The aged statesman reluctantly took his
leave and went into the courtyard.
Before going down to his boat Babalatchi stopped for a while in the big
open space where the thick-leaved trees put black patches of shadow which
seemed to float on a flood of smooth, intense light that rolled up to the
houses and down to the stockade and over the river, where it broke and
sparkled in thousands of glittering wavelets, like a band woven of azure
and gold edged with the brilliant green of the forests guarding both
banks of the Pantai. In the perfect calm before the coming of the
afternoon breeze the irregularly jagged line of tree-tops stood
unchanging, as if traced by an unsteady hand on the clear blue of the hot
sky. In the space sheltered by the high palisades there lingered the
smell of decaying blossoms from the surrounding forest, a taint of drying
fish; with now and then a whiff of acrid smoke from the cooking fires
when it eddied down from under the leafy boughs and clung lazily about
the burnt-up grass.
As Babalatchi looked up at the flagstaff over-topping a group of low
trees in the middle of the courtyard, the tricolour flag of the
Netherlands stirred slightly for the first time since it had been hoisted
that morning on the arrival of the man-of-war boats.
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