the words with difficulty, like a man in the cold
fit of a fever. “No!” shouted Jim
in a passion. “I have not, and I don’t
intend to. I am going to live here, in Patusan.”
“You shall d-d-die h-h-here,” answered
Cornelius, still shaking violently, and in a sort
of expiring voice. The whole performance was
so absurd and provoking that Jim didn’t know
whether he ought to be amused or angry. “Not
till I have seen you tucked away, you bet,”
he called out, exasperated yet ready to laugh.
Half seriously (being excited with his own thoughts,
you know) he went on shouting, “Nothing can
touch me! You can do your damnedest.”
Somehow the shadowy Cornelius far off there seemed
to be the hateful embodiment of all the annoyances
and difficulties he had found in his path. He
let himself go—his nerves had been over-wrought
for days—and called him many pretty names,—swindler,
liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an
extraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds,
that he was quite beside himself—defied
all Patusan to scare him away—declared he
would make them all dance to his own tune yet, and
so on, in a menacing, boasting strain. Perfectly
bombastic and ridiculous, he said. His ears burned
at the bare recollection. Must have been off his
chump in some way.
. . . The girl, who was sitting
with us, nodded her little head at me quickly, frowned
faintly, and said, “I heard him,” with
child-like solemnity. He laughed and blushed.
What stopped him at last, he said, was the silence,
the complete deathlike silence, of the indistinct
figure far over there, that seemed to hang collapsed,
doubled over the rail in a weird immobility.
He came to his senses, and ceasing suddenly, wondered
greatly at himself. He watched for a while.
Not a stir, not a sound. “Exactly as if
the chap had died while I had been making all that
noise,” he said. He was so ashamed of himself
that he went indoors in a hurry without another word,
and flung himself down again. The row seemed
to have done him good though, because he went to sleep
for the rest of the night like a baby. Hadn’t
slept like that for weeks. “But I
didn’t sleep,” struck in the girl, one
elbow on the table and nursing her cheek. “I
watched.” Her big eyes flashed, rolling
a little, and then she fixed them on my face intently.’
CHAPTER 31
’You may imagine with what interest I listened.
All these details were perceived to have some significance
twenty-four hours later. In the morning Cornelius
made no allusion to the events of the night. “I
suppose you will come back to my poor house,”
he muttered, surlily, slinking up just as Jim was
entering the canoe to go over to Doramin’s campong.
Jim only nodded, without looking at him. “You
find it good fun, no doubt,” muttered the other
in a sour tone. Jim spent the day with the old
nakhoda, preaching the necessity of vigorous action
to the principal men of the Bugis community, who had
