I have told you, reader, that my story is monotonous.
. . . then Adinda’s mother had died with fretting. And her baby sister had died because she had no mother to suckle her. And Adinda’s father feared the punishment if he did not pay his land-rent. . . .
I know it, I know it, my story is monotonous!
. . . Adinda’s father had gone away from the country, and had taken Adinda with him, and her brothers. But he had heard that Saïdyah’s father had been punished at Buitenzorg with rattan-strokes, because he had left Badoor without a pass. And therefore Adinda’s father had not gone to Buitenzorg, nor to Krawang, nor to the Preanger, nor to the Batavian out-districts . . . he had gone to Tjilang-Kahan, the district of Lebak which borders on the sea. There he had hidden in the woods and awaited the arrival of Pa-Ento, Pa-Lontah, Si-Ooniah, Pa-Ansioo, Abdool-Isma, and yet a few others who had been robbed of their buffaloes by the District-Chief of Parang-Koodyang, and who all feared the punishment if they did not pay their land-rent. There, during the night, they had seized a fishing-prao, and had put out to sea. They had steered a westerly course, keeping the land to the right of them as far as Java-Point. Thence they had steered northwards until they saw before them Tanah-itam, that the European sailors call Princes Island. They had sailed round the eastern coast of that island, and then they had made for Kaiser’s Bay, taking their bearings by the high point in the Lampongs. This at any rate was the route that people in Lebak whispered into each other’s ears whenever there was talk of official buffalo-theft and unpaid land-rent.
But Saïdyah, half dazed, did not clearly understand what they told him. He even did not quite grasp the tidings of his fathers death. There was a dinning in his ears as though someone was beating a gong in his head. He felt the blood forced with jerks through the veins at his temples, that threatened to burst under the pressure of so severe an expansion. He did not speak, and
