’"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
