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!
You will surely find the means of living which you seek;
But I am sitting alone near the wood of Djati-trees
