“Prabu is no pirate; moreover, he would sacrifice his own life rather than any harm should come to the young sahibs.”
“Oh! that is all very well, and I believe it,” answered Martin; “still, you should have told us what we had to expect, not kept us in the dark so long.”
“Sahib Martin,” he replied, earnestly, “you are right; I might well have intrusted both with my secret, for you are brave as lions; but, thanks to Allah! it is not too late to make amends. Let them listen.”
Then he confessed, what we surmised from the words of the Dutch captain—namely, that he had been acting as agent for the Pangeran of Pugar, collecting and selling his birds’-nests, and purchasing arms with the money.
“Then,” said I, “there is a conspiracy afoot, and the native princes are about to rise against their masters, the Dutch.”
“Masters!” he exclaimed, scornfully—“the dogs of Dutch—the treacherous Hollanders—thieves and plunderers of the East—fellows whose souls are in their money-bags—the masters of the descendants of the Susunans!” Then, as if bethinking his haste had betrayed him into imprudence, he added, “But who is Prabu, that he should prate of the affairs of princes? Sahib,” he continued, “you will not betray me. Know, then, that in every island of the archipelago, the people are but biding their opportunity to throw off the accursed yoke.”
“But, Prabu,” I asked, quite innocently, “why do you dislike the Hollanders?”
“Dislike!” he exclaimed; “I hate them!—yes, with the hereditary accumulated hatred of generations; nor is it alone so with us islanders. Has not the Sahib Claud told us how readily even the Chinese captain forgot his hatred to me, for depriving him of his cargo of nests, when hearing that I and the arms were beneath the claws of these Dutch wolves? But,” he added, “the sun is sinking; another day I will tell the sahibs the history of the cruel doings of these Dutch in Java, and they shall then judge whether our hatred to them is groundless or not.”
CHAPTER XIV.
HISTORY OF OUR CAPTAIN: HIS HATRED OF THE DUTCH.
The next day, as my brother and I were reclining beneath the deck-awning, Prabu related the following history:—