An old woman led him to her cottage, and took care of the poor fool.
Soon he laughed less horribly, but still did not speak. But during the night the inhabitants of the hut were [[348]]frightened at his voice, when he sang monotonously: “I do not know where I shall die,” and some inhabitants of Badoer put money together, to bring a sacrifice to the bojajas[41] of the Tji-Udjung for the cure of Saïdjah, whom they thought insane. But he was not insane.
For upon a certain night when the moon was very clear, he rose from the baleh-baleh,[42] softly left the house, and sought the place where Adinda had lived. This was not easy, because so many houses had fallen down; but he seemed to recognise the place by the width of the angle which some rays of light formed through the trees, at their meeting in his eye, as the sailor measures by lighthouses and the tops of mountains.
Yes, there it ought to be:—there Adinda had lived!
Stumbling over half-rotten bamboo and pieces of the fallen roof, he made his way to the sanctuary which he sought. And, indeed, he found something of the still standing pagger,[43] near to which the baleh-baleh of Adinda had stood, and even the pin of bamboo was still with its point in that pagger, the pin on which she hung her dress when she went to bed.…
But the baleh-baleh had fallen down like the house, and [[349]]was almost turned to dust. He took a handful of it, pressed it to his opened lips, and breathed very hard.…
The following day he asked the old woman, who had taken care of him, where the rice-floor was which stood in the grounds of Adinda’s house. The woman rejoiced to hear him speak, and ran through the village to seek the floor. When she could point out the new proprietor to Saïdjah, he followed her silently, and being brought to the rice-floor, he counted thereupon thirty-two lines.…
Then he gave the woman as many piastres as were required to buy a buffalo, and left Badoer. At Tjilangkahan, he bought a fishing-boat, and, after having sailed two days, arrived in the Lampoons, where the insurgents were in insurrection against the Dutch rule. He joined a troop of Badoer men, not so much to fight as to seek Adinda; for he had a tender heart, and was more disposed to sorrow than to bitterness.
One day that the insurgents had been beaten, he wandered through a village that had just been taken by the Dutch army, and was therefore[44] in flames. Saïdjah knew that the troop that had been destroyed there consisted for the most part of Badoer men. He wandered like a ghost among the houses, which were not yet burned down, and found the corpse of Adinda’s father with a [[350]]bayonet-wound in the breast. Near him Saïdjah saw the three murdered brothers of Adinda, still boys—children,—and a little further lay the corpse of Adinda, naked, and horribly mutilated.…
A small piece of blue linen had penetrated into the gaping wound in the breast, which seemed to have made an end to a long struggle.…