The djaksa interpreted the question; but the prisoner hesitated—he seemed not to know what he ought to say. He cast a furtive sidelong glance at August van Beneden, who reassured him by saying:
“Speak up, Setrosmito, speak up, tell the simple truth.”
“No, kandjeng toean,” said he, “I am not guilty of smuggling. I never touch the bedoedan. I have killed a Chinaman because he ill-treated my child.”
The Javanese spoke in a very low tone of voice—he was abashed before that large audience and before his chiefs. He spoke moreover in the Javanese tongue, which hardly any one present could understand, so that his answer produced no impression whatever.
“Now, listen attentively, Setrosmito,” said the president. “The charges against you, your own statements, and the evidence of the witnesses, will be read out to you.”
“Yes, kandjeng toean.”
Thereupon the clerk of the court rose, and in the sing-song monotonous tone of voice peculiar to his class, began to read all the depositions and the whole body of evidence which the preliminary examinations had produced. He read very fast, very indistinctly, and in so low a tone of voice that not a soul in the pandoppo, not even the president himself, who was seated close beside him, could understand what he said. The prisoner, of course, could not catch a single word; for the papers were all drawn up in Malay, a language of which the simple dessa-labourer knows little or nothing. From time to time this dreamy flow of words was interrupted by the djaksa, whose duty it was to translate to the prisoner the more important parts of the case. But even the interpretation was got through at such a pace that it was very doubtful whether the prisoner was any the wiser for the djaksa’s translation.
He sat squatting on the floor without changing his attitude, and kept his eyes rivetted on one spot; his hands, fumbling the while at the skirts of his jacket, betrayed his extreme agitation. At every explanation of the djaksa, whether he understood it or not, he mumbled the invariable Javanese answer:
“Yes, kandjeng toean.”
This reading of the evidence was a most dreary and tedious business. Even the members of the council at the table kept up a whispered conversation, which the president had repeatedly to interrupt with an impatient gesture and a stern look of displeasure.