Tales of Unrest

We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our hands ourlives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dimeyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence ofvarious native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines ofthose short paragraphs-sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange name wakes upmemories; the printed words scent the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtleand penetrating perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygonenights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, theadvanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches ofopen water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams onthe reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of apolished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel