the sea, the forest far away: a vast landscape mysterious and
still--Hassim's native country sleeping unmoved under the wrath and fire
of Heaven.



IV

A Traveller visiting Wajo to-day may, if he deserves the confidence of
the common people, hear the traditional account of the last civil war,
together with the legend of a chief and his sister, whose mother had
been a great princess suspected of sorcery and on her death-bed had
communicated to these two the secrets of the art of magic. The chief's
sister especially, "with the aspect of a child and the fearlessness of a
great fighter," became skilled in casting spells. They were defeated by
the son of their uncle, because--will explain the narrator simply--"The
courage of us Wajo people is so great that magic can do nothing against
it. I fought in that war. We had them with their backs to the sea."
And then he will go on to relate in an awed tone how on a certain night
"when there was such a thunderstorm as has been never heard of before
or since" a ship, resembling the ships of white men, appeared off the
coast, "as though she had sailed down from the clouds. She moved," he
will affirm, "with her sails bellying against the wind; in size she was
like an island; the lightning played between her masts which were as
high as the summits of mountains; a star burned low through the clouds
above her. We knew it for a star at once because no flame of man's
kindling could have endured the wind and rain of that night. It was such
a night that we on the watch hardly dared look upon the sea. The heavy
rain was beating down our eyelids. And when day came, the ship was
nowhere to be seen, and in the stockade where the day before there were