but brief deliberation, "and we shall 
 be most happy to try the adventure suggested by your 
 kindness as our final experience of Borneo. Perhaps, 
 
416 THEEE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 as I am informed that you think of leaving the island 
 very soon yourself, we might induce you to accept pas 
 sage with us in our brig to Singapore ?" 
 
 "Kindly thought of, Mr. Effingham : it would be 
 vastly agreeable for me to accede to that idea at once ; 
 but the exploration of a mountain cave in my neighbor 
 hood, that I have been lately induced to undertake, 
 may make the time of my departure quite uncertain. I 
 thank you, however, for your very polite intention, and 
 also for your acceptance of my own invitation. Mrs. 
 Effingham, I shall really deem it an enviable honor to 
 be the first European welcoming ladies to a genuine 
 Dyak village of Borneo." 
 
 Thus, while the unique adventure was decided upon, 
 the exact date for its accomplishment went undesig- 
 nated ; and this was eminently characteristic of an 
 exotic manner of life in which both parties to the 
 friendly engagement had unconsciously lost all meth 
 odical habit of taking account of time. 
 
 Several weeks elapsed before Mr. Effingham s affairs 
 in Kuchin were so conclusively ordered that he felt jus 
 tified in having the brig Weltevreden made ready for 
 Singapore. Then, as the vessel was too large to go all 
 the way to the village, and, if employed, would neces 
 sitate a supplementary transportation of the visitors in 
 small boats, he determined to engage for the latter trip, 
 instead, a fine trading-prahu from Celebes, at that time 
 awaiting a cargo in the river. 
 
 Embarked for the excursion on this rude, but thor 
 oughly stanch and indolently comfortable craft, the 
 family were accompanied by Berner, Ambrose, the Chi 
 nese cook and a lower servant of the same nationality. 
 In due observance of the warning as to Dyak barbarism 
 of fare, various suitable appointments and provisions 
 for kitchen and table were likewise carried, and Mr. 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 417 
 
 Effingham bore with him a fowling-piece for the benefit 
 of such game as might prove incidental to the trip. At 
 the bow of the prahu a brass swivel gun was mounted, 
 and two small iron carronades stood on either side of the 
 deck ; but these were only the common armament of any 
 Archipelago coaster. Not a dream could there be of 
 peril for peaceful voyagers in the Sarawak valley of 
 these days ; so absolutely established was the authority 
 of the great Kajah, and so thoroughly had it overawed 
 all exterior marauders from venturing into a river once 
 haunted by their piratical fleets. 
 
 Under the broad, peaked awning of plaited rattan, 
 upon ship-chairs from the Weltevreden, sat husband and 
 wife, daughter and Cousin Sadie ; the ladies in brown 
 linen dresses and hats of straw, suitable to the climate 
 and occasion ; the gentleman in the same half-soldierly, 
 half miner-like costume he had worn on his Simunjon 
 expedition. At the bow, Berner, Ambrose and their 
 subordinates watched the hoisting of the large, tri 
 angular sail of the prahu ; Master Cherubino standing 
 near them, with arms akimbo, staring at the bronzed 
 Bugis captain with an intensity calculated to make even 
 that rude mariner miserably conscious of any aspect of 
 his person or dress that might conceivably challenge 
 unfavorable criticism. 
 
 "There is a ship of war coming in," remarked the 
 American merchant, indicating a point of view down 
 the river, some distance beyond the Rajah s wharf, 
 where a full-rigged vessel could be discerned approach 
 ing. " I heard at The Grove that a frigate and gun 
 boat might be here from Singapore to-night ; but this is 
 probably an unexpected arrival." 
 
 u lt is hard to realize that we, ourselves, shall be so 
 soon starting down this river for our old, outer world 
 again," said his wife, looking with more interest at their 
 
418 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 own brig, anchored not far away. "The months we 
 have passed here seem longer when looked back upon 
 than they did in being lived. Shall we remain long at 
 Singapore, Richard ?" 
 
 " Probably not over two days, my dear. After I have 
 finished my business with Mr. Dodge we may go at 
 once on board the Comanche. Our life here has been 
 quite an ideal one; but is such an existence living, 
 after all ? We are out of the human life of the civil 
 ized world, and do not enter into that of the native 
 barbarism here. It is a comparatively passive tran- 
 sitionary condition for us, and will appear to all like a 
 dream when it shall be over." 
 
 But, as the desultory conversation of the short jour 
 ney now beginning was not essential to the elucidation 
 of our story, and the general character of Sarawak river- 
 scenery has been sufficiently exhibited in earlier chap 
 ters, they need not be repeated nor dwelt upon here. 
 
 The half-day s voyage was a tranquil, languorous 
 gliding on through that historical valley, the shadows 
 of whose flanking chains of forest-clad hills met under 
 the prahu and gave an almost black relief to the snowy 
 ripple of the prow. No other hues met the sight, on 
 either side, than the varying emeralds of an eternity of 
 Tropical foliage ; from the opaque low growths with 
 unknown mountain depths behind them, to the trans 
 parent and delicately dwarfed leafage of the high, re 
 tiring crests against the untinted sky. Flowers bloomed 
 not visibly on bank nor in palm-openings ; no flutter of 
 bird s wing lightened the afternoon dusk of the jungled 
 shore s unbroken embowerment ; and yet, between the 
 dun and yellow tinges of the noiseless prahu itself, the 
 soft, bluish darkness of the stream, the graded ver 
 dures of the hills, and the dull red of a sun bound ray- 
 less in a firmament of pearly vapor, there was a Senti- 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 419 
 
 ment, as it were, of sensuous color, to which an artistic 
 ideal of any inner Sunland would have added neither 
 glow of rose nor gleam of water-lily. 
 
 At Leda Tanah both sail and mast were lowered, 
 and long oars plashed in the tide, as the prahu turned 
 into the left branch of the river there, and entered the 
 narrowing archway of Nypas leading to the village. In 
 the cool, green dimness of the pillared shade now so 
 closely about them, the voyagers began to see strange 
 birds among the boughs, and an occasional gaunt Dyak 
 dog, and even wild hogs, in the waterside jungle ; the 
 delight of the small-boy of the party at view of the half- 
 starved canine mongrels being expressed in such saluta 
 tory irrepressible whistles, as are the eternal delusion and 
 despair of creatures of their credulous species, in lands 
 where masculine immaturity is refined to the last in 
 genuity of embittering their natural trustfulness into 
 ultimate hydrophobic frenzy at the very sight of a lad s 
 toothsome leg. 
 
 "When the boat, in its now slow progress, had arrived 
 within a short distance of the point where it should 
 emerge below the village, Doctor Hedland and an 
 other European figure were seen, apparently in waiting, 
 upon a place on the bank where the latter sloped 
 gradually to the tide and presented an opening between 
 the trees. 
 
 "Welcome, at last, to you all !" shouted the natural 
 ist, heartily ; at the same time making a motion for the 
 prahu to stop there. His companion, lifting his hat 
 and bowing, was discovered to be Colonel Daryl. 
 
 The mooring occupied so little time, that some of the 
 visitors had scarcely recovered from their first surprise 
 at recognizing the Doctor s companion when the latter 
 and their host climbed on board and offered their con 
 gratulations. 
 
420 THEEE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 u We selected this for your landing-place, ladies," ex 
 plained Hedland, whose whole manner was fairly bouy- 
 ant ; " because the one with which Mr. Effingham is 
 familiar, has as he probably remembers a bluff to be 
 scaled by ladders before you are even at the foot of our 
 tall village. You must be resigned to a little hard 
 uphill walking, as it will save you all ladder-climbing 
 except what I trust you will find not very difficult." 
 
 " It must appear to you, Mrs. Effingham, that you are 
 never to see the last of me," remarked the Colonel to 
 that lady, in a half laughing, half apologetic way. 
 
 " The pleasure of meeting you here, sir, was certainly 
 unexpected by us," she replied, not seeming to notice, 
 or, at any rate, not imitating, the cold reserve with 
 which her daughter had received his greeting. 
 
 " I am here upon peremptory personal summons of 
 our friend, Hedland," continued the Colonel, "who 
 thinks that he has actually discovered, in the most curi 
 ous manner, a clue to the fate of that unfortunate being 
 in whose profitless pursuit I have passed so much time 
 in Borneo." 
 
 "And he is yet a skeptic on that point, madame," 
 struck in the Doctor, overhearing the conversation. 
 " "Wait until to-morrow evening, after we have made a 
 little excursion together, and then hear what he may 
 have to say !" 
 
 Only so much explanation of Daryl s presence was 
 practicable before the business of landing the party 
 monopolized all attention. It was found that the mov 
 able prahu ladders leading from the deck to the hold, 
 would reach easily, and at a convenient angle, from the 
 deck to the shore ; consequently no very awkward inci 
 dent attended the disembarkation. With assistance 
 from the gentlemen, rather formal than actually neces 
 sary, the ladies descended in the undemonstrative style 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 421 
 
 of experienced travelers. Then their host, with Mrs. 
 Effingham under his special care ; the Colonel, calmly 
 stepping into the position of escort to the obviously re 
 luctant Abretta ; Mr. Effingham lending an arm to Miss 
 Ankeroo, and Cherubino following with the servants ; 
 formed a little procession to accomplish the short re 
 maining journey. 
 
 The course of the latter was nearly parallel with the 
 water, though in gradual ascent of the hillside across 
 which it ran. A path, cut through the jungle for the 
 purpose, led between the green walls of a slightly undu- 
 latory Tropical hedge, as it could be called, from the 
 moorage of the prahu to a level with the piled founda 
 tion of the village, and the fairer members of the party 
 had no more difficulty in treading it than if their walk had 
 been a leisurely ramble between bushes and under trees 
 on the sloping riverside grounds of a Christian estate. 
 That there should be no annoyance from popular curi 
 osity, the considerate naturalist had requested Pa Jenna 
 to keep all his Dyaks strictly out of sight during the 
 brief overland passage ; and, as a consequence, even the 
 somewhat disappointed Cherub beheld no savage human 
 reminder of the absence of civilization. 
 
 Nevertheless, strangeness enough there was in the ex 
 perience to repress feminine personality of conversation, 
 until, after a naturally wondering view of the iron-wood 
 colonnade uprearing the community of their destina 
 tion, the adventurous guests duly scaled the interval 
 of laddered storeys in Doctor Hedland s house, and 
 emerged, rather tired, through the trap in the topmost 
 floor. 
 
 " Once more, welcome, my friends," said the Doctor, 
 when, at last, they all stood safely in the room memor 
 able for the lecture on Oshonsee. Mr. Effingham glanced 
 about him in search of the famous ape ; and Cherubino, 
 
422 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 bold with t*he engaging unreserve of his tender years, 
 made prompt inquiry : 
 
 " If you please, sir, where s the monkey that you say 
 is like Father and me and other men ?" 
 
 Before the parental impulse to rebuke this infantile 
 presumption could find words to express itself, Hedland 
 made answer with noticeable alacrity as though rather 
 gratified at the opportunity : 
 
 "To be sure, my young friend where is he ? Such 
 curiosity is very natural. Just now the object of your 
 inquiry is rusticating in a new retreat of mine amongst 
 the hills, a little further up the river ; but Colonel 
 Daryl and I may bring him back with us from our ex 
 cursion to-morrow." 
 
 Although ostensibly addressed to the inquisitive 
 youth, this explanation of a notable absence was plainly 
 intended for the timely information of all who might 
 feel an interest in the matter. 
 
 "And now, if you please," continued the smiling 
 Doctor, making the invitation general, "we will see 
 how you ladies can walk a Dyak bridge. You must see 
 what kind of houses I have obtained for you." 
 
 As before described, the "batang," or bridge, con 
 necting this house with the great common gallery, or 
 open veranda, of the village, was shaped liked an 
 inverted triangle, a single bamboo pole giving the foot 
 ing, whence rattan lashings slanted up on either side to 
 a handrail of the same gigantic reed. Over this sway 
 ing structure, as it was not long, the ladies followed 
 their masculine conductors without serious disturbance 
 of nerve ; and were introduced upon the veranda to 
 Pa Jenna, who, with a select company of the elders of 
 the village, male and female, had there waited to offer 
 homage and hospital professions to their beloved 
 Tuan s marvelous friends. 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 423 
 
 Thus was inducted to a Dyak eyrie the first Christian 
 family ever penetrating into the Dyak country south 
 ward of Bruni.* It is unnecessary to dilate again upon 
 the remarkable spectacle of the village-street in mid-air ; 
 with tree-tops to be touched from the bamboo railings 
 in front, and the hill summit, jungled and palmed, 
 rising protectively behind. In prospect of such un 
 wonted visitors the whole half-civilized community had 
 been disciplined into an at least temporary system of 
 manners and dress with which the most sensitive 
 strangers from Christendom could not reasonably have 
 found fault. In making a round of the village with 
 their host, his friend, the Orang-Kaya, and the native 
 elders before mentioned, our Americans were able to 
 study the simple domestic genius of the place, as well 
 as its public curiosities (excepting, of course, the in 
 terior of the " head-house ") without being either dogged 
 or stared at by the usual popular following of visiting 
 Christians in barbarous settlements. 
 
 Returning finally to the two houses assigned for 
 their occupancy; both of them at Dr. Hedland s corner 
 of the mighty veranda and made as commodious as 
 was practicable by generous appropriation of nearly all 
 the Doctor s own furniture in addition to that brought 
 by the prahu; the party found the promised social 
 privacy in temporary partitions of bamboo rails and 
 mats across the public way on either side of their 
 quarters. An inspiration more than masculine 
 seemed to have guided their benignantly transformed 
 host in his preparations for the utmost domiciliary 
 comfort to be evoked in such an unaccustomed place for 
 the gentler natures of earth ; and even Miss Ankeroo 
 
 * The families of an American and an English missionary had pre 
 viously lived for a short time in the suburbs of Bruni. 
 
424 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 forgot, momentarily, his biological audacities, in con 
 templating the many obvious signs of his hospitable 
 forethought. 
 
 While the Chinese cook, with the inimitable adapta- 
 tiveness of his ingenious race, was doing wonders 
 towards the composition of a dinner at one of the open- 
 air fireplaces ; and Berner and Ambrose systematized 
 the distribution of things indoors for the night ; Mrs. 
 Effingham and her daughter and cousin, seated 
 on ship s chairs near the veranda railing, enjoyed 
 the novel prospect below and around them, and 
 gradually lapsed from discussion of Dyak architecture 
 and character into the nearer interests and person 
 alities of ordinary talk. 
 
 " And the most surprising thing to me in this surpris 
 ing place," said Mrs. Emngham to the Doctor, "is to 
 hear what Colonel Daryl has told me of the occasion for 
 his sudden presence here with you. Are you really 
 confident, Doctor Hedland, of being able to trace the 
 history of the long-missing man after his escape from 
 Batavia to this island ?" 
 
 u I have traced so much, madame so very much," 
 returned he, with emphatic earnestness, " that my own 
 astonishment at it grows, I may say, with every hour !" 
 
 With a look inviting the adjacent Miss Ankeroo and 
 Mr. Efnngharn to draw their chairs nearer and heed, 
 also, what he should say, the naturalist bent nearer 
 toward all three, from his own chair, and lowered his 
 voice : 
 
 "Daryl himself does not know all yet; for I have 
 made my greatest confirmative discovery ; and that at 
 no considerable distance from this very spot ; since re 
 turning from Singapore. It is to reveal this to him, 
 with the assistance of peculiar local proof, that I have 
 engaged him to go with me, unquestioningly, to-morrow. 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 425 
 
 on the excursion I mentioned to you, Madame, this 
 afternoon. The engagement was made, Mr. Effingham, 
 before the coming of your note by canoe this morning, 
 saying that you would be here to-day." 
 
 "Our presence must not for a moment deter you 
 from keeping such an appointment to the hour," said 
 that gentleman, with courteous promptness ; "otherwise 
 I shall not excuse myself for deferring until so late to 
 warn you of our advent. It was my hope to prevent 
 any too liberal pains on your part for our accommoda 
 tionwe being all old travelers, and ready to take new 
 places as they are ; but I see that you have fairly revo 
 lutionized the village for us, after all." 
 
 " Don t mention it, my good sir. There is no limit 
 to my inclination of good-will toward yourself and the 
 ladies," responded Doctor Hedland, with surprising 
 fervor of tone and manner. "And I must avail myself 
 of your own and your family s considerate indulgence 
 for a few hours to-morrow, indeed. You will, and 
 ought to, think me a rude host for so doing ; and Daryl 
 himself is not likely to accede altogether graciously to 
 what I can see that he is half disposed to regard as 
 pursuant of another visionary delusion on my part. But 
 wait until we have come back to you in a few hours, 
 my friends, and then we shall find out whether you yet 
 judge my discourtesy to have been gratuitous, and he 
 holds me yet to be a harebrained hunter of wild geese!" 
 
 The suppressed exultation of the speaker had a con 
 tagious effect upon his auditors, in stimulating them 
 with an expectation no less lively because widely in 
 definite. Making every allowance for the philosopher s 
 supposed tendency to be very positive in his deductions 
 of mountainous theory from molehill fact, it was yet 
 the intuition of his present observers that he was now 
 under the inspiration of a conviction practically sub- 
 
426 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 stantiated. Evidently he had made a discovery rela 
 tive to the Daryl family mystery of sufficient import 
 ance to revivify the Colonel s exhausted interest in that 
 previously hopeless problem ; but the question re 
 mained : what had he yet of that discovery in reserve, 
 even from the Colonel himself, to yield any more ma 
 terial fruition than the mere delight of his own mind, 
 in being able to trace the erratic steps of a fugitive 
 madman some distance further than any one else could 
 do ? 
 
 "We are not to be persuaded into a question of 
 your courtesy, whatever may be the temporary philo 
 sophical skepticism of your friend," Mr. Effingham 
 said, smilingly ; " and whatsoever gratifying revelation 
 you and the Colonel may have for our sympathetic cu 
 riosity to-morrow evening, need be burdened with no 
 apologetic property so far as your guests are concerned. 
 Shall I seem too inquisitive if I ask, whether the discov 
 ery you have made is likely to be of practical benefit to 
 Colonel Daryl ?" 
 
 " The man can t be alive yet, of course," interrupted 
 Miss Ankeroo, half question ingly, 
 
 "No, he has been dead for years, " the Doctor replied, 
 to the lady first. 
 
 "You ask no more, sir, than I should be happy to 
 tell you freely, and at once," he continued, addressing 
 the merchant, " were I certain on that point myself. 
 Daryl, only, can decide that, when he shall have seen 
 what I hope to show him to-morrow ; and it is because 
 of the bare possibility of my latest discovery not turn 
 ing out to be quite all that I am at least morally san 
 guine it must be, that I do not at once inform him and 
 you of its apparent nature. Were I as positive about 
 any earthly thing now, as I was about everything in 
 the whole universe a few months ago, you would not 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 427 
 
 find me figuring thus in what I know must appear like a 
 bit of mawkish theatrical mystification." 
 
 " Don t discredit yourself in that shockingly prosaic 
 way, Doctor Hedland," remarked Mrs. Effingham, 
 lightly. "A little romantic mystery was the one 
 thing needed to make our adventure in this most pic 
 turesque of villages poetically perfect. Keep the charm 
 unbroken for us while you can." 
 
 The mother might feel herself thus luxuriously sat 
 isfied with the immediate situation of affairs, but it 
 was not so with the daughter. If Abretta s wholesome, 
 elastic young nature could never again be as completely 
 subjective to parental dictation of sentiment and feeling 
 as before, it had bravely thrown off the depression conse 
 quent upon its first experience of independent action; 
 and the offended surprise with which the girl beheld the 
 so early reappearance of Colonel Daryl in her particular 
 world, had no morbid quality of romantic injury about 
 it. She was indignant that this uncongenial, overbear 
 ing Englishman, who had repaid all their spontaneous 
 and generous courtesy to his nephew and himself with 
 a coldly calculating invidiousness of interpretation al 
 most insulting, should presume, in this abrupt way, to 
 renew the association with her family, even though 
 unforeseen chance compelled them temporarily to be 
 neighbors. His unruffled manner of greeting them all, 
 this afternoon, as though his peculiar farewell to her 
 invincibly amiable mother had never taken place, ap 
 peared to Abretta the last extreme of arrogant British 
 assumption, and his special condescension to herself 
 made her every nerve tingle with silent resentment. 
 
 The Colonel easily read this feeling in the sparkling 
 and dilated black eyes, the lofty carriage, and con 
 strained taciturnity of his beautiful usurped charge, 
 and was provokingly tranquil in a pretence of deferring 
 
428 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 indulgently to what might be construed as merely a 
 passing mood of youthful caprice. His own deep-set 
 greyish-blue eyes twinkled slightly with occasional 
 covert amusement at her studiously monosyllabic re 
 plies to his casual remarks and explanations while the 
 walk to and through the village was in progress ; yet, 
 after all, the reigning expression of his countenance 
 was kind, and even singularly gentle. Like his old 
 friend, he seemed to be exceptionally subdued and 
 brightly genialized by some gracious local spell. 
 
 "Doctor Hedland shows no sign yet of inviting 
 you and me to share the confidences of his select little 
 party," the Colonel remarked, with a glance towards 
 the group, some twenty feet distant, a portion of whose 
 conversation has been quoted. 
 
 Without seeming purpose he had commended his cap 
 tive to a chair rather out of speaking reach of her kin 
 dred and his friend, though in line with them near the 
 verge of the veranda ; and stood beside it, leaning back 
 ward against the bamboo railing, in an attitude of easy 
 colloquial accommodation. She had acknowledged his 
 last observation by a momentary wistful look in the 
 direction indicated and the slightest perceptible nod of 
 resigned assent and he went on : 
 
 " You have understood, I presume, Miss Effingham, 
 that I am here upon the sudden call of my oldest living 
 friend, who, without a dream of seeking it, has recov 
 eredor so believes, at least, our lost clue to the fate 
 of the man who so long ago robbed my nephew and 
 myself of our birthright ?" 
 
 His eyes were upon her intently when he mentioned his 
 nephew ; and her own met them at the name with a calm 
 clearness of expression that would have been the perfec 
 tion of indifference but for the accompanying effortful de 
 fiance of delicately pulsing nostrils and constrained lips. 
 
UNWONTED aUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 429 
 
 "Yes, Colonel Daryl." were her words of reply to 
 his implied question ; although but the vaguest idea of 
 the Doctor s reason for having such company to meet 
 her parents and herself had hitherto found apprehen 
 sion in her fluttered thoughts. 
 
 "I came in great haste from Singapore; only two 
 days later than the Doctor himself ; and, being pressed 
 for time, did not go ashore at Kuchin. Otherwise you 
 would have had warning of my presence here ;" and 
 he smiled as he said it. "All the nicer formalities of 
 etiquette, however, must often be foregone in this rude 
 part of the world, or I might feel it obligatory upon 
 myself to apologize for circumstances imposing so much 
 of my society upon a young lady whose favorable regard 
 I seem, unfortunately, to have forfeited." 
 
 This would have been cruel, from a man of his years 
 to such a childlike creature, but for the tone of almost 
 fatherly remonstrance in which it was spoken. 
 
 "Please do not be critical with my want of tact," 
 said poor Abretta, nearly breaking down at the unex 
 pected challenge to defend her attitude of patriotic 
 was that it? hostility. "Mamma astonishes me by 
 the way in which she seems to take it for granted that 
 you wish to talk with nobody but myself ! Please do 
 not allow me to detain you another moment. With 
 such a wonderful scene as this to look upon, I require 
 no attention whatever, sir, I assure you." 
 
 Between embarrassment at what she felt to be a kind 
 of persecution inexplicably condoned by her own 
 mother, and a sense of humiliation in being compelled 
 thus to deprecate criticism of her ungraciousness to a 
 gentleman of the Colonel s age and dignity, the inno 
 cent girl realized that she had not the worldly experi 
 ence, yet, to play a haughty part with success. 
 
 My dear Miss Effingham," the Colonel retorted, 
 
 u 
 
430 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 gravely earnest, though without apparent cognizance 
 of her temporary agitation, " if I lacked the good taste 
 to appreciate you for your own sake, the fact that you 
 are daughter to a lady whom I respect and admire 
 beyond expression, would make it an honor and a pleas 
 ure for me to render you any attention in my power." 
 
 "Mamma is good to everybody." A safe filial tru 
 ism, and nothing more. 
 
 "And would never be otherwise. Her unmeasured 
 kindness to my orphan boy ; he coming to her as a 
 passing stranger ; the peculiarly delicate consideration 
 shown for his youthful freedom and inexperience by 
 every one in your Borneon home, Miss Effingham has 
 made me, no less than my nephew, a grateful debtor for 
 life. Edwin should be in Kuchin this very night. His 
 ship had reached Singapore, from Chinese waters, be 
 fore I came away, and was to cruise as far as Sarawak 
 immediately. I could almost regret that he is not here 
 with us." 
 
 Edwin s Uncle was skating on very thin ice in this 
 kind of talk ; and to what end he did not, perhaps, 
 realize^ himself. 
 
 " Will Doctor Hedland s discovery be of any value 
 to Mr. Belmore ?" asked Abretta, boldly meeting the 
 unwary turn of the subject, and giving it a generally 
 practical direction. 
 
 " So far as the Doctor has chosen to impart the ex 
 tent of that discovery to me, I infer that it will only 
 carry our desultory search for footprints of the Sam 
 bas fugitive one stage further on. It is not Doctor 
 Hedland s natural manner to practice mystification in 
 anything ; and from his seeming resort to it with my 
 self, in refusing to be more explicit as to what he thiriks 
 he has found out, until I shall have made to-morrow s 
 excursion with him, I suspect that he is far from con- 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 431 
 
 fident of its ultimate tendency to any practical result. 
 He has certainly ascertained that poor, mad Kuadh 
 went from Sambas up the Simpang-Kira river, skirting 
 around the southeastern boundary of this province of 
 Sarawak, to the Sadong and Simunjon country north 
 east from here. The circumstantial evidence on this 
 point, though curiously obtained, appears to be suffi 
 cient. But I fancy that my friend now has a theory of 
 Ruadh s presence in Sarawak itself at some period of 
 his wretched wanderings possibly in the very moun 
 tain cave whither we are to go to-morrow and hopes 
 that I may be able to recognize some justification of it 
 in what imagined signs of past human habitation he 
 may persuade me to join with him in detecting among 
 the hills." 
 
 " Nothing more ?" the girl asked; obviously disap 
 pointed, and, therefore, as obviously, taking a lively in 
 terest in the subject. 
 
 "What more could there be, my dear young lady ? 
 Nearly two-fifths of a century have passed away since 
 the maniac from the Batavia hospital was traced to 
 savage Sambas, and there totally disappeared. It is 
 now discovered that he penetrated onward into the 
 wilderness of the orang-outan and the wildest of the 
 Dyaks. As he was seen to have an oilskin-wrapped 
 object of some description, when he reached Sambas, 
 openly dangling from his neck by a cord, it is not to be 
 credited that he could carry that object presumably 
 my grandfather s missing papers even so far as his 
 unknown grave. Somewhere in the trackless wilder 
 ness of Borneo these papers and the hapless wretch 
 who stole them must be buried eternally out of all 
 human sight. Doctor Hedland s recovery of the trail 
 beyond Sambas, even though he may have traced it to 
 this very village, enlists my interest at this time merely 
 
432 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 because it is my duty to Edwin Belmore, as well as to 
 myself and my family name, to miss no accessible proof 
 of Kuadh s certain refuge and death in this island. If 
 we can prove the death itself, with any kind of legal 
 identification, our case in chancery may be brought to 
 a conclusion for, or against, us. Such is the poor 
 sum, Miss Effingham, of my nephew s hereditary pros 
 pects, and mine." 
 
 The Colonel s unreserved admittance of her to his 
 confidence, in this way, made Abretta forget that she 
 had been so lately principled to keep him at a very 
 chilling distance. When, therefore, Berner presently 
 summoned the whole party from their twilight linger 
 ing on the veranda, to dinner by candle-light in the 
 larger of the two cottages, she was as deep in conver 
 sation with her recent ideal of presumptuous English 
 arrogance, as were her parents and Cousin Sadie with 
 the regenerated naturalist ; and, . it having been 
 agreed that one table should serve for all during the 
 short visit, the ensuing quaintly appointed and varied 
 meal ushered in the evening most enjoy ably for every 
 body. 
 
 Night s curtain descended upon the village in the air 
 while this gustatory diversion was in progress. From 
 a domestic interior of primitive, barnlike simplicity ; 
 fantastically incongruous with the desperately extem 
 porized banquetting-board and its company ; the thin, 
 pale light of tapers brought from Kuchin defined, spec 
 trally, on the darkened outer atmosphere, the sagging 
 doorway and the opened flap of the palm-leaved roof. 
 On either side of the partitions across the veranda 
 gathered swarms of villagers for a while ; to peer and 
 wonder as sharply as they dared, and hold themselves 
 in readiness to disperse, instantly, should their at pres 
 ent invisible Orang-Kaya appear, to rebuke sucb covert 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 433 
 
 transgression of their pledge of abstinence from that 
 vicinity. 
 
 Pa Jenna did, indeed, mysteriously disappear from 
 his place and function of immediate magistracy very 
 soon after dusk, and in such seeming haste that no one 
 was deputed by him to restrict the freaks of popular 
 curiosity in his absence. It was hinted privately 
 amongst certain elders of the community, that a run 
 ner, secretly dispatched by him, some days before, to 
 Patusen, had come back ; and that, soon after this ar 
 rival, the Orang-Kaya summoned four favorite follow 
 ers and hurriedly descended the ladders with them, as 
 though bent upon an urgent mission. None, however, 
 believed that he would be long away. 
 
 It was past midnight, and a starless gloom enveloped 
 river, hillside, and now wholly darkened and sleeping 
 village, when the phantom of a very light canoe, noise 
 lessly paddled by two ghostly shapes, came stealthily to 
 the village lauding, from the direction of Songi. Softly 
 laying aside his paddle, and as cautiously lifting a long, 
 spear-like weapon from the bottom of the boat, the fore 
 most human shade placed two fingers across his lips 
 and produced a peculiar, wailing cry, like that of the 
 bird of omen known as the Kushah. Listening intently 
 thereafter, and hearing no response, he seemed to hesi 
 tate for a brief interval, and gaze questioningly into 
 the darkness above. Then the cry was repeated over 
 his head ; whereupon, lifting another object from the 
 bottom of the canoe, and placing it under his arm, he 
 waved a sign with his spear-like sumpitan for his speech 
 less companion to follow ashore ; and, in another mo 
 ment, the two were swiftly and silently climbing the 
 ladders up the steep bank. 
 
 - At the summit of this preliminary ascent, where 
 the greenly matted ground was nearly flai, for a short 
 
434 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 space, before the densely -wooded acclivity of the village 
 began, four other shadowy beings abruptly fell, without 
 warning word or slightest sound, upon the dim pair, 
 and held them pinioned and helpless in the suddenly 
 kindled yellow light of a large lamp of clay borne by a 
 fifth captor. 
 
 " Your life is at the point of my kris, Sejugah," said 
 the light-bearer, in a concentrated though low voice, 
 advancing his lamp nearer to the frightened face of the 
 captive with the sumpitan and the object under an 
 arm. 
 
 "Who has betrayed me?" quavered the disgraced 
 Dyak ; his eyes glaring with the wild openness of brute 
 fear, and his tremulous limbs making no resistance 
 when Pa Jenna s associates quietly took from him his 
 weapon, and a seeming bamboo case about fourteen 
 inches long. 
 
 " It is enough for you to know, wretched youth, that 
 I have heard of your visit to Patusen," said the Orang- 
 Kaya, sternly." But who is this with you? " he added, 
 moving the glaring lamp towards the cringing second 
 prisoner. 
 
 "Only a boy, who knows nothing of my purpose," 
 responded Sejugah ; and he continued, with more firm 
 ness of tone : "Whatever you may do with me, Pa 
 Jenna, remember that I have meant no harm to you. 
 Tuan Hedland has put a disgrace upon me forever, and 
 I meant to tell Makota that Amina had fled to Tuan s 
 house." 
 
 " Amina fled to me, fool ! and is now with my sister, 
 at Kuchin," rejoined Pa Jenna, glowering angrily upon 
 the traitor. 
 
 " Take the boy back to the canoe, and let him return 
 whence he came," was his order, after a brief pause. 
 Two of the Dyaks promptly disappeared down the side 
 
UNWONTED GUESTS IN THE VILLAGE. 435 
 
 of the bluff with the lesser captive ; and the Orang- 
 Kaya, handing his lamp to one of the remaining twain, 
 took in exchange the bamboo case before mentioned. 
 From the interior of the latter, with a readiness of 
 movement showing that the use of such an object was 
 not unfamiliar to him, he drew forth a polished spear 
 head, and held it, fitfully glittering, near the twitching 
 face of Sejugah. 
 
 "I had expected this, too !" he muttered, with sup 
 pressed fury, " and it shall go to him who will know best 
 how to pay for it." 
 
 Expecting instant death, Sejugah bowed his head in 
 despairing nervelessness. 
 
 "Stand away from him!" commanded the fierce bar 
 barian chief. 
 
 His two followers released the baffled captive, with 
 the same noiseless obedience as before. 
 
 "You are the son of my father s brother, Sejugah," 
 said Pa Jenna, slowly ; " and as your crime is known to 
 me before it has gone beyond yourself, I give you your 
 miserable life. Go, unworthy Illanaon ! but dare not 
 return to the village. Escape into the mountains while 
 night yet hides your form, and beware that you are 
 further than Gunong Tubbang before Tuan Hedland 
 goes there to-morrow, for I shall tell him of what you 
 would have done. Never show your face again in the 
 village, or upon the river, if you would not have your 
 head hanging in the head-house. 
 
 " Give him his sumpitan," he concluded, with a ges 
 ture towards the custodian of that weapon. 
 
 The recreant Dyak prostrated himself at his kins 
 man s feet, in token of tribal submission to the sentence 
 pronounced ; then hurriedly grasped the mercifully 
 conceded means of self-defence, and darted out of the 
 flickering circle of lamp-light into the outer, trackless 
 
436 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 darkness. His flying footsteps gave back no sound ; 
 but the remaining figures stood motionless until suffi 
 cient time had elapsed for his withdrawal beyond pos 
 sible sight or hearing. 
 
 Pa Jenna turned his eyes from the spear-head, at 
 last, to the watchful face of the bearer of the lamp, and 
 that shadowy mute extinguished the light. 
 
 4 Follow me." 
 
 At the water s edge the three silhouetted mystics of 
 the disembodying gloom were rejoined by their two 
 fellows ; and the five human outlines of the all-indis 
 tinct picture of starless night in the wilderness were 
 presently dim half-figures on a dimmer canoe, in swift 
 and silent flitting towards the lower point of the stream, 
 where lay moored the prahu from Kuchin. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 
 
 Iisr the morning, after a breakfast of fried fish, sea- 
 biscuit, coffee and fruit : to which the ladies came with 
 an air of not yet being the more at home in their novel 
 place of sojourn from having spent the night amid 
 surroundings as unluxurious as those of strolling 
 players in a rural granary ; Dr. Hedland and the 
 Colonel conducted the others, across a bridge, from the 
 veranda behind the village to the receding hill-top 
 beyond. A brief experience of such clambering amongst 
 tenacious rank vegetation as the gentlest explorers of 
 foreign heights must occasionally essay, brought the 
 party to a sunny little expanse of table-land, where the 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 437 
 
 object of attraction was a great vine, running in the 
 most graceful undulations over and between shrubs and 
 tree-stumps, for a distance of several yards, and bear 
 ing at short intervals exquisitely proportioned natural 
 vases, of vivid green daintily mottled with red. 
 
 " Bretta, my dear, a pitcher-plant!" exclaimed Miss 
 Ankeroo, clasping her hands in an ecstacy of botanical 
 delight. 
 
 A chorus of wondering admiration followed, as the 
 family gave minuter attention to this marvel of the 
 Equatorial vegetable kingdom, never seen by them 
 before. Its pitchers, nearly a foot deep, were largest at 
 the base, and then symmetrically narrowed before 
 flaring at the top into two leafy wings, or ears ; between 
 which an elastic, green lid came down upon a delicately 
 annulated brim. In each there was a quantity of water, 
 not looking exactly potable. 
 
 "This is very different from our pitcher-plants in 
 Virginia and Florida," observed Mr. Effingham. 
 
 "And handsomer than the specimens I have seen 
 growing in Ceylon ; although there is a red variety, 
 there, of uncommon beauty," said Colonel Daryl. 
 
 " Your American pitcher-plants," returned the natu 
 ralist, to the merchant, "are of the genius Sarracenia, 
 and, excepting, perhaps, a variety lately found in Cali 
 fornia, will not compare in extent and splendor with our 
 East Indian nepenthece family. The Australian water- 
 plant s pitchers, curiously elaborate in details, are not 
 more than a quarter the size of these before us. Botan 
 ists will tell you that plants of this species can thrive 
 only in bogs and swamps ; yet here you see one nourish 
 ing on a hilltop, and I have found the nepenthes on every 
 mountain known to me in Borneo, from the thirteen 
 thousand feet altitude of Mount Keeni Baloo, above 
 Bruni, to Santobong and the heights around us here." 
 
438 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " There appear to be dead insects in the water of 
 some of these pitchers," said Mrs. Effingham. 
 
 "Drowned there, madame, as they might have been 
 in a tumbler of the same fluid," explained the Doctor. 
 " And there you see a basis of many of the pleasing 
 fables of science about insectiverous, or carniv 
 orous, plants, which are supposed to set traps for unwary 
 flying and creeping mites, and then assimilate them." 
 
 "But are those fables, sir ?" inquired Miss Ankeroo, 
 in a surprised tone. 
 
 " My own investigations have never brought me one 
 positive proof of their truth," was the answer, in quite 
 the old, dogmatic style of the speaker. " In the 
 pitcher-shaped, or trumpet-shaped, ascidia of the Sarra- 
 ceniacece, or the nepenthece, dead insects are discovered, 
 as you see them here ; near the brims of some Sarra- 
 cenia a secretion like honey is found ; and whether at 
 tracted by the water, or the honey; be the pitcher 
 lidded, as in the nepenthes Rafflesiana at our feet, or 
 open, like the Venezuelan Hdiamphora ; it is assumed 
 that the deluded insects are artfully tempted in, or 
 fatuously press their way in, and so furnish fleshy sus 
 tenance to the treacherous plant. Practically, the 
 whole scientific deduction is from no stronger proof- 
 positive than you now behold in the drowned flies of 
 these pitchers here." 
 
 " Hedland, you talk very curiously, of late, about 
 Science, for a scientist," remarked the Colonel, with a 
 short laugh. 
 
 "I ve suffered something, myself, I believe, for 
 taking her to be infallible," responded the naturalist, 
 with a queer glance at his friend. "Were I a contro 
 versial theologian, my first point against Scientific Ma 
 terialism would be, that while it cants so glibly about 
 the puerile folly of taking any account in reasoning of 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 439 
 
 the Unknowable and Unthinkable, it assumes just 
 as much of the arbitrarily inferential, and insists quite 
 as much upon a blind faith in existences and processes 
 never yet found practically demonstrable to unpreju 
 diced thought, as the system of spiritual intuition that 
 it chiefly combats. I know this much from my own 
 experience, although never realizing it until within 
 the last month." 
 
 To all but Colonel Daryl this speech sounded like one 
 of the frequent irritable perversities of a man born a 
 chronic Oppositionist ; and even to the Colonel it had 
 a sound of capricious extravagance beyond reasonable 
 warrant of what he privately knew of the speaker s 
 later scientific disconcertion. 
 
 For the purpose of breaking the awkward silence en 
 suing, as the party turned to retrace their steps to the 
 village, Mr. Effingham observed that the flattened sum 
 mit they were leaving would afford an admirable 
 retreat for the villagers, in case of a sudden warlike 
 attack upon their homes below. The remark led to an 
 interesting dissertation upon the customs of Dyak war 
 fare by Hedland, who quickly regained his former un 
 professional affability; and the little botanical excursion 
 presently ended in a return to the cottages. 
 
 It was an hour past noon before the uneasy con 
 sciences of the two men destined for the apparently 
 very selfish adventure of the Cave would allow them to 
 desert their American friends. When the time of de 
 parture could no longer be judiciously delayed, not only 
 Daryl and the Effinghams, but also a throng of observ 
 ing villagers, were surprised to see Hedland lead the 
 way, riverward, down the toilsome vertical ladders from 
 the veranda, after his two appointed Dyak boatmen, 
 instead of making the usual commodious descent 
 through his own house. 
 
440 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "Is this special athletic exercise intended for the 
 entertainment of the ladies ?" queried the Colonel, as 
 they touched ground at the foot of the colonnade of 
 piles. 
 
 "The ladders are removed from my house until our 
 return which we must make as early as possible," the 
 Doctor said, hurrying down the short flight to the 
 water, where a light canoe with an awning awaited 
 them. He evinced no disposition to be more explicit 
 until the paddle-wielder at either elevated end of the 
 boat had taken his signal to push oif from the shore. 
 Then 
 
 " I have been rather troubled ever since we came back 
 from botanizing, Daryl, by the discovery of two disap 
 pearances for which I can not at all account. In the 
 first place, Pa Jenna, whom I had charged to keep the 
 village upon its best behavior during the visit of our 
 fair friends, and whose presence there in our absence 
 was to be my chief reassurance in leaving the place this 
 afternoon, has not been seen here since last night, 
 when a runner that he had sent out to track a missing 
 kinsman, is said to have brought him a message. In 
 the second place and this circumstance is far the 
 stranger Mr. Efnngham s Bugis prahu is gone, with 
 out a sign, from her mooring down the river." 
 
 "That is, indeed, extraordinary," commented the 
 veteran soldier, his countenance and inflection betray 
 ing surprise and some anxiety. " Does Mr. Effingham 
 know it ?" 
 
 " Not from me. I said nothing to him on the subject, 
 because the Bugis ray ah may merely have gone to an 
 anchorage at Leda Tanah, from fear of the prahu s 
 grounding at ebb tide. There was no time for me to 
 ascertain whether that is so, or not." 
 
 "It must be so," said the Colonel, with an air of 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 441 
 
 relief. "There is not much doubt that the boat will 
 reappear at the right place tomorrow morning, when 
 the family are ready for their return. Your thrifty 
 Bugis is not likely to run away from a liberal pay 
 master." 
 
 " Probably you are right," assented the Doctor, nod 
 ding thoughtfully ; "but I can t understand Pa Jenna s 
 conduct. This is the first time in more than a year that 
 he has absented himself from the village overnight 
 without some notice to me. However, there can be no 
 uninvited access to the place through my house, now, 
 and we may be back there, ourselves, before dark." 
 
 " Uninvited access ?" echoed Colonel Daryl, astound 
 ed. " Who on earth should attempt that sort of busi 
 ness here, in these days, Lawrence ? I have supposed 
 your village to be as free from every imaginable outside 
 danger as any hamlet in the heart of England ; now 
 that the whole province seems so devotedly loyal to 
 Brooke. From your tone of misgiving one might fancy 
 that we are guilty of something much more serious 
 than a breach of politeness, in leaving strangers alone 
 on that monstrous perch, even for a few hours only." 
 
 " If Amina, the runaway Dyak wife of Makota, had 
 remained in the village, I should have misgivings, in 
 deed," responded the naturalist, his brow clearing ; 
 " the girl s flight, under a man s protection, was such a 
 stinging dishonor for the savage Malay prince, that he 
 might have been expected to adopt any treacherous or 
 desperate means for her recapture, if she had finally 
 harbored anywhere else than under the invincible Ka- 
 jah s own wing at Kuchin. Possibly Pa Jenna s run 
 ner brought him word of some scheme on foot for the 
 girl s abduction, even from Kuchin itself, and he may 
 have felt compelled to go there on the instant." 
 
 "lam sorry that we did not delay this private expe- 
 
442 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 dition of ours until after the Americans were gone," 
 muttered Daryl, shaking his head doubtfully. 
 
 " That is a reflection upon my chivalry, for which I 
 shall expect an apology before the day is over," re 
 joined Hedland, with a jaunty air of fully recovered 
 confidence. " You persist in regarding this same ex 
 pedition, as you call it, Will, in the light of an under 
 taking to be shifted about from day to day, like a 
 Thames punting frolic. Am I the kind of man to drag 
 you summarily from your Singapore dress-parades into 
 these lonely mountains, and leave my own invited guests 
 so unceremoniously on the only afternoon of their visit, 
 for the sake of a matter of no immediate moment ?" 
 
 "I don t know," said his companion, stubbornly; 
 "you have been such a paradoxical being to eveiy- 
 body since the time of Edwin s sickness at The 
 Grove, that I should not be surprised at any freak of 
 yours now. We are old friends, and I may as well 
 speak plainly." 
 
 " Well, I ve only convinced your own sagacity of my 
 farther solution of a mystery of possibly great import 
 ance to you, though you, yourself, had given it up as 
 thoroughly hopeless ; and now I am conducting you to 
 make a personal test that, whether it justifies your 
 pains, or not, must exhibit myself to you, conclusively, 
 as something scarcely more dignified than an arrant 
 charlatan of Science. 
 
 " And you reiterate this to me in the tone of a good 
 joke !" Daryl exclaimed, staring as though doubtful of 
 his own apprehension. " Have you established the Ape 
 in this cave of yours as a fortune-teller ; and do you 
 experience rational misgivings as to my likelihood of 
 being satisfactorily impressed with his occult power 
 of assisting us to divine the fate of Kuadh ? Upon my 
 word, Larry, to those who do not know you as well as 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 443 
 
 the Rajah and I our American friends, for example 
 your changes of manner must seem like the vagaries of 
 veritable mental disease !" 
 
 "Oshonsee might not be wholly impracticable as a 
 solver of some mysteries," responded Doctor Hedland, 
 taking his friend s fretfulness with aggravating com 
 posure. "As for the variations of mood upon which 
 you so graciously congratulate me I should like to 
 know by what standard of rational consistency that 
 fine girl and her high-bred mother judge your latest 
 very friendly assiduity for their entertainment, after 
 such Macchiavellian diplomacy on your part, between 
 the family and young Belmore, of which they appear 
 to have more than an inkling at The Grove ?" 
 
 "Your retort is both fair and unfair," said Colonel 
 Daryl, discomfited for the moment by this unexpected 
 tu quoquc, Brute, of the philosopher. " It would be 
 useless for me to deny, that I find it simply impossible 
 to maintain any dignified consciousness of my own 
 rights and wrongs in the society of a woman so subtly 
 subduing as Mrs. Effingham. And I find, too, that her 
 daughter has a certain ingenuous fascination for me. 
 You are fair in charging that I show little consistency 
 to these ladies ; but you are also unfair, inasmuch as 
 my ultimate discouragement of my nephew s partiality 
 in that quarter, was especially precipitated by your own 
 emphatically expressed opinion of a certain trait in the 
 character of the head of the family." 
 
 "I said he was the proudest of men as thorough 
 an aristocrat as I ever met," confessed the naturalist, 
 dragging a hand idly in the placid water. " Whatever 
 in the expression was calculated to make you think 
 that your sailor-boy s romantic nature stood in danger 
 of contumely from any vulgar mercantile pride of 
 purse, may be assigned to my temporary irritation at 
 
444 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 having been overwhelmingly talked out of a field of my 
 own rash selection by the American. He maintained 
 his republican dignity sorely at the expense of my Brit 
 ish obstinacy. In fact, I have learned to like the man 
 greatly ; as I do the whole family ; and, in my opinion, 
 Daryl, it was much more the morbid assumption of 
 your own pride than any justification in the visible 
 character of your charming sister-in-law, or her hus 
 band, or her daughter, that prompted you to act as 
 though a lacerating indignity was obviously imminent 
 for another of the Daryls." 
 
 " That is plain speaking, in legitimate return for my 
 own recent exercise of the same friendly privilege, and 
 I shall not be hypercritical as to its justice," the Colonel 
 said, smiling faintly. " I may congratulate you, at any 
 rate, upon being no longer either so scientifically lofty 
 above all ordinary mankind as when the American gen 
 tleman and I were first in your village, or so combat 
 ively humble as when your spasm of self-depreciation 
 at The Grove set all our teeth on edge." 
 
 "I deserve your irony, old fellow not a doubt of 
 it," rejoined Hedland, though with no very penitential 
 change of aspect. "You have already heard me con 
 fess my sins of intellectual presumption. But my 
 spasm of self-depreciation, as you style it, was based 
 upon a supreme wretchedness of feeling that might 
 have excited the compassion of Miss Ankeroo her 
 self! In taking his final vicious leave of me, my 
 solitary Malay partisan in Borneo had practically 
 knocked to pieces my whole elaborate theory of the 
 origin of my immortalizing ape-Man ; yet there was the 
 incarnated enigma to mock me with the inexorable 
 certainty of his dreadful human approximation, and 
 subject me to the torture of perpetually recogniz 
 ing a seeming accursed truth in Nature, that I had 
 
TEE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 445 
 
 no longer a choice but to reveal in ignorant helpless 
 ness. 
 
 "I cannot adequately describe to you, "Will Daryl, 
 how pitiably humiliated I was, at being suddenly con 
 vinced that I must renounce my whole inductive theory 
 of the foreign origin of Oshonsee as explaining his 
 structural difference from the Borneon mias ; nor what 
 a reaction of miserable self-contempt and aversion to 
 the unhallowed Man-Goblin seethed in my tormented 
 moral nature, at the thought that I had merely blun 
 dered unintelligently upon a horrible hybrid ; one that 
 I could only introduce to the world as a living confuta 
 tion of every sublime spiritual pretension of Man of 
 his Divine special Fatherhood without having more 
 knowledge of the creature s true ethnologic relation 
 than the vulgarest showman ! Losing the mental in 
 toxication of sanguine philosophical theory, I was yet 
 forced to realize that the world held a frightful living 
 Blasphemy, against the possibility of whose existence 
 my natural mind, now freed from the self-delusions of 
 intellectual arrogance, protested with every instinct of 
 its own mysterious being. Can you wonder that I even 
 made one attempt to murder the object of my spiritual 
 abhorrence ? 
 
 " And such was my mood, Daryl, when I went to 
 Kuchin at your call. Before I left The Grove, our 
 noble friend, the Rajah, invited my confidence, and 
 controverted my despairing obstinacy of self-defensive 
 argument with every Christian principle. He believed 
 that I exaggerated the human similitudes of a perhaps 
 exceptional anthropoid ape, and persistently pressed 
 upon me that I should doubt the evidence of my own 
 limited senses, rather than proclaim what Man must 
 lose his Father s God, his Eedeemer, and his immor 
 tality of Soul, in believing. This construction I repelled 
 
446 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 by all the desperate resources of specious sophistry in 
 which the despiritualized mind is made adroit by eter 
 nal hidden conflict with human nature s ineradicable 
 moral instinct of innate self-respect. But it was all 
 sophistry, only. I felt that, while I was hottest in it. 
 Father Urban s famous thesis ran : Quid sit Jesuita. 
 nemo scit, nisi quifuit Ipse Jesuita no one knows what 
 a Jesuit is, but he that has been a Jesuit. The disin- 
 genuities of scientific positivism are appreciated only 
 by those who are familiar with the proportion of specu 
 lative deduction to absolute demonstration in advanced 
 physical science." 
 
 The tenor of this frank confession was not more sur 
 prising to Daryl, than the air of calm, philosophical 
 complacency with which it was delivered. He knew 
 not what to expect next, and said, rather weakly : 
 
 " I never much believed, Hedland, that any supposed 
 new discovery relative to the origin of our species was 
 likely to make you permanently a spiritual heathen : 
 though you might seem such for a while to those who 
 assume that progressive Science and stationary Religion 
 must necessarily be hostile to each other." 
 
 " As the} always must ! That is, some of the most 
 positive assumptions of what I may call modern scien 
 tific Materialism, are radically irreconcilable with every 
 essential inculcation of Christian faith. Prove by in 
 disputable physical demonstration that the Biblical 
 history of man s special creation is but a fiction devised 
 by man s egotism, and that will be the end of the whole 
 Mosaic and Christian religion. Could I have sustained 
 my theory of an ape-grown Man, the God that you and 
 I have known would be lost to us forever. All definite 
 conception of personal Deity must then, perforce, have 
 fallen back to human nature s mere innate spiritual 
 consciousness of a something remotely Supernatural, 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 447 
 
 to account for the creation of Nature in bulk ; and from 
 this retrogression to primitive superstitious vagueness 
 of instinctive recognition, a wholly new religious and 
 perhaps moral system must have been evolved, for the 
 re-civilization of thinking mankind." 
 
 " And during the interval, I suppose, the world would 
 have fallen into spiritual and moral chaos," said the 
 Colonel. 
 
 " Inevitably. It would have been a period of brutalized 
 anarchy, between the loss of one God and the finding of 
 Another," returned the Doctor, with earnestness. 
 "There is no real honesty in a pretension that the 
 theories of Science, or the speculations of Philosophy, 
 tending to this consummation, are reconcilable with 
 anything either historical, or spiritual and I might 
 add, or even moral in the Scriptural constitution of 
 revealed Religion. A strictly honest reasoner in the 
 battle must be either a Fichte, or a Schleiermacher ; 
 either in effect an atheist, or an uncompromising 
 champion of thorough orthodoxy. To be a Hegel, 
 mystificating between the two, however speciously, is 
 to act as the pendulum of a clock that is without hands. " 
 
 " And am I to infer from all this, Lawrence, that you 
 finally accept your phenomenal ape as the mere excep 
 tional freak of nature your friends have, all along, 
 believed him to be ?" asked the Colonel, wondering 
 more and more. 
 
 The Doctor smiled significantly: "That is a ques 
 tion you may answer for yourself before we leave the 
 cave." 
 
 "I don t understand you," rejoined his friend, with 
 emphasis and some impatience. "If the animal had 
 become simply a humiliating horror to you when you 
 came to us so apologetically in Kuchin, what more 
 amiable transformation have you found in him to make 
 
448 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 you such a later model of self-depreciatory good- 
 humor?" 
 
 " I have a new theory." 
 
 " And that is ?" 
 
 "What you are now about to see practically illus 
 trated ; for here we are at the foot of Gunong Tub- 
 bang." 
 
 Their canoe had, indeed, touched the bank, near a 
 point where a small tributary stream, called the Stabad, 
 enters into the left branch of the Sarawak. Through an 
 opening that had been lately cut in a dense thicket of 
 growths of the banana family, coming almost to the 
 water s edge, the naturalist conducted his friend to the 
 base of a small mountain, about two hundred feet 
 high, and conical in shape ; so seemingly steep in its 
 ascent that the trees and jungle upon it appeared to 
 bristle towards the sharp peak in a kind of nervously 
 timid rigidity. By pursuing a winding path, however, 
 the two men scaled a good half of the sharp acclivity 
 without excessive labor, and then found themselves 
 at the mouth of a circular hole in the ground, down 
 which led a bamboo ladder. The Dyak, Kalong, was 
 in waiting for them there, with one of Hedland s 
 fowling-pieces on his shoulder, and silently took the 
 lead in the descent. 
 
 The entrance, you see, only needs a trap-door, and 
 the spell of Open, Sesame ! quite to realize AH Baba s 
 cavern in the Arabian Nights," remarked the Doctor, 
 as they followed down the well-like aperture. "Don t 
 forget, now, Daryl, that our talk must be in French." 
 
 Thus reminded that the most philologically sensitive 
 of orang-outans was to be encountered in the subter 
 ranean retreat, Colonel Daryl had a final sense of 
 merely humoring some culminating visionary caprice in 
 this whole stealthy adventure. Nevertheless, by 
 
TEE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 449 
 
 coming, at all, without explicit understanding of the 
 full wherefore, he had morally committed himself to a 
 patient acceptance of whatever fantastical conceit 
 mignt ensue, and would remain philosophically passive 
 to any event. So thinking, and, in somewhat dreary 
 expectation of scrambling from the foot of the ladder 
 into an underground room relieved only by artificial 
 illumination, he was agreeably surprised to find the short 
 descent ending in a bracing atmosphere as clear as the 
 average woodland twilight. Instinctively looking first 
 for an explanation of this optical phenomenon, he saw 
 that the whole farther end of the cave was open to the 
 outer air; and, hurrying curiously thither, along a 
 flooring of fine, light sand, and at last between snowy, 
 supporting stalactites, gazed down, as from a noble 
 Gothic doorway, upon a descent so precipitous that 
 only one sturdy Areca palm had been able to 
 lift a top as high as the level on which he stood. 
 Obs ;rving that the trunk of this tree, so far as visible, 
 sustained one of those dizzy, elastic ladders of consecu 
 tive bamboos, rattanned to rising pegs driven into the 
 bark, whereby the Dyak bee-hunter mounts to his 
 honeyed harvest ; that, below, at the foot of the 
 declivity, a marshy wood stretched to the next hillside ; 
 and that the sky-sweep of the upper view was grandly 
 extended, he next turned his attention definitely in 
 ward. 
 
 The cave of Tubbang was about fifty, or sixty, feet 
 long, and rather more than half as wide. Its lofty, 
 arching roof, groined like that of a Gothic hall, sent 
 down a colonnade of stalactites, as already noticed, 
 where the rainy percolations of ages through the lime 
 stone above, had thus invertedly pillared a space reach 
 ing some distance back from the great outlet on the 
 precipice. Midway to the entrance a large mound of 
 
450 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 caked earth and rocky fragments, rife with sunless 
 vegetation, marked a heavy fall from the top of the 
 cave that had occurred in times long past ; and 
 upon this massive heap, sloping from high up on a 
 side, stood several mute Dyaks with clumsy wooden 
 spades, apparently waiting for orders to resume a task 
 of digging that was yet but little advanced. 
 
 "While Daryl was inspecting these greater features of 
 the place, his friend and Kalong approached, "with 
 the exiled ape following like an unrelated human 
 shadow at their heels. The step of Oshonsee shuffled 
 and dragged, as though inexpressibly wearied ; his 
 head drooped, his long arms swung listlessly ; and his 
 whole air was so spiritless that the Colonel s first 
 remark referred to it. 
 
 "Yes," answered the naturalist, "the poor fellow 
 has not been himself since I sent him here. The place 
 depresses him. Kalong must take him back to the vil 
 lage to-morrow. But, look at him now, Daryl ! Is he, 
 indeed, nothing more than a brute ?" 
 
 In the subdued light of the scene, with his head 
 bowed, his attitude erect, and his costume of Chinese 
 blouse and trousers, the creature looked mournfully 
 manlike indeed : so much so, that the the Colonel ex 
 perienced an unpleasant, if not shrinking, sensation in 
 looking at him. 
 
 The illusion is uncomfortably strong, I must say, 
 Hedland ; but perhaps it would be less so in broader 
 daylight. Why do you have him here, where every 
 condition is so contrary to the arboreal habits of his 
 species V He must feel like a bird in a vacuum." 
 
 " I had him brought here because he belongs to our 
 story." 
 
 "Ah, I thought so ! " 
 
 The Doctor smiled at his friend s disconsolate tone, 
 
THE CAVE GIVES IIP ITS SECRET. 451 
 
 and, after bidding Kalong to remain where he was, 
 took the Colonel s arm and moved briskly towards the 
 earth-heap. 
 
 "Must we climb this rubbish ?" queried Daryl, des 
 perately. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Forward, then ! The mias seems to be following 
 us." 
 
 " His instinct is finer than your reason." 
 
 " Thank you, Larry ; but I don t understand." 
 
 "You shall, presently." 
 
 A series of vigorous strides carried them to the sum 
 mit of the triangular mound, where it appeared that 
 much more lowering and levelling spade-work had been 
 performed than was apparent from the Colonel s ear 
 lier point of observation. Addressing them in their 
 own tongue, the naturalist dismissed the Dyak spades 
 men down to Kalong, for the time, and then pointed 
 his companion to an object showing against the stretch 
 of the cave s side, whence a large quantity of the fallen 
 earth had recently been cleared away. 
 
 " Can you make out what that is? I discovered it 
 in our first day s digging." 
 
 It was a heavy, oblong slab of greyish stone ; much 
 chipped and discolored at the edges ; set into the dark 
 surface like a mural tablet, and bearing on its face a 
 rudely sculptured half-relief of some animal. Two or 
 three feet lower down, portions of three roughly-hewn 
 steps of the same kind of stone had been partly un 
 earthed ; indicating the existence of a whole flight be 
 neath the remaining mound. Upon the topmost of 
 these the mias crouched himself. 
 
 " Why, here is a prize for an archseologist !" ex 
 claimed the amazed Colonel, tracing the outlines of 
 the sculptured figure with an eager hand. "How, in 
 
452 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 the name of all the Seven Wonders, came such a thing 
 here ? A tomb, I suppose." 
 
 "No; an altar," said the Doctor; "and as old as 
 the days of the Hindoos in Borneo. The figure is 
 intended to represent the sacred Bull, symbol of the 
 god Siva ; called Nandikesvara : the animal ridden by 
 Siva, and sent into the world as his avatar when he 
 was informed that men s worship of him was declin 
 ing. I infer that this altar belongs to the close of the 
 Hindoo period in this island, when the Mahometan 
 conquerors were beginning to persecute the religion it 
 represents. Perhaps this cave was a secret temple." 
 
 " You are confident, then, that the Hindoos once held 
 sway here ?" 
 
 " No thoughtful scholar who is familiar with the tra 
 ditions yet preserved among the older Dyaks could be 
 otherwise. This stone, alone, is enough to prove the 
 assumption incontestably. Before the ascendancy of 
 the mongrel Maky, this poor Borneo had splendid 
 princely courts at Bruni, Sambas and Pontianak." 
 
 "And this tablet and these steps were a secret altar 
 to Siva, you think," resumed the Colonel, musingly ; 
 the subject interesting him the more because he had an 
 ticipated nothing so tangibly practical. " Have you any 
 idea how long this fallen earth has covered the spot ?" 
 
 "Not more than twenty years, perhaps," answered 
 the naturalist. " But now," he added, drawing nearer 
 to Daryl, and passing a hand kindly over the brow of 
 the mias, "you ask a question leading straightway to 
 your own concern in the mysteries of this cave. Is the 
 vagrant priest s story, as I repeated it to you in Singa 
 pore, yet fresh in your mind ?" 
 
 "In every detail," answered Colonel Daryl, turning 
 to him, quickly. 
 
 " Then follow closely what I have now to say. Ruadh 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 453 
 
 O Shawnessy and his Panam wife were seen in the 
 Simunjon forests, after their Dyak marriage, and cruel 
 chaining-together, and transportation, as evil Antus, 
 to the mountains west of Simpang-Kira river. When 
 last observed in the mias country, they were accompa 
 nied by a younger creature of their own species, and 
 the maniac had yet the charm suspended from his 
 neck. The legend runs, that the Simunjon miases 
 worshiped the chained pair as Antus ; from which I 
 conclude that the unfortunate creatures made amicable 
 company with the orang-outans. It can only be con 
 jectured how long the Simunjon period lasted ; but I 
 should put it at somewhere about ten years, and for 
 this reason : Aided by the tribal authority of Pa Jenna, 
 I have persuaded an old Dyak of my village, who was 
 formerly at Leda Tanah, to confide to me what he has 
 known and heard of the to him supernatural history 
 of the Cave we are in. Applying common sense to the 
 crude mystical delusions of his story, I infer not only 
 that Simunjon miases were seen in the Sarawak valley 
 a quarter of a century ago, but also that your wretched 
 Euadh, and his hapless, brutalized family, had by that 
 time discovered and taken shelter in this cave." 
 
 Colonel Daryl stared around the shadowy scene as 
 though expecting to behold some startling proof of the 
 theory. 
 
 u This is about the substance of the legend," pursued 
 Doctor Hedland, quietly, " and you may see that it goes 
 back a number of years farther than Medlani s narra 
 tive of the Antus here : More than twenty years ago 
 an Antu Queen and her infant daughter were in this 
 cave ; and miases appeared in the woods round about 
 for the purpose of doing homage. A reckless young 
 fellow of the since-destroyed village of Leda Tanah 
 drank enough tuak at a festival, one day, to volun- 
 
454 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 teer an exploration of the fairy miases mountain home. 
 Enter the cave he did, indeed ; and came back, abjectly 
 terrified, with a story that he had not only seen the 
 Antu Queen and her daughter, but also two fearful 
 familiar spirits, lying on a bed of stone with stone pil 
 lows undoubtedly these steps before us, with their 
 curbings which are yet to be excavated and having a 
 chain between their waists."* 
 
 The Colonel started, and again stared expectantly 
 about him. 
 
 " Nothing was seen or heard again of these attendant 
 familiars of the chain, nor of the queen herself, after 
 the fall of this mass of earth on which we are standing 
 supposed to have been produced by Jovata s wrath. 
 As, however, the miases yet remained in the neighbor 
 hood, it was supposed that the little Antu princess 
 yet lived in the cave." 
 
 "But the two chained wretches ?" exclaimed 
 Daryl, showing much excitement. 
 
 " I believe that they lie buried at this moment be 
 neath our feet." 
 
 Colonel Daryl stepped involuntarily back a pace, like 
 one who had trodden unwittingly upon a serpent. 
 
 "You mean," he said, catching his breath, "that 
 we are standing upon the grave of Ruadh ! This is 
 magic, Hedland ; yet can it be so ? What absolute 
 certainty is there, after all, that the Sambas story of the 
 chain is not a superstitious invention ? Remember 
 Makota s fabrications to you about this infernal ape 
 here, because he fancied that you expected an unusual 
 tale ! Are we not both being fooled by a characteristic 
 Oriental trick of politic lying ?" 
 
 * In 1842, three years earlier than the period of our narrative, Rajah 
 Brooke saw this cave, exactly as it is here described, and was told the 
 legend of the fairy queen 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 455 
 
 "After a moment I shall submit a decisive test to 
 your own trial. Let us suppose, at any rate, that 
 Ruadh did find and inhabit this cave. There are 
 plenty of well-attested instances to prove that a mad 
 man can survive enough hardship and exposure to kill 
 half a dozen robustious sane men. And there is this, 
 also, about the insane they sometimes appear to re 
 gain their reason, or its semblance, at the approach of 
 death. Now assume that Ruadh, by a never wholly 
 extinguished instinct of human nature, dragged him 
 self and his wife and child to this final shelter, because 
 here are walls, and roof, and some human associations 
 of permanent safety. He may even have fled hither to 
 escape the miases, though they appear to have pursued. 
 One might fancy a certain dawning of reason in this 
 very movement. One might also fancy, that, when 
 near his end, the poor outcast victim of savage super 
 stition may have been impelled, by a final reasoning- 
 impulse, to take some desperate measure for the future 
 safe concealment of the treasure he had so long kept 
 hanging upon his breast." 
 
 "Hedland ! Hedland ! you are the boldest of theor- 
 izers!" muttered Daryl, in a bewildering conflict of 
 credulity and doubt. 
 
 Without more ado the naturalist grasped one of the 
 heavy Dyak spades left sticking in the truncated 
 mound, and advanced so sharply to the edge of the 
 begrimed stone step on which huddled the ape, that the 
 latter cowered away from him with a pitiful, low cry. 
 Up to this moment Doctor Hedland had remained per 
 fectly calm and deliberate. Now, however, his manner 
 became nervously excited, and he drove the blade of his 
 rude implement into a gritty crevice of the wall, at one 
 end of the sculptured tablet, with a hasty force indicat 
 ing a passionate sense of some crisis with which there 
 
456 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 should.be not another moment s temporization. Be 
 fore his equally stirred companion could form any idea 
 of his purpose he had thrown his broad chest against 
 the improvised lever, and so effectively pried the carved 
 stone from its support that it fell heavily upon the sod 
 den earth at his feet, revealing a square aperture of 
 stone that it had concealed. 
 
 "There!" he ejaculated, pantingly. "This time I 
 have brought it down altogether. I moved it only half 
 way when I was at it before. Originally it must have 
 swung on bronze pivots. A device for some kind of 
 priestly concealment, I take it. * * Something is 
 inside, Will Daryl. I have felt it with my hand ; sus 
 pected know what it must be ; but I would not bring 
 it out until you could be here. * * * * Well, why 
 don t you bring it out, man ? * * If I should be mis 
 taken !" 
 
 Moving like a somnambulist, the iron-nerved soldier 
 mechanically thrust an arm into the opening in the 
 wall, and, with an inarticulate exclamation, drew forth 
 an object of cylindrical shape ; perhaps a foot long and 
 not quite half as wide : black as charcoal, apparently, 
 and dangling at either end a bit of coarse, tarred 
 string. 
 
 " Quick ! Tear it cut it open !" fumed the Doctor, 
 hovering around his now thoroughly dazed friend like a 
 wizard chafing over a dilatory incantation. 
 
 Every eager effort to rip away the matted envelope 
 of the strange prize proving futile for his strong, though 
 not quite steady, fingers, the sorely fluttering Colonel 
 finally applied a knife to the task ; and, by several reck 
 less slashes at hazard through thickness upon thickness 
 of redintegrated oilskin, brought to view, in the dusky 
 light, a roll of papers. One glimpse, at the start of 
 their unrolling, was enough 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 457 
 
 "Well, you snail! i sit?" cried the naturalist, half- 
 mad in his impatience. 
 
 " It is, indeed, the Fortune of the Daryls ! " shouted 
 the other ; his voice breaking shrilly with excite 
 ment. 
 
 In the overwhelming emotion of the instant the 
 electrified speaker had forgotten his French obligation 
 and lapsed into English. At the sound, a hoarse, rasping 
 scream, "O-shon-see! O-shon-see! O-shon-see! "seemed 
 to break from the dim air immediately behind the two 
 friends ; and, simultaneously, the Dyaks at the foot of 
 the mound uttered outcries at sight of the frenzied Ape 
 flying down to and between them, in the direction of 
 the opening on the precipice. 
 
 " Kalong ! stop him!" roared Hedland, plunging 
 from the mound with a youth s agility, and bounding as 
 swiftly in pursuit of the fugitive as the swiftest of the 
 Dyaks. 
 
 On the very verge of the great doorway in the air 
 they overtook the frantic creature, and a brief, desper 
 ate struggle ensued, before the Doctor could drag him 
 from his probably intended leap to the tree-top beyond 
 the edge. 
 
 "Tuan! See! Sejugah!" cried Kalong, pointing 
 down the jungled steep. 
 
 A Dyak with a long weapon clasped in his left hand 
 could be seen, for a moment, darting from the foot of 
 the laddered palm, and then sliding swiftly down the 
 declivity, as only Dyaks know how to do. 
 
 "Sejugah, eh ? and with a sumpitan!" muttered 
 the Doctor. 
 
 Daryl had now joined the group, grasping his yet but 
 half-credited prize and looking wan with the tempest of 
 sensations he was still undergoing. 
 
 " So, your freakish Caliban,"" he began, with an 
 
458 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 attempt at rallying, " continues to be of more import 
 ance to you than But, look ! What ails him now ?" 
 
 The question was scarcely uttered before a visible 
 shudder passed over the frame of the Ape, and, with 
 an awfully human, gasping cry, the creature dropped 
 like a log upon the sanded floor. His startling face, 
 and then his whole body, were convulsed, as the quickly 
 kneeling Doctor lifted the poor head from the dust ; and 
 only Kalong seemed to have inspiration for the mys 
 tery s immediate solution. The Dyak summarily tore 
 away the blouse from the animal s hairy chest, and, 
 after a swift, comprehensive glance, pointed to a spot 
 near the heart. 
 
 "A jowing, Tuan Hedland, from Sejugah s sumpi- 
 tan," he said. 
 
 Hedland, his ruddy face turned a bluish white, 
 reached a hand to the spot indicated, and, after slight 
 manipulation, drew forth a small, pointed piece of 
 bone. 
 
 "See!" added Kalong, holding up what looked like 
 the shaft of a toy arrow, that he had found on the 
 floor. 
 
 "A sumpitan arrow*," groaned the Doctor; "and 
 the wretch intended it for me !" 
 
 " For you V" murmured his friend. 
 
 " Yes. I have been warned of Sejugah s enmity. He 
 lurked in yonder tree-top, to kill me when I should 
 appear at this opening of the cave, and the poisoned 
 dart designed for my breast has slain this poor fellow." 
 
 * The Dyak sumpitan is a weapon of hard wood, like a spear in appear 
 ance and having a lance-head fastened on it like a bayonet. It is bored 
 for a small dart, generally made of the thorn of the Sago palm and 
 poisoned at the point, or jowing, with the deadly sap of the Upas. A 
 puff of the lips will send this dart forty yards, and the point breaks in 
 the wound. 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 459 
 
 The Ape gasped once more, as in confirmation of his 
 master s despairing judgment ; a fearful convulsion 
 racked every muscle and nerve ; and then the upas- 
 dipped, brittle bone of the sting-ray had done its speedy 
 work, and Oshonsee was dead. 
 
 With colorless lips twitching uncontrollably, the 
 naturalist knelt speechlessly at first, as though incredu 
 lous of the tragic event. Retaining yet the splinter of 
 bone drawn from the shallow wound, he finally held it 
 near to his glasses, and said, slowly, and in a forced 
 voice : 
 
 "A barbed bone of the sting-ray. It was with the 
 envenomed spine of such a fish : genus Raia, order 
 chondropterigia ; that Telegonus, the son of Ulysses by 
 Circe, is said to have slain his father on the coast of 
 Ithaca. Makota s devilish hand shows in this again : 
 who else would have taught the dolt, Sejugah, to use 
 such a j owing for his dart-tip ? The upas-juice is white 
 yet, and has been drawn lately from the trees near 
 Bruni ; it does not darken even now. A scratch by a 
 pin dipped in such dew of hell would kill the strongest 
 man before 
 
 Not finishing the sentence, save by such a sigh as 
 interrupts the rambling soliloquy of fever, he softly 
 lowered the head of Oshonsee from his knee to the 
 ground, and spread his handkerchief over the face : 
 
 " He is gone I Faithful, cruelly ill-fated being, he is 
 gone !" Then rising to his feet, but gazing downward 
 yet "It only remains for me to give him the grave 
 from which he has saved his unworthy master. Yet 
 better so for him oh, infinitely better so I" 
 
 Colonel Daryl s own state of mind remained too 
 much discomposed by the marvels going before, to be 
 immediately capable of appreciating all the meaning of 
 the present anomalous scene ; but something like dis- 
 
460 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 may entered into the feeling of surprise with which he 
 observed actual tears on his friend s working face. 
 
 "I am truly sony, Lawrence," he said, "that your 
 wonderful solution of my fortunes could not have been 
 accomplished without the sacrifice of an animal so ex 
 traordinarily endeared to you." 
 
 They were a strange group in a strange place, with 
 the mellow haze streaming in upon them from a declin 
 ing sun, through the Gothic doorway in the air : 
 Heart-stricken philosopher and spell -bound soldier 
 standing at the head and the feet of the prostrate 
 figure; yellow-faced Dyaks, fantastically apparelled, 
 in an irregular circle around them ; and the glittering 
 stalactites colonnading all as in some cabalistic temple. 
 
 " William Daryl, are you yet blind to what this creat 
 ure was ?" asked the Doctor, speaking as solemnly as 
 a priest over the dead. "Have you felt no suspicions 
 of the truth, in being bidden here by me to find me 
 proved a vainglorious scientific charlatan ; and hearing 
 me confess to a new theory in place of the one I had so 
 much vaunted as impregnable ?" 
 
 "I pretend to no scientific knowledge, Lawrence. 
 What could the poor satyrus have been, but what he 
 seemed ?" 
 
 " Satyrus ? Yes ! and more ! Kecall what you have 
 heard of this cave s occupants. Twenty years ago the 
 falling earth from the roof entombed all but the young 
 Antu princess of the miases. Ten years later the 
 rebellion of Siniawin drove the miases from the Sarawak 
 valley, and they have never been seen here since. But 
 they did not take their princess Antu with them ; 
 for, at a later period, Sejugah killed her, for her head, 
 near the cave s entrance, and Makota s followers subse 
 quently captured this unhappy one at our feet, in the 
 same place." 
 
THE CAVE GIVES UP ITS SECRET. 461 
 
 The Colonel s attentive face revealed but indefinite 
 apprehension, yet, of what might be coming. 
 
 " More than once my theory of Ape evolving by con- 
 secutiveness of species into Man has been met by the 
 suggestion that it could be made to prove as well the 
 converse of the proposition Man s degeneracy into 
 Simia. I dismissed that idea as Unthinkable ! My 
 friend, it is the converse of my proposition that has 
 been, indeed, demonstrated to us at last!" 
 
 "What horrible conceit is this, again ?" exclaimed 
 Daryl, drawing instinctively back from the feet of the 
 dead. 
 
 " Think, man ! Think ! The strong mental impres 
 sions of one generation become the physical instincts of 
 another. Your Ruadh s last intimations of reason 
 were ungovernable terror of everything, in sight or 
 sound, associative with England ; a desperate clinging 
 to the precious subject hung from his neck ; an inextin 
 guishable devotion to his master. Do you recall how 
 Oshonsee went into paroxysms of fright at your sword, 
 at a red-coat, and alas for to-day ! at your English 
 speech ? Have I told you how I found him hiding 
 scraps of written paper in his bed, and how, after my 
 discovery, he would rest only at my feet at night ? His 
 facility in learning to drink arrack, and to smoke his 
 attack upon Dodge do you not recognize the nation 
 ality of these traits ? And then poor Kuadh s habit of 
 reiterating his own name when greatly agitated as 
 though to imply, possibly, a fidelity identified with it 
 hereditarily ; what else than an articulate survival of 
 this was O-shon-see ! O-shon-see ! O-shon-see ?" 
 
 " By all that is unnatural, Hedland !" cried his 
 friend, aghast, " do you actually mean to assert that " 
 
 " There was Once a Man in the genealogy of Oshon 
 see !" broke in the scientist, vehemently ; " There was 
 
462 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 once a man ; and as surely as that you and I stand here, 
 William Daryl, the creature now dead at our feet is a 
 descendant, in the third generation, from him whose 
 dying hand last held the fateful papers you have this 
 day regained !" 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 NIGHT S BRINGING FORTH. 
 
 THERE was no lack of entertainment during the 
 afternoon for the visitors left in the village. Pa Jenna s 
 unforeseen absence devolved the duties of master of 
 ceremonies upon an old Sibnowan Dyak, who had been 
 selected to act as his assistant in guarding the strangers 
 from undesirable intrusions, and affording them special 
 opportunity to observe all that was most curious and 
 interesting in the customs of the place. Deeming it a 
 high honor to be thus elevated in the sight of the all- 
 powerful "sirani," this simple-minded patriarch of 
 the unsophisticated air-dwellers was indefatigable in 
 exhibiting one native industry after another, upon the 
 veranda, before the two partitioned houses, for the 
 amusement of the family. Successive pairs, or trios, ot 
 women appeared upon this stage, with the appurten 
 ances of their respective avocations ; and the processes 
 of pounding rice out of the husk, with poles, in a wooden 
 trough ; beating cotton to a film with sticks, and then 
 deftly spinning it to thread ; plaiting mats and hats of 
 rattan split and dyed, and fashioning baskets of the 
 Nypa leaf, were studied at leisure by an audience in 
 itself serving as a source of far greater wonder to the 
 performers. 
 
 But when the shades of evening began to deepen 
 
NIGHT S BRINGING FORTH. 463 
 
 without bringing sign of the return of the absent 
 Doctor and his companion, and Berner and Ambrose 
 at last served dinner in tacit rebellion against farther 
 delay on that account, Mr. Effingham, at least, ex 
 perienced a certain uneasiness of mind. Situated as he 
 was, in this queer outpost of an unknown, savage land, 
 with three women and a child dependent upon him for 
 protection, the merchant felt vaguely perturbed at the 
 unpunctuality of him whose autocratic command of the 
 place had been the single condition powerful enough to 
 induce his coming thither in household state. Every 
 thing here was abnormal to civilized intelligence, save 
 by association with the immediate presence of the adap 
 tive naturalist ; so that even a casual lateness of the 
 latter in ending, by his reappearance, a lapse of respon 
 sibility impossible to be made good by any other than 
 himself, troubled the husband and father much more 
 than he cared to have perceived. Perhaps the knowl 
 edge that had accidentally come to him of a covert per 
 turbation amongst the villagers at their Orang-Kaya s 
 invisiblity, and of the mysterious withdrawal of the 
 ladders from the Doctor s house, had much to do with 
 his disquieted feeling. What particular significance 
 there might be in these circumstances he could not, of 
 course, know ; but he was satisfied that they were un 
 usual, and that was enough to make them vaguely dis 
 comforting to him. Had he been aware of the dis 
 appearance of his prahu he would have felt yet more 
 disturbed. 
 
 Expressions of surprise by the ladies at the tardiness 
 of the mystifying cave excursionists, and surmises as to 
 the real occasion of their unsocial adventure, evoked 
 only terse commonplaces from the gentleman, until his 
 wife, who had already given him two or three inquiring 
 looks, put her own sudden distrust into words : 
 
464 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "Richard, you have eaten scarcely anything. You 
 are not anxious about them are you ?" 
 
 Abretta and Miss Ankeroo also looked at him upon 
 this remark ; and the Cherub over his plate of fruit, and 
 Berner and Ambrose in waiting, gave equal heed to 
 the suggestive idea. All of them not even excepting 
 Cherubino, who had presumptuously penetrated into 
 the forbidden " Head-House " during the afternoon and 
 been fidgety with Dyak ghosts ever since were more 
 facile to be startled by any trifling jar in this unpre 
 cedented episode of their life in the savage island, than 
 they had hitherto fully realized. After the first excite 
 ment of thrilling novelty had somewhat subsided, an 
 unspoken, indefinite doubt of the perfect wisdom of 
 having trusted themselves so readily to such a problem 
 atical experience of barbarianism, had made each in 
 dividual, secretly, more or less thankful that the sojourn 
 was to end on the following morning. 
 
 "I can t say that I have any serious apprehensions 
 for the gentlemen, my dear," replied Mr. Effingham, 
 bestowing great pains upon the snuffing of the nearest 
 candle while he spoke. "In a voyage so short, on 
 water so shallow, through a country uninhabited, there 
 should be small possibility of peril for a philosopher of 
 medical accomplishments and a soldier of veteran 
 Indian experience. We must be patient for a while 
 longer, I suppose, that is all." 
 
 "Papa, Doctor Hedland was very positive that he 
 should return before dark," said Abretta, reflecting her 
 mother s questioning expression of face. 
 
 "No doubt he fully expected to do so, but has been 
 detained by some unanticipated exigency of science. 
 Possibly the paragon of Orang-Outans has not proved 
 so apt in divining the fate of Colonel Daryl s Pat-o - 
 the-wisp as his too sanguine discoverer had hoped." 
 
NIGHTS BRINGING FORTH. 465 
 
 If the merchant intended this for a reassuring pleas 
 antry, he was destined to disappointment. 
 
 "We are all nervous, Cousin Richard, and may as 
 well tell the truth about it," said straightforward 
 Miss Ankeroo. "No man with half a grain of real 
 common sense would have asked us to visit a rookery 
 of wild-men, where we are as helpless as so many 
 children, and then have left us so long to take care of 
 ourselves." 
 
 The wild-men you mention happen to be the helpless 
 children, in this case," rejoined Mr. Effingham, laugh 
 ing. " Backed by Berner and Ambrose, I would under 
 take so to intimidate the whole Dyak community 
 around us, that we might sack and burn the village 
 without encountering the flash of a single kris. Do me 
 the honor, Cousin Sadie, of believing, that even if our 
 scientific friends should remain away all night, you 
 would not be wholly without masculine protection 
 against any casual outbreaking ferocity of the human 
 sheep upon whose fold we are trespassers." 
 
 "That s sarcasm, I presume," answered the lively 
 spinster, quite willing to accept the brunt of the debate 
 for the sake of its mental diversion ; " but cannot one 
 feel uneasy in a strange situation without expecting 
 murder to come of it ? The way I look at the matter 
 is, that we are like a party of travelers on an unfamiliar 
 road, whose implicitly trusted guide has not returned 
 by nightfall from an undesignated errand of his own, 
 for which he craved but an hour s leave early in 
 the afternoon. We know of no particular danger to 
 attend our halt on the wayside for the night, yet none 
 of us is likely to have much mind for sleep during the 
 experience." 
 
 " Comparatively old travelers like ourselves, espe 
 cially after nearly a year s residence in Borneo, should 
 
46G THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 not be so nervous even as that. But are we not making 
 altogether too much ado over the mere lateness of two 
 gentlemen for dinner ?" asked the head of the family, 
 his mind relieved of much of its own preceding oppres 
 sion by the excitement of conversation. He cast an 
 amused look around the primitive tenement of their 
 occupation, with its ceiling of bamboos and palm- 
 leaves ; its floor like a wooden grating covered with 
 rattan mats ; its extemporized partitions and screens of 
 Nypa matting ; the table a mat, stretched between 
 bamboos and resting on shapeless canework chairs ; the 
 English candles from Kuchin flaring over wine-bottle 
 candlesticks, and the polished silver stars of a Tropical 
 night glinting through the open and mosquito-barred 
 flap in the roof. " We ought to be reminded by every 
 object around us," he added, addressing his hearers gen 
 erally, " that the civilized clock can be no consistent 
 criterion of good faith in an engagement for the table 
 where " 
 
 The sentence was broken by the hurried approach of 
 Ambrose from the net-curtained doorway, to say that 
 a Dyak outside asked to see " Tuan" instantly. 
 
 Had the arrival of a commercial dispatch been an 
 nounced, it would not have seemed much more foreign 
 to the local possibility of things than this peculiar per 
 sonal call, and even the well-trained Ambrose had been 
 flurried out of his usual deliberateness of professional 
 service by its suggestion of an extreme exigence. Mr. 
 Effingham responded to it, however, as promptly as 
 though it had come by his own appointment ; so imme- 
 mediately, indeed, as to leave time for neither word nor 
 look to his startled family ; nor even for the seizure of 
 his hat. For a moment he was heard talking in a low 
 tone to some one, on the veranda, with the pauses and 
 inflections of a speaker in a language awkwardly diffi- 
 
NIGHTS BRINGING FORTH. 467 
 
 cult to him, and then he appeared to walk away with 
 the quick step of an urgent occasion. Perhaps five min 
 utes had elapsed when he reappeared to those who had 
 silently awaited the event, and their first view of- his 
 altered face justified every apprehension that had kept 
 them dumb in his absence. 
 
 Mr. Effingham s countenance exhibited a pallor that 
 not even sickness had ever before given to it. His 
 forehead was beaded with the cold dews of precipitate 
 mental agitation, and at a sound like a confused, run 
 ning murmur of human voices, coming abruptly in from 
 the hitherto noiseless night-air, a flush passed over the 
 whiteness of his rigid features, to leave them even 
 paler than before. 
 
 " You are women ; but not weaker nor more timid, I 
 believe, than I could wish wife, and daughter and cousin 
 of mine to be," he began, looking from one to another 
 of the paling upturned faces, and articulating as with 
 shortened breath. "I feel that I may depend upon 
 each of you to behave with courage and good sense, 
 under a suddenly arising danger that seems to menace 
 us all to some degree. The Dyak who called me out 
 just now is the old man of our afternoon s acquaint 
 ance, and he thinks that there are enemies abroad on 
 the river below, who may design an attack on the vil 
 lage. There are certainly movements and sounds of a 
 suspicious character on the water, though the night is 
 too dark for me to discern distant shapes. A lad, in 
 duced to go some distance down the hillside to see more, 
 reports that a number of canoes, full of strangers, 
 coming from the direction in which our friends went 
 this afternoon, are practicing the usual native manoeu 
 vres to induce a demonstration by the village canoes. 
 The old Dyak thinks as nearly as my small knowledge 
 of his language allows me to understand him that the 
 
468 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 strangers are Gilolo Illanaons, in the service of a Bruni 
 Pangeran whose wife deserted him lately to take refuge 
 with her father, the Orang-Kaya of this place. They 
 are -supposed to have come for her recapture, though 
 neither she nor her father is here." 
 
 "Tell us all our danger, Richard, " entreated the 
 wife, who, with her daughter, son and cousin, had me 
 chanically drawn nearer to the self-constraining man, 
 and now laid a hand on his arm. " Keep back nothing 
 from us that you fear. Trust our intelligence as well 
 as our courage. Why are not Doctor Hedland and 
 Colonel Daryl here ?" 
 
 " If they have not been surprised in their cave, the 
 river must be blockaded against their return. If they 
 carried any firearms with them they may be safe yet. 
 
 " I will talk as unreservedly to you on the subject, 
 my dears, as I would to as many brave men," continued 
 Mr. Effingham, speaking more firmly and rapidly, 
 though evidently with every nerve yet on edge for the 
 least new sound from without. " Come closer, Berner 
 and Ambrose ; you have both heard what I have been 
 saying, and must listen attentively to what remains to 
 be said. The ladies are true grit, you see, and if we three 
 men find it necessary to give the enemy a wholesome 
 warning or two with Dr. Hedland s fowling-pieces and 
 my own, there will be no crying nor fainting at the noise. 
 
 The Swiss major-domo s ordinarily rubicund counte 
 nance was colorless and solemn, and around the negro s 
 mouth, nostrils and lower eyelids purplish-white tints 
 appeared ; but neither man exhibited any tremulous- 
 ness. 
 
 "I ll do my duty, sir," said Berner, and Ambrose 
 made a gesture of concurrence. 
 
 "Papa, you will not go down to the river?" whis 
 pered his daughter, breathlessly. 
 
NIGHT S BRINGING FORTH. 469 
 
 "Are there no pistols we could have V" asked Miss 
 Ankeroo. 
 
 U I shall resort to what arms may be found in the 
 Doctor s house, across here, if there is any need for them," 
 remarked the sorely discomposed gentleman, with diffi 
 culty suppressing a start at an outcry and a rushing 
 sound on the veranda, which had their momentary effect 
 upon the sharpened faces of all. " Now, my dears, you 
 are doing so bravely that I can leave you for a few mo 
 ments again. Berner and I will go and take observa 
 tions from the Doctor s house. Ambrose, you will take 
 my fowling-piece from the corner, yonder, and stand 
 sentry at this door until my return. Understand, all 
 of you, my dears, that there is no immediate danger up 
 here in the village. Every means of drawing our 
 natives into a fight by canoes will be exhausted before 
 any attempt is made to scale our refuge. The old 
 Dyak assures me that such is the invariable custom of 
 the villains, unless a village is caught sleeping. I am 
 confident that we three men, with our guns, can hold 
 the veranda until daylight, as they have no firearms 
 and entertain a deadly fear of them. Ambrose, let no 
 one pass the door, on any account. Come, Berner !" 
 
 Mrs. Effingham, pale and speechless, clasped her 
 arms about her husband s neck, kissed him, and turned 
 away. Daughter and Cousin succeeded her in the 
 same silent pledge of loyalty and courage unmeasured. 
 
 Emerging upon the veranda, Mr. Effingham and his 
 attendant found the whole extent of that aerial gallery 
 alive with the alarmed population, who, in the undis- 
 tinguishing starlight, seemed, alternately, to swarm 
 together in a dense, buzzing mass at one point or an 
 other, and then raggedly scatter, like a community of 
 ants flurried by the movement of some crippled larger 
 insect amongst them. Prom the deeper blackness of 
 
470 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 the watery pass below arose a confusion of sounds, that 
 might have been compared with the subdued chattering of 
 woodland creatures scarcely confident enough yet to give 
 full cry, rather than with any familiar clamor of human 
 voices. All of the lights in the village were obscured 
 by a closing of doorways and roof-flaps, excepting those 
 in the two partitioned cottages. 
 
 In a moment the old Dyak had come over the tempo 
 rary barrier across which the master and servant were 
 peering, and reported that certain of the younger fight 
 ing men rebelliously scouted his delegated authority, 
 and were trying to persuade their fellows to essay a 
 battle in their canoes. The tactics of a night-attack 
 were always the same : a comparatively few boats of 
 warriors appeared before the menaced place, to tempt 
 a sally by the besieged, while the main fleet lay con 
 cealed in the mangroves and reeds behind, to overwhelm 
 the duped defenders when they should have started to 
 pursue their apparently retreating foes. The young- 
 men who were advising a resort to the canoes must 
 have some traitorous understanding with the pirates ; 
 for they knew very well that such a movement would 
 almost inevitably end in defeat, and then leave the 
 depleted village at the mercy of the Illanaons. Would 
 not Tuan Hedland s mighty friend command them to 
 remain where they were ? Of him they were afraid, 
 and they would obey. 
 
 Partly by his own acquisition of Malayan, and partly 
 through the translations of Berner, who had become 
 quite a master of the dialects of Sarawak, the merchant 
 was able to understand this statement, and foreboded 
 a new vexation for his critical position from such a 
 sign of domestic disaffection. It was, however, with 
 the most resolute decision of manner that he assumed 
 immediate absolute commandership-in-chief, and au- 
 
NIGHT S BRINGING FORTH. 471 
 
 thorized the Dyak elder to announce, in his name, that 
 any man attempting to descend a ladder, unless so 
 ordered, should be shot instantly. 
 
 "Now, Berner, my man," he said, in a low voice, 
 when the Orang-Kaya s deputy had left them, "we 
 must make free with Dr. Hedland s firearms. I have 
 decided upon a system of action, for the present at any 
 rate." 
 
 Already the native herd on the far-stretching veranda 
 gave sign of being affected by the order conveyed 
 through the old Dyak ; for the dusky thronging seemed 
 now all to be along the inner veranda, or overhang of 
 the eaves of the houses. Thus no figures were left visi 
 ble from below, nor could any one attempt a descent of 
 the ladders without timely detection. 
 
 Over the little bridge and into the detached cottage 
 of the naturalist hastened Mr. Eflmgham and the taci 
 turn major-domo. Both were familiar with every detail 
 of the interior appointments ; for neither door nor win 
 dow was ever closed, and the Doctor s domiciliary 
 policy of Hie Argus esto, non Briareus, for everybody, 
 kept perpetually obvious to common sight, however 
 prohibited from touch, the full array of his domestic 
 possessions. Xo light was requisite to enable the in 
 truders to find a rifle and a fowling-piece, together with 
 appurtenances of ammunition ; and, thus armed, the 
 two men were presently standing upon the veranda 
 again, listening intently for any indication of farther 
 development in the sinister drama of the night. All 
 was as silent once more as though peace and sleep pos 
 sessed the whole dimly outlined scene of their observa 
 tion ; the timorous village host being mute, for the time, 
 and lost to casual sight in the dark shadow against the 
 range of houses, and the enemy on the deep-sunken 
 river apparently as cowering and inactive. 
 
472 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " This cannot last long," muttered the merchant. 
 "We must be prepared for some savage trick at any 
 moment." 
 
 "Perhaps it is all a false alarm," suggested Berner, 
 though not very confidently. 
 
 " It will not do to count upon that. Probably neither 
 side knows what to do. I suspect that the rascals, 
 below there, have looked for some sort of treacherous 
 co-operation from the village itself, and are waiting for 
 it yet." 
 
 "If the Doctor and the Colonel were only at home 
 with us now, sir, I think we d be equal to any number 
 of them." 
 
 "Until they do get back, or are heard from," said 
 Mr. Effingham, his secret misgivings about the missing 
 Englishmen growing heavier as he spoke, "we must keep 
 a particular watch upon the Doctor s house. It is the 
 weakest point in the place, from having those storeys so 
 far down the piles. By some lucky and very strange 
 chance the ladders have all been taken out of it since 
 morning. Stand here with your rifle by this railing 
 Berner, while I return to see what should be done about 
 the ladies. Keep your eyes steadily upon the founda 
 tion of the Doctor s house while I am away, and let 
 nothing distract your attention from it. If you hear or 
 see anything moving down there, call the Doctor s 
 name, loudly, once ; and if you are not properly an 
 swered, fire without hesitation. Do you understand ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 After casting one more anxious look around the 
 ominously quiet scene of darkness, the gentleman 
 shouldered the weapon with which he had supplied 
 himself, and, under a kind of desperately protesting 
 sense of the unreality of the situation, went moodily 
 back to his gentle ones. 
 
NIGHTS BRINGING FORTH. 473 
 
 They were rising from the attitude that imperilled 
 Christian womanhood ever bows itself to by primary 
 spiritual instinct, and if tears were in the eyes of 
 mother and daughter, they were drops from a tempest 
 that could bend, but not break, them. 
 
 "Well, Richard?" queried the wife, scanning his 
 countenance searchingly. 
 
 " Nothing is to be seen yet, and your own ears can 
 tell you that all sounds have ceased." 
 
 " What do you think of it ?" 
 
 "My impression is, that an attack is certainly in 
 tended. I have taken all the precautions my judgment 
 and limited knowledge of the probabilities can suggest. 
 The whole affair is incomprehensible to me : for I have 
 supposed every part of the Sarawak valley to be as se 
 cure from hostile intrusion as London, or New York. 
 Here we are, however, in a Dyak village about to suffer 
 a piratical night-assault, and must be ready to meet any 
 emergency with such coolness and common sense as we 
 can command. Get on your hats and wrappers, all of 
 you, so that if" 
 
 A shout from Berner, a brief interval of absolute 
 silence, and then the report of the rifle, caused Mr. 
 Effingham to dash through the doorway again ; and, 
 by a common impulse, requiring no verbal explanation, 
 the whole family hastened after him. 
 
 As though the shot had been a preconcerted signal to 
 dissolve the spell of silence and of night, its ringing 
 reverbations among the hills had not ended before an 
 appalling uproar of inhuman yells, crash of gongs and 
 clatter of wooden drums arose from the gulf; and, 
 simultaneously, the latter became redly radiant with 
 fires of bark soaked in cocoanut oil, alight at several 
 points on the little bluff near the water, and scores of 
 rude torches flaming on as many canoes upon the 
 
474 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 stream itself. With answering clamors the people of the 
 village rushed to the railed verge of the lofty veranda, 
 flourishing krisses, parangs, sumpitans, and other bar 
 barous weapons. Through the interstices of the great 
 palm-leaves down the jungled slope occasional glimpses 
 could be caught of wild figures in fantastical costume, 
 moving stealthily from the obscuration of one tree- 
 trunk to that of another ; and, between the vast 
 Nypas and over the mangroves along the bank, the 
 illuminated river was a maze of fiery flecks, alive with 
 perpetually moving and bellowing monkey-heads in 
 savagely furred and feathered caps, and tossing, brass- 
 ringed arms, flourishing a cloud of shields flashed with 
 bared kris and sumpitan spear-head. 
 
 The eldrich vision, the fiendish din, made the women 
 and child recoil involuntarily towards the shelter they 
 had left : their incongruous presences suggesting an 
 unwonted apparition of beings from a nobler world, 
 pausing in half-flight upon a bridge of awful shadows 
 spanning Hades and thronged with the lost. 
 
 " What did you fire at, Berner ?" Mr. Effingham 
 asked, mechanically ; scarcely realizing, in the distrac 
 tion of such an ominous spectacle, that the others had 
 followed him. 
 
 " Something moved amongst the piles down below, 
 sir. I called out, as you told me, and then drew trig 
 ger," returned the brave Switzer, raising his voice to 
 be heard above the stentorian clamor. 
 
 At this moment a noise upon the veranda itself, mag 
 nified by overwrought nerves into a frightful crash, 
 caused every eye in the thrilled group to stare fearfully 
 in that direction. Two dim shapes had summarily 
 forced a way through the barrier on the side opposite 
 to that which demarcated the main body of the village, 
 and came on with such headlong celerity as to run upon 
 
NIGHT 9 S BRINGING FORTH. 475 
 
 the very muzzles of the guns precipitately levelled at 
 them. 
 
 "Thank God, we are here in time I" 
 
 "In the devil s name, what can it all mean V" 
 
 Thus, simultaneously and characteristically, sounded 
 the two voices in the world which their amazed hearers 
 could have wished most eagerly to be greeted by, the 
 voices of the naturalist and his friend, the Colonel. 
 
 " Thank God, indeed, that we see you alive, once 
 more, gentlemen !" ejaculated the chief of the defend 
 ers, with devout emphasis. "I have apprehended a 
 worse disaster for you than has thus far fallen upon 
 ourselves. How did you escape those wretches on the 
 river ?" 
 
 " They stole our boat while we were in the cave. We 
 had to return by the mountains, and have been hours 
 about it," puffed the Doctor, fatigue and excitement 
 contending in his wheezy tones. 
 
 "The ladies must be got away from here immedi 
 ately," panted the Colonel, in hurried accents. "This 
 is no time for talk, gentlemen ; we must take them to 
 the hill-top, where they were this morning." 
 
 "I shall not leave my father s side," said a girl s 
 voice, high and resolute. 
 
 But farther conversation was prevented by a sudden 
 shrill shout of " Api !" Fire ! by the Dyaks, who, 
 like their Fabian besiegers, had abruptly discontinued 
 their outcries and gesticulations for the last two or 
 three minutes. 
 
 Leaning far over the bamboo rail at the edge of the 
 veranda, Hedland and the other men gazed anxiously 
 down through the palm fronds for explanation of the 
 alarm. 
 
 " By all the powers of Satan ! they are building a 
 fire under my house," exclaimed the Doctor. " Here ! 
 
476 THERE WAS ONCE A 
 
 where are the guns ? Quick, now ! give me that piece, 
 Berner I" 
 
 He snatched the weapon from the major-domo as he 
 spoke, and fired, without bringing to shoulder, into a 
 certain glow now showing itself between the roots of 
 the piles on which his too-many-storyed cottage was 
 uplifted. The American fired also, and again the air 
 resounded with discordant, furious cries. 
 
 " They keep at it yet, Lawrence," called Daryl, peer 
 ing down at the point of danger from the other side of 
 the little connecting bridge, with a cocked pistol in his 
 hand. "Ah, I see now! they have brought up a 
 canoe from the water, and are holding it, bottom up 
 ward, over their heads." 
 
 u That is an old trick with the villains, to keep off 
 missiles from above while they work," cried the Doctor, 
 handing back his gun to Berner for reloading. "Unless 
 we can get a bullet through the canoe they will not be 
 lieve that they can be reached. This may turn out 
 seriously, Mr. Effingliam," he added, somewhat flur- 
 riedly. " If the house is fired the village must go ! We 
 should lose no time, now, in hurrying the ladies to a 
 safer place, as a precaution ; for Halloo !" 
 
 Scurrying out of the house, across the bamboo bridge, 
 and to the verge of the veranda, in a reckless haste as 
 though the threatened fire was already at their heels, 
 came Cherubino and the negro, Ambrose ; the latter 
 swinging out gingerly before him, by his finger-tips, a 
 small keg, thrust half-way into a forced opening in one 
 end of which the lad was holding a twisted sheet of 
 flaming paper. 
 
 The Doctor s exclamation, the rush of small-boy and 
 African with this curious burden, the hasty launching of 
 the latter, with its projecting flame, over the veranda 
 rail, and a combined mad dash of Doctor, Colonel, Mer- 
 
NIGHT S BRINGING FORTH. 477 
 
 chant and Major-domo, with insanely outspread arms, 
 against the trio of ladies were coincident movements 
 of the same second of time ; the next second being sig 
 nalized by the striking of the descending lighted keg on 
 a projecting timber of the lowest floor of the detached 
 house, and an ensuing " burst of thunder-sound " that 
 sent a racking tremor through the whole village. 
 
 "That ll astonish them!" carolled the thoughtful 
 boy, in an ecstacy with a noise beyond his fondest 
 hopes, and capering delightedly in a momentary up- 
 welling of pungently sulphurous smoke. 
 
 "I do think it s blown every soul of them out of 
 sight boat and all!" announced Berner, who, rather 
 abashed at his precipitancy in the late electrical act of 
 chivalry, was the first back at the railing to observe the 
 effect of the gunpowder s explosion. 
 
 " You little child ! it is a wonder we are not all in 
 
 Eternity !" sputtered the naturalist, irascibly embar 
 rassed at having behaved with so little dignity in a 
 crisis. 
 
 When the ladies had been fairly whirled into their 
 cottage again b}*- the abrupt and instinctively protective 
 onset of their momentarily crazed defenders, Mr. Effing- 
 ham and Colonel Daryl remained long enough with 
 them to explain what had happened, and express them 
 selves quite bitterly upon the maddening capabilities of 
 boyhood. 
 
 Nevertheless, the boy s act was a fortunate inspira 
 tion. The explosion of the keg about half full of pow 
 der summarily ended the fire-kindling attempt, that 
 must otherwise, almost inevitably, have set the whole, 
 tinder-like village in flames. Apparently, too, the ter 
 rific detonation paralyzed the occupants of the cluster 
 ing canoes on the river : for their demoniac uproar was 
 completely hushed by the crash. 
 
478 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "The scoundrels will make a charge for us now it 
 is their last resource," growled Dr. Hedland, when his 
 two friends rejoined him. " That must be the meaning 
 of the commotion amongst them down there." 
 
 He advanced quickly to the barrier on the veranda 
 over which the old D} r ak had climbed, and, by a vigor 
 ous exertion of his powerful arms and shoulders, pushed 
 a part of it down. Since the explosion, the villagers, 
 no less startled than their enemies, had fallen back once 
 more, in panic-stricken confusion, to the entrances of 
 their houses, and the murky light from below shone 
 only on the bamboo railing at the outer verge. 
 
 " Have your guns ready foi the first head that ap 
 pears above a ladder !" 
 
 But, instead of the expected final desperate rush from 
 the canoes, that would have been attempted far earlier 
 if internal treachery had aided the attack, or the vil 
 lage had been caught asleep, it was seen that the torches 
 on the boats were being hurriedly extinguished, and 
 paddles began flashing where lights yet flared. 
 
 As the armed men bent anxiously over the railing to 
 watch this inexplicable flurry, a strange, voluminous 
 shout from a place obscured from them down the stream 
 startled them more than any sound they had yet heard, 
 and there followed instantly a sharp train of cracking 
 reports, under which every lingering torch went out and 
 a confusion of unearthly yells arose. 
 
 "Musketry, by Heaven!" exclaimed Daryl, hurry 
 ing past the broken barrier to a point where the down 
 ward view was less obstructed by trees. 
 
 " The savages cannot have muskets," suggested the 
 American, who, with Hedland and the two stanch 
 serving-men, had followed. 
 
 "The savages ? No ! but Englishmen!" cried the 
 naturalist, in a frenzy of excitement. "Hear that, 
 
NIGHTS BRINGING FORTH 479 
 
 again!" at another crackling outburst, attended with 
 lightning-like flashes in the nether gloom, fainter yells, 
 and unmistakable English cheers! "What miracle is 
 this ?" 
 
 Between bewilderment at the astounding change in 
 the scene, and an inexpressible sense of relief, at recog 
 nizing in it, by instinct rather than from immediate 
 visual evidence, an end of the barbarous perils which 
 had menaced them, the several members of the little 
 party became temporarily light-headed. Never after 
 wards were they able to recall exactly the order of the 
 events following the last volley on the so swiftly 
 redeemed river. There was a new vision of illumina 
 tion on boats and forms joyfully familiar to civilized 
 eyes, beyond the low-distant Nypas and mangroves ; a 
 noisy outpouring of the villagers again to the veranda s 
 edge with a number of flaming lamps, this time ; a 
 hurrying forth of the three ladies, in hats and wrap 
 pers, to be ready for the previously suggested retreat 
 to the hill-top of the pitcher-plants, should the new 
 tumult mean fresh danger ; and a shrill hurrah from 
 the omnipresent small-boy in answer to the reverberat 
 ing cheers of a body of sailors scrambling up the slope 
 amongst palms and bushes, 
 
 The first figures to reach the foot of the village ladders 
 were those of Dyaks, and Doctor Hedland dropped his 
 gun with an angry exclamation when their ascent had 
 revealed that they were the Orang-Kaya and his four 
 henchmen. 
 
 " Pa Jenna ! Is this your friendship for me?" 
 
 "See, Tuan !" returned the chieftain, drawing from 
 beneath his jacket a spear-head, and pointing at it with 
 an emphasizing forefinger. " This is what Makota sent 
 to the village by the traitor Sejugah. My runner from 
 Patusen told me of its coming, and I surprised the 
 
480 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 wretched son of my father s brother bringing it secretly 
 here in his canoe last night. Tuan knows its mean 
 ing."* 
 
 "It means that a rebellious uprising was expected 
 here," said the naturalist, in accents of surprise. " Have 
 we, then, rebels, yet, in Sarawak ?" 
 
 " Sejugah has friends and I know them !" answered 
 the Orang-Kaya, throwing a scowling glance in the di 
 rection of the listening swarm of villagers. "I knew, 
 Tuan Hedland, that the Pangeran s canoes would follow 
 fast after the spear-head, and that, with traitors among 
 us, we must have help from Tuan Besar," 
 
 "From Kuchin ?" ejaculated the Doctor, in added 
 amazement ; taking but mechanical note of many new 
 figures rising upon the veranda by all of its ladders. 
 
 " From Kuchin yes, Tuan. I knew^that the canoes 
 would be here to-night, and that here was not an hour 
 to spare. I went with my men to the Bugis prahu of 
 Tuan s sirani friends, and forced the Bugis rayah to 
 sail at once for Kuchin. There I saw Tuan Besar, and 
 told him all, and showed him the spear-head. He could 
 not come himself, for there has been a horrible murder 
 of his friends in Bruni by Makota, and he must sail 
 thither ; but he asked Tuan Officer and men from the 
 ships to come back with me." 
 
 "In other words," sounded a second voice, in Eng- 
 glish, as the speaker stepped out from a shadowy knot 
 of last-appearing blue-jacket s ; his epaulet gleaming in 
 the lamplight as he did so ; "in other words, the pin 
 nace and cutters of Her Majesty s Ship, Oressy." 
 
 * The timely discovery of this spear-head ended the last attempt of 
 Makota s adherents to excite sedition against Rajah Brooke in Sarawak. 
 Such an article, conveyed stealthily from one village to another and se 
 cretly displayed to the local insurrectionary characters, was, like the 
 Fiery Cross in Scotland, a signal for revolt in Borneo. 
 
FORBEARANCE IS THE DIGNITY, ETC. 481 
 
 " It is Edwin !" cried Colonel Daryl, starting forward 
 to grasp his nephew s extended hand ; while, under a 
 similar enthusiastically welcoming impulse, the natural 
 ist and the Americans moved eagerly after him. " My 
 dear boy, this crowns a wonderful day for you and my 
 self!" 
 
 " The beggars did not wait long enough after the 
 first volley for us to distinguish ourselves much," re 
 turned the modest Lieutenant ; innocently thinking his 
 uncle inclined to overrate his prowess on the occasion, 
 but not hesitating, in the general congratulations, to 
 retain Abretta s trembling hand as protractedly as 
 though she had extended it to him in special token 
 of his having rendered heroic service to her particu 
 lar self. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 FORBEARANCE IS THE DIGNITY OF MIGHT 
 
 THE consummate moral ascendancy of the Rajah of 
 Sarawak over the heterogeneous subjects of his princi 
 pality had no more suggestive illustration than was 
 presented daily by his court of Justice. Preceding 
 European dignitaries in Asia, whether of India proper, 
 or the Archipelago, had deemed it necessary to invest 
 their every function of authority with a princely, or at 
 least a military, pomp of circumstance, calculated to 
 impress the Oriental imagination with an exalted sense 
 of both splendor and invincibility in the power it em 
 blazoned. But the frank manliness of James Brooke 
 would have none of this ostentation of regal affluence, 
 
482 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 or might, in a dominion to which he had come in a 
 yacht, and over which he had ever disdained to rule by 
 the tyranny of arms. Pride, without vanity, is the 
 soul s honest instinct of justice to itself, and he had a 
 firm pride in abstaining as much from the sign as from 
 the reality of militant assumption, in a position glorious 
 to his ambition only as he had won and might hold it as 
 a fearless missionary of practical and beneficent Chris 
 tian civilization. Thus, his court was simply a tribunal 
 of democratic justice, wherein, while all due forms of 
 true magisterial dignity were strictly observed, and even 
 some of the native traditions of courtly ceremony 
 heeded, no imposing display of royal retinue, or trap 
 pings, met the eye. 
 
 At the farther end of the long, central saloon, or hall, 
 traversing the Government House ; upon English arm 
 chairs of the plainest practical pattern ; sat the Rajah 
 and two of his principal European subordinates Mr. 
 Ruppel, a tall, slender Englishman and chief of staff, 
 on the right hand, and Mr. Williamson, secretary and 
 interpreter, on the left. Ranged on either side of these, 
 in the orders of their respective ranks, upon a divan 
 against the wall, were the Bandhara, or traditional 
 Malayan vizier, the Tumangong, or Admiral of the 
 Port, and a Patinghi of the Dyaks. Before the Rajah 
 and his aides stood a table formerly belonging to the 
 saloon of the yacht Eoyalist. Half-way down either 
 side of the room extended a divan for the accommoda 
 tion of privileged visitors ; and the remainder of the 
 apartment, furnished only with a flooring of mats, lay 
 open to suitors and general spectators. Two members 
 of the sparse body-guard, in loose blue dresses and hats 
 of plaited rattan, stood guard at the door, while a few 
 others were scattered at intervals within to serve as 
 police. Tall windows, used also as doors and hung 
 
FORBEARANCE IS THE DIGNITY, ETC. 483 
 
 with silken portieres of the national yellow hue, ad 
 mitted light from as many short passage-ways, which 
 ran between flanking offices to the open veranda. 
 
 Such was the usual aspect of a practically imperial 
 court that, in less than five years, had redeemed a 
 whole province of twelve thousand souls and twenty 
 different tribes from the most brutalizing injustice that 
 ever degraded its helpless victims into mere soulless 
 beasts of burden. To European eyes it looked, at first 
 glimpse with the three Englishmen at the table, the 
 native magistrates on their divans, and the throng of 
 Malays, Dyaks and Chinamen, in their several native 
 costumes, in the body of the room like one of the fre 
 quent pictures of representatives from one civilized 
 power, or another, discussing treaties with semi-barba 
 rians in the rude council-chamber of some primitive 
 Asian state. 
 
 And such, too, was its appearance on the day after 
 the departure of the Bugis prahu and its American pas 
 sengers for the Dyak village ; save, only, that the sur 
 geon of the household, Doctor Treacher, sat in place 
 of Williamson.* 
 
 The Rajah, who had returned but that morning from 
 a visit to his opium plantation, nine miles away, knew 
 little yet of the news brought by ships arriving in his 
 absence, and was, therefore, unprepared for an episode 
 that interrupted the ordinary routine of his tribunal. 
 An aged Chinaman, with a too just grievance against a 
 Malayan creditor, had bowed to the floor in gratitude 
 for the judgment in his behalf, and another humble 
 suitor was coming reverentially forward in his turn, 
 when there pushed hastily through the motley crowd of 
 
 * This unfortunate gentlemen had lost his life shortly before by the ac 
 cidental overturning of his canoe. 
 
484 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 witnesses and lookers-on a woman, whose face was cov 
 ered, in the Mahometan fashion, and who led by the hand 
 a Malay lad in the fez and embroidered dress of a Pan- 
 geran ? s follower. 
 
 Hurrying in advance of the Chinaman s slow succes 
 sor, the two importunate ones prostrated themselves 
 abjectly, like true Orientals, with a passionate cry from 
 the w r oman 
 
 " Justice, great Rajah ! Justice !" 
 
 The Chief of Staff and the Surgeon exchanged swift 
 glances, and then furtively watched their chief, as 
 though anxious to note his manner. 
 
 At a signal from the Bandhara, two of the guards 
 stepped silently forward and were about to remove the 
 headlong intruders, at least until their hearing should 
 follow in due order ; but, at the touch of a hand on her 
 shoulder, the woman sprang to her feet again, dragging 
 the passive boy with her. 
 
 "Justice!" she cried again, extending her clasped 
 hands towards the table. " Justice," Tuan Besar, for 
 my murdered sister!" 
 
 Something familiar in the young Malay s face made 
 the Rajah gaze at him earnestly for a moment before 
 addressing the suppliant : 
 
 "Who are you, woman ?" 
 
 "I am Amina, the daughter of Pa Jenna. My sis 
 ter, Inda, has been murdered at Bruni by Pangeran 
 Makota !" 
 
 "At Bruni ? Makota, did you say?" asked the 
 Rajah, quickly, with another glance at the boy. " What 
 do you mean ? Is this youth from Bruni ?" 
 
 "Speak, Japper !" commanded the veiled figure, al 
 most fiercely, turning upon her hitherto passive com 
 panion. "You have that for Tuan b Besar which will 
 prove what I say ! 
 
FORBEARANCE IS THE DIGNITY, ETC. 485 
 
 Advancing timidly to the table, without raising his 
 eyes to the faces of those sitting there, the Malay boy 
 placed before the Rajah the signet-ring entrusted to him, 
 for such return to its original owner, by the devoted 
 Budrudeen. 
 
 "Justice, TuanBesar!" resounded the impassioned 
 appeal once more "Justice against Makota, the 
 Serpent, who has killed Budrudeen and Muda Hassim !" 
 
 An outcry rang through the court-room from the 
 native throng thus first hearing the murderous news 
 brought the night before by the ship Hazard ; and even 
 the foreign listeners, who had caught something of it 
 earlier, could not refrain from smothered exclamation. 
 
 With such a whitening of face and twitching of lip as 
 his officers had never known him to show before, 
 under any agitation, Rajah Brooke slowly raised the 
 ring that told him, silently, all the story of Makota s 
 revenge upon his friends, and placed it deliberately upon 
 the finger it had encircled before the fight at Bruni. 
 
 "What ships are here from Singapore, Mr. Ruppel?" 
 he asked, in English, of his right-hand companion. 
 
 " The Cressy and the Phlegethon came in last night, 
 3>-our Excellency, not three hours behind the Hazard. 
 
 He nodded, slightly, apparently in satisfaction at the 
 information, and when his face turned again to the 
 daughter of Pa Jenna, an iron sternness, as unwonted 
 as its previous pallor, had settled upon it. 
 
 "Why is it, Amina, that Japper has sought you, 
 first ?" he inquired. 
 
 " Tuan Besar was not here when he came from the 
 ship, and he heard that Inda s sister was in Kuchin," 
 replied the woman, like a speaking statue. 
 
 The Rajah fixed his flashing eyes upon the boy, 
 in final readiness for the ghastly story he already 
 grasped in its generalities. 
 
486 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " Japper, tell me all that you have to tell." 
 
 What that was the miserable tale of the Sultan s 
 imbecile superstition, Makota s audacious usurpation, 
 and the catastrophe ensuing need not be repeated here 
 in detail. At its conclusion the great English friend of 
 the Bruni martyrs arose summarily from his chair, 
 without a word, and, motioning for Mr. Kuppel and the 
 surgeon to follow, led the way to a private apartment ; 
 the native magistrates and spectators bowing low at the 
 sight, and the woman and the boy mutely disappearing 
 through the quickly dispersing crowd. 
 
 Never before in its history had the court been 
 allowed to experience any visible disturbing effect from 
 convulsions of the Borneo state. The present excep 
 tion informed the simplest cognizant mind, that its 
 special tragic occasion affected the Rajah more power 
 fully than had the most trying previous outrage of 
 piratical Shereef, or dastard Pangeran. Soon the whole 
 town was aware of the cruel drama that had been 
 enacted in the Sultan s disordered capital, and all the 
 able-bodied population took to sampan and canoe, for 
 curious observation of anticipated energetic goings and 
 comings between the Grove and the waiting English 
 vessels of war. 
 
 The tidings brought by the Malay boy had, in 
 deed, struck to the deepest heart of the ruler of 
 Sarawak, exciting in him a mingled grief and indig 
 nation that put all his power of self-control to the 
 severest test. The two only friends whom he had 
 found stanchly true among the native princes, were dead 
 at the treacherous hands of his most implacable enemy 
 dying because of their inflexible fidelity to him and 
 to his Queen. Noble Budrudeen, especially, had been 
 to him as princely Jonathan to the son of Jesse ; and 
 the traitorous foe hounding him to a terrible, if heroic, 
 
FORBEARANCE 18 THE DIGNITY, ETC. 487 
 
 death, was the man whose own venomous life the friend 
 of Budrudeen had spared for this I The puerile Sultan, 
 whose ignorant folly and witless timidity had suffered 
 the audacious miscreant to begin the great crime in his 
 very presence, had thereby broken faith, treaty-pledged, 
 with Great Britain, no less than with himself; and 
 there, on the waters of the Sarawak, were the British 
 armed ships wherewith Sarawak s Rajah and Eng 
 land s Agent to Borneo could, within three days, lay 
 blood-stained Bruni in ruins and erect an English 
 kingdom to the memory of Muda Hassim and Budru 
 deen! 
 
 "I shall start for Bruni to-night," said the Rajah, 
 when he and his two followers had arrived in a side 
 apartment usually devoted to the transaction of per 
 sonal business. u You will issue orders to that effect, 
 Ruppel, and represent me here in my absence." 
 
 " Can your Excellency be ready for such an expedition 
 so soon?" asked the chief of staff, with uplifted eye 
 brows. 
 
 " It is but a question of the time that it will take the 
 Phlegethon to get into sailing order again. She must 
 have refitted at Singapore, and cannot require many 
 hours to be in trim for going on," replied the Rajah, 
 pausing, with folded arms, before a window through 
 which the vessel he had named was visible. "I hope 
 she has no sickness on board, to cause delay. That is 
 what I desired to ask you about, Doctor." 
 
 "All well on board, I believe, your Excellency," re 
 ported Doctor Treacher; "and on tbe Cressy and the 
 Hazard, also." 
 
 " But surely you will not go with the Phlegethon, 
 alone ? She is a mere gunboat," urged Ruppel, forget 
 ting official etiquette in contemplation of what seemed 
 to him the last exaggeration of temerity. 
 
488 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " I would take no other ship than my own schooner, 
 were it not obligatory upon me to go no less as a repre 
 sentative of the British government than of myself," 
 was the resolute answer. " I tell you, gentlemen," con 
 tinued the Kajah, turning quickly to face them both, 
 and extending his clenched right hand in sympathetic 
 gesticulation, "I could wish to walk singly and alone 
 from the Sultan s wharf to the palace, and there take 
 by the yellow throat, before his doltish sovereign and 
 all the pangerans of Bruni, the base wretch whose 
 thrice-forfeited life I once spared, when he was my 
 prisoner on this very Phlegethon, scarcely more than a 
 year ago.* But Makota will not await me no hope of 
 that ! I shall have to deal only with the driveling 
 dotard of the imperial musnud, and should be less noble 
 than my cause to need a squadron s guns for the hum 
 bling of such craven impotence as his. Mr. Euppel, 
 you will see that the proper arrangements are made for 
 my departure. I perceive that the officers are coming 
 from the ships again to visit us ; we will return to the 
 hall." 
 
 Words were never multiplied by his subordinates 
 when he spoke in this decisive tone. Chief of staff and 
 Surgeon followed him silently back to the court, now 
 serving as a reception-chamber as it would be used yet 
 later in the day for a dining-room and there took their 
 parts in welcoming the captains and lieutenants of the 
 three latest men-of-war in the stream. 
 
 It was during this reception that the impatient Pa 
 Jenna finally gained the interview for which he had been 
 waiting several precious hours, and secured the eagerly 
 volunteered help from the Cressy that has been de- 
 
 * During the Expedition with Captain Keppel against the Sakarran 
 pirates, in August, 1844. 
 
FORBEARANCE IS THE DIGNITY, ETC. 489 
 
 scribed as proving of such timely value to the besieged 
 village. The exhibition of the intercepted, ominous 
 spear-head, and the Orang-Kaya s explanation of the 
 danger threatening the supposed hiding-place of Amina, 
 would have induced the Rajah s own leadership of a 
 rescue at any other hour than that in which the blood 
 of his slaughtered champions had just called to him 
 for signal remembrance. As it was, the prompt offer 
 of men and boats for the occasion by the commander 
 of the frigate, and Lieutenant Belmore s unhesitating 
 entreaty and acceptance to be the chief of the expedi 
 tion, relieved all minds of any serious dread for the 
 issue of an affair, that the firearms known already to be 
 in good hands at Leda Tanah should be almost suffi 
 cient to end at its beginning. 
 
 The Cressy s young officer and his sturdy blue 
 jackets were well on their way up the river with the 
 returning Bugis prahu, when the historic little Phleg- 
 ethon, long familiar in these and the Chinese waters, 
 unfurled her so lately reefed canvas to the cool even 
 ing breezes of the Sarawak, and started for the sea. 
 The two other ships of war at the anchorage joined in 
 the parting salute of cannon at the Rajah s wharf ; the 
 bosom of the stream was alive with native boats, whose 
 occupants English, Malay, Chinese and Dyak waved 
 fluttering, many-hued emblems of loyal speeding ; and 
 from the veranda of "The Grove," and the deck of 
 frigate and .prahu, burst a roar of cheers for Tuan 
 Besar the Great Man who was never greater than in 
 forbearing to be the greatest. 
 
CHAPTEE 
 
 BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 OUT of the shadowy coolness and fitful perturbation 
 of a year s sojourn amongst the mountains of Borneo, 
 into the sunny glare and commonplace activities of 
 Singapore, was an emergence for the American family 
 like that from one s curtained bedchamber, on a cloud 
 less summer morning, after a night s incalculable span 
 of all the dear delusions and mocking frights of dream 
 land, into the broad light and familiar realities of re 
 newed social existence. As in visionary sleep the most 
 closely assimilated characters of earlier waking hours 
 have their clearly distinctive individualizations, even 
 though the brooding of some common physical peril 
 may, ultimately, influence all to the one culminating 
 impression of dread ; so each member of the adventur 
 ous household had undergone a certain separate mental 
 effect from the dream-like Borneon experience, before 
 the final unison of sensibility to an impending actual 
 horror made all of one mind in the delight of awaking 
 in Singapore again. 
 
 Mrs. Effingham looked back upon her first meeting 
 with the husband of Caroline Dornton, and the ensuing 
 tacit conflict between a generously humble spirit of 
 reparation and an invincibly wounded Pride, in an ever 
 resuming reverie of self-questioning as to whether their 
 actuation of herself would, or would not, have been to 
 wiser effect if she had at once dared more ? Abretta 
 did not so much recall in detail her own so tardily 
 recognized growth into a feeling instinctively reserved 
 490 
 
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 491 
 
 from confession even to her tender mother, as secretly 
 and half-misgivingly wonder at herself that its vague 
 aggregate left her a heart-revealing child no longer. 
 Cousin Sadie thought of her year in the marginal wil 
 derness as an ideal experiment, happily remote from 
 censorious worldly criticism, to prove whether woman 
 can, or cannot, be more than man s complement in the 
 elevation of their common race ; and was privately 
 convinced by the result that Borneo, at any rate, re 
 quired missionaries of the male sex who, by the way, 
 might have wives. Mr. Emngham retained an impres 
 sion of vast commercial practical possibilities for the 
 great Island, in the immediate future development of 
 which he hoped to interest his fellow-countrymen and 
 have some share himself ; but he doubted that even the 
 English Kajah s noble work of redemption had yet 
 made even the beautiful Sarawak valley a place to be 
 unreservedly commended for the residence of Christian 
 families. Master Cherubino s memories were as of an 
 anticipated unexampled Menagerie, wherein, upon in 
 nocently sanguine visitation, every leading wonder of 
 natural history was found to be phenomenally scarce ; 
 and Berner and Ambrose agreed with their youthful 
 superior, that the concluding gratuitous display of fire 
 works and heroic naval demonstration were the most 
 successful features of the show. 
 
 But all these varying personal impressions merged in 
 a single conclusion from the episode of the Dyak village 
 that it was good to be back safely on the highway to 
 a civilized world once more ; and a compensation for 
 every misadventure, that Colonel Daryl and his nephew 
 had so marvellously regained their long-lost warrants 
 of a just inheritance. 
 
 For it had been told to the astonished and heartily 
 gratified family, before the departure from Sarawak, 
 
492 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 that Doctor Hedland s acumen had really tracked the 
 expatriating purloiner of the precious papers to the 
 cave on Mount Tubbang whither he had finally betaken 
 himself in his weary wanderings from Sambas, and 
 there discovered the last Will and missing title-deeds 
 of the Colonel s grandfather in the recess of an ancient 
 Hindoo altar. From the somewhat disordered condition 
 of things immediately following the attempt of Mako- 
 ta s emissaries on the village Sejugah s body being 
 found beneath the Doctor s shattered house with a rifle- 
 ball in the brain, and other ghastly indications occur 
 ring elsewhere up the stream it had not been deemed 
 judicious to take the visitors to the fateful cave itself; 
 but Hedland minutely recited to them Medlani s reve 
 lation ; modified only by making it trace the poor 
 madman, alone, from Sambas to Tubbang ; and was 
 sufficiently modest under the encomiums lavished 
 upon the ingenuity he had shown in attaining such 
 an amazing practical result from a clue so ambiguous. 
 The warped, embittered nature of the older of the 
 two men benefited by this surprise of fortune, has been 
 lately shown in an already curiously softened aspect. 
 Colonel Daryl could scarcely have explained to himself 
 exactly why, upon being thrown again unexpectedly 
 into the company of people whose every associative 
 suggestion had previously irritated him to a climax of 
 supposedly farewell defiance, he experienced a sudden 
 inclination to deprecatory peace-making. Truth to con 
 fess, he was unconsciously influenced thereto by nothing 
 more difficult of definition than the hope, howsoever 
 faint, that had been stirred in his breast by the last 
 discovery of the naturalist. He would not have 
 acknowledged to his own practical judgment that he 
 felt the slightest degree of actual faith in his old friend s 
 theory of the importance of the Arab priest s story to 
 
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 493 
 
 his pecuniary fortunes ; yet to his instinctive, even if 
 unwitting, sympathy with that very theory, was due, 
 unquestionably, his sudden disposition to resent less 
 acutely than before the asperities which fate had im 
 posed upon him. Then,, when he and his nephew were 
 in Singapore once more, with the Effinghams, after all 
 doubts of the final beneficence of Fortune for him were 
 dissipated, what more equably mild-tempered English 
 gentleman, to every one, than he ! 
 
 Of all the fallacies of sound that ever strove, by sheer, 
 insensate pertinacity, to overwhelm the honest verities 
 of sense, is there one more often asserted and less really 
 believed than that the acquisition of riches is an evil ? 
 To every rational craving of human nature this con 
 summation is so much the highest human good as 
 giving the greatest effectiveness to every good that 
 the uncontrollable sensibility of the loftiest spirits 
 to some phase of its temptation is perpetually induc 
 ing inconsistencies between professed principle and 
 involuntary practice, by which the saintliest types of 
 character are made to appear as practically sordid as 
 the worst. Is the spire of a Church the less a growth 
 from eager money-getting than the dome of a Stock 
 Exchange ? Are the benevolent ambitions of the mar 
 tial patriot and the light-giving sage altogether regard 
 less of that ultimate incidental attainment of the 
 universal potentialities of wealth which the narrow- 
 sighted creature of avarice makes the avowed sole first 
 and last purpose of his life ? What meaning has Phil 
 anthropy in pauper form ? Associate the noble terms, 
 Benevolence, Generosity, Charity exclusively with 
 empty purses and what beneficent signification would 
 they have for the improvident, the impoverished, the 
 starving ? And be it reverently said how unspeak 
 ably different would it have been for fallen mankind, if, 
 
494 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 in place of the Crown of Thorns, the incarnate brow 
 Divine had received from a believing and a loyal world 
 a Crown of Gold ? 
 
 Omnipotent wisdom allows earthly riches to be the 
 chief of rewards for earthly endeavor ; all other com 
 pensations being but impotent inutilities if wholly lack 
 ing them ; and the native nobilities which their posses 
 sion makes potent for a benign munificence in noble 
 natures, work immeasurably more good for the race 
 than can ever be malignly counterbalanced by the 
 meannesses, imbecilities and vices it intensifies in ig 
 noble minds. 
 
 Thus, a man whose youth had been profoundly embit 
 tered by a humiliating injustice ; a stern soldier whose 
 mature inner life had been perverted to seek welcome 
 distraction even in a seemingly hopeless quest : found 
 his harshest memories suddenly turning gentle, and his 
 sardonic cynicisms transmuting as quickly into the mel 
 lowest of social susceptibilities, upon coining at last, 
 almost as by miracle, into the long-denied, affluent 
 inheritance of his fathers. There was a generous bless 
 ing in the change that his whole nature tacitly acknowl 
 edged and was gratefully sweetened by. His nephew, 
 who had known only the casual abnegations which are 
 a day s despair and a month s disremembrance to the 
 young, was scarcely less surprised than charmed at 
 the genial transformation ; not apprehending what it 
 was for unsuccessful manhood, consciously past its 
 prime, first to see a future as apparently irredeemable 
 as the past had been fatally a mistake, and then to 
 have revealed to it, in a moment, that the kindly old 
 world held some good for it yet. His friends paused 
 not in their gratification at the change to analyze its 
 philosophy ; but certainly no one thought of attributing 
 it to a sordid soul s mere, vulgar delight in selfish gain. 
 
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 495 
 
 This much is said in explanation of Colonel Daryl s 
 altered manner, not only to the Effinghams, but to all 
 the world, during the last days at Singapore ; because, 
 with all his worldly experience and haughtiness of 
 usual bearing, he had really yet a certain soldierly sim 
 plicity of character that made his successive moods as 
 obvious as a boy s, and as devoid of any tact against 
 others misjudgment. If conciliatory and even, finally, 
 chivalrously assiduous to the mother and daughter dur 
 ing their common unexpected sojourn at the Dyak 
 village, he was unreservedly cordial with the whole 
 family when all came together once more in the City of 
 the Straits ; and even gladly accepted, for himself and 
 Belmore, the American merchant s invitation to a voy 
 age on the Comanche as far as Calcutta, whither it was 
 his professional dut}^ to repair before carrying his recov 
 ered treasures back to England, and where the family 
 desired to tarry for a few days on their own homeward 
 way. 
 
 " I like to think of it all as a fairy-tale, and give full 
 scope to the fancy that you and I are the fortunate 
 Princess and Prince in it," whispered Edwin to Abretta, 
 as the youthful pair, significantly thus neglected to 
 gether, walked slowly back and forth, side by side, on 
 the upper balcony of " The Straits." It was after din 
 ner, in the soft, amethystine twilight, and the pretext 
 to the elders, conversing within, had been, to look for 
 Biela s double comet. 
 
 " Only, in a fairy-tale there should be some malevo 
 lent giant, or spirit, or monster, to triumph in the 
 distressful part, and be signally overthrown at last," 
 murmured Abretta. 
 
 " That is an awkward deficiency," confessed the light- 
 hearted young sailor, " unless we can make something of 
 Makota, and that blundering attack on the village." 
 
496 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 " But that was not intended for us, at all, you know. 
 Doctor Hedland told Papa that the Illanaons would 
 never have dared to come into the Sarawak if they had 
 not believed that even he was absent at the time." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose it must have been so ; those yellow 
 fellows are surprising cowards when bullet or shot 
 rattles amongst them. But the horrible affair at Bruni 
 had emboldened them, and they might have managed 
 at least to fire your village on masts," suggested Edwin 
 Belmore, disconcerted to find the value of his own ex 
 ploit dwindling more and more. 
 
 " You came in time to prevent that," said the girl, 
 her tone more eloquent than her words. 
 
 " If we could only have caught them trying to scale 
 the piles !" ejaculated her companion, implying his keen 
 regret that she had not a more heroic service to recall 
 in that fervent voice. "Well, at any rate, none of you 
 came to harm, thank (Sod ! "We must not forget our 
 fairy-tale, though. We must have the regulation Evil 
 Genius for it. Poor old Kuadh might serve, in a way, I 
 suppose. But, no 1 he was a martyr to a crazed idea of 
 fidelity to his master s interest ; and that makes him a 
 kind of a hero : doesn t it ? Suppose we take Doctor 
 Hedland s Ape for our implacable Monster. " 
 
 "That seems to be a rather desperate resource," 
 laughed Abretta. " Besides," she added, more gravely, 
 " your Uncle shows almost as much sense of bereave 
 ment as Doctor Hedland, at the loss of the poor ani 
 mal." 
 
 " Do you know, I m half ready to believe that Uncle 
 Will is infected with the Doctor s heathen theory of 
 the humanity of orang-outans ?" said Edwin, reflec 
 tively. He shows such extraordinary feeling in mak 
 ing any reference to the curious death of the Ape in 
 our patrimonial cave. The Doctor and he arc both 
 
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 497 
 
 very sparing of words as to that bit of zoological trag 
 edy ; they barely tell how it happened, and then plainly 
 want to drop the subject. " 
 
 " I m afraid your fairy-tale must go without a Mon 
 ster, then." 
 
 They were pausing, face to face, at the end of the 
 balcony remotest from the combination of mat-hung 
 door and window, opening from the room in which were 
 their kindred. Faint stars sprinkled the dusky alti 
 tudes of the balmy evening hour ; the row of palms 
 before the house lifted dark fronds above the railing, 
 but not so high that the lights kindling on the shipping 
 of the Roads could not be seen far beyond them. 
 
 "Perhaps we are not thinking at all, dear Abretta, 
 of the really most remarkable part of our story," re 
 marked the Lieutenant, availing himself of the deep 
 ening shadows to gaze unreservedly at the charming 
 profile her face presented in its look at the lights. 
 " Felonious abstractions of Wills have been common 
 enough ; such a half-witted creature as Ruadh was far 
 more likely to have an unreasoning instinct for first fol 
 lowing his master to Holland with the stolen papers, 
 and then taking wild flight farther away from the Eng 
 lish overtaking he feared, than to have pursued any 
 other course, in the circumstances. To the Dutch 
 dependency of Java, whither mail-steamers and troops 
 were then frequently going, was his most obvious direc 
 tion of escape from Amsterdam ; and, quitting Batavia 
 under terror of British invasion, he would as naturally 
 reach the Dutch settlements of Sambas, in Borneo, as 
 any other immediately attainable refuge. I have not yet 
 heard from Uncle "Will all the details of the unfortunate 
 fellow s sufferings in the wilderness and discovery of the 
 cave ; but can imagine easily enough the natural logic 
 of that and the sequel. Then Doctor Hedland s chance- 
 
498 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 hearing of the Arab priest s tale of the Sambas Antu, 
 and all that, was only a lucky accident in our favor, 
 and his shrewd idea of having a part of the fallen roof 
 dug away was characteristic of his scientific habits of 
 investigation." 
 
 "But what could have become of the poor maniac 
 himself?" asked Abretta, in youthful unwillingness to 
 have no mystery left in the romance. 
 
 "He must have died, of course, dear. Uncle Will 
 and the Doctor don t say anything about that ; they take 
 it for granted, I suppose. As I was going to say, though, 
 all this business about the lost papers is less amazing to 
 my mind, than that Uncle Will should have been your 
 Aunt s husband and had such an awful time of it. Can 
 any one imagine such a man as concerned in a tragedy 
 of sentiment like that ?" 
 
 "Now I see where you are going to find the Evil 
 Genius of your fairy-tale," returned Abretta, quickly. 
 
 "No, dearest girl," said the young man, as quickly, 
 "I ll not be less just than my Uncle himself, who 
 says that his own thoughtless imprudence justly sub 
 jected him to all that he suffered." 
 
 Meanwhile the Uncle in question was saying to his 
 American friends, as they sat talking amicably together 
 in the rooms of the hotel : 
 
 " I shall not relinquish my profession. My whole life 
 is molded to it and I am too old for a change. Edwin, 
 however, is more adaptable to altered circumstances, 
 and will readily resign his commission to assume the 
 less precarious and more important duties of a man of 
 property. Our faithful friend the Governor, here, has 
 kindly tendered his good offices, in addition to those of 
 the Captain of the Cress?/, with the Admiral ; so that 
 my nephew may venture to accompany me at once to 
 Calcutta. When in England, I hope to negotiate an 
 
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 499 
 
 exchange for myself from the Indian service into that 
 nearer the ancestral home, where Edwin must repre 
 sent the family for both of us. 
 
 " You anticipate no legal difficulties, Colonel, in the 
 re-establishment of your rights ?" queried Mr. Effing- 
 ham. 
 
 " The lawyers here assure me that there can be none. 
 The sworn attestations of all the witnesses to the will 
 are sufficient to authenticate it beyond a doubt, though 
 I shall, of course, secure Hedland s affidavit." 
 
 " And your half-uncle s son ?" 
 
 " Has no claim whatever. But what the law does 
 not give him our sense of moral justice shall concede. 
 Edwin and I are heartily agreed upon that." 
 
 Only the two gentlemen and the ever undemonstrative 
 Mrs. Effingham were in the room at the time ; Miss 
 Ankeroo having retired immediately after dinner to the 
 private business-office of the hotel, to read some late 
 American and English newspapers by the light early 
 burning there, taking Cherubino with her. As, besides 
 being the American merchant s immediate host, the 
 proprietor of "The Straits" was also his commercial 
 correspondent, the whole hotel was, in a manner, per 
 manently free to the family. Cousin Sadie, at least, 
 with her usual practical philosophy, felt no hesitation 
 in acting upon Mr. Dodge s thoughtfully courteous sug 
 gestion, that the customary privacy of the retired little 
 apartment in question might afford her a convenient 
 resort at any time when she desired to write a letter, or 
 read anything, without the distracting adjacency of 
 young people with romances. Accordingly, in the pri 
 vate office she was now bestowed, for a fragmentary 
 half-hour s perusal of the last news from either side of 
 the Atlantic ; Cherubino coiling in a chair beside her, 
 and falling immediately asleep from the exhaustions of 
 
500 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 a day spent in every known activity of the boyish frame 
 to shorten life between meals. 
 
 Presently a deprecatory knock sounded on the door, 
 and, in response to the lady s summons of admittance, 
 there entered Mr. Dodge, bringing another newspaper. 
 
 " Excuse the liberty, Miss Ankeroo," pleaded the in 
 truder, with a bow, after a sharp, inquisitive glance at 
 the slumbering boy. "Looking over this copy of the 
 London Times just now, I found something that I think 
 may interest you, as an American. An account of the 
 distinguished success of Charlotte Cushman at the 
 Princess Theatre, in the play of Fazio. Miss Cush 
 man comes from our side of the water, you know." 
 
 "Very kind in you, sir, I m sure," the spectacled 
 fair one answered, rather stiffly and without any motion 
 to take the paper. " I know that there is such a person 
 as Miss Cushman, but take no interest in theatrical 
 affairs of any description." 
 
 The lively countenance of Mr. Dodge lost some of its 
 native confidence, at this chilling hint that his tact had 
 made an unfortunate mistake in forgetting that an ex- 
 missionary might not indulge an enthusiasm for the 
 drama. It was but a moment, however, before his 
 hazel eyes were vivaciously illuminated by a timely 
 second thought : 
 
 But Fazio is the work of a clergyman, you see 
 Milinan ; author of a History of Christianity and other 
 respectable games of that character. It occurred to me 
 that this circumstance might make the occurrence seem 
 less wicked," concluded the host of "the Straits," to 
 whom the apt literary recollection was really the inspi 
 ration of the moment. 
 
 "I ll look at the paper, thank you," said Miss An 
 keroo, with a barely visible relaxation at the corners of 
 her handsome lips. " I do sincerely wish, Mr. Dodge, 
 
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS 501 
 
 that, in leaving this part of the world, we could carry 
 away with us the memory of at least one serious speech 
 by yourself." 
 
 "You shall!" returned he, with startling assent, 
 simultaneously lifting into the air, by its arms, the wide 
 wicker chair in which reposed the small-boy, and with 
 as noiseless celerity depositing it again on the mat. 
 Seemingly a casual experiment to prove whether the 
 sleep of the child could sustain, unbroken, a movement 
 so repugnant to nature, the muscular effort was really a 
 device to ascertain whether or not the sleep in question 
 was but a shrewd simulation not always repugnant, by 
 any means, to the nature of a small-boy. 
 
 " You shall remember at least one serious speech of 
 mine, Miss Ankeroo," asserted Mr. Dodge, with indu 
 bitable earnestness, "and that is, that I am up to my 
 eyes in Love " the lady started" in Lover s Samuel 
 Lover s Handy Andy, you know," he hurried on, 
 with miraculous presence of mind, "to divert my 
 thoughts from the realization of the departure of your 
 self and party to-morrow. Nothing unbalances the 
 distressed mind like a comic novel. While you were all 
 in Borneo I had the comfort of feeling that something 
 of my country was near me ; it was like your being in 
 Boston, with myself in New York." 
 
 " I consider Boston the first of American cities," re 
 marked the gentle New Englander, flushing slightly. 
 
 " Oh ! you forget, Miss Ankeroo not quite the first, 
 is it? There s Albany, you know. First A , and 
 then B . Of course you mean alphabetically ?" 
 
 " It s of no consequence, sir," was the frigid reply. 
 "We shall all be gratified to know that you regret 
 us." 
 
 " Loneliness scarcely expresses what will be my por 
 tion, until the arrival of a cage of monkeys that I am 
 
502 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 daily expecting from the Archipelago," murmured poor 
 Dodge, in perfect good faith, leaning desolately upon 
 the back of Cherubino s chair. " There 11 be nothing 
 to divert my thoughts from melancholy. Can nothing " 
 desperately" induce you to remain in the East In 
 dies, Miss Ankeroo ?" 
 
 " Why, certainly not." 
 
 " Couldn t /offer any inducement ?" (Very timidly 
 and humbly for him.) 
 
 " Oh, not at all, Mr. Dodge." 
 
 " I mean, of course, in the way of first-class hotel ac 
 commodations," (presence of mind again) " with a fine 
 view of the sea and in close proximity to several ortho 
 dox churches. However, if your mind is made up, I 11 
 not dwell upon the merits of Singapore as a place of resi 
 dence for the season, and have the honor to bid you a 
 very good evening." 
 
 "With which extremely ingenious perversion of a real 
 sentimental crisis into an apparently commonplace illus 
 tration of a hotel-proprietor s naturally polite urgency 
 for continued patronage, Mr. Dodge retreated in good 
 order. 
 
 Early on the morning following these several symp 
 tomatic scenes of colloquy in a story now nearing its 
 close, a boat so small that it barely afforded space for 
 two passengers and a Coolie paddler, passed under the 
 last bridge of the city across the narrow, shallow, Sin 
 gapore Eiver, and entered between the weedy banks of 
 a suburb rolling in a succession of picturesque minia 
 ture hills. One of the passengers, in a blue serge suit 
 of European fashion and a Panama hat of wide dimen 
 sions, was saying to the other, whose coat and cap were 
 military fatigue 
 
 " Any one who knows the man would have expected 
 just such news. Attended only by the Captain and 
 
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 503 
 
 Lieutenant of the little Phlegethon; without so much 
 as a guard of marines ; he landed in that den of hyenas 
 as though it had been our old, hospitable Devonport, 
 and marched straight up to the palace. Of course that 
 snake of a heathen, Makota, had taken to the moun 
 tains at first sight of the flag in the river ; but who else 
 than Brooke would have ventured in that way into a 
 town of treacherous savages, where a dozen of his 
 friends had just been butchered in an anti-English coup 
 d etat f" 
 
 " I think he would sooner loose his own life than 
 avenge what he considers a personal wrong, by arms, 
 in Borneo," remarked the other. 
 
 "Not a doubt of it. Only against pirates and their 
 immediate abettors will he fight ; or to put down head 
 hunting. He might be assassinated on any day of the 
 year, in Sarawak, for all the precautions he takes to 
 prevent it." 
 
 " And what was the result at Bruni? " 
 
 " The Captain of the Phlegethon reports, that the 
 Sultan cringed at his rebuke in the most pitiably abject 
 style, and agreed to repair forthwith, attended by his 
 whole court and body-guard, to the graves of Muda 
 Hassim and the others, and render royal honors to the 
 injured shades. The moral effect of the ceremony, so 
 peremptorily compelled, is equal to a victorious battle 
 for the Rajah, they say." 
 
 " James Brooke is indeed a great man!" ejaculated 
 the soldier. " Saint and savage may unite in that title 
 for him." 
 
 Here the boat stopped, at signal from him of the 
 Panama hat, beside a knoll rising at the stream s edge, 
 and the Englishmen, stepping ashore, looked at each 
 other significantly. 
 
 "I brought him here with me, Daryl," said the 
 
504 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Doctor, in a low, deliberate tone, as they paused a mo 
 ment before ascending ; " because some of the villagers 
 could not have been trusted, in my absence, not to have 
 disturbed the remains for the sake of the head. That 
 barbarism is strong in the best of the Sea-Dyaks yet." 
 
 "I understand, Lawrence. But the others ?" 
 
 " They are safe until the Judgment under the bank of 
 fallen earth that gave them merciful sepulchre. Super 
 stition invests the cave now, more than ever, with 
 supernatural terrors, which will protect it permanently 
 from all native profanation." 
 
 " Poor Kuadh !" sighed Daryl, as they moved up the 
 knoll. "What a fate!" 
 
 The ascent was easy and short ; and on the summit, 
 between overshadowing palms and bordered by luxuri 
 ant undergrowth, was a newly defined mound, of that 
 length and breadth which tell ever but one sad tale. 
 
 " I wanted you to see where I had placed him, Will, 
 before you went away. Between you and myself rests 
 the dread secret of what he was. Here we will leave 
 him, midway between the Heathen and the Christian 
 worlds ; himself the awful link between Man as God 
 made him and the irretrievably fallen Man." 
 
 There was planted at the head a small granite slab, 
 such as the Chinese use in their burial-grounds, and 
 upon it, without date or epitaph, was inscribed : 
 
 O SHAWNESSY. 
 
CHAPTEK XXIX. 
 
 SHE TELLS ALL. 
 
 BOUND for the Bay of Bengal and the Hoogly, her 
 lofty towers of canvas snowy, or delicately shading each 
 other, in the full-orbed moonlight, and her long, dark 
 hull gliding rhythmically below, like the condensed 
 shadow of all, the stately Comanche traversed silvery 
 waters in Malacca Strait, with Penang Island on her 
 starboard and Point Diamond on her larboard side. 
 
 Thus far were the voyagers on their way to a port 
 where two of them were to part from the others ; and 
 each hour that lessened the distance thither had drawn 
 closer together by instinctive feeling, whether con 
 sciously or not, the uncle and nephew destined to homes 
 in the Old World and the family returning to theirs in 
 the Kew. 
 
 Occupying chairs triangularly placed near the copper 
 stanchions guarding the skylight of a cabined saloon 
 below, the merchant, his wife and Colonel Daryl enjoyed 
 the serene light and tranquillizing quietude of the spot 
 less after-deck, where the occasional plash of the cool 
 waves, thrown back in softened consonance by echoing 
 sail, but lulled their thoughts more luxuriously to what 
 soever came by casual circumstance to contemplation 
 or remark. - ^&i 
 
 "Why does not Cousin Sadie join us, my dear?" 
 asked Mr. Effingham, when he and the Colonel, by 
 request more than permission of the lady, had ignited 
 their segars. 
 
 505 
 
506 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "Now that Bino is disposed of for to-night, she 
 is at her Dictionary of Hindostanee, again, probably, 
 to be ready for India," replied the wife, half-laugh- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Our Cousin is always our first interpreter in foreign 
 places," said the merchant to his English friend. 
 " When others study maps, she devotes herself to 
 lexicons." 
 
 U A feminine counterpart of Hedland, in that respect," 
 remarked the Colonel; "he is an insatiable linguist." 
 
 " Is Doctor Hedland likely to return soon to Europe?" 
 inquired Mrs. Effingham. 
 
 "He proposes, I believe, madame, first to visit his 
 brother in Lombok, who is a great dignitary there." 
 
 "And his theory in regard to miases has gone the way 
 of Lord Monboddo s, I presume," said Mr. Effingham. 
 "After the cruel death of his ape I heard him say no 
 more on that subject. It was always curious to me, 
 that a man of his general practical tendencies and views 
 should become an enthusiast over a proposition having 
 no proofs which could not be construed as well to 
 demonstrate the converse of itself. And then, at the 
 first serious discredit to its speculative assumptions, 
 his whole theory apparently fell to pieces. At least, I 
 so judged from the suddenness with which he ceased to 
 talk about it." 
 
 "With all his eccentricities and positivisms of the 
 moment, Doctor Hedland is an invincibly honest man," 
 returned the Colonel, guardedly. "Let him perceive 
 that he has assumed too much as assured in any given 
 argument, and he will make no sophistical effort to 
 cover his retreat." 
 
 " He certainly prevented our retreat from the Dyak 
 village," rejoined Mr. Effingham, who was really not 
 much interested in what he supposed to have been a 
 
SHE TELLS ALL. 507 
 
 mere scientific aberration. "When you and he made 
 your appearance to us at last, that night, Colonel, on 
 the veranda, I had virtually decided that the time was 
 come for a retreat with my women and children across 
 the bridge to the hilltop. You may imagine the 
 strain upon my nerves from the consciousness of my 
 responsibility for the safety of so many helpless ones, 
 whom I had brought to such a barbarously unfitting 
 place, and whose ignorance of the ways of the savages 
 menacing us was scarcely greater than my own." 
 
 "In your place, sir, I should have retreated to the 
 hilltop even earlier, perhaps. Hedland and I fully 
 appreciated the critical nature of your situation with 
 the ladies, when we realized, from the disappearance of 
 our boat, and other signs, that hostile strangers had 
 passed towards the village during our stay in the cave. 
 "We wasted no time in our overland return, I can assure 
 you, although the whole way was over hills and through 
 pitiless entanglements of jungle." 
 
 " While you were so nervous for us, Richard," said 
 the wife, looking affectionately at her husband," all our 
 own anxiety was on your account." 
 
 " Of that I have not the least doubt, my dear. But 
 I hope never again to feel so painfully what it is to be a 
 husband and a father ! With myself, only, to protect on 
 such an occasion, I might not have been much dis 
 mayed at an obviously foiled attempt to surprise the 
 place, by wretches to whom our lofty position and three 
 good guns were really a fortress impregnable for direct 
 assault ; but, as it was, every yell from the river shook 
 my courage, and I did the good villagers the injustice 
 secretly to suspect that they might at any moment fall 
 upon us themselves. It is natural, if not generous, I 
 think, for us to suspect everybody as robbers when par 
 ticularly prized treasures are in our charge." 
 
508 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 This concluding commonplace of husbandly politeness 
 was, of course, intended to be no more than that ; yet 
 the Colonel seized upon it as a salient statement in the 
 ethics of guardianship. 
 
 " There you express a truth, Mr. Emngham," said he, 
 speaking more earnestly than before, " that I have had 
 reason to recognize from its evidence in my own later 
 feelings. Both yourself and Mrs. Effingham are aware 
 how dear my boy always has been to me ; but only in 
 this last month, since the goodness of fortune has made 
 him seem even more to me like a son in our close com 
 munity of material interests, have I come to understand 
 how much one may suffer from that jealous suspicion of 
 all the world s robber-proclivities which seems to be a 
 part of the intensest regard we can feel for individuals. 
 Coincident with my happiness in being able at last to 
 see Edwin restored to our patrimonial rights by my 
 side, and while I was feeling all a veritable father s 
 pride in the consummation, came yet a secret distrust, 
 and sting, with the sudden fear that now the world 
 would want to rob me of him ! 
 
 " Oh, my good friends," he continued, abruptly low 
 ering his voice, but with increased fervor of manner, 
 "I know now that there was full warrant in piteous 
 human nature for an award to myself that my inexpe 
 rienced, passionate youth thought inhuman ! I can 
 understand, I can sympathize in and unspeakably com 
 passionate, the fierce agony of a devoted parent, at an 
 untried, almost unknown stranger s intervention of 
 assumed superior claim between herself and the child 
 whose whole life had been her own fashioning, her 
 dearest fruition, her cherished source of every tender 
 hope for the future." 
 
 " Do you, then, indeed, forgive my Mother, Colonel 
 Daryl?" exclaimed Mrs. Emngham, in a voice and 
 
SEE TELLS ALL. 509 
 
 with an air which caused both men to regard her sur- 
 prisedly. 
 
 " More than that ; I justify Mrs. Dornton, madame. 
 In her jealous mother-love she could know me only as a 
 would-be audacious robber of her dearest treasure ; and 
 at her first challenge I fled. My pride it was that made 
 me thus dastard ; and it is pride that has kept me un 
 just to her memory, until now, when, myself feeling as 
 she felt, I can frankly confess that I was the sinner." 
 
 The scene at this moment was dramatic. An efful 
 gence almost equal to that of day exhibited the three 
 seated figures in attitudes of varying urgent expectancy 
 towards each other. Daryl sat rigidly erect, his segar 
 lying unheeded at his feet and his strongly-lined face 
 turned waitingly to Mrs. Efnngham. She, involuntarily 
 clutching her fan with both hands, leaned slightly to 
 wards him, in an obviously rising excitement at his 
 words. The merchant, holding his segar forgotten in 
 mid-air, watched both of his companions, inquisitively, 
 with an uneasy intuition of a crisis he could not divine. 
 From the distant forecastle came the occasional swell 
 of a chorus ; but for which the three might have 
 seemed, at the time, to be the sole human occupants of 
 the great, pallid snowberg of a ship. Close before them 
 arose an unrustling pinnacle of grandly curving sails, 
 and behind appeared the black opening of the cuddy 
 hatchway, like the mouth of a tenantless cave. 
 
 "You can say, sir, from your heart, that you have 
 not yet a lingering harsh thought against her who bade 
 her daughter renounce you, in bitterness of repentance, 
 to your face, and in her presence ?" questioned Mrs. 
 Effingham again, in a hurried, breathless voice. 
 
 "I do say it and feel it," responded Colonel Daryl, 
 firmly. " Wisdom has been given me to see that my in 
 considerate folly deserved all its punishment." 
 
510 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 Her face turned as pale as on the night of mortal 
 dread in the village, but attitude and tone were un 
 changed : 
 
 " Only upon such assurance, Colonel Daryl, could I 
 tell you what you shall now hear. Not even to you, my 
 Husband, could I before reveal that which in its confes 
 sion might seem to ask my own vindication at the price 
 of my mother s blame." 
 
 " Your own vindication, Julia ?" echoed Mr. Effing- 
 ham, incredulously. " You can never require vindica 
 tion to me ; and whomsoever else may deem it requisite 
 shall find myself sufficiently answerable." 
 
 She placed a hand upon the arm of his chair, at once 
 in acknowledgment and deprecation of the feeling he 
 had expressed : 
 
 " Bear patiently with me, Kichard. After hearing 
 what I may now tell this gentleman, you will under 
 stand my meaning better. 
 
 "Colonel Daryl," she continued, once more address 
 ing the Englishman, who watched and listened with 
 growing amazement, " you have believed that my sister 
 Caroline, at our mother s command, bade you leave her, 
 forever." 
 
 He bowed constrainedly : knowing not what to say. 
 
 " You have resentfully blamed you have generously 
 excused you have lovingly forgiven you can now even 
 justify her for so acting; because it was under com 
 pulsion of an authority that you finally acknowledged 
 to have been higher and more righteous than yours 
 though you were her husband." 
 
 Another inclination of the head. 
 
 " My sister did not commit that act." 
 
 "Great Heaven, madame ! what can you mean?" 
 cried the Colonel, in staring astonishment. 
 
 " Remember the darkened room ; the tearful face that 
 
SHE TELLS ALL. 511 
 
 never turned to you ; the sobbing accents. You were 
 deceived, Colonel Daryl. " 
 
 "Impossible! The voice the dress the words" 
 
 " Were mine ! or, rather, the dress, alone, was Caro 
 line s. Resembling my poor, distracted sister in voice, 
 in form, in many physical attributes, I impersonated 
 her ; because she being rebellious, unconquerable, 
 locked, an indomitable prisoner, in her room our 
 mother implored me peremptorily commanded me 
 to do it." 
 
 By a simultaneous common impulse the two men 
 looked blankly at each other for a moment. Daryl s 
 face lost its color, and his hands tightened spasmodic 
 ally upon the arms of his chair. 
 
 "Madame! * . . I am confounded !" But in the 
 next instant his countenance flushed and radiantly 
 lightened" I thank God that it was not my Wife !" 
 
 "Your pride was spared that blow. Caroline was 
 loyal to you in word, as indeed, to the latest hour of her 
 short life. Although you heard my voice alas ! and 
 I yours, neither of us saw the other s face in that un 
 happy meeting at Dornton Manor. I saw you first in 
 Borneo, scarcely a year ago ; and from that hour have 
 inwardly prayed I cannot describe how fervently and 
 humbly that God would so permanently soften your 
 heart to my mother s memory that, as one of her chil 
 dren, I need not fear, for her sake, to make this confes 
 sion to you, Colonel Daryl. You said that you forgave 
 her, when I knew that you did not. But tonight I 
 feel assured, at last, as by some influence even other 
 than your own generous words, that the time is fitting 
 for the only expiation in the power of a Dornton to 
 ofler." 
 
 Mr. Eftingham sat silent ; his mind in conflict between 
 an unselfish wish that he had been denied the hearing 
 
512 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 of what no prerogative of his should ever have imposed 
 the pain of telling, and a sympathy with both wife and 
 friend that made him glad to be tacitly united with the 
 one in a reparation due to the other. 
 
 "Madame," said the Colonel, in a tone of the pro- 
 foundest feeling, " you have extracted the last drop of 
 bitterness from the cup that I prepared for myself." 
 
 "You thought, that, when our mother asked the 
 kneeling girl before you, if she repented her great 
 folly ? it was Caroline who replied with the word Bit 
 terly / " added the lady, as feelingly. "When I, in 
 her likeness to your eyes, employed that meaning term, 
 its application in my own agonizingly reproachful 
 thoughts was to the deed of deception to which I had 
 suffered myself to be compelled, though not yet could 
 I be aware of its full cruelty to Caroline and to you. 
 The recollection has humbled me unspeakably all 
 through my life." 
 
 "A daughter s filial obedience, to save an inexperi 
 enced sister from what all worldly wisdom would have 
 joined parental judgment in esteeming but little better 
 than the throwing of her whole existence away, may 
 bear a less unsparing verdict, I think, my dear, than 
 the one you inflict upon yourself," said Mr. Eflingham, 
 quietly. 
 
 " I agree with you, sir, in that sentiment, perfectly," 
 the Colonel remarked, with a quick resumption of his 
 easier, cordial air. "But look yonder !" he continued, a 
 peculiar smile informing lips and eyes as he nodded in 
 the direction of something just then catching his obser 
 vation on the side of the deck opposite from where they 
 sat " there is the best solution of our problem." 
 
 Husband and wife turned their heads to follow his 
 glance, and beheld two youthful figures, side by side, in 
 a pause of a walk not previously verging upon the re- 
 
EPILOGUE. 513 
 
 tirement of their seniors. The girl, graceful and pic 
 turesque, was pointing animatedly to some object glanc 
 ing in the lustrous waves perhaps a silvery albacore 
 and the young sailor s handsome head almost touched 
 her shoulder in his eager promptness to assure her what 
 it was. 
 
 Only these fairer forms of expanding life, and san 
 guine hope, and future promise, were requisite, to take 
 up the remaining strands of a story first webbed in 
 broken hearts, across the cold Atlantic, a score of years 
 before, and blend them into a romance of fairest augury 
 upon the warm billows of the Indian Ocean. 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 IN one of the prettiest vallies among the southern 
 hills of the State of Yermont, nearly midway between 
 the fine scenery of Bellows Falls and the sunny Massa 
 chusetts line, there is a thrifty railway village, with 
 two summer hotels, three churches and a newspaper. 
 In the year 1851, this was an unbustling and cosily 
 embowered hamlet, philosophically satisfied with a soli 
 tary quadrangular white wooden house of worship, and 
 an as unpretentious and tidy a "public" to keep in 
 countenance the daily omnibus to the nearest station 
 for trains. But even this latter vehicular enterprise 
 indicated that the place was not wholly without human 
 interest for the outer world ; and, indeed, a certain 
 educational "Young Ladies Institute," whose broad, 
 snowy front, balconied and green-blinded, gleamed at 
 tractively through the noble maples of an overlooking 
 hillside, had acquired a celebrity of which the hamlet 
 was not a little vain. 
 
514 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 It is with this same academic nursery of the budding 
 mind feminine that we have now to do, as it appeared 
 on a cloudless June afternoon in the year mentioned. 
 
 A tall, bright-eyed gentleman, slightly foreign in 
 dress, arriving alone from the station by the omnibus, 
 made some general inquiries about the boarding-school, 
 at the small hotel, how long did the summer vacation 
 last ? when would the next term begin ? and so on 
 and then : having secured a room for the night, and 
 freshened himself from the dust and frowsiness of travel : 
 proclaimed his purpose of walking to the " Institute " 
 for a call. 
 
 By a neatly kept main road, bordered with rows of 
 fruit trees and pleasant fields of pasture, he took his 
 way, as instructed, to a bisecting narrower one, leading 
 up, between hedges, by comfortably undulating ascent, 
 to a wide iron gate, set in a substantial stone wall that 
 ended the thoroughfare. Seeing no bell-pull, nor por 
 ter s lodge, the stranger confidently admitted himself 
 through the unfastened gate to the smoothly graveled 
 carriage-road within, and traversed a gently rising 
 stretch of flanking lawn and brilliant flower-beds, until 
 it led him finally into the grateful shade of the patri 
 archal maples, through which he had seen the face of 
 the building from below. 
 
 Pausing a moment at the foot of the steps leading to 
 the lower balcony and principal entrance, he first sur 
 veyed the expanse of deserted piazza and closed blind- 
 shutters before him, and then, turning, was impressed 
 by the solitude of the outspreading garden-walks and 
 arbors of the ample private grounds of the house. A 
 dog in a sunny clover field some distance away was the 
 only animated object visible, for the instant, in the 
 whole gilded landscape ; and at that redeeming quadru 
 ped the visitor, after a hasty precautionary glance 
 
EPILOGUE. 515 
 
 around, could not refrain from hurling, vigorously, the 
 nearest convenient pebble. 
 
 The missile was not really intended to strike any ob 
 ject; its propulsion having resulted merely from the 
 irrepressible buoyant impulse of a human organization 
 of peculiar liveliness ; and when the clover-nosing dog 
 apparently failed to realize that anything had been 
 thrown in his direction at all, the covert thrower dusted 
 his hands upon his handkerehief with a subdued laugh, 
 and forthwith addressed himself to the door and bell 
 of the soundless " Institute." 
 
 A pair of eyes behind the bowed blinds of an unno 
 ticed window had witnessed the performance with the 
 pebble, and their owner s rather indignant surprise 
 thereat underwent a swift change to another order of 
 astonishment when, next, they remarked the face of the 
 visitor coming up the piazza. 
 
 " As sure as this world !" 
 
 There were voices in the broad hall, as of some one 
 amazedly recognizing some one else, and that some one 
 else cheerfully confessing the identity. 
 
 " And so you re up here, too, Ambrose, are you ? I 
 wasn t aware that they had Darkey tecture on the list of 
 studies for the fair sex." 
 
 " Now go way, Mr. Dodge ; that s just like you, sir ! 
 I m more accustomed to the country than the city, 
 and when the family moved into the town-house from 
 the Manor, last Fall, they let me come up here, sir, to 
 reg late a bit of gardening for the lady." 
 
 In another moment the smiling negro was presenting 
 a card to his mistress, in the cosey and shady little re 
 ception-room of the establishment that she had con 
 verted, temporarily, into a collector s office for the cooler 
 "making out" of bills for the parents of her absent 
 scholars. 
 
516 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 "Do allow me to come in, with the privilege of an old 
 friend," pleaded the unceremonious visitor, appearing 
 in the doorway. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Dodge ! can it be you ?" exclaimed Miss 
 Ankeroo, advancing from behind the busy-looking desk 
 drawn near the blinded window. " Well, this is truly 
 a surprise !" 
 
 " It wasn t in me to make it more gradual I wanted 
 to see you so much !" apologized the gentleman, shak 
 ing hands tempestuously ; and, after a few farther 
 amenities, lady and guest took chairs for more original 
 conversation. 
 
 "Upon my word, you re quite imposing in your 
 grandeur here, Miss Ankeroo," observed Mr. Dodge ; 
 thinking less, however, of the stately spaciousness of 
 the "Institute," than of the freshly blooming retro 
 gression to youth that the accomplished " Lady Princi 
 pal" seemed to have made since their last interview. 
 "Mr. Emngham, whom I met in New York on the day 
 of my arrival, yesterday, by the way, informed me 
 of your professional engagement and address, and I 
 took the liberty of making haste to catch you before 
 you should be taking your own vacation. At the 
 hotel below they told me that term-time was over 
 with you until September, and that I might not find 
 you visible for callers. Of course it would have been 
 the regular thing for me to forward my card first, 
 and wait for an invitation to follow , but you see I 
 didn t doit." 
 
 " Nor was it necessary, after the compliment of think 
 ing of me so soon, " laughed.the school-mistress, thinking, 
 in her turn, that a tuft of auburn hair upon his chin 
 rather improved the traveler s looks. "You certainly 
 would not have found me here one day later, as I shall 
 go to New York tomorrow." 
 
EPILOGUE. 517 
 
 "That is to be the date of my own return. You ll 
 honor me as your escort V" 
 
 "Oh, thank you, that will be pleasant. But do ex 
 cuse me, Mr. Dodge, if I allow the celebrated curiosity 
 of my sex to have its way at once. Have there been 
 any particular changes at Singapore, or in Sarawak, 
 since we were all there ?" 
 
 You wouldn t know Kuchin, again, he replied, com 
 placently ; "it s growing like a clump of bamboos. 
 They ve actually got roads and a few horses there, now. 
 That is, there s a quite civilized bridle-path, as you 
 might call it, made by laying down trunks of trees side 
 by side, from the town to the Rajah s opium farm, seven 
 or eight miles along the river. Then there s a church, 
 too, at last, for a Scotch missionary Mr. McDougal ; 
 and quite a body of European society. I ve got a little 
 new hotel myself there sort of provincial branch, you 
 know, of The Straits and Merton and Yon Camp 
 and I are speculating together, modestly, in antimony 
 and nutmegs." 
 
 "A missionary there, you say ?" sighed the lady. 
 
 " And his wife. Very nice people they are, too, 
 with a large congregation on the week-day evenings, 
 when they give magic lantern exhibitions of scenes in 
 the Holy Land and Paris. I ve not yet told you, 
 though," continued Mr. Dodge, in a lighter tone, "that 
 I went from Singapore to London before coming back 
 home, and had Colonel Daryl for a fellow-passenger 
 with me from Liverpool." 
 
 "Indeed! Then the Colonel is now in New 
 York?" 
 
 "Yes; for the first time, he tells me, since he and 
 his nephew crossed for Belmore s marriage with Miss 
 Effingham. I wouldn t wish for better company than 
 the fine old fellow is in these days ; and it s a complete 
 
518 THERE WAS ONGE A MAN. 
 
 course in high-toned gentility to hear him mention my 
 Sister-in-law, Mrs. Effingham. 
 
 " Did you see anything of the Belmores ?" 
 
 "When I reached London, early last month, they 
 had just come in to their house in the city from their 
 place in Surrey, and as I d sent my card to them in the 
 country it was a few days before they found me out. 
 Then Belmore called at my hotel, ami took me to see 
 the wife and two little ones. I doubt if there s another 
 woman in London as handsome as our former Miss 
 Abretta ; and I m sure that her husband feels no un 
 certainty on that point at all. As for the Colonel, he 
 plainly regards the pair as the connubial paragons of 
 the age, and only objects to their system of visiting the 
 United States every second year. But, you see, he s 
 here, himself, now." 
 
 "And that eccentric Doctor Hedland?" queried 
 Miss Ankeroo, smiling. 
 
 " Oh, after visiting a brother of his who is a kind of 
 Mogul amongst the heathen of Lombok, the Doctor 
 left the Archipelago at last for England ; where he has 
 a fine estate on the Thames, near a place called Ditton, 
 and wages bitter war on the vivisectionists. His last 
 idea seems to be, that the brutes are all merely so 
 many physical degeneracies of human nature." 
 
 " How perfectly ridiculous !" 
 
 "I must say that I prefer it, myself, to his earlier 
 theory about monkeys," intimated Mr. Dodge, whose 
 knowledge of what, exactly, that theory had been, was 
 not of the clearest. " The Doctor was giving a great 
 dinner to Kajah Brooke on the day when the Colonel 
 and I left London." 
 
 " So the Eajah of Sarawak is now in England, too," 
 said the fair school-mistress, with renewed interest. 
 
 "He and I were fellow-travelers from Singapore by 
 
EPILOGUE. 519 
 
 the Peninsular and Oriental route. I could have cut 
 quite a figure amongst the cockneys on the strength of 
 such illustrious companionship." 
 
 "Have his countrymen learned to appreciate him 
 justly, yet, do you think ?" 
 
 Mr. Dodge fingered the tuft upon his chin reflectively, 
 and assumed an expressiou of grave cogitation. 
 
 "All the boring that a great celebrity, in his most 
 suicidal moments, could expect, is certainly his ; he 
 is dined, and speeched over, and stared at, whichever 
 way he turns ; but you hear a number of people de 
 nouncing him, right and left, in private, for what they 
 call his inhumanities in his last battle with the 
 Sarebas pirates, two years ago ; and a member named 
 Hume persecutes him relentlessly in Parliament." 
 
 "Was it true, as we have heard, that eight hundred 
 lives were lost in the battle of Kaluka River ?" asked 
 Miss Ankeroo. 
 
 " The bill of mortality was undoubtedly large enough 
 to cast a gloom over the whole piratical community," 
 confessed the colloquial historian. " Warmed to an un 
 comfortable excess by the fire of Captain Farquhar s 
 frigate, Nemesis, the yellow gentlemen, who were more 
 accustomed to the cooler experience of surprising 
 peaceful merchantmen by night, made the mistake of 
 retreating from their prahus to a tongue of land between 
 two rivers. There the Kajah s Dyak land-force treated 
 them to a native head-hunting festival, they say, and it 
 may be that somebody was hurt." 
 
 "Don t speak lightly of such horrors !" admonished 
 his feminine auditor. 
 
 " I d drop a tear for the lamented pirates if I could, 
 Miss Ankeroo ; but that particular tap in my nature 
 became suddenly dry before I d been in the Indies 
 a week. Why, just look at the facts of the case, my 
 
520 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 dear friend : When the Kajah came back from his 
 English visit of 1847, a knight of the Bath ; Governor 
 of the island of Labuan, just off Bruni, and British 
 Commissioner and Consul General to Borneo ; those old 
 villains, the pirate Shereefs of the Sarebas and Sakarran 
 dens, began a renewal of all their former atrocities 
 upon unarmed vessels and sleeping villages ; fancying 
 that Tuan Besar s forbearance after the massacre of his 
 friends at Bruni meant that he was cowed at last. Sir 
 James, being then a British Governor no less than a 
 Kajah, had no choice but to use the whole available 
 power of his country to chastise, finally, and for all, 
 such pitiless plunderers and assassins ; and he and Far- 
 quhar did make thorough work of it." 
 
 "I am glad to hear such explanation of a matter 
 known to us in this country only through prejudiced 
 English representations," remarked the spinster, ener 
 getically. "I couldn t bear to think of such a man 
 becoming selfishly ambitious at last." 
 
 " Selfishly ambitious !" echoed Felix Dodge, raising 
 his eyebrows. "I went up to Labuan from Kuchin, 
 while I was building my new hotel, and there I found 
 your victim of ambition magnificently flaunting a con 
 queror s princely estate in a cottage of three rooms 
 amongst the camphor trees ; the royal reception cham 
 ber being about sixteen feet square. In his sumptuous 
 stables was one half- Arab pony, and the gubernatorial 
 army and navy consisted of ten native constables and 
 three canoes. This imposing pomp has so overawed 
 the formerly troublesome Makota, who is now prime 
 minister to a new Sultan of Borneo, that he meekly 
 avows himself to be a stanch friend of Tuan Besar and 
 the English." 
 
 "Then who represents the Eajah at 4 The Grove 
 now ?" 
 
EPILOGUE. 521 
 
 " His nephew from England, Brooke Johnson Brooke. 
 And a Datu of the Dyaks, Pa Jenna, commands the 
 native troops for Sir James there."* 
 
 The conversation, having thus yielded the foreign 
 news most interesting to Miss Ankeroo, was amiably 
 allowed by the latter to drift into a vein of personal 
 confidence. She explained, that, after the marriage 
 and departure of Abretta Effingham, and the placing of 
 Master Cherubino under masculine tutorship for college, 
 her active spirit would not suffer her to remain a mere 
 social passivity in her cousin s household ; and, ac 
 cordingly, upon hearing that a large building erected as 
 a summer boarding-house amongst the hills of her native 
 State of Vermont was not to be occupied, after all, in that 
 capacity, and might be very favorably rented, she had 
 conceived the idea of her u Young Ladies Institute." 
 So successful proved the undertaking, that she and her 
 staff now had nearly a hundred pupils. In vacation 
 time she rejoined her friends in New York, and accom 
 panied them to the .seaside and the Springs. 
 
 Mr. Dodge w r as also confidential. Fortune had been 
 so propitious to him, that he proposed to remain only 
 one year longer in the East Indies, and then return, for 
 permanence, to the United States. Upon taking leave, 
 to go back to the hotel, with the understanding that it 
 should be his inestimable privilege to escort the lady to 
 the city on the following day, he also confessed that he 
 found it an extremely miserable thing for a man to be 
 alone in the world, and wished that some phenomenally 
 
 * The remaining career of the last and noblest of the English Cru 
 saders may be summed in a few words. After subduing a Chinese in 
 surrection in Sarawak, in 1857, incidental to England s war with China 
 in that year, Sir James Brooke revisited Devonshire for a few months. 
 Ten years later his shattered health compelled Mm -once more to seek his 
 native land, where he died, June 11, 1868. 
 
523 THERE WAS ONCE A MAN. 
 
 unselfish ornament of her sex would take compassion 
 on him. 
 
 To which replied the Lady Principal; her color 
 heightening beautifully ; that her friend would, undoubt 
 edly, find some good woman, some day, to appreciate 
 adequately his eminent worthiness of her life-compan 
 ionship, and that he and she would thereupon become 
 blessings to each other. 
 
 "But I m a style of blessing that is rapidly descend 
 ing into the vale of years, you see," urged he, pathetic 
 ally ; lingering beside her on the woodbine-hung piazza. 
 "It s dangerous to delay that kind of business when 
 people are as far advanced in life as I and and other 
 gentlemen of the same age. Blessings frighten as they 
 take their blight, you know." 
 
 Miss Ankeroo observed, in a general way, that the 
 train she expected to take on the morrow would start 
 at ten o clock, and shook hands with no greater appar 
 ent sign of sentimental effusion ; but when, on his 
 returning way to the village hostelry, Mr. Dodge 
 brilliantly achieved the athletic feat familiarly known 
 as "leap-frog" upon a substantial fragment of rock 
 marking the corner of two roads, an observer aware 
 of his idiosyncracies might reasonably have inferred 
 therefrom, that, for some recent special reason, he was 
 feeling "first-rate." 
 
AUTHORS NOTE. 
 
 SUCH titles of classification as Kovel, Romance, Tale 
 and Story have no essential difference of meaning to 
 the popular apprehension, and even seern to commend 
 themselves to some writers of imaginative works as 
 practically convertible terms. It is of no account to 
 the ordinary reader of an entertaining literary narra 
 tive whether it is called by one or another of these 
 names. Many a clever man, or woman, of letters 
 makes choice from them for a title-page merely as im 
 mediate fancy, or, perhaps, euphonic preference, may 
 indicate the selection. 
 
 It is not intended here to argue against the usage as 
 commonly followed ; and there need be no pretense of 
 invidious philological criticism in the assertion that, 
 where an author in the implied category feels that a 
 particular form of artistic presentment is imposed upon 
 his work by anything peculiar in the nature of its ma 
 terials, he finds himself at least instinctively impressed 
 with a vivid sense of very important differences between 
 the methods of composition represented by the above 
 different terms. For instance, without recalling the 
 special literary personalities involved, he realizes that 
 the best average discriminating custom has dictated, 
 distinctively, for the "Novel" a predominance of Char 
 acter over Incident; for the " Romance," a predomi 
 nance of Incident over Character; for the "Tale," an 
 absolutely unbroken continuity of narrative, be it Nov- 
 elistic or Romantic, so as to be practically but one 
 chapter, however subdivided for convenience of read- 
 533 
 
524 A UTHOtf S NOTE. 
 
 ing; and for the "Story," as much assimilation to all 
 three of the foregoing types as may be consistent with 
 a certain steady implication of Fact, and a judicious 
 regard for current approved forms of sustained nar 
 rative. 
 
 A Novel, like a finely-wrought light Comedy, may 
 succeed with but the slightest thread of social plot ; a 
 Romance requires ingenuity and depth of plot propor 
 tionate to the variety and dramatic boldness of its 
 action; a Tale may either replace definite plot with 
 picturesqueness of scene and episode, or employ it 
 gracefully in the development of poetic sentiment ; a 
 Story pleases the imagination according to whatsoever 
 aids it may safely borrow from all the methods of Fic 
 tion whether of plot, or characterization, or incident, 
 or casual idealization without serious prejudice to its 
 assumption of a motive in Facts. 
 
 The present book is classified as a Story for reasons 
 of which the following are the two principal ones : 
 
 First because it deals with real characters and inci 
 dents of fact not to be either judiciously or artistically 
 subjected too freely to the liberties of purely fanciful 
 Fiction: and 
 
 Second because its chief intellectual motive is the 
 demonstration of a philosophical idea requiring the 
 boldest possible appeal to the imaginative faculties for 
 its illustration. 
 
 As the most prosaic record of veritable personal ex 
 periences is commonly denominated a " Story," so the 
 other extreme of narrative that which taxes most 
 severely the fancy of child or man goes by the same 
 name, as Fairy-" Story," or Ghost- "Story." And it 
 may be added, that if the story of fairy, or of ghost, 
 had not for the instinctive credulity of infancy, or of 
 maturity, a certain implied insistence of truth, it would 
 
AUTHORS NOTE. 525 
 
 have very little attraction for either childhood or man 
 hood. 
 
 Thus, in choosing to call this book a Story, the au 
 thor understands himself at once to be under pledge of 
 abstinence from every such imaginative idealization of 
 real character and historic incident as he should have 
 deemed his artistic privilege of calling his work either 
 Novel, or Komance, and at full liberty to exercise his 
 own literary discretion outside of that restriction. 
 
 The result of this system of composition is to be 
 seen particularly in the pages given to the not yet 
 justly appreciated Sir James Brooke and his remark 
 able career as a Eajah of Borneo. Without assuming 
 to be a comprehensive historical study, the sketch of 
 this thoroughly great man, and of the characters and 
 scenes incident to his princely sway in its most critical 
 year, is as scrupulously true to the facts of history as 
 the soberest record of its plainest verities could be 
 made. "Whatever imperfections there may be in the 
 picture they are not on the side of exaggeration, nor 
 adulterated with a romancer s inventions. Fame has 
 not been half fair to this noble Englishman, whose 
 always outspoken pleasure in the prompt recognition of 
 his high, humane purposes by the United States, makes 
 his familiar introduction in a narrative of American 
 adventure a strain upon none of the proprieties of his 
 toric sentiment. 
 
 It has been fairly a literary embarrassment that, in 
 the story of social complication and travel, upon the 
 immediate texture of which the Borneon episodes are 
 etched rather than incorporatively woven, actualities 
 of person and experience have necessarily been a bar to 
 such optional accessories of romantic, or dramatic, in 
 terest as might have been eifectively employed in a 
 work of wholly fictitious construction. For example, 
 
526 A UTHOR 8 NOTE. 
 
 humorous invention and device could be but sparingly 
 indulged in such critical relation, and the light to relieve 
 the shade had to be evolved only from the less sombre 
 realisms of compulsorily realistic factors. 
 
 There remains yet, however, an element of the work, 
 that not only permitted but exacted a free draft upon 
 all the legitimate resources of literary art for its suc 
 cessful treatment. While no pains have been counted 
 in the effort to handle dexterously and consistently the 
 difficult problem involved, and to make it at once logic 
 ally acceptable and imaginatively suggestive, it is left 
 for the reader to decide whether or not the execution 
 has proved equal to the intention. Upon the average 
 intelligent decision of this point both the popular and 
 literary fortunes of the story must chiefly depend, and 
 the author presumes not to anticipate it. 
 
 That the Christian hero and the materialistic phi 
 losopher, representing, respectively, widely divergent 
 types of mental honesty, are intended as intellectual 
 foils to each other ; that the philosopher s idiosyncrasies 
 are designed to exemplify the genius of a strong mind 
 whose spiritual and imaginative properties have been 
 left wholly uncultivated, and whose lack of humorous 
 perception amounts to an obstinate obliquity of mental 
 vision ; and that the salient illustration of the social 
 romance is of that chronic irritability between English 
 men and Americans which is but too likely to produce 
 bitter international fruit some day might be left, per 
 haps, to the unprompted discovery of the reader. It 
 may not be superfluous, however, to suggest to the 
 hasty critic, that, in forming his judgment of the rela 
 tive proportions observed in the development of the 
 various characters prominently introduced, he should 
 be just enough to take some pains in discerning which 
 . are the real hero and heroine of the story. 
 
NEW BOOKS. 
 
 BOOKS and HOW to USE THEM : Some Hints to Readers and 
 Students. By JOHN C. VAN DYKE. i2mo, Cloth. f I, 
 
 A rlpar roncise and practical exposition of the advantages of reading, the bes^. 
 nethodsS aces and times for reading, the best classes of books as adapted to purposes 
 S special P re a a C dfn g the rudiments of Bibliography, and the mode of getting at the htera- - 
 ture of a given subject, amid the mazes of a public library. 
 
 The HOUSEKEEPER S YEAR BOOK. By HELEN CAMPBELL. 
 i6mo, Limp Cloth. 50 cents. 
 A nmoendiun of the thousand and one bits of information which every house- 
 
 the seasons and months. 
 
 The MODERN HAGAR. Author s New, Revised Edition. 2 Vols. 
 
 in one. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 cast in a large mould .... has un 
 usual breadth and strength." New I ork 
 Tribune. 
 
 u One of the most notable novels of the 
 year. ... A strong virile book, sure 
 to be read and talked about, to be praised 
 and criticised, and to be remembered when 
 most of the novels of the day are forgot- 
 
 u Reveals, as few novels have done in the 
 past, the rich possibilities of American 
 fiction. New York Times. 
 
 " Sounds almost every variety of passion, 
 and at ,imes with masterly hand. . . . 
 A book of immense fire and strength. 
 Boston Gazette. 
 
 " Likely to receive a good deal more than 
 ordinary attention. . . . Certain to be 
 read and talked about in circles where mere 
 novels receive vjry little attention. It is 
 
 ten "Providence Press. 
 
 u A noble story, written brilliantly, ana 
 of undeniable originality and power. 
 Louisville Courier-Journal. 
 
 Housekeeping and Cooking," etc. 
 
 "Gives a most interesting account of 
 the l Jerry McAul;y Mission* in the Five 
 Po nts of New York, including many thrill 
 ing personal narratives, and several chap 
 ters of clear, practical advice about real 
 methods of helping the poor of our great 
 citie; to rise in their scale of living, 
 especially in matters of Diet, in its rela 
 tion to Drunkenness and Disease. Ihe 
 baok is both attractive, interesting, and c 
 marked value in its unpretending contri- 
 
 Cloth. 90 
 
 bution to the work of cleansing the sources 
 from which come the great volume of our\ 
 criminals-and our Voters." .S* Fran* 
 
 cisco Alta-Califorma. 
 
 " Earnest, interesting, and sensible." 
 Boston Globe. 
 
 " Has the charm which comes from the 
 relation of an unusual individual ex- 
 perience." Philadelphia American. 
 
 Interior. 
 
 Like fair fruit, leaves a pi asant taste 
 in the mouth "Providence Press: 
 
 "A charming unpretentious romance. 
 
 marked value in its unprete 
 
 Miss LEIGHTON S PERPLEXITIES. A Love Story. By Auo| 
 CROSETTE HALL. Cloth, ink and gold. $i. ae itmu-e 
 
 "A very charming story."- Chicago .^^^^^^^^^^\ 
 
 very slender one at the opening,. broadens 
 and grows intricate as the narrative grows 
 on, until at last the k perplexities present 
 themselves. Cincinnati Gazette. 
 
 FORDS, HOWARD, AND HULBERT, 
 
 tf % 27 Park Place, New York. 
 
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