He shook his head with mournful regret and threw another handful of fuel on the fire. The burst of clear flame lit up his broad, dark, and pock-marked face, where the big lips, stained with betel-juice, looked like a deep and bleeding gash of a fresh wound. The reflection of the firelight gleamed brightly in his solitary eye, lending it for a moment a fierce animation that died out together with the short-lived flame. With quick touches of his bare hands he raked the embers into a heap, then, wiping the warm ash on his waistcloth--his only garment--he clasped his thin legs with his entwined fingers, and rested his chin on his drawn-up knees. Lakamba stirred slightly without changing his position or taking his eyes off the glowing coals, on which they had been fixed in dreamy immobility.
“Yes,” went on Babalatchi, in a low monotone, as if pursuing aloud a train of thought that had its beginning in the silent contemplation of the unstable nature of earthly greatness--“yes. He has been rich and strong, and now he lives on alms: old, feeble, blind, and without companions, but for his daughter. The Rajah Patalolo gives him rice, and the pale woman--his daughter--cooks it for him, for he has no slave.”
“I saw her from afar,” muttered Lakamba, disparagingly. “A she-dog with white teeth, like a woman of the Orang-Putih.”
“Right, right,” assented Babalatchi; “but you have not seen her near. Her mother was a woman from the west; a Baghdadi woman with veiled face. Now she goes uncovered, like our women do, for she is poor and he is blind, and nobody ever comes near them unless to ask for a charm or a blessing and depart quickly for fear of his anger and of the Rajah’s hand. You have not been on that side of the river?”
“True! true!” interrupted Babalatchi, soothingly, “but I go often alone--for your good--and look--and listen. When the time comes; when we both go together towards the Rajah’s campong, it will be to enter--and to remain.”
Lakamba sat up and looked at Babalatchi gloomily.
“This is good talk, once, twice; when it is heard too often it becomes foolish, like the prattle of children.”
“Many, many times have I seen the cloudy sky and have heard the wind of the rainy seasons,” said Babalatchi, impressively.