who knew how to fight after the
manner of white men) wished to settle the business off-hand, but his people were
too much for him. He had not Jim's racial prestige and the reputation of
invincible, supernatural power. He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of
unfailing truth and of unfailing victory. Beloved, trusted, and admired as he
was, he was still one of them, while Jim was one of us. Moreover, the white man,
a tower of strength in himself, was invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be
killed. Those unexpressed thoughts guided the opinions of the chief men of the
town, who elected to assemble in Jim's fort for deliberation upon the emergency,
as if expecting to find wisdom and courage in the dwelling of the absent white
man. The shooting of Brown's ruffians was so far good, or lucky, that there had
been half a dozen casualties amongst the defenders. The wounded were lying on
the verandah tended by their women-folk. The women and children from the lower
part of the town had been sent into the fort at the first alarm. There Jewel was
in command, very efficient and high-spirited, obeyed by Jim's own people, who,
quitting in a body their little settlement under the stockade, had gone in to
form the garrison. The refugees crowded round her; and through the whole affair,
to the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordinary martial ardour. It was
to her that Dain Waris had gone at once at the first intelligence of danger, for
you must know that Jim was the only one in Patusan who possessed a store of
gunpowder. Stein, with whom he had kept up intimate relations by letters, had
obtained from the Dutch Government a special authorisation to export five
hundred kegs of it to Patusan. The powder-magazine was a small hut of rough logs
covered entirely with earth, and in Jim's absence the girl had the key. In the
council, held at eleven o'clock in the evening in Jim's dining-room, she backed
up Waris's advice for immediate and vigorous action. I am told that she stood up
by the side of Jim's empty chair at the head of the long table and made a
warlike impassioned speech, which for the moment extorted murmurs of approbation
from the assembled head-men. Old Doramin, who had not showed himself outside his
own gate for more than a year, had been brought across with great difficulty. He
was, of course, the chief man there. The