Chapter III.
“This is the righteous maid, the comforter.”
Thus ended the hopes of the West. The time that followed was one of wild confusion. Violence was the only law, and those who escaped in that terrible day yielded themselves in hopeless misery to the disorders they could not avert or control. Some few there always were who longed for order and peace, and mourned in silence for their lost leaders; but none had the courage to speak out.
It was in these days that a ship of strange appearance was seen approaching the entrance of the Lagoon, which, passing quickly round to the north of the Island, a bare, rocky region not yet inhabited, landed there a large number of passengers, and before the rest of the inhabitants could cross the mountain and discover who were the new-comers, the ship which brought them had vanished again into the open sea.
A stealthy departure and scarcely to be wondered at, for the government of Burmah had grave fears whether even on the Island of Outlaws its passengers could be welcomed or endured. They were a large company of an entirely lawless robber race known at that time by the name of Dacoits—the terror of the Burmese country.
These men soon found that they had been put ashore on the least fertile part of the Island, and they began to come over the heights and plunder the older settlers for whatever they needed, even driving them from their homes and taking possession of these.
There was no government or settled order to which anyone could appeal—“each man for himself” was the only rule. The number of the early settlers was much diminished by the years of strife and violence, and though some of those who came as children to the Island were now growing to man’s and woman’s estate, these were not many, and the fact that among the older settlers there were some who had families was a great source of weakness to them as against the new-comers, for even the most lawless of the old Southern men dreaded the attacks of these wild marauders upon their feeble women and children.