Then he would go back to his work, polishing the brass on the railings of his boat, regardless of the watchful eyes that blinked at him from the mud beneath the wharf.
He smiled contentedly, for his mind was made up. He would not ask to be made master of the Sultan’s marvellous yacht, that was sent out from Liverpool,—although the possibility made him catch his breath: he would ask nothing for himself,—he would ask that his Excellency let his son Noa go to Mecca, that he might become a hadji and then some day—who knows—Noa might become a kateeb in the attap-thatched mosque back of the palace.
And Noa, unmindful of his father’s dreaming, played with the little Prince, kicking the ragga ball, or sailing miniature praus out into the river, and off toward the shimmering straits. But often they sat cross-legged and dropped bits of chicken and fruit between the palm sleepers of the wharf to the birch-colored crocodiles below, who snapped them up, one after another, never taking their small, cruel eyes off the brown faces that peered down at them.
Child-life is measured by a few short years in Malaya. The hot, moist air and the fierce rays of the equatorial sun fall upon child and plant alike, and they grow so fast that you can almost hear them!
The little Prince soon forgot his childhood companions in the gorgeous court of his Highness, the Sultan of Johore, and Noa took the place of his father on the launch, while the old man silently mourned as he leaned back in its stern, and alternately watched the sunlight that played along the carefully polished rails, and the deepening shadows that bound the black labyrinth of mangrove roots on the opposite shore. The Governor had never noted his repeated protestations and deep-drawn sighs.
“But who cares,” he thought. “It is the will of Allah! The Prince will surely remember us when he returns.”
On the very edge of Bander Maharani, just where the almost endless miles of betel-nut palms shut from view the yellow turrets of the palace, stood the palm-thatched bungalow in which Anak grew, in a few short years, from childhood to womanhood. The hot, sandy soil all about was covered with the flaxen burs of the betel, and the little sunlight that found its way down through the green and yellow fronds drew rambling checks on the steaming earth, that reminded Anak of the plaid on the silken sarong that Noa’s father had given her the day she was betrothed to his son.
Up the bamboo ladder and into the little door,—so low that even Anak, with her scant twelve years, was forced to stoop,—she would dart when she espied Noa coming sedately down the long aisle of palms that led away to the fungus-covered canal that separated her little world from the life of the capital city.
There was coquetry in every glance, as she watched him, from behind the carved bars of her low window, drop contentedly down on the bench beneath a scarred old cocoanut that stood directly before the door. She thought almost angrily that he ought to have searched a little for her: she would have repaid him with her arms about his neck.
From the cool darkness of the bungalow came the regular click of her mother’s loom. She could see the worker’s head surrounded by a faint halo of broken twilight. Her mind filled in the details that were hidden by the green shadows—the drawn, stooping figure, the scant black hair, the swollen gums, the syrah-stained teeth, and sunken neck. She impulsively ran her soft brown fingers over her own warm, plump face, through the luxuriant tresses of her heavy hair, and then gazed out at the recumbent figure on the bench, waiting patiently for her coming.