possible,” he thought, “to get angry with Adinda about this! For even if she had spun a flaw into the cord, and if the bet between Badoor and Tjipooroot had been lost through this, and not through the glass splinter so naughtily and dexterously thrown by little Djameen, who was hidden behind the hedge, should I even then have been right in behaving so harshly to her, and calling her unseemly names? How will it be if I die in Batavia without having asked her forgiveness for such great rudeness? Will it not be as though I were an evil person who flings bad names at a girl? And if people hear that I died in a strange land, will not everyone in Badoor say: ‘It is a good thing that Saïdyah died, for he opened a wide mouth at Adinda’?”
So then his thoughts took a course which differed widely from the previous exaltation, and involuntarily they expressed themselves first in half-words scarce audible, but soon in a monologue, and at last in the sorrowful chant of which I here give the translation. At first it had been my intention to write it in metre and rhyme, but like Havelaar I judge it more fitting to omit that corset.
I saw the great sea on the South Coast when I was there with my father to make salt;
If I die on the sea, and my body is thrown into the deep water, sharks will come.
They will swim round me, and ask ‘Which of us shall devour the dead body that sinks yonder through the water?’
I shall not hear.
I have seen the burning house of Pa-ansoo, that he himself had set afire because he was half-mad.
If I die in a burning house, the flaming timbers will fall on my body,
And outside the house there will be the hue and cry of people who throw water to quench the fire.
I shall not hear.
I have seen little Si-oonah fall from the klappa-tree when he plucked a klappa for his mother.
