“The child was stringing beads on a cord, and seemed to need all her attention for this. Three red ones, one black . . . three red ones, one black: it was pretty!
“Her name was Si Oopi Keteh. This in Sumatra means approximately little lady . . . yes, Verbrugge, you know it, but Duclari has always served in Java. Her name was Si Oopi Keteh, but in my mind I called her ‘poor thing,’ or something like it, as in my estimate I was so infinitely exalted above her.
“It was late afternoon . . . nearly evening, and the beads were put away. The land moved slowly away alongside us, smaller and smaller grew the Ophir behind us to the right. To the left, in the West, above the wide wide sea that has no limit until it meets Madagascar, and behind it Africa, the sun was sinking, and made his beams play ducks and drakes on the waves in curves that grew more obtuse every moment: he sought coolness in the sea. How the deuce did that thing run again?”
“What thing . . . the sun?”
“No, no . . . I used to make up verses in those days! Oh, delicious ones! Just listen:—
That steeps Natal’s wild shore,
So gentle when on other strands,
There ever bursts upon the sands
With turbulent rush and roar!
No sooner hears you speak,
But Westward to the unmeasured space
Rise his dark eyes and seem to face
The distant climes they seek.
Westward their glances flee,
And when your own stray round, he shows
’Tis water, boundless water flows,
Always the sea, the sea!
