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_ 'Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had
ever seen. His bulk for a Malay was immense, but he did not look
merely fat; he looked imposing, monumental. This motionless
body, clad in rich stuffs, coloured silks, gold embroideries; this
huge head, enfolded in a red-and-gold headkerchief; the flat, big,
round face, wrinkled, furrowed, with two semicircular heavy folds
starting on each side of wide, fierce nostrils, and enclosing a
thick-lipped mouth; the throat like a bull; the vast corrugated brow
overhanging the staring proud eyes--made a whole that, once seen, can
never be forgotten. His impassive repose (he seldom stirred a limb
when once he sat down) was like a display of dignity. He was never
known to raise his voice. It was a hoarse and powerful murmur,
slightly veiled as if heard from a distance. When he walked, two
short, sturdy young fellows, naked to the waist, in white sarongs
and with black skull-caps on the backs of their heads, sustained his
elbows; they would ease him down and stand behind his chair till
he wanted to rise, when he would turn his head slowly, as if with
difficulty, to the right and to the left, and then they would catch
him under his armpits and help him up. For all that, there was
nothing of a cripple about him: on the contrary, all his ponderous
movements were like manifestations of a mighty deliberate force.
It was generally believed he consulted his wife as to public affairs;
but nobody, as far as I know, had ever heard them exchange a single
word. When they sat in state by the wide opening it was in silence.
They could see below them in the declining light the vast expanse
of the forest country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating
as far as the violet and purple range of mountains; the shining
sinuosity of the river like an immense letter S of beaten silver;
the brown ribbon of houses following the sweep of both banks,
overtopped by the twin hills uprising above the nearer tree-tops.
They were wonderfully contrasted: she, light, delicate, spare,
quick, a little witch-like, with a touch of motherly fussiness in
her repose; he, facing her, immense and heavy, like a figure of
a man roughly fashioned of stone, with something magnanimous and
ruthless in his immobility. The son of these old people was a most
distinguished youth.
'They had him late in life. Perhaps he was not really so young as
he looked. Four- or five-and-twenty is not so young when a man is
already father of a family at eighteen. When he entered the large
room, lined and carpeted with fine mats, and with a high ceiling of
white sheeting, where the couple sat in state surrounded by a most
deferential retinue, he would make his way straight to Doramin, to
kiss his hand--which the other abandoned to him, majestically--and
then would step across to stand by his mother's chair. I suppose
I may say they idolised him, but I never caught them giving him an
overt glance. Those, it is true, were public functions. The room was
generally thronged. The solemn formality of greetings and leave-takings,
the profound respect expressed in gestures, on the faces, in the low
whispers, is simply indescribable. "It's well worth seeing," Jim had
assured me while we were crossing the river, on our way back. "They
are like people in a book, aren't they?" he said triumphantly. "And
Dain Waris--their son--is the best friend (barring you) I ever had.
What Mr. Stein would call a good 'war-comrade.' I was in luck. Jove!
I was in luck when I tumbled amongst them at my last gasp." He
meditated with bowed head, then rousing himself he added--' "Of course
I didn't go to sleep over it, but . . ." He paused again. "It seemed
to come to me," he murmured. "All at once I saw what I had to do . . ."
'There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come
through war, too, as is natural, since this power that came to him
was the power to make peace. It is in this sense alone that might so
often is right. You must not think he had seen his way at once.
When he arrived the Bugis community was in a most critical position.
"They were all afraid," he said to me--"each man afraid for himself;
while I could see as plain as possible that they must do something at
once, if they did not want to go under one after another, what between
the Rajah and that vagabond Sherif." But to see that was nothing. When
he got his idea he had to drive it into reluctant minds, through the
bulwarks of fear, of selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was
nothing. He had to devise the means. He devised them--an audacious plan;
and his task was only half done. He had to inspire with his own
confidence a lot of people who had hidden and absurd reasons to hang
back; he had to conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away all
sorts of senseless mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority,
and his son's fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the
distinguished youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of
those strange, profound, rare friendships between brown and white,
in which the very difference of race seems to draw two human
beings closer by some mystic element of sympathy. Of Dain Waris,
his own people said with pride that he knew how to fight like a
white man. This was true; he had that sort of courage--the courage
in the open, I may say--but he had also a European mind. You
meet them sometimes like that, and are surprised to discover
unexpectedly a familiar turn of thought, an unobscured vision, a tenacity
of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of small stature, but admirably
well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage, a polished,
easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky face, with
big black eyes, was in action expressive, and in repose thoughtful.
He was of a silent disposition; a firm glance, an ironic smile, a
courteous deliberation of manner seemed to hint at great reserves
of intelligence and power. Such beings open to the Western eye, so
often concerned with mere surfaces, the hidden possibilities of races
and lands over which hangs the mystery of unrecorded ages. He
not only trusted Jim, he understood him, I firmly believe. I speak
of him because he had captivated me. His--if I may say so--his
caustic placidity, and, at the same time, his intelligent sympathy
with Jim's aspirations, appealed to me. I seemed to behold the very
origin of friendship. If Jim took the lead, the other had captivated
his leader. In fact, Jim the leader was a captive in every sense. The
land, the people, the friendship, the love, were like the jealous
guardians of his body. Every day added a link to the fetters of that
strange freedom. I felt convinced of it, as from day to day I learned
more of the story.
'The story! Haven't I heard the story? I've heard it on the march,
in camp (he made me scour the country after invisible game); I've
listened to a good part of it on one of the twin summits, after
climbing the last hundred feet or so on my hands and knees. Our
escort (we had volunteer followers from village to village) had
camped meantime on a bit of level ground half-way up the slope,
and in the still breathless evening the smell of wood-smoke reached
our nostrils from below with the penetrating delicacy of some choice
scent. Voices also ascended, wonderful in their distinct and
immaterial clearness. Jim sat on the trunk of a felled tree, and pulling
out his pipe began to smoke. A new growth of grass and bushes was
springing up; there were traces of an earthwork under a mass of
thorny twigs. "It all started from here," he said, after a long and
meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a
sombre precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing
here and there ruinously--the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable
camp.
'But it had been taken, though. That had been his idea. He had
mounted Doramin's old ordnance on the top of that hill; two rusty
iron 7-pounders, a lot of small brass cannon--currency cannon.
But if the brass guns represent wealth, they can also, when crammed
recklessly to the muzzle, send a solid shot to some little distance.
The thing was to get them up there. He showed me where he had
fastened the cables, explained how he had improvised a rude capstan
out of a hollowed log turning upon a pointed stake, indicated
with the bowl of his pipe the outline of the earthwork. The last
hundred feet of the ascent had been the most difficult. He had made
himself responsible for success on his own head. He had induced
the war party to work hard all night. Big fires lighted at intervals
blazed all down the slope, "but up here," he explained, "the hoisting
gang had to fly around in the dark." From the top he saw men
moving on the hillside like ants at work. He himself on that night
had kept on rushing down and climbing up like a squirrel, directing,
encouraging, watching all along the line. Old Doramin had himself
carried up the hill in his arm-chair. They put him down on the level
place upon the slope, and he sat there in the light of one of the big
fires--"amazing old chap--real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his
little fierce eyes--a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees.
Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks
and a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it
seems--in exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to
good old McNeil. God only knows how _he_ came by them. There he
sat, moving neither hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind
him, and lots of people rushing about, shouting and pulling round
him--the most solemn, imposing old chap you can imagine. He
wouldn't have had much chance if Sherif Ali had let his infernal
crew loose at us and stampeded my lot. Eh? Anyhow, he had come
up there to die if anything went wrong. No mistake! Jove! It thrilled
me to see him there--like a rock. But the Sherif must have thought
us mad, and never troubled to come and see how we got on. Nobody
believed it could be done. Why! I think the very chaps who pulled
and shoved and sweated over it did not believe it could be done!
Upon my word I don't think they did. . . ."
'He stood erect, the smouldering brier-wood in his clutch, with
a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his boyish eyes. I sat on the
stump of a tree at his feet, and below us stretched the land, the
great expanse of the forests, sombre under the sunshine, rolling like
a sea, with glints of winding rivers, the grey spots of villages, and
here and there a clearing, like an islet of light amongst the dark
waves of continuous tree-tops. A brooding gloom lay over this vast
and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss.
The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the
empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint haze, seemed to
rise up to the sky in a wall of steel.
'And there I was with him, high in the sunshine on the top of
that historic hill of his. He dominated the forest, the secular gloom,
the old mankind. He was like a figure set up on a pedestal, to
represent in his persistent youth the power, and perhaps the virtues,
of races that never grow old, that have emerged from the gloom. I
don't know why he should always have appeared to me symbolic.
Perhaps this is the real cause of my interest in his fate. I don't know
whether it was exactly fair to him to remember the incident which
had given a new direction to his life, but at that very moment I
remembered very distinctly. It was like a shadow in the light.' _
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