“I am glad. I like you English. You shall hunt and shoot. There are tigers, and I have elephants. My slaves shall find game, and you shall have my boat to fetch you.”
Dark as her skin was, the Resident noticed the red blood mantling beneath it in her cheeks as she spoke eagerly, fixing her eyes upon Hilton as she spoke, and then lowering the lids in a dreamy, thoughtful way.
“Then you will both come?” she said.
“Yes, I promise for both; but we cannot leave the station together,” said Mr Harley.
“It is well,” she said, smiling; “and you too, lieutenant—you will come and see me? You like to shoot. All Englishmen like to shoot.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll come,” said Chumbley, with his slow, heavy drawl. “I think it would be rather jolly. Yes, I’ll come.”
She nodded and smiled at him once more, as if he amused her; and Harley noticed that she glanced at Chumbley again and again as the conversation went on, looking at him as if he were some fine kind of animal she thought it would be well to buy at the first opportunity.
All at once, though, she turned sharply upon the Resident, and the object of her visit came out.
“I want you to help me,” she said, with an angry flash in her eye. “I am a woman, and I cannot fight, or I would not come to you for help. But you English are just. You have settled in our country, and your Princess says, ‘Let there be no cruelty and ill-treatment of the people where you are.’ I have seen you for ten years, ever since I became a woman who could think and act; but because I am a woman I am oppressed. Because I will not be his wife Rajah Hamet stops my people’s boats, and takes away tin and rice. His people beat my slaves and steal their fruit and fowls. Our lives become suffering, for my people are me. I am not a mother, but they call me mother, and they say, ‘See, your children are robbed and beaten; they moisten the dust of the earth with their tears.’”
“Ah! ah! ah! ay! ayo!”