"Koyala bimeby mally him—Mynheer Muller, go hide in bush?" Cho Seng ventured. The question was asked with such an air of simple innocence and friendly interest that none could take offense.
Koyala flushed hotly. Then her nose and chin rose high with pride.
"The Bintang Burung will wed no man, Cho Seng," she declared haughtily. "The blood of Chawatangi dies in me, but not till Bulungan is purged of the orang blanda" (white race). She whipped the jeweled kris out of its silken scabbard. "When the last white man spills his heart on the coral shore and the wrongs done Chawatangi's daughter, my mother, have been avenged, then Koyala will go to join the Hanu Token that call her, call her—"
She thrust the point of the kris against her breast and looked upward toward the far-distant hills and the smoking mountain. A look of longing came into her eyes, the light of great desire, almost it seemed as if she would drive the blade home and join the spirits she invoked.
With a sigh she lowered the point of the kris and slipped it back into its sheath.
"No, Cho Seng," she said, "Mynheer Muller is nothing to me. No man will ever be anything to me. But your master has been a kind elder brother to Koyala. And like me, he has had to endure the shame of an unhappy birth." Her voice sank to a whisper. "For his mother, Cho Seng, as you know, was a woman of Celebes."
She turned swiftly away that he might not see her face. After a moment she said in a voice warm with womanly kindness and sympathy:
"Therefore you and I must take care of him, Cho Seng. He is weak, he is untruthful, he has made a wicked bargain with your master, Ah Sing, which the spirits of the hills tell me he shall suffer for, but he is only what his white father made him, and the orang blanda must pay!" Her lips contracted grimly. "Ay, pay to the last drop of blood! You will be true to him, Cho Seng?"
The Chinaman cast a furtive glance upward and found her mellow dark-brown eyes looking at him earnestly. The eyes seemed to search his very soul.
"Ja, ja," he pledged.