Nature under the equator knows not even the semblance of rest. In Northern countries she at least appears to sleep; here she sits through the cooler hours on her couch listening.
Certainly there was no rest for Gerard van Helmont, or for any Dutchman at that time in Acheen; there was only the tension of expectant inactivity amid all-encompassing treachery, hundred-eyed and hundred-handed. Barbaric murder lurked behind every tree and behind every smiling face that bent in allegiance. For if an Achinese stoop low before the Kafir it is with the idea, in rising, of ripping him up.
Gerard in this small “Benting” had fifty men under his orders, European and native fusileers. His nearest neighbors were established about half a mile off in a similar intrenchment, a certain number of these permanent camps having been constructed to keep open the way to the sea, for the invading force had gone up the valley into the interior.
The lanterns along the outer side of the wall had been lighted; their yellow reflection created a circle of vaguely lessening defence. Across this, into the dark tangle beyond the clearing, peered solitary sentinels by their guns. A sergeant tramped past. The night was starless and misty.
“Werda?” cried a sentry.
Something had moved, he thought, behind the glooming bushes. Something always seemed to be moving—creeping forward through the whispers of the forest, in the incessant alarm of guerilla night attack.
“Nonsense, it’s too early,” said the sergeant. “Besides, we’re quite safe now, here in these pacified districts. Keep a good lookout, all the same.”
Gerard smiled, overhearing the concluding exhortation. He knew that they were not safe—no, not for one moment. The friendly villagers from the farther side of the marsh who had sold them victuals that morning might even now be meditating a raid, one of those terrible Achinese swoops and withdrawals, the hand-to-hand swarm up the battlements—Allah il Allah!—On!
He lighted a cigarette, and wondered how many he still had left. It was painfully lonely and humdrum and wearing. Danger becomes humdrum; death can become humdrum, they say. Occasionally he met his brother officer from the neighboring fort. Otherwise not a white-faced Christian, except his own garrison, and the commissariat people from the camp, at long intervals, with stores.
He was thinking—no, not of home. Soldiers—thank God!—do not always think of home.