There are faces too--faces dark, truculent, and smiling; the frank
audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed and noiseless. They
thronged the narrow length of our schooner's decks with their ornamented
and barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of checkered sarongs,
red turbans, white jackets, embroideries; with the gleam of scabbards,
gold rings, charms, armlets, lance blades, and jewelled handles of their
weapons. They had an independent bearing, resolute eyes, a restrained
manner; and we seem yet to hear their soft voices speaking of battles,
travels, and escapes; boasting with composure, joking quietly; sometimes
in well-bred murmurs extolling their own valour, our generosity;
or celebrating with loyal enthusiasm the virtues of their ruler. We
remember the faces, the eyes, the voices, we see again the gleam of silk
and metal; the murmuring stir of that crowd, brilliant, festive, and
martial; and we seem to feel the touch of friendly brown hands that,
after one short grasp, return to rest on a chased hilt. They were
Karain's people--a devoted following. Their movements hung on his lips;
they read their thoughts in his eyes; he murmured to them nonchalantly
of life and death, and they accepted his words humbly, like gifts of
fate. They were all free men, and when speaking to him said, "Your
slave." On his passage voices died out as though he had walked guarded
by silence; awed whispers followed him. They called him their war-chief.
He was the ruler of three villages on a narrow plain; the master of
an insignificant foothold on the earth--of a conquered foothold that,
shaped like a young moon, lay ignored between the hills and the sea.

From the deck of our schooner, anchored in the middle of the bay, he
indicated by a theatrical sweep of his arm along the jagged outline
of the hills the whole of his domain; and the ample movement seemed to
drive back its limits, augmenting it suddenly into something so immense