Bab Bab 26 · ‘Doramin was one of the most remarkable men of his race I had ever seen.

. ‘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.’