Or she had passed the night in darkness, sitting on the rice floor and counting with her eager finger, that indeed thirty-six deep lines were cut near each other. And she had amused herself with an imaginary fright as to whether she had miscalculated, perhaps had counted one less, to enjoy again and again, and every time, the delicious assurance, that without fail three times twelve moons had passed since Saïdjah saw her for the last time.
And now that it was becoming light, she too would be exerting herself with useless trouble, to bend her looks over the horizon to meet the sun, the lazy sun, that stayed away … stayed away.…
There came a line of bluish-red, which touched the clouds and made the edges light and glowing;—and it began to lighten, and again arrows of fire shot through the atmosphere; but this time they did not disappear, [[341]]they seized upon the dark ground, and communicated their blaze in larger and larger circles, meeting, crossing, unrolling, turning, wandering, and uniting in patches of fire and lightnings of golden lustre on the azure ground … there was red, and blue, and silver, and purple, and yellow, and gold, in all this … oh God! that was the daybreak, that was seeing Adinda again!
Saïdjah had not learnt to pray, and it would have been a pity to teach him; for a more holy prayer, more fervent thanksgiving than was in the mute rapture of his soul, could not be conceived in human language. He would not go to Badoer—to see Adinda in reality seeming to him less pleasurable than the expectation of seeing her again. He sat down at the foot of the ‘Ketapan,’ and his eyes wandered over the scenery. Nature smiled at him, and seemed to welcome him as a mother welcoming the return of her child, and as she pictures her joy by voluntary remembrance of past grief, when showing what she has preserved as a keepsake during his absence. So Saïdjah was delighted to see again so many spots that were witnesses of his short life. But his eyes or his thoughts might wander as they pleased, yet his looks and longings always reverted to the path which leads from Badoer to the Ketapan tree. All that his senses could observe was called Adinda.… He saw the abyss to the left, where the earth is so yellow, where once a young buffalo sank down into the depth,—they had descended with strong [[342]]rattan cords, and Adinda’s father had been the bravest. Oh, how she clapped her hands, Adinda! And there, further on, on the other side, where the wood of cocoa-trees waved over the cottages of the village, there somewhere, Si-Oenah had fallen out of a tree and died. How his mother cried, “because Si-Oenah was still such a little one,” she lamented, … as if she would have been less grieved if Si-Oenah had been taller. But he was small, that is true, for he was smaller and more fragile than Adinda.… Nobody walked upon the little road which leads from Badoer to the tree. By and by she would come … it was yet very early.
Saïdjah saw a badjing (squirrel) spring with playful nimbleness up the trunk of a cocoa-tree. The graceful animal—the terror of the proprietor of the tree, but still lovely in form and movement—ran untiringly up and down. Saïdjah saw it, and forced himself to stay and look at it, because this calmed his thoughts after their heavy labour since sunrise—rest after the fatiguing expectancy. Soon he uttered his impressions in words, and sang what his soul dictated him. I would rather read you his lay in Malay, that Italian language of the East:—
“See, how the ‘badjing’ looks for his means of living
On the Klappa-tree. He ascends, descends, wantons right and left,
He turns (round the tree), springs, falls, climbs, and falls again.
He has no wings, and yet he is as quick as a bird.
Much happiness, my ‘badjing,’—I give you hail!