t know that story; I can only guess that once before Patusan
had been used as a grave for some sin, transgression, or misfortune. It is
imposible to suspect Stein. The only woman that had ever existed for him was the
Malay girl he called My wife the princess, or, more rarely in moments of
expansion, the mother of my Emma. Who was the woman he had mentioned in
connection with Patusan I can't say; but from his allusions I understand she had
been an educated and very good-looking Dutch-Malay girl, with a tragic or
perhaps only a pitiful history, whose most painful part no doubt was her
marriage with a Malacca Portuguese who had been clerk in some commercial house
in the Dutch colonies. I gathered from Stein that this man was an unsatisfactory
person in more ways than one, all being more or less indefinite and offensive.
It was solely for his wife's sake that Stein had appointed him manager of Stein
&amp; Co.'s trading post in Patusan; but commercially the arrangement was not a
success, at any rate for the firm, and now the woman had died, Stein was
disposed to try another agent there. The Portuguese, whose name was Cornelius,
considered himself a very deserving but ill-used person, entitled by his
abilities to a better position. This man Jim would have to relieve. But I don't
think he will go away from the place, remarked Stein. That has nothing to do
with me. It was only for the sake of the woman that I... But as I think there is
a daughter left, I shall let him, if he likes to stay, keep the old house.
    Patusan is a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief
settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty miles from
the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can be seen rising above
the level of the forest the summits of two steep hills very close together, and
separated by what looks like a deep fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke.
As a matter of fact, the valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the
appearance from the settlement is of one irregularly conical hill split in two,
and with the two halves leaning slightly apart. On the third day after the full,
the moon, as seen from the open space in front of Jim's house (he had a very
fine house in the native style when I visited him), rose exactly behind these
hills, its diffused
