by honest and irksome toil when the days of adversity were upon him. So,
although at times leading the Sulu rovers, he had also served as Serang
of country ships, and in that wise had visited the distant seas,
beheld the glories of Bombay, the might of the Mascati Sultan; had even
struggled in a pious throng for the privilege of touching with his lips
the Sacred Stone of the Holy City. He gathered experience and wisdom in
many lands, and after attaching himself to Omar el Badavi, he affected
great piety (as became a pilgrim), although unable to read the inspired
words of the Prophet. He was brave and bloodthirsty without any
affection, and he hated the white men who interfered with the manly
pursuits of throat-cutting, kidnapping, slave-dealing, and fire-raising,
that were the only possible occupation for a true man of the sea. He
found favour in the eyes of his chief, the fearless Omar el Badavi, the
leader of Brunei rovers, whom he followed with unquestioning loyalty
through the long years of successful depredation. And when that long
career of murder, robbery and violence received its first serious check
at the hands of white men, he stood faithfully by his chief, looked
steadily at the bursting shells, was undismayed by the flames of the
burning stronghold, by the death of his companions, by the shrieks
of their women, the wailing of their children; by the sudden ruin and
destruction of all that he deemed indispensable to a happy and glorious
existence. The beaten ground between the houses was slippery with blood,
and the dark mangroves of the muddy creeks were full of sighs of the
dying men who were stricken down before they could see their enemy. They
died helplessly, for into the tangled forest there was no escape, and
their swift praus, in which they had so often scoured the coast and the
seas, now wedged together in the narrow creek, were burning fiercely.
Babalatchi, with the clear perception of the coming end, devoted all his
energies to saving if it was but only one of them. He succeeded in time.
When the end came in the explosion of the stored powder-barrels, he was