’It was then that Brown took his revenge upon the world which, after twenty years of contemptuous and reckless bullying, refused him the tribute of a common robber’s success.  It was an act of cold-blooded ferocity, and it consoled him on his deathbed like a memory of an indomitable defiance.  Stealthily he landed his men on the other side of the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them across.  After a short but quite silent scuffle, Cornelius, who had tried to slink away at the moment of landing, resigned himself to show the way where the undergrowth was most sparse.  Brown held both his skinny hands together behind his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then impelled him forward with a fierce push.  Cornelius remained as mute as a fish, abject but faithful to his purpose, whose accomplishment loomed before him dimly.  At the edge of the patch of forest Brown’s men spread themselves out in cover and waited.  The camp was plain from end to end before their eyes, and no one looked their way.  Nobody even dreamed that the white men could have any knowledge of the narrow channel at the back of the island.  When he judged the moment come, Brown yelled, “Let them have it,” and fourteen shots rang out like one.

‘Tamb’ Itam told me the surprise was so great that, except for those who fell dead or wounded, not a soul of them moved for quite an appreciable time after the first discharge.  Then a man screamed, and after that scream a great yell of amazement and fear went up from all the throats.  A blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along the shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water.  Some few jumped into the river then, but most of them did so only after the last discharge.  Three times Brown’s men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only one in view, cursing and yelling, “Aim low! aim low!”

‘Tamb’ Itam says that, as for him, he understood at the first volley what had happened.  Though untouched he fell down and lay as if dead, but with his eyes open.  At the sound of the first shots Dain Waris, reclining on the couch, jumped up and ran out upon the open shore, just in time to receive a bullet in his forehead at the second discharge.  Tamb’ Itam saw him fling his arms wide open before he fell.  Then, he says, a great fear came upon him—­not before.  The white men retired as they had come—­unseen.

’Thus Brown balanced his account with the evil fortune.  Notice that even in this awful outbreak there is a superiority as of a man who carries right—­the abstract thing—­within the envelope of his common desires.  It was not a vulgar and treacherous massacre; it was a lesson, a retribution—­a demonstration of some obscure and awful attribute of our nature which, I am afraid, is not so very far under the surface as we like to think.