Dutchman's house. She was a great and wilful lady: I had seen her once
carried high on slaves' shoulders amongst the people, with uncovered
face, and I had heard all men say that her beauty was extreme, silencing
the reason and ravishing the heart of the beholders. The people were
dismayed; Matara's face was blackened with that disgrace, for she knew
she had been promised to another man. Matara went to the Dutchman's
house, and said, 'Give her up to die--she is the daughter of chiefs.'
The white man refused and shut himself up, while his servants kept
guard night and day with loaded guns. Matara raged. My brother called a
council. But the Dutch ships were near, and watched our coast greedily.
My brother said, 'If he dies now our land will pay for his blood. Leave
him alone till we grow stronger and the ships are gone.' Matara was
wise; he waited and watched. But the white man feared for her life and
went away.

"He left his house, his plantations, and his goods! He departed, armed
and menacing, and left all--for her! She had ravished his heart! From
my stockade I saw him put out to sea in a big boat. Matara and I
watched him from the fighting platform behind the pointed stakes. He sat
cross-legged, with his gun in his hands, on the roof at the stern of his
prau. The barrel of his rifle glinted aslant before his big red face.
The broad river was stretched under him--level, smooth, shining, like
a plain of silver; and his prau, looking very short and black from the
shore, glided along the silver plain and over into the blue of the sea.

"Thrice Matara, standing by my side, called aloud her name with grief
and imprecations. He stirred my heart. It leaped three times; and three
times with the eyes of my mind I saw in the gloom within the enclosed
space of the prau a woman with streaming hair going away from her land
and her people. I was angry--and sorry. Why? And then I also cried out