Jove! I was in luck when I
tumbled amongst them at my last gasp. He meditated with bowed head, then rousing
himself he added:
    Of course I didn't go to sleep over it, but... He paused again. It seemed to
come to me, he murmured. All at once I saw what I had to do...
    There was no doubt that it had come to him; and it had come through the war,
too, as is natural, since this power that came to him was the power to make
peace. It is in this sense alone that might so often is right. You must not
think he had seen his way at once. When he arrived the Bugis community was in a
most critical position. They were all afraid, he said to me - each man afraid
for himself; while I could see as plain as possible that they must do something
at once, if they did not want to go under one after another, what between the
Rajah and that vagabond Sherif. But to see that was nothing. When he got his
idea he had to drive it into reluctant minds, through the bulwarks of fear, of
selfishness. He drove it in at last. And that was nothing. He had to devise the
means. He devised them - an audacious plan; and his task was only half done. He
had to inspire with his own confidence a lot of people who had hidden and absurd
reasons to hang back; he had to conciliate imbecile jealousies, and argue away
all sorts of senseless mistrusts. Without the weight of Doramin's authority, and
his son's fiery enthusiasm, he would have failed. Dain Waris, the distinguished
youth, was the first to believe in him; theirs was one of those strange,
profound, rare friendships between brown and white, in which the very difference
of race seems to draw two human beings closer by some mystic element of
sympathy. Of Dain Waris, his own people said with pride that he knew how to
fight like a white man. This was true; he had that sort of courage - the courage
in the open, I may say - but he had also a European mind. You meet them
sometimes like that, and are surprised to discover unexpectedly a familiar turn
of thought, an unobscured vision, a tenacity of purpose, a touch of altruism. Of
small stature, but admirably well proportioned, Dain Waris had a proud carriage,
a polished, easy bearing, a temperament like a clear flame. His dusky face, with
big black eyes, was