’"It was . . . it was immense!  Immense!” he cried aloud, flinging his arms open.  The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to the steely sea.  Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks of a stream whose current seemed to sleep.  “Immense!” he repeated for a third time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone.

’Immense!  No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words, the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his achievement.  All this, as I’ve warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling.  I can’t with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and utter isolation.  I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him in such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed only the effect of his power.  His loneliness added to his stature.  There was nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one of those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of their fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for many a day’s journey.  You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long weary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its voice.  Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we all know—­not blatant—­not brazen.  It took its tone from the stillness and gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth of every passing day.  It shared something of the nature of that silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching—­tinged with wonder and mystery on the lips of whispering men.’

CHAPTER 28

’The defeated Sherif Ali fled the country without making another stand, and when the miserable hunted villagers began to crawl out of the jungle back to their rotting houses, it was Jim who, in consultation with Dain Waris, appointed the headmen.  Thus he became the virtual ruler of the land.  As to old Tunku Allang, his fears at first had known no bounds.  It is said that at the intelligence of the successful storming of the hill he flung himself, face down, on the bamboo floor of his audience-hall, and lay motionless for a whole night and a whole day, uttering stifled sounds of such an appalling nature that no man dared approach his prostrate form nearer than a spear’s length.  Already he could see himself driven ignominiously out of Patusan, wandering abandoned, stripped, without opium, without his women, without followers, a fair game for the first comer to kill.  After Sherif Ali his turn would come, and who could resist an attack led by such a devil?  And indeed he owed his life and such authority as he still possessed at the time of my visit to Jim’s