“Yes. Alone. What more did you say, Tuan? I did not understand your talk.”
“It is nothing. I expected to find here …But where are they all?”
“What matters where they are?” said Babalatchi, gloomily. “Have you come to see my people? The last departed on a long journey—and I am alone. Tomorrow I go too.”
“I came to see a white man,” said Lingard, walking on slowly. “He is not gone, is he?”
“No!” answered Babalatchi, at his elbow. “A man with a red skin and hard eyes,” he went on, musingly, “whose hand is strong, and whose heart is foolish and weak. A white man indeed …But still a man.”
They were now at the foot of the short ladder which led to the split-bamboo platform surrounding Babalatchi’s habitation. The faint light from the doorway fell down upon the two men’s faces as they stood looking at each other curiously.
“Is he there?” asked Lingard, in a low voice, with a wave of his hand upwards.
Babalatchi, staring hard at his long-expected visitor, did not answer at once. “No, not there,” he said at last, placing his foot on the lowest rung and looking back. “Not there, Tuan—yet not very far. Will you sit down in my dwelling? There may be rice and fish and clear water—not from the river, but from a spring . . .”
“I am not hungry,” interrupted Lingard, curtly, “and I did not come here to sit in your dwelling. Lead me to the white man who expects me. I have no time to lose.”
“The night is long, Tuan,” went on Babalatchi, softly, “and there are other nights and other days. Long. Very long … How much time it takes for a man to die! O Rajah Laut!”
Lingard started.
“You know me!” he exclaimed.
“Ay—wa! I have seen your face and felt your hand before—many years ago,” said Babalatchi, holding on halfway up the ladder, and bending down from above to peer into Lingard’s upturned face. “You do not remember—but I have not forgotten. There are many men like me: there is only one Rajah Laut.”
He climbed with sudden agility the last few steps, and stood on the platform waving his hand invitingly to Lingard, who followed after a short moment of indecision.
The elastic bamboo floor of the hut bent under the heavy weight of the old seaman, who, standing within the threshold, tried to look into the smoky gloom of the low dwelling. Under the torch, thrust into the cleft of a stick, fastened at a right angle to the middle stay of the ridge pole, lay a red patch of light, showing a few shabby mats and a corner of a big wooden chest the rest of which was lost in shadow. In the obscurity of the more remote parts of the house a lance-head, a brass tray hung on the wall, the long barrel of a gun leaning against the chest, caught the stray rays of the smoky illumination in trembling gleams that wavered, disappeared, reappeared, went out, came back—as if engaged in a doubtful struggle with the darkness that, lying in wait in distant corners, seemed to dart out viciously towards its feeble enemy. The vast space under the high pitch of the roof was filled with a thick cloud of smoke, whose under-side—level like a ceiling—reflected the light of the swaying dull flame, while at the top it oozed out through the imperfect thatch of dried palm leaves. An indescribable and complicated smell, made up of the exhalation of damp earth below, of the taint of dried fish and of the effluvia of rotting vegetable matter, pervaded the place and caused Lingard to sniff strongly as he strode over, sat on the chest, and, leaning his elbows on his knees, took his head between his hands and stared at the doorway thoughtfully.
Babalatchi moved about in the shadows, whispering to an indistinct form or two that flitted about at the far end of the hut. Without stirring Lingard glanced sideways, and caught sight of muffled-up human shapes that hovered for a moment near the edge of light and retreated suddenly back into the darkness. Babalatchi approached, and sat at Lingard’s feet on a rolled-up bundle of mats.