"He is very late," said the voice, like a sigh. "He should have sent long ago."
Only at this point did the whole thing begin to seem queer. As evidence that I must have been awake, I recalled afterwards that my arm had been made numb by the pressure of my head upon it while lying down, and now began to tingle.
"It is very late," the voice repeated. "Perhaps too late——"
The fire settled, flared up fresh, and lighted the man's face dimly,—a long, pale face with gray mustache and pointed beard. He was all in black, so that his outline was lost in darkness; but I saw that round his neck was a short white ruff, and that heavy leather boots hung in folds, cavalier-fashion, from his knees. He wavered there in the dark, against the flicker of the bamboo shadows, like a picture by that Dutch fellow—What's-his-name-again—a very dim, shaky, misty Rembrandt.
"And you, Mynheer," he went on, in the same toneless voice, "from where do you come to this shore?"
"From Singapore," I managed to reply.
"From Singapura," he murmured. "And so white men live there now?—Ja, ja, time has passed."
Up till now I may have only been startled, but this set me in a blue funk. It struck me all at once that this shaky old whisper of a voice was not speaking the Dutch of nowadays. I never before knew the depths, the essence, of that uncertainty which we call fear. In the silence, I thought a drum was beating,—it was the pulse in my ears. The fire close by was suddenly cold.
"And now you go whither?" it said.
"To Batavia," I must have answered, for it went on:—