TALES OF UNREST




KARAIN, A MEMORY


I

We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in
our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any
property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives;
but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to
miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence
of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams
between the lines of those short paragraphs--sunshine and the glitter of
the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the
smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating
perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone
nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre
cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand
watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of
white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the
reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon
the level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of
steel.