Download the full version of the ebook at ebookname.

com

Dancing Out of Bali Periplus Classics Series John

Coast

https://ebookname.com/product/dancing-out-of-bali-periplus-
classics-series-john-coast/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Dancing out of line ballrooms ballets and mobility in

victorian fiction and culture 1st Edition Molly Engelhardt

https://ebookname.com/product/dancing-out-of-line-ballrooms-ballets-
and-mobility-in-victorian-fiction-and-culture-1st-edition-molly-
engelhardt/
ebookname.com

Dirty Dancing An Ethnography of Lap Dancing 1st Edition

Rachela Colosi

https://ebookname.com/product/dirty-dancing-an-ethnography-of-lap-
dancing-1st-edition-rachela-colosi/

ebookname.com

500 Popular Tropical Plants Periplus Editions

https://ebookname.com/product/500-popular-tropical-plants-periplus-
editions/

ebookname.com

Food Processing Operations Modeling Design and Analysis

Second Edition Soojin Jun

https://ebookname.com/product/food-processing-operations-modeling-
design-and-analysis-second-edition-soojin-jun/

ebookname.com
Complete Solution Manual for Single Variable Calculus 6th
Edition James Stewart

https://ebookname.com/product/complete-solution-manual-for-single-
variable-calculus-6th-edition-james-stewart/

ebookname.com

Erectus Walks Amongst Us The Evolution of Modern Humans

1st Edition Richard D. Fuerle

https://ebookname.com/product/erectus-walks-amongst-us-the-evolution-
of-modern-humans-1st-edition-richard-d-fuerle/

ebookname.com

Engineering Tables and Data 3rd Edition A. M. Howatson

https://ebookname.com/product/engineering-tables-and-data-3rd-edition-
a-m-howatson/

ebookname.com

Principles of Contemporary Corporate Governance 2nd

Edition Jean Jacques Du Plessis

https://ebookname.com/product/principles-of-contemporary-corporate-
governance-2nd-edition-jean-jacques-du-plessis/

ebookname.com

Italian Foreign Policy The Statecraft of the Founders 1870

1896 Federico Chabod

https://ebookname.com/product/italian-foreign-policy-the-statecraft-
of-the-founders-1870-1896-federico-chabod/

ebookname.com
Bsava Manual Of Canine Practice A Foundation Manual Pb
2015 1st Edition Hutchinson T.

https://ebookname.com/product/bsava-manual-of-canine-practice-a-
foundation-manual-pb-2015-1st-edition-hutchinson-t/

ebookname.com
 "If you know where to look, you can still discover and recognize what it was that
intoxicated John Coast fifty years ago." -Sir David Attenborough

John Coast

t"l"''::
r-I'TI Foreword by
.,_
>~
Sir David Attenborough
.,"'1:1
-r-
t"lC
V>Vl
 From the London and New York Press

WINTER GARDEN THEATRE, LONDON.... breaking several house

records for attendance.

FASCINATING AND CHARMING.... "How fascinating are these tiny

fragile girls in glittering gold brocade and gold head-dresses, their dark hair
twined with white flowers. Particularly interesting was Tumulilingan danced by
Ni Gusti Raka and Sampih, depicting the vain courtship of a bumblebee. How
charming was ... the lovemaking.... The classical Legong including a charming bird
dance by Raka .... Among character dancers, outstanding was the Ketjak ... a male
chorus squatting in concentric circles about an admirable mime, Serog, gradually
acquire the characteristics of monkeys. The combination of abrupt movement and
gutteral barks is quite extraordinary."
-Cyril Beaumont, Sunday Times, London

FIRE AND PRECISION.... "delicacy of arm and hand movement ... infi-
nitely plastic use of the body ... the tight swaddling of the girls ... gives them a
tenuous elegance, enhanced by their tender age. Ni Gusti Raka ... dances with the
fire and precision of a ballerina ... she is the very embodiment of all fairy-tale
princesses and as a fierce little bird she is irresistible, putting all western Firebirds
to shame ... (and there is some beautifully dressed up fooling) .... The entertain-
ment offered is far from being only dancing. The 'gamelan orchestra' is fascin-
ating not only to hear but to watch . . . and there is a splendid 'monkey
chorus' from the men .... The costumes are rich and strange as only oriental dress-
es can be. Incredibly, they were woven and made in two villages on the island."
-Alexander Bland, The Observer, London

UNIQUE DISPLAY.... "a unique display of a highly developed art which

should not be missed . . . a continuous sinuosity of movement .... Three young
girls ... dance the Legong ... with superb grace ... the Ketjak ... has the most atmos-
phere, but the highlight of the evening is the Barong, a grotesque comedy about
a mythical lion who protects the Balinese from evil influences. The show is very
ably produced by John Coast."
-P. EJ, London Telegraph

A BEAUTIFUL SHOW. ... "gorgeous to look at, stunning to listen to, full of
vivacity and completely off the beaten track. Ni Gusti Raka, the leading dancer,
is an utterly lovely wisp of a girl. Her dancing in the gay and delightful
'bumblebee' numb~r called 'Tumulilingan' is bewitching, and in the more
demanding 'Legong' it is truly superb, technically and dramatically:'
-John Martin, New York Times
THEY LIVE THE DANCE.... "A rich cross-section of the wonderfully
varied Balinese dance repertoire. In the intricate choreographies so closely co-
ordinated with music of magic sound and complex rhythm, a sensational theat-
rical art is displayed, like nothing else to be found throughout the East."
-Colin McPhee, New York Times Magazine

BEAUTY PLUS.... "William Saroyan once wrote a play called 'The Beautiful
People.' The same title fully describes the event which took place last evening at
the Fulton Theater where the Dancers of Bali with their Gamelan Orchestra from
the little Indonesian villiage ofPliatan, made their American debut. For there was
beauty everywhere. Beauty of movement and beauty of sound, beauty of color
and beauty of spirit. From the temple doorways, etched against the deep blue sky,
came tiny dancers in golds and crimsons and purples, in costumes of breath-
taking loveliness and in the wonderfully monstrous garbs of demons.''
-Walter Terry, New York Herald Tribune

DANCERS OF BALI ARE FASCINATING, FUNNY AND FRISKY

"This Balinese company, visiting here by courtesy of the Republic of Indonesia,
is exotic, fabulously costumed, exciting and just plain lightheartedly funny. Its
orchestra, called a Gamelan, is a fascinating syncopated ensemble."
-John Chapman, New York Daily News

MAGIC CARPET.... "The Fulton Theater, while it shelters the 'Dancers of

Bali', is the place to go. The excitement of unfamiliar rhythms and daring
volumes, the supreme delicacy of dance patterns and the luxury of broad
comedy all combine to make a magic carpet of the exhibition."
-William Hawkins, New York World- Telegram and Sun

BALI DANCERS ARE MAGNIFICENT.... "A visit to the Fulton is imper-

ative for those who wish to enlarge their artistic horizons. We found the
performance nothing less than magnificent, and the youngsters in the audience
were enchanted by it, particularly with the clowning and pageantry."
-Robert Coleman, New York Daily Mi"or

EAST COMES WEST.... "It portrays a glittering world of make-believe

where people never grow up to serious problems of emotions .... Another new
experience is the Gamelan orchestra. It can whip up as much frenzy as our
jiviest jazz and in the next moment lull you to meditation."
-Frances Herridge, New York Post

EXTRAORDINARY.... "From the village of Pliatan, Bali, Indonesia, some

14,000 miles away, came its foremost dancers and musicians to make real the
almost legendary accounts of their unique way of life. They provided a choice
experience.... There is strange exhilaration as well as fascination in the multi-
rhythmic music.''
-Miles Kastendieck, New York Journal-American
 John Coast
With a Foreword by
Sir David Attenborough

~)

PERIPLUS
Paperback edition published by Periplus Editions
with the permission of Laura Rosenberg

©John Coast, 1953, 1954

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in

part in any forun

First published as Da~1cers of Bali by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1953

Reissued as Dancing Out of Bali by Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1954
First Periplus edition, 2004

ISBN: 978-1-4629-0471-6 (ebook)

Publisher's Note
Modern spelling was introduced to Indonesia in 1969 when, for example,
"Dj" became simply "J".Ardjuna is now spelt Arjuna.

"Pliatan" is derived from the original name ofPeliatan village, usually

shortened to Pliatan, and so used by John Coast in his book. Peliatan is
adjacent to Ubud which became more famous in later years.

"Luce" was the familiar name of Supianti Sujono, the Javanese wife of
John Coast.

Printed in Singapore

DISTRIBUTORS

PT Java Books lndonesia,Jl. Kelapa Gading Kirana, Blok A-14/17,

Jakarta 14240. Tel: (021) 451 5351; Fax: (021) 453 4987
Email: [email protected]

Asia Paetfic
Berkeley Books Pte Ltd, 61 Tai Seng Avenue #02-12, Singapore 534167
Tel: (65) 6280 1330; Fax: (65) 6280 6290; Email: inquiries~penplus.com.sg

japan
Tuttle Publishing,Yaekari Building, 3F, 5-4-12 Osaki, Shinagawa- ku,
Tokyo 141-0032.Tel: (813) 5437 0171; Fax: (813) 5437 0755
Email: [email protected]

North America, Latin America and Europe

Tuttle Publishing. 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon,VT 05759-9436
Tel: (802) 773 8930; Fax: (802) 773 6993; Ennail: [email protected]
www.tuttlepublishing.com
 JOHN ALAN COAST
1916-1989

Menanti di pintu sorga

Dancing Out of Bali chronicles John's

most cherished life's work-bringing the people
and culture of Bali to the attention of audiences
throughout the world. It has now been reissued,
fifty years after its initial release, in the hope that
this passionate appreciation will reach an
ever-widening circle of people.

Grateful thanks go to arts consultant and

writer James Murdoch for helping to make this
edition possible, and to Sir David Attenborough,
Jonathan Copeland, Tom Hennes, Ni Wayan Murni
and Ni Gusti Raka for their special support.

Royalties from the sale of this edition

will go towards the continuance of
the performing arts in Bali.

LAURA ROSENBERG
New York City, january 2004
www.johncoast.org
 About the Author

John Coast was born in Eastbourne, Kent on October 30, 1916. As

Britain entered World War II, he joined the Coldstream Guards and then
later the Norfolk Regiment as an officer. He was posted to Singapore,
which within days fell to the Japanese invaders, and taken prisoner of
war. Coast was sent to Siam (now Thailand) to slave for more than three
years on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway. His story of that ordeal,
Railroad if Death (1946), became an instant best seller and was later to
form the basis of Return to the River Kwai, an acclaimed documentary he
made in 1969 for the BBC. With a multicultural group of dancers, musi-
cians and actors, including many Malays and Indonesians, Coast pro-
duced many concert performances during his internment. Mter the
war, Coast joined the press department of the British Foreign Office in
Bangkok, but shortly after became press attache to President Sukarno
during the Indonesian struggle for independence. He described his roles
in early Indonesian politics in his book Recruit to Revolution (1952). In
1950, when Coast moved to Bali to write this book, he became
immersed in Balinese culture and dreamed of organizing the first post-
war Western tour of Bali's finest musicians and dancers. His perseverance
brought such a troupe to Europe and America in 1952/53, with spec-
tacular success. His book Dancers of Bali (1953)-published in Britain as
Dancing out if Bali (1954)-relates the story of this legendary tour. The
historic recording made in London of the group's exotic music caused
widespread interest and influenced England's great composer Benjamin
Britten's three-act ballet Prince cif the Pagodas. In the mid-19 50s, Coast
returned to London and became a leading impresario, managing the
careers of such artists as Mario Lanza, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carerras,
Jon Vickers and Montserrat Caballe. He presented Bob Dylan's first
appearance in London and first brought Ravi Shankar to the West. He
also contributed articles to The New Statesman, The Economist, Ballet and
Dance News, and made several films with Sir David Attenborough on
Balinese culture for the BBC.
 Contents

From the London and New York Press page 1

Dedication 5
About the Author 6
Acknowledgments 8
A Short Bibliography 8
Books by the Same Author 8
Author's Dedication 8
Foreword by Sir David Attenborough 9
Illustrations 11
10 We Decide to Stay 15
20 Our Work Begins 34
3 The Club in Pliatan
0 54
40 Our Legong: and the Great Mario 73
So Shaping a Programme 93
60 Of Guests and Guest-Houses 112
7 Invitation to Malaya
0 130
80 Enter our Impresario 149
90 Preparations and Politics 168
100 London Interlude 186
110 Balinese in America 198
120 End of the Journey 210
A Postscript 221
Information on the Language, Pronunciation and
Currency, in Bali and Indonesia 222
Index 227
 Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Mr Colin McPhee for his technical advice
in connection with the analysis of Balinese music made in Chapter 7.

A Short Bibliography
The Island of Bali by Miguel Covarrubias
(ISBN 962 593 060 4)
Dance and Drama in Bali by Walter Spies and Beryl de Zoete
(ISBN 962 593 880 X)
A House in Bali by Colin McPhee
(ISBN 962 593 629 7)
A Tale from Bali by Vicki Baum
(ISBN 962 593 502 9)

Books by the Same Author

Railroad of Death
Recruit to Revolution
Some Aspects of Siamese Politics

Author's Dedication
One day towards the end of February 1954, after the dancers had been
back in Bali a year, Sampih was called to dance with the Pliatan group in
the palace of the Raja of Gianjar in front of President Sukarno.
He failed to appear. Three days later his murdered body was found in
the Ubud River.
Sampih was a very great dancer; and while Luce and I were living in
Bali he was like our brother.
The book, which so fittingly could have been dedicated to him and
the Anak Agung Mandera, I now dedicate in great sorrow to his memory.
 Foreword

There was a time when Bali, to Western eyes, represented all that was
remote and exotic. It was the Far East at its most romantic. In the 1930s,
a few wealthy travellers, attracted by rumours of the island's extraordinary
beauty and the wonders of its music and dancing, started to visit it in their
luxury yachts. Occasionally, one or two European painters and musicians
went with them and several became so fascinated by the island's rich yet
alien culture that they settled there. But they were the exceptions. To the
rest of the world, Bali was little more than a name for a distant unreach-
able island paradise.
John Coast, the author of this book, arrived in Southeast Asia as a
member of the British Army during the Second World War. Within days
of his landing at Singapore, the island fell to the Japanese and he was taken
as prisoner to work on the murderous Burma Railway. There he laboured
and suffered alongside others who came from what was then the Dutch
East Indies. Such appalling experiences might well have turned many
against all things Oriental. For John, they did quite the reverse, and when
peace came at last and he was demobilized he returned as part of the
British diplomatic delegation in Thailand. From there, he went to Java as
a private individual to do what he could to help Indonesia in its fight for
independence.
It was then that he visited Bali. He was so overwhelmed by the splen-
dour of the islanders' music and dancing, so unlike the stately traditions
ofJava and beyond in its fire and brilliance, that he dreamed of arranging
a worldwide tour for a group of dancers together with their essential
complement, a full gamelan orchestra.
In this book, he tells how he achieved this unlikely and pioneering
feat. The story involves intrigue, politics, rivalries and even-tragically-
murder. But his pages are also filled with the brilliant clashing sounds of
the Balinese gamelan, the flicker of candlelight on the graceful bodies
of child dancers, the perfume of incense and frangipani, and the vivid
presence of one of the most generous, friendly and talented people on
earth.
When his book was first published in 1953, few of its readers could
have been to the island. Bali still had no airport of any kind, let alone one
that could accept aircraft big enough to bring in visitors hundreds at a
time. The beach at Sanur, today lined by towering luxury hotels, was then
so quiet and lonely that a stranger could spend the night there, watching
turtles come ashore to lay their eggs, looking at the stars, and sleeping on
the sand. I know. I did.
So I too became captivated by all things Balinese. On my return, I
read this book and eventually met its author. Together we persuaded BBC
Television to let us make a series of films that would give some account
of Balinese art, and in particular its music and dancing. So I had the huge
good fortune of working in Bali in partnership with someone whom the
Balinese knew well and held in great affection.
It is indeed splendid that John's book should be in print once more
to tell today's visitors of how things once were on the island. But its read-
ers will have no difficulty in imagining that, for there is a miracle about
Bali. Its traditions are so vigorous, so deeply rooted in the Balinese char-
acter, that they remained astonishingly free from foreign influences for
centuries. As a result-if you know where to look-you can still discov-
er and recognize what it was that intoxicated John Coast fifty years ago.

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

London, October 2003
 Illustrations

1. John Coast, Bangkok, 1950. ( Vichitr Photo Studio, Bangkok)

2. John Coast and Luce in their house in Kaliangu, Bali.
3. Mario (I Ketut Maria) training Ni Gusti Raka. (john Coast)
4. Ni Gusti Raka copying Mario's movements. (john Coast)
5. Ni Gusti Raka learning the rhythmic patterns of the Bumblebee
Dance. (john Coast)
6. Ni Gusti Raka and Sampih rehearsing the dance. (john Coast)
7. First public appearance of the Bumblebee Dance. (john Coast)
8. Mario in the 1930s performing Kebiar Duduk. (Photo courtesy of
Melanie Arcudl)
9. The young Sampih performing Kebiar Duduk. (Photo courtesy of
Melanie Arcudl)
10. Sampih rehearsing Kebiar Duduk with Anak Agung Gde Mandera.
(john Coast)
11. The Legongs rehearse in Mandera's house temple. (john Coast)
12. The attendant of the two Legongs dances for a Balinese audience.
(Indonesian Ministry of Information)
13. Ni Gusti Raka as the raven, the golden bird of ill omen. (john Coast)
14. A dramatic episode of the Legong. (john Coast)
15. Ni Gusti Raka in front of the carved Garuda Bird. (john Coast)
16. Anom and Oka in the Legong. (john Coast)
17. A public performance of the Djanger folk-dance. (john Coast)
18. Djanger dancers wearing the typical headdress. (john Coast)
19. Anak Agung Gde Mandera directing a rehearsal. (john Coast)
20. Rehearsal of the dance-drama, "The Fasting Ardjuna". (john Coast)
21. "The Fasting Ardjuna" rehearsed by the roadside. (john Coast)
22. An open-air rehearsal of the gamelan in Pliatan village. (Indonesian
Ministry of Information)
23. A section of the gamelan from Pliatan village. (Colin McPhee)
24. Chengcheng players from the Pliatan gamelan. (Colin McPhee)
25.Anom, Raka and Oka preparing their costumes. (john Coast)
26. Tjokorda Oka and Luce fitting a costume. (john Coast)
27. President Sukarno with the three Legongs in the palace in Djakarta.
28. Twelve-year-old Ni Gusti Raka, star of the travelling show.
29. The Pliatan Gam elan orchestra on stage at the Winter Garden
Theatre in London. (Dennis de Marney)
30. The three Legongs from the wings of the Winter Garden Theatre.
(Baron)
31. Sampih performing Kebiar Duduk at the Winter Garden Theatre.
(Baron)
32. The warrior Ardjuna about to do batde with the wild boar sent
by the god Shiva to test his prowess. (Baron)
33. The Finale: the Barong triumphs over all its adversaries. (Baron)
34. Publicity for the "Dancers of Bali" tour of the United States.
35. The "Dancers of Bali" reach Broadway.
36. John Coast directing a rehearsal at the Fulton Theater.
37. The Djanger ensemble in the US debut. (Arnold Eagle)
38. Rangda and the Barong with other characters. (Arnold Eagle)
39. Sampih performing the Baris. (Louis Faurer)
40. Sampih performing Kebiar Duduk with Anak Agung Gde Mandera.
(Arnold Eagle)
41. Ni Gusti Raka as the bee in the Bumblebee Dance. (Louis Faurer)
42. The Djanger dance being performed at the Thunderbird Hotel in
Las Vegas. (Hervey, Southern Pacific R.R.)
43. Serog, the clown, in the Ketjak monkey circle. (Colour Processing
Laboratories Ltd.)
44. Oka and Raka sipping orange pop in their dressing room in the
Fulton Theater. (Southern Pacific R.R.)
45. The Balinese dancers eating ice cream in Manhattan. (Gordon Parks)
46. The Legongs with Walt Disney in Los Angeles.
47. The Legongs with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby at Paramount
Studios, Hollywood.
48. The three Legongs meeting prima ballerina Alicia Markova.
49. The three Legongs and Luce looking over an American magazine.
(Los Angeles Mam
50. A farewell picture in Miami. (Frank Boran, Miami)
51. Ni Gusti Raka in 1966 with her youngest child. (John Coast)
52. Ni Gusti Raka in a publicity shot for the 1971 Australian tour.
53.John Coast in his London office, 1981. (Laura Rosenberg)
54. Reunion in Pliatan,August 1983: Belge,John Coast,AnakAgung
Gde Mandera, Raka and Anom. (Laura Rosenberg)
55. Pegil, Beige and John Coast, Iseh, Bali, 1983. (Laura Rosenberg)
56. Ni Gusti Raka teaching in Bali, 2004. {Jonathan Copeland)

Drawings by Supianti Coast

Sketch map of Bali page 13

Author's house and compound 14
Full Balinese orchestra 136
 JAVA SEA

~
......
~
~
~

...,......

~ ~
t~~ ~0
00 ~

~~~
BAL l
English mtltJs
0 10 15 20 75

Sketch-map of Bali showing the towns and villages mentioned in the text
Bird's-eye view of our house and compound in
Kaliungu Klod, Denpasar

14
 1

We Decide to Stay

W
*
e sat in two bamboo chairs, looking toward the beach,
where we could hear the breakers gently pounding the
white sweep ofKuta Bay. Between our grass-thatched hut
and the sea lay only a shallow strip of coconut palms, beneath which the
grey, sandy soil baked in the afternoon sun. The breezes blowing in
steadily off the Indian Ocean made us want to sleep twelve hours a
day. We had only been living in Bali for two weeks, but already we
wanted to stay there indefinitely.
Kuta was a fishing village. Along the beach there stood a series of
long, ragged huts, placed under trees just above the high-water mark.
In these huts were the narrow boats with prows carved like fanciful
masks to scare the monsters of the ocean, with their outriggers leaning
drunkenly on the sand. But in these huts no Balinese lived; for accord-
ing to the beliefs of the people, the low-lying sea is the habitat of
demons, while always from the sea Bali's invading enemies have come.
The sea, therefore, is not to be trusted, but to be placated. It is in the
Great Mountain, whose vast peak dominates the whole of the island,
that the gods of Bali prefer to live. The real village ofKuta, therefore,
lay behind us, slightly inland.
This afternoon had been unusually warm, and we were just thinking
of going to the bathhouse to cool off, for the tide was far out and the
well water, if scooped over ourselves in empty halves of coconut shells,
was cold and refreshing, when our temporarily adopted son, Pegil,
came running up to our porch from the direction of the sea. He was a
small boy of ten, permitted by his family, who were very poor hill
villagers, to live with us and help in our household in return for being
15
sent to school and a promise that we would never take him away from
Bali. He was a handsome child, sturdily built, with a wonderful smile,
and he lived proudly in a new pair of dark blue cotton shorts. He stood
now smiling, nervous, pulling out the joints of his fingers, watching
us. First he looked at me; then at Luce. Perhaps Luce looked less for-
bidding or the more awake, for it was to her that he spoke.
"Excuse, please," he said. "The tide is very far out today. Are you
and the Tuan, perhaps, going fishing on the reef?"
Luce looked at me resignedly from her chair and Pegil turned his
smile on to me, too.
"Let's all go," she said. "You know you enjoy it yourself quite as
much as Pegil does."
"All right, Pegil," I said. "We'll go in a few minutes. As soon as
we've put some shoes on."
"Excuse me, Tuan, I will first tell my friends-that is, if the Tuan
is going to drive the jeep?"
"Yes, we'll take the jeep."
Inside the hut we pulled on canvas shoes so that we could more
safely clamber over the rocks and through the channels. Luce wore
shorts and a brief blouse; I wore shorts and sunglasses. Then we were
ready. As we walked over to the old wartime jeep, Pegilcameforward,
seven or eight of his friends from the village with him. Grinning,
cheerful little brown urchins, they wore mostly rotting and patched
shorts, and in their hands they carried small baskets, heavy hammers,
with barbed, yard-long spikes of iron. At my "Okay!" they all
scrambled aboard, talking excitedly, for this was a big moment for
them; Pegil, however, now kept his face very calm, even slightly
aloof, implying that for him it was all a most usual and boring
occurrence.
There was a grass track leading to the foreshore, but as the jeep
descended the slope on to the beach itself, I had to shift to low gear;
then we lurched forward through the soft sand like a tank, the children
whooping with pleasure, and chattering like magpies when we finally
sped along the firm white sand close to the sea's edge, heading for the
reef of white coral that ran out several hundred yards from Kuta Point.
I left the jeep on firm sand and we jumped down. Now it was the
turn of a boy smaller than Pegil to lead us. This was Baris, eight-year-
16
old expert on the reef, nimble and wise on tides and races. We had
met Baris first during a stroll along the shore at low tide, when he had
shown us how to scoop out exquisite black shells living just under the
wet sand where the water retreated.
Baris led the way. Luce and I moved cumbersomely after the quickly
scattering and light-footed boys. As we walked through pools and
over the low rocks, forward to the main reef's edge, where now tame-
looking waves lapped at and caressed it, we had to guard all the time
against spiky and poisonous sea urchins, amber, black and pale pink,
which lay in holes and under ledges everywhere, so that when we
stepped or lifted a rock to peer under it, we had always to beware that
a groping foot or levering hand did not light upon us.
At first we found only a few clams and some giant, rubbery starfish,
bright blue in colour, but presently we caught up with the children
busily chipping and prodding for cat's-eyes. These stones, we had
learned, were plugs, or stoppers, attached to the bases of certain small
molluscs, which, when frightened, retired into their shells, thus seal-
ing themselves in, leaving the glaring green and black eye on a white
background to frighten off any enemy. The small boys, however,
gathered up the shells complete, for they would eat the fish and try to
sell the stones to any tourists who came down to bathe. Luce was
having one mounted by a Kuta silversmith in a filigree silver ring.
Sometimes, in holes in the rocks, the boys would plunge in their
barbed spikes and one would pull out a small octopus, a greatly prized
delicacy, or from under the ledges fat eels would wriggle through the
shallows to be speared and captured also. In deeper pools shoals of
tiny fish of a kingfisher blue would flash and turn, while at the reef's
farthest point, where the rocks were crumbling soft, huge and glisten-
ing cowries, some brown-black, some fawn-coloured and speckled,
were prised away before the turning tide forced us to withdraw to the
beach. There we would compare catches with the fishermen, who
would try to sell us their too salt crayfish, or huge sea fleas, which
they had trapped on the sand ledges between high and low tides. And
then we would jeep back to the village.
On the evening of this same day, old Wo Ketut (which means
Uncle Fourth-Born) our servant, came to us bursting with excite-
ment.
B 17 D.O. B.
 "Tuan," he said, "there is good news. Lotring has come at last.
Tonight the Music Club will be rehearsing in Kuta. The Tuan will
certainly want to be present. Lotring is my old friend. Let me take the
Tuan and the Tuan's wife there after they have eaten."
"This is good news indeed, W o. Do you know what they will be
rehearsing tonight-or is it just a meeting?"
"I do not yet know, Tuan, but later I will find out."
He bustled back to the kitchen, content in his own new-found
importance.
For us this really was most valuable information. Lotring had long
been one of Bali's most famous musicians, and his home was in Kuta;
but so much was he in demand as a teacher that he was being con-
tinually called all over the island, and never yet had we found him in
his own house. So far the only dancing we had seen had been at the
Bali Hotel in Denpasar, where the little girls encased in their cloths
of gold, the clowns and masked monsters who fooled and ranted, had
begun to work their spell on us. But the dancing had not as yet pleased
us as much as the music, that most gentle, hypnotic music of the
Belaluan orchestra, hammered out by a percussion of gongs and gilded
metallophones-xylophone-shaped, but with keys of metal-played
by some five and twenty men. The music fascinated me because I
could not see which players so precisely and perfectly controlled it-
and I was baffled by the way a piece ended always unexpectedly, as if
in mid-phrase, still in mid-air.
After we had eaten that night we went on foot together to the
village. The rehearsal was taking place in a small bale, or open-air
hall, on the earth floor of which the instruments were arranged on
three sides of a square. Surrounding the space were crude bamboo
slatted shelves on which sat a few casual spectators, the one oil lamp
smoked foully, and, as we watched, a fierce argument seemed to be
taking place in the thick near-darkness. The men squatted cross-legged
behind their metallophones, most of them inscrutable, scratching
themselves occasionally, clad only in their workaday sarongs. In the
centre of the square two drummers sat leaning across their drums,
which they held lengthwise across their knees. One of the drummers,
who seemed to be leading the argument, was a well-featured man of
some fifty years. Repeatedly he would shout what sounded like: "Sing!
18
Sing! Sing nyak!" (No! No! I don't want that!) At last, after some
throaty grumbles, the dissidents sulkily eyeing the floor, the rehearsal
jerked into life again.
Close by my side old Wo Ketut's voice informed me: "That is
Lotring who has been speaking, Tuan. The men of the village say
that they are rehearsing for a small festival in three days' time."
We watched Lotring using his drum, his eyes remote, flat palms
and beringed fingers alternately caressing, flicking, coaxing and
thumping the two end skins. Then suddenly, with no warning, yet
all together, they would stop again. Leaning over his drum, Lotring
would reach forward toward one of the metallophones, take the light
wooden hammer from the player's hand, and, from the reverse side of
the keys, beat out the next, unlearned phrase of the melody. Then
straight at it they would fly again. If the metallophones hesitated,
from Lotring's throat an unearthly, whining sound would issue, his
voice thus giving them the lost melody, while his hands continued to
punctuate the phrases with the drum.
Amidst laughter and imprecation the rehearsal went on for two
hours more. Every half hour or so they would rest. A distinctly musky,
fetid atmosphere, purely masculine, clogged the air of the ball. During
a rest, men would stroll out to relieve themselves, squatting by the
edge of the lane. Some of them lit acrid cigarettes flavoured with
carnations, but Lotring would always be politely offered a shallow
wooden tray whose partitions contained leaves of the sireh vine, some
betel nut, lime paste and a coarse black tobacco. Automatically the
teacher would fold himself a chew of betel, wrapping the nut and paste
in the sireh leaf, putting it well back into his mouth, after which he
would rub around his gums with a wad of tobacco, finally leaving the
quid between his lips, grotesquely protruding. Presently, as the saliva
began to circulate, he would begin chewing; a minute later he would
be looking round for a few open inches of floor where he might spit
out his first red betel jet.
When it was all over and we were walking home, W o Ketut,
savouring our pleasure, said casually, "Tomorrow perhaps I will ask
Lotring to come and meet the Tuan at the house."
And in the morning, when we came out on to the porch to sip our
morning coffee, we found Lotring there waiting for us, sitting in one
19
of our chairs, wearing a new khaki shirt and batik headcloth. We
greeted him, offered him coffee, but he refused it; out of politeness he
allowed us to bring him the milk of a young coconut, but he hardly
touched it.
We asked him about the performance in three days' time. Oh, it
was nothing-some Baris dancers were coming over from Sanur,
maybe, and there would be a little music. But it was of no account.
"How is it," I asked him, "that in your own village there are no
dancers, and that this is the first time we've heard music in Kuta?"
"Well, there used to be a club. A Legong club. But the men broke
always into factions and squabbled about money. That happens often.
But in Kuta the people are very difficult. Beh! very difficult," he
repeated. "I have tried several times to hold them together-in vain
always. There is nothing to be done about it."
He smiled at us, very unperturbed, his hands lightly thrumming
the sides of his chair, as ifimpatient to be at his drum again.
"Uncle Lotring, we came to Bali to look for dancers and the finest
of orchestras. Could you not persuade the men to work with you once
more?"
He laughed at us quietly, pointing to his betel-stained, gaping
mouth.
"You see, Tuan, I have no teeth. It is hard for me to eat, and I
cannot chew betel on my gums with pleasure. But even if you
promi~ed me new teeth, I would not be able to make this club work
together. It is too difficult, Tuan: too difficult."
"You know, we could look for false teeth for you at the hospital in
Denpasar, Uncle."
"Still not possible, Tuan," he grinned. Then a moment later, hands
politely clasped, "Titiang pamit," he said, "I go now." And in Bali-
nese fashion, very simply, he was gone.

It was a Japanese mortar shell exploding in my platoon truck during

the battle of Singapore that had led me thus to be looking for dancers
in Bali. On that far-off day all my glasses had perished in the gutted
vehicle, so that later, when l was taken prisoner by the Japanese, I
lived for more than three years in a dim, half-seen world. When, in
1944, our main slave task of building a railway from Siam into Burma
20
through hundreds of miles of monsoon jungle and mountains had been
completed, we were reassembled for a brief period in vast base camps.
There, with our native ingenuity, we built theatres from bamboo and
palm thatch and matting, and put on plays and musicals, and I, in
order to be able to see these shows, volunteered to prompt. Soon
afterwards, in order further to occupy my mind, I had started to learn
a foreign language-Malay. By a most singular and far-reaching
coincidence, on the day of my first Malay lesson, my teacher intro-
duced me to a young Javanese dancer, a fellow prisoner, whose brown
chest was tattooed with the head of a blue tiger and with powerful
magic writing. 1
A month or two later, speaking a limping Malay and having
graduated from prompter to stage manager, I was endeavouring to
form a company that would put on some Javanese dancing. So
absorbed did I become in this utterly new experience, that though a
prisoner, I felt perfectly happy.
My first Javanese production, I am ashamed to say, was accom-
panied by a pair of pseudo-Javanese cymbals played from the matting
wings and to the strains of "La Cucaracha" jerked out by the camp
band, whose unique instruments were made from such things as
telephone wire, soapboxes and gut from locally slain cats. The
dancer's costume was made from stolen Japanese mosquito netting,
ornamented with lead foil torn from discarded Red Cross cigarette
cartons stolen from us by the Japanese Army, and the noble Hindu
headdress was fashioned from a cardboard crate that had contained
dried fish. To me, at the time, this was magnificent dancing; the other
Javanese in camp, fortunately, were too amused and polite to express
their real opinions.
This enthusiasm led me, when returned home after the war, to look
for the nearest Javanese dancers, whom I did actually find in the end
in nearby Holland. They were a student group, and after seeing them
dance once in Leyden Museum, my friends and I brought them over to
England for a couple of months. This was in the year 1946.
There were only nineteen of them, from princelings to waiters, all
amateur, all very impecunious. There were two good dancers among
them, both from Solo, in Java. In the theatres we had to use scratchy
1 See Railroad of Death, 1946.
21
copies of twenty-year-old records to accompany the classical Javanese
dance, but for the lighter folk dances of Sumatra, Celebes and Ambon,
we used a small, Hawaiian type of band. The finale of the programme
was a Djanger dance from Bali, in which, oddly enough, Luce had
danced as a student member when studying in Holland before the war.
Our short tour was enthusiastically received in England, and Sol
Hurok, the impresario, sent his agent to make us an offer to come to
the United States next spring; a Madame Bouchonnet, too, from
Paris, suggested that we tour France, Spain and Portugal. But the
group broke up, since its members planned to return to Indonesia
before the end of the year. And although exhausted after those hectic
seven weeks, my ambition had been more than ever fired to bring over
a really superb and authentic group, with full orchestra, for the joy
and delectation of the western world.
It was my interest in this dancing that led me next into Indonesian
politics, so that for some years I was working in Java with the un-
recognized Indonesian Government, having unusual adventures as I
strove humbly to help in the struggle for Indonesian independence.
My eyes, however, remained always fixed on the group of dancers of
which I had dreamed, and when, in 1950, after Indonesia had attained
nationhood and I was moored impatiently behind a desk in the new
Foreign Ministry in the new capital of Djakarta, I spent most of my
time working out plans for cultural missions to tour the world. For
months I laboured at estimates and routings and earning capacities,
and the final result of my research was presented to President
Sukarno at ten o'clock one morning in April.
It was a hot and humid day, I remember, as I arrived at the small
palace of white marble which is the official residence of the Indonesian
President. I sat opposite him in the reception room lined with modem
paintings by young Indonesian revolutionary artists, the President
cool and elegant in his simple white uniform and black Moslem hat,
I perspiring but hopeful in an old sharkskin suit.
Himself a patron of the arts and by blood half Balinese, the Presi-
dent was sympathetic. He recalled, in fact, that in 1948, in the be-
leaguered capital of Jogja, with Dutch troops trying to force the
young Republic to its knees, I had had the temerity to suggest some
such venture as this. When I left the palace, in my old battered jeep
22
which often needed a pushing hand from one of the guards, I felt
confident.
Imagine, then, my chagrin, when only a few weeks after leaving
my memorandum with the President, the chief Palace Secretary, a
man with the soul of a true bureaucrat, announced out of the blue that
my estimates were ten times too optimistic, that I would need a
million dollars of hard currency, that there were many more important
things for a young country to think about than mere artistic adventures.
The rejection of my plan, or, more euphemistically, its being
"indefinitely postponed," was one of the reasons that sent me on
leave to Bali. There, perhaps, was the work on which my heart was
set, and together with Luce I hoped to prove my thesis by building up
a Balinese dance-group first of all, for I had every confidence that
Bali's foreign champions from before the war had not been over-
romantic or too grossly misleading in their descriptions of the
island's music and dancing.
And already, after only two weeks, and after seeing only three or
four performances for tourists and this one rehearsal of Lotring's, we
were becoming emotionally entangled. Thus, when Lotring laugh-
ingly shrugged off the possibility of creating a club again in Kuta-
our first hope-it was a setback to us. It only had the result, however,
of making us pull up our roots in Kuta forthwith, for within a few days
we had heard from an old friend, Daan Hubrecht, that there was a
house for sale in the village ofKaliungu, on the outskirts of Denpasar,
a house in Balinese style, set in a delightful compound, hitherto the
property of the Government's agricultural adviser, Hans Harten, who
was due to go on home leave.
At once we set out for Kaliungu; and when we had seen the house
and its walled garden, we found it so charming and so exactly what
we wanted, that we decided very quickly to make a bid for purchase.
But this meant first sending letters to Djakarta to arrange for a loan
on the security of my jeep from Chinese banker friends, while to carry
us over the first months Luce and I agreed to pool our capital. This
consisted of a Rolleiflex camera, a ring and a few household goods
that might well be saleable. Altogether, we hoped that we might be
able to live there modestly for half a year or a year.
Our decision thus taken and acted upon, we confounded Hans
2S
Harten by driving over to see him one evening a couple of weeks later
and scattering bills of large denomination all over his supper table.
Then one day in the September of 1950 we registered the purchase of
our house at the office of the Raja of Denpasar, made a new contract
for the lease of the land which no foreigner in Bali may own outright,
and moved in.

Kaliungu was to become our home and base for the next two years,
and when we took over there was not just one house, but two. Both
had high, grass-thatched roofs, supported on finely grained pillars of
coconut-palm wood. The floor foundations were made from coral,
smoothed over with a dark grey cement, and raised a couple of feet
above the level of the surrounding garden. Most of the front house
was quite open and acted as a cool living room; but one large comer,
our bedroom, was walled off squarely with bamboo wickerwork walls,
which, on the inside, were lined with a white matting made from finely
woven grasses. At the back of this bedroom was a simple dip-and-pour
Balinese bathroom, built under the house's extended eaves, and next
to it was a lavatory on which we had to squat. Its heart-shaped aper-
ture was hardly the size of a teacup, and there was quite a drop below.
We christened it the "high-level bombing sight" and set about having
it altered as soon as the equivalent of a plumber could be located.
In both houses almost all the fumiture was made from bamboo.
From the front house a passageway ran back past a kitchen, where
our food was cooked over charcoal braziers, leading to the smaller,
second house, which consisted of two small rooms at the back of a good
verandah. Here Hans' servants had slept. The two houses lay in a
compound and garden some thirty yards across and sixty yards long.
In the front house, suspended from the eaves by hooked branches,
there hung luxuriant fems and orchids roughly potted in broken open
coconut husks and these bordered our entire living space. The passage-
way was walled with blue-and-white-flowered creepers. In the garden
were sireh vines and another vine with creamy, red-tipped flowers
called "The Young Maiden chews Sireh," together with flaming red
and yellow cannas, and climbing bougainvilleas. A very old hibiscus
shrub had grown almost into a tree, and shaded our well and launder-
ing wall behind the kitchen; while we ourselves quickly planted some
24
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 King Bilbonzo. Ah! this is indeed surprising. Listen then, and I will
tell you my dream.
Don Torribio. No, no—you need not let me off any of my part. I
mean to play Daniel entire—but I am not going to let you off the
grass-eating, either! Do you listen to me, and I will interpret the
dream.
King Bilbonzo. Well—this is astonishing!
Ministers. Think of that, now!
Homaris. All pre-concerted!
Don Torribio. Gathering shells is an innocent and even laudable
employment,—but it should be carried on on a safe shore, and not
within reach of hungry sea-monsters.
Every man—and more especially a king—ought to know what his
house is built on.
If your house happens to stand—not on a rock foundation, but on
the back of a sleeping whale, you must not dance too vigorously, or
you will probably wake the brute.
It is safer to swim about in the sea on the back of a shark, than to
be king of a famished people.
The conclusion of your dream I will interpret to you after the
grass-eating. Now it is your turn.
King Bilbonzo. This is really going too far! Our toleration has
reached its limits. Can you be wanting to sow discord between Us
and our beloved people? Out of our sight, impious liar!—this very
moment!
Hyacinthe (the Poet-Laureate—seated next to the King). Majesty!
—look out for your crown!
King Bilbonzo. Oh!—thanks! [Sets his crown straight.]
Don Torribio. Omen accipio. How do you wish me to disappear, O
King?
Palaemon (to a footman). Fetch the lictors to remove this person.
King Bilbonzo. My lords, you will agree with me that a man like
this is very dangerous to the State.
Homaris. I had feared as much, Sire! He is a clever quack, and
what he sells is poison for the people.
 Lepidus. But his knowledge was something wonderful.
Homaris. Tricks!—most likely there’s bribery at the bottom of it.
Hyacinthe. Or else atheistic magic.
King Bilbonzo. In any case, my Lord Palaemon, you ought to have
taken measures somewhat earlier to prevent his doing harm.
Palaemon. He shall be thrown into chains at once.
Amenias (4th Minister). It is really a case for capital punishment.
King Bilbonzo. No—our delight is to show mercy. When the judges
have condemned him to death, we will commute the sentence into
penal servitude for life.
A Footman. Your Excellency!—the lictors.
[Torribio has suddenly vanished during the previous conversation.]
Palaemon. Let this man be strictly confined.
A Footman. What man, your Excellency?
Palaemon. Here—what! Where is he?
Ministers. What! Where is he? Gone?
King Bilbonzo. This is unspeakably insolent!
Amenias. He was standing here when I last saw him.
Palaemon. He was standing here.
[They search all over the room.]
King Bilbonzo (to Amenias). What is that on the floor?
Amenias (picking it up). A tuft of grass, Sire!
King Bilbonzo. This is infamous ribaldry.
Lepidus. It is very mysterious.
Homaris. Jugglers’ tricks! We have all been made fools of.
Footman (opening a door). Breakfast is served, your Majesty!
King Bilbonzo. Come, my lords,—search no further! It is not worth
while. Follow me! [He retires with dignity.]
Hyacinthe (follows, improvising)—
Shall hate and envy dim its lustre—
The crown on royal brows that glows—
And rob the People of their father,
And lead both parties by the nose?
La, la, la, la—no, never! no, never!
La, la, la!
[Exeunt omnes, following one another in a solemn procession.
Frederick Van Eeden.
(From the Comedy of “Don Torribio.”)
 THE DOMINIE.[3]

“It is a very serious matter,” said Gerrit Rond, the burgomaster, to

Kobus.
“Very serious, indeed,” replied Kobus, the veldwachter.[4]
“It is a disgrace to the whole parish!” continued the burgomaster.
“An everlasting disgrace!” repeated the veldwachter.
Then followed an ominous silence, in the course of which the
burgomaster, with gloomy countenance and wildly rolling eye,
attentively followed the movements of a fly which was leisurely
walking about the stately expanse of his waistcoat; while the
veldwachter kept a watchful eye on his superior’s features, that he
might not fail to mould his own accordingly. In the meantime, he
knit his brows, and provided himself with a half-expectant, half-
threatening expression.

“IT IS A DISGRACE TO
THE WHOLE PARISH!”

At length the reverend head of Gerrit, the burgomaster, solemnly

rose upright, and his reflection opposite did the same.
 “Kobus,” said Gerrit, “it must be seen to.”
And Kobus replied: “It shall be seen to, if your worship pleases.”
“Very good, Kobus; and I do please—of that I assure you....”
“I think I’ve got something,” said Gerrit, with an astute smile, and
rubbed his nose with a civic forefinger, in a satisfied way.
“Ha!” cried Kobus, triumphantly.
“Yes, surely, ... surely, ...” said Gerrit, as though thinking aloud,—
still, astute, smiling, and rubbing his nose, ... “But let us at least go
over the whole thing once more—at least the main point.”
“Shall I tell your worship once more, exactly?” asked Kobus, with a
self-satisfied laugh.
“Well, yes, it will be just as well. I can then weigh the importance
of the whole matter so much better. Just go on,” said the
burgomaster, with the lofty attitude of one who is quite sure of
himself, and can afford to wait for anything, seeing that his
resolution is already taken.
“I will therefore tell your worship, once more,” began Kobus, “that
on Saturday week—a fortnight ago to-morrow—Jan o’ the Wood
came running into my house with a face—with a face....”
“Like Balthasar Gerard’s,”[5] the burgomaster helped him out, with
a certain gloomy majesty befitting the dignity of his position and his
historical knowledge.
“That would be just about it,” said Kobus, with deep respect, and
then went on. “He rushed into my house with a face like—h’m, h’m—
it’s sinful to think of—what a face the man had! And first he dropped
down on a chair, and couldn’t speak a word—not a letter—your
worship! My wife gave him a glass of water, and she said, says she,
‘Come, Jan, just drink a little, and then you’ll come to yourself again,
and then you can tell us what’s the matter.’ That’s what she said,
your worship,—for them women-folk are always so curious, and she
was just on fire, I tell you. Jan soon got his breath, and then it came
out—how, that night—last Saturday week, a fortnight ago to-morrow
—two baskets full of pears had been taken away from his trees—two
whole baskets, your worship!”
Gerrit Rond, the burgomaster, the principal resident, and the
respected head of his parish, stroked his plump chin complacently,
and looked at his factotum, quietly smiling.
“Well; and what more, Kobus?”
Such imperturbable calm must surely conceal a great plan, thought
the veldwachter; and he was several seconds recovering from his
consternation. Then he stammered,—
“And ... and ... nothing more, your worship. I reported the matter
to you at once; I drew up the procès-verbal. But though I have done
my best to find out....”
The honest veldwachter completed his sentence by shrugging his
shoulders, extending his arms, and dropping them again,—
illustrating the whole pantomime by a face expressive of the utmost
helplessness.
But now Gerrit Rond, burgomaster, the principal resident, and
respected head of the community, arose from his municipal arm-
chair, and spake,—
“Kobus, I know it!”
Kobus listened in breathless excitement.
“Kobus,” the burgomaster went on, looking round him with
vigilant eyes, as though he suspected that pear-thieves might be
hidden in the corners of his sitting-room,—“Kobus, did he steal all
the pears?”
The veldwachter was silent, and looked questioningly at the
burgomaster. He could not make out what the latter was driving at.
“I mean,” explained the father of the citizens, “whether Jan o’ the
Wood has not got a single pear left on his trees?”
“Well; no, sir. Two baskets the rascal made off with; but how many
baskets there were to be had in that orchard, I don’t know. It’s quite
terrible the way Jan’s trees bear, and everything prime quality, large-
sized, and juicy. I think Jan’s father had them before him, and he
must have brought them....”
“That will do, Kobus,” the burgomaster interrupted his
subordinate; “but that’s not the point.... So the pears have not all
been removed? I mean, by this, that the thief has not unlawfully
possessed himself of the whole?”
“Why, no, your worship.”
“Now, Kobus, look here.”
 Kobus listened respectfully, understanding that the critical
moment had now arrived.
“My father, Kobus, was a man of sense, and when he had enjoyed
anything, he always used to say, ‘This peach tastes of more.’”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Kobus, as though suddenly enlightened,—
whereas, in truth, he was more puzzled than ever.
“And, look you, Kobus, the apple can never fall far from the tree.
My father was a sensible man; and I, too, say, ‘This peach tastes of
more,’ and....”
Here the burgomaster looked through his half-closed eyelids with
an air of infinite sagacity, and added, slowly dragging out his words,
one by one,—
“... And—that—I suspect—the thief—will—say—too.”
“O-o-oh!” bellowed the veldwachter; “I understand—the thief will
want more pears. He will come back, and then we’ll catch him?”
The burgomaster looked at his factotum with a paternal air of
approbation.
“Kobus!” said he, “something may be made of you yet!”
“Does your worship think that?” cried Kobus, in an ecstasy,—and a
rosy prospect instantly appeared before his mind’s eye—chief agent
in a large town, commissioner of police, nay, perhaps,—but that he
would not have dared to say out loud for any money in the world,—
perhaps, one day, even burgomaster!
“But now to business, Kobus! This very night we will try to catch
the thief; and my name is not Gerrit Rond if we don’t succeed. We’ll
hide in Jan’s orchard, and when he comes we’ll collar him, and
then....”
Here the burgomaster-detective pointed downwards. Under the
tower of the court-house there was a vault or cellar of masonry,
which usually served as a receptacle for old iron and thieves; the
latter destination, however, was unknown, save by tradition, for only
the very oldest inhabitants of the village dimly remembered an evil-
doer being imprisoned there.
Kobus then suggested that it might be as well to take his son
Hannes with him on their expedition, a suggestion which might have
been unkindly interpreted by outsiders, for there were unpleasant
reports current about the brave garde-champêtre’s reluctance to
pursue criminals alone. The suggestion, however, found favour in the
eyes of the magistrate, as it would enable them to take forty winks
while the boy watched for the appearance of the thief. This being
settled, Kobus withdrew, to reappear at the appointed time that
evening. But he had not been gone long when a loud knocking
startled the burgomaster out of an incipient reverie.
“Come in!” he cried, somewhat ungraciously, and the opening door
revealed Kobus’s bearded face; but this time with so scared an
expression, and such wildly rolling eyes, that Gerrit turned rigid with
terror and, pale as death, held on to the back of his chair for support,
as he stammered,
“Wh—wh—what is it, Kobus?”
“Burrgemeesterr,” rolled out Kobus, hoarsely, making as much as
possible of the r’s, and putting his head round the door without
coming into the room, “the thief of the apples that were stolen from
Piet Stein a year and a half ago, and this thief of the pears....”
“The same,” sighed the burgomaster, struck with consternation.
“Your worship,” said Kobus, “it is a conspiracy! Shall we—should
we—go and ask the Dominie?”
But scarcely had Kobus uttered this fatal word than he darted out
of the door and up the street, and it was long before his mind’s eye
had lost sight of that frightful picture: the burgomaster, purple in the
face, and boiling over with indignation; and the voice of his superior
thundered in his ears with all the annihilating force of contempt.
“The Dominie!” was all he had said.
The village schoolmaster was an old man of sixty-three, who, ever
since his twentieth year, had stood, day after day, Sundays excepted,
behind the same desk, leading the peasants’ children from the
spelling of s, p, a—spa, to the four elementary rules of arithmetic.
Every year a few left him, being found ripe for forgetting at the
plough-tail what they had learnt in the schoolroom, and every year
fresh aspirants for s, p, a—spa, appeared on the scenes. So he had
grown old at his work, and his work with him. For he belonged to the
pre-examination days—he was a “schoolmeester,” not an
“onderwijzer.” The new generation looked on him rather as a
curiosity, a touchstone of progress, a souvenir of old times, than a
living being, a wheel in the world-machine of the nineteenth century.
Other men of his age had gone with the stream, and followed its
capricious windings; he had landed on the bank, and followed his
own old path; his mind had rusted into the old groove, and he could
not extricate it.
He had already received hints that he ought to retire, to ask for his
pension, so as to make way for modern forces; but the idea of ceasing
to stand before his class and behind his desk was too strange to the
old man—too new!
So he remained on for the present, till his resignation should no
longer be a matter of choice.

The elder children were busy doing sums; the younger ones were
being attended to by the Dominie himself.
But how strange he was to-day! It sometimes seemed as if he heard
nothing of the lesson the children were droning over,—saw nothing
of the tricks the older ones were up to in the background,—as if, in
fact, he were thinking of something entirely different. He had such
fits, sometimes. How funny it was, now, when he dipped his pencil
into the inkstand, instead of a penholder, and, shortly afterwards,
abstractedly put it into his mouth! What a face he made when he
found it out! The whole school had simply yelled at the joke, and the
Dominie had got very angry, and put the whole lot of them in
detention. Later, however, he almost laughed at the matter himself,
and allowed them all to go home. Such foolish and absurd things he
used to do every now and then; and the reason for this was, as the
burgomaster said, because the Dominie was “an obstructive fellow,”
and “not practical.”
And when the burgomaster said so, every one believed him, for the
burgomaster was considered a very clever man.
But, after all, the Dominie was cleverer still.
For, indeed, there were sometimes things that the Dominie himself
did not know,—of course, for no man can know everything. But, in
those cases, he always said, “I’ll just look it up.” And then he looked
in his books, and kept on looking till he found it; and he always did
find it, because he had such piles of books! For, after all, that was
where things were to be found—in books! For this reason the
burgomaster was not so clever as the schoolmaster; he had scarcely
any books at all. This was one cause of the burgomaster’s dislike. He
was Gerrit Rond, the burgomaster, the first man in the village; and
the Dominie was just the schoolmaster. And, naturally, the former
could not endure being looked on as less clever than the latter. But
he did not utter this opinion aloud; he sometimes needed the
Dominie’s help in “just looking up something,” and swallowed his
dislike as best he could; but people could see it all the same.
Yes, indeed! the Dominie was particularly clever!
Once it befell that Piet Stein’s son came home from the city, where
he had “studied” with a view to becoming assistant-teacher; and on
that occasion he had said, in the presence of his father, “All the
Dominie’s cleverness is worth nothing; he is antiquated, and doesn’t
know French.” Piet Stein, junior, was well acquainted with the
French language; he had just learnt it. But Piet Stein, senior, seized
his promising son by the collar, and dealt him a well-intentioned
thrashing, “to knock these new-fangled notions out of him once for
all.”
For the schoolmaster was a knowledgeable man. He lived with his
books, and—which was less obvious to the eyes of the world—with
his instruments and his medicine-chest. For years past he had been
practising on his own account, and had acquired a certain medical
reputation among the peasants of the neighbourhood as well as
within the village. He had, in truth, treated several cases within the
last few years with great success; but it might be better not to inquire
how many earlier trials had failed. Then came the new ideas—the
laws against unlicensed doctoring were strictly enforced, and he
received warnings from various quarters, of which, however, he took
no notice. He could not understand why he might not try to lessen
people’s sufferings, as well as other men, who usually did not succeed
any better than he. It had become to him a passion, an aim in life, a
vocation.
So he obstinately went his own way, in spite of warnings, till the
doctors, whom he injured in their practice, at last lost patience, and
prosecuted him. He was convicted and fined, and from that time his
medical career was over,—at least so it was universally reported. It
seemed strange, however, that now and then a sick person made a
wonderful recovery, without having been treated by the doctor.
 Now, one evening it happened that old Klaas, the shepherd, was
seriously ill, and had asked for the schoolmaster. The Dominie had
said “No,” but he had meant “Yes”; for though no longer allowed to
do any doctoring, he could not keep from it. So he meant to wait till it
was dark, and then slip out unnoticed to Klaas’ cottage.
In Jan o’ the Wood’s orchard three figures were crouching down
behind three low dwarf pear-trees, and each of the three had his
head full of thoughts that were not those of his neighbour. The
burgomaster was chiefly tortured by the idea that on the good or ill
success of the evening’s undertaking depended the preservation of
his official dignity; for, seeing that he had enjoined the strictest
secrecy on the veldwachter, and his promising son and heir, the only
question was which of the two would most speedily spread abroad
the whole story through the village. But, over and above this, the
respected head of the community was trembling like an aspen-leaf,
for before his mental eye there arose a vision of a robber—yes, truly
and literally, a robber,—a man with a long beard, bristling hair, and
bloodshot eyes,—a man who goes about with jemmies and
murderous weapons on his person, and—and—who might kill you if
you came in his way, you see!
The veldwachter was, before all things, eager to behold the heroic
feats of the burgomaster, for he was firmly convinced that the mere
presence of the great man was sufficient to compel the miscreant to
run into the snare. For terror there was now no room in his martial
spirit,—for, after all, he had Hannes with him!
Hannes was a big sturdy chap, who at fifteen might well have been
taken for eighteen,—a fellow with fists like engine-buffers, and a face
which, for shrewd intelligence of expression, was about equal to that
of a sheep. Hannes was burning with impatience to hammer away at
the malefactor; hitherto he had only tried his strength on mere
vagabonds, but now he was to have the opportunity of measuring
himself with a real thief. That would be something to boast of!
Thus the three would-be thief-catchers sat in the greatest
excitement behind three of the smallest dwarf pear-trees that any
one can imagine.
A considerable time elapsed, during which even the strained
senses of the triumvirate could perceive nothing which, in the
remotest degree, resembled even a fraction of a thief. At last Hannes’
patience was exhausted, and with it his capacity for silence. “Dad,”
he began in a whisper, “if he comes, am I to take him by the throat
and choke him, or shall I punch his head till he falls down dead?”
“I don’t know,” replied the veldwachter, in an equally cautious
whisper, at least as low as his love for gutturals and sibilants would
allow, “I’ll just ask his worship.” Thus did Kobus, and repeated the
gruesome question to the burgomaster, thereby sending a shudder
through the latter’s limbs.
“Tell him,” said the heroic man to his heroic subordinate, who was
squatting between his superior and his son, “that he must seize him
by the legs, so as not to come within reach of his hands; the thief is
sure to have daggers and pistols to defend himself with if he is
attacked.” Thus spake the wise man; but the real reason for his
caution was that he felt there might be disagreeable consequences for
himself if Hannes received the thief in too heavy-handed a manner.
The veldwachter passed on the message in a whisper to his son:
“Hold him by the legs, Hannes!”
“All right, dad,” replied Hannes, though he did not understand
why he was to treat the criminal so gently. But the burgomaster had
said so,—in other words, the oracle had spoken, and so——
It was very quiet, in the dark, behind Jan’s pear-tree. The
burgomaster dropped his venerated head, and slept. When Kobus
heard the low sound of snoring beside him, he turned to his son, and
said:
“Hannes, his worship is off; I think I’ll have a nap too; keep a good
look-out, and give me a push if you see anything wrong.”
“All right, dad,” said Hannes, and he sat bolt upright, and opened
his eyes still wider than before. But the duet at his side, the darkness
all round him, and the weariness in his eyelids, made him close them
now and then. He struggled bravely against sleep, but there was no
one to help him. And he was only fifteen, and it was so late and so
dark, and Hannes fell into a doze.
Now and then he was awakened for a moment or so by the uneasy
thought that he was the one who had to watch. On one of these
occasions, he thought he saw a dim figure pass right before him in
this dark, and to hear steps—hurried footsteps. He rubbed his eyes,
and—yes—there was some one carefully opening the gate and leaving
the orchard.
Hastily Hannes awakened his parent, in the gentle manner
prescribed and told him, in a whisper, what he knew. The awful
tidings were then reported to the burgomaster, and a moment later
the trio were on their way to seek the thief, who surely, as the
veldwachter supposed, was just carrying away his booty. Hannes
went first, the burgomaster followed, and Kobus formed the
rearguard. This order had been determined by the burgomaster.
“For,” said he, “as head of the community, I ought to have the most
protection.”
In this way the police force wandered aimlessly about for some
time. Hannes did not know for certain what direction the thief had
taken after leaving the orchard; and, besides, there was scarcely any
light. It really seemed as though the moon were taking upon herself
to play at bo-peep with the most worshipful the burgomaster, for she
chose not to show up at all. Yes, perhaps, indeed—oh! scandalous
thought!—she was making faces at the great man behind her thick
curtain of clouds! Who knows?—there are such queer stories told
about the moon.
The expedition, then, returned to the orchard unsuccessful, and
once more took up its position behind the dwarf pear-trees. That the
miscreant might yet return seemed probable, as Hannes assured
them that he had indeed seen him carrying something under his arm,
but not a large sack or anything of that sort. He could not, therefore,
have taken much with him. And they waited—waited—waited....
Meanwhile the schoolmaster had quietly gone on his way. The
better to escape observation, he did not take the nearest way, along
the main street, but went out into his back garden, opened a little
gate which led into Jan o’ the Wood’s orchard, struck right across the
orchard, and so reached a lane leading round to the other side of the
village. Here he turned into a wood, and, following a small winding
footpath, came at length to a lonely cottage, seemingly forsaken,
hidden away among the tall trees. Here he seemed a habitual visitor.
At least he lifted the latch without first knocking, opened the door,
and found himself in an apartment serving at the same time as
bedroom and kitchen.
 A close, heavy air, and an ominous stillness, seemed to oppress
him as he entered. But the Dominie was not easily daunted. He felt
about till he found a lamp standing on the table, and lit it. With the
light, life seemed to come into the dead silence of the room; at least a
low moaning was heard from a corner where there was a bedstead,
and a broken voice asked, “Who’s there?”
“It’s I, Klaas, the schoolmaster,” announced the visitor; and,
bending over the sick man, he went on, “How is it with you?”
“It’s all up, Dominie, it’s all up,” gasped the voice. “Oh, Klaas is no
great loss—not much; oh no!”
There seemed to be reason enough for such an estimate; at least
the man who lay there dying did not give the idea of one whose loss
society would feel very keenly. The flickering lamp-light showed the
bed-place, let into the wall like a ship’s berth, in an indefinite half-
darkness, except the head, on which a dull yellow gleam was cast.
There lay, on an unsightly grey, greasy bolster, a head that at first
sight seemed more animal than human. The thin face was made still
more angular and hollow by the strongly projecting cheek-bones, and
the pointed chin with its bristly beard. The upper-lip, and indeed the
whole mouth, was almost covered with stiff hair; the nose was broad,
flat, and turned up; while a quantity of lank, tangled hair fell over the
projecting forehead and deep-set eyes. But these eyes glittered
fiercely, every now and then, in their dark sockets, and then again
looked anxiously, almost entreatingly, at the schoolmaster.
The Dominie tried to answer him cheerfully. “Come, come, Klaas!
What foolish talk is this? You may not have been a king or a great
man, but you have been of use for all that. Shepherds are wanted just
as much as kings.”
“No, sir,” said Klaas, moving his head restlessly. “Every day so
many finer lights are blown out, and Klaas is only a rushlight. Oh,
Lord, yes!”
The old schoolmaster tried to comfort him, but Klaas still seemed
to have something on his mind.
He had stolen Jan’s pears a fortnight ago, he told the schoolmaster
at last.
The old man remained with him till a late hour, and then started
homewards by the same way as he had come.
 “Father, father!”
“What is it, Hannes?”
“I hear the gate creak.”
“So it does.... Your worship, here he comes back again.”
“Really? Yes, I see him.... Kobus, stand firm, my man. Let Hannes
hold him fast by the legs. No, not yet—wait till he passes! Oh, do be
careful! Look out for his weapons!”
“Hannes, be ready!”
“I’m quite ready, dad.”
“Not before I speak, and then by the legs—do you hear?”
“Yes, dad. Hush now!”
—The shuffling of approaching footsteps in the grass of the
orchard ... suddenly a figure disengages itself from the darkness.—
“Now, Hannes, now!”
Hannes creeps forward along the ground, seizes the figure,
according to instructions, firmly by the ankles—a good pull—and the
thief falls forward at full length. Hannes seizes his wrists, and lets
himself fall flat on the top of his prey.
The veldwachter, for greater security, incontinently throws himself
upon his two predecessors; and the burgomaster crowns the human
pyramid, and the successful thief-hunt, by sitting down, with all his
burgomasterly weight and a heavy bump, upon the three others,
triumphantly shouting the while, “I’ve got him,”—which is answered
by, “Oh my ribs, your worship!” from the uppermost stratum, “What
in thunder!” from the midmost, and a smothered groan from the
lowest.
“Hannes, have you got a hold of his hands—tight now?”
“Yes, your worship, but I can’t do anything myself like this.”
“Well, I’ll get up, but keep a good hold of him—do you hear?”
“All right, sir.”
The burgomaster arose. “Kobus, put the handcuffs on him at once.
In heaven’s name make haste about it then.”
The veldwachter bustled up from the ground, and set about
securing the prisoner as closely as possible. While he was thus
occupied, and Hannes was holding the persistently silent criminal,
the burgomaster kept walking round and round his captive in order
to see what sort of a fish he had got in his net. In this he would
probably have been unsuccessful, had not the moon, in a sudden
caprice, shone out brightly once more. When the triumvirate saw the
pale face, paler than ever with the fright and the cold moonlight, and
perceived it to be the face so well known to them, all their
astonishment uttered itself in the simultaneous cry—
“The Dominie!”

The school was empty, and the children had a holiday, for the
Dominie ... was sitting in the vault under the tower.
Under the tower sat the Dominie, amidst pieces of old iron and
other rubbish. Light and air stole in shyly, in small quantities,
through the little, square, grated window, in which a single scrap of
glass, dusty and weather-stained, remained in one corner, to show
there had once been a pane. As the court-house was surrounded by a
paddock, which again was enclosed by a low wall, the sounds from
outside only penetrated indistinctly, as a vague murmur, into this
chamber. Sometimes it was quiet,—deadly still, there, especially of
an evening, and then life came into the place, for the rats and mice
began their games. The Master was an old man, and nervous, and he
could not sleep much. He thought over the whole matter in his
wakeful hours, and it gradually became clear to him that he had been
arrested by mistake.... Klaas had stolen Jan van ’t Hout’s pears, and
he, the Dominie, had been taken for the thief returning for a second
load. But it would not be difficult to prove his innocence. Only it was
lasting a long time; he ought surely to have been tried before now.
Four days had passed without his hearing anything. Even the
veldwachter, who, as a rule, could not be with him two minutes
without wanting to relate some story or other, was now silence itself,
when he brought the Dominie his daily rations. What was the
meaning of this delay?
 “SITTING IN THE
VAULT UNDER THE
TOWER.”

Yes, the delay had well-founded reasons! The burgomaster had

indeed caught the fish, but he did not exactly know what he was to do
with him. It was a ticklish business. Was he to hand over the prisoner
immediately, without the form of a trial, to the authorities in town?
or was he first to hold an inquiry, and send up the procès-verbal
along with the prisoner? Supposing the latter to be the case, how was
he to set about it? It was a most unfortunate circumstance that there
had never been any thieves in the parish, for now the burgomaster
was most certainly at his wits’ end. The secretary—a poor, infirm old
man, almost in his dotage—was consulted in vain. The same result
attended a conference with the “law-holders.”[6] Finally the
burgomaster called Kobus to his assistance. He reflected for some
time, and said at last:
“Doesn’t it say in the communal bye-laws?”
“This case is one for which no provision is made in the
Gemeentewet” said the burgomaster, with admirable composure,—
the truth being that the greater part of the Gemeentewet was Greek
to him, and that he had gradually picked up, by practical experience,
what knowledge he possessed of his official duties. Kobus, however,
was very far from suspecting any such subtleties, and believed his
superior implicitly. His invention being now exhausted, he confined
himself to remarking, with a sigh, “If it hadn’t been the Dominie
himself, now, we might have asked him—he could surely have looked
it up somewhere.”
Yes, that would have been too absurd. They could not have
brought the Dominie all his books in a wheelbarrow, and requested
him to “look up” information as to what was to be done with himself!
No—that would not do. But all at once an expedient occurred to
Kobus. There was an old, old man in the village—a grey-beard of
ninety or more. Perhaps in his young days there might have been
such a thing as a malefactor in this rural region. Yes, the idea was not
such a bad one, and Kobus was sent as a delegate from the
government to this oracle of antiquity. In fact, the old man had a
suggestion ready. He remembered that some sixty years ago an
analogous case had occurred, and then the burgomaster had first
examined the culprit himself, and then sent him to town for trial. He
added, however, that the burgomaster on that occasion had not been
quite certain of what he ought to do. That, however, did not matter
so much—the precedent was there in any case. The schoolmaster
then must be examined; and, as Mulders had once been present at a
trial in court, the forms of justice presented no such great difficulty
after all.
On the fifth day after his arrest, the schoolmaster was haled forth
from the dungeon under the tower, and—of course, heavily
handcuffed—taken to the council-chamber. That was an event. The
whole village formed a long procession, which accompanied the
prisoner; and when he was taken inside, his train remained hanging
about the doors. Then followed a buzz and clatter among the crowd,
as though it were a swarm of bees, or a duck-yard.
 “THAT WAS AN
EVENT.”

“It’s too bad,” said a little old woman; “an old white-haired man
like that. What may not a man come to? Only yesterday he was
teaching my daughter’s children their lessons, and to-day the poor
lambs are running after their master, because he’s been in jail just
like some nasty vagabond. And I can’t believe it of him, do you know
—anything but that. He has always been much too kind to every one.
I’m not the only one here whom he has helped for nothing—nothing
at all—without your having to pay a cent for it.”
“Yes, but, mother,” began a rich farmer,—with a face and attitude
in which the most condescending amiability could not altogether
hide the lowest greed, and a stupid arrogant conceit,—“you must
understand that there are well-founded reasons—I say, well-founded
reasons—for the man to have been taken up—eh? That’s surely self-
evident—eh? No one is put into handcuffs without important
reasons; there must be a ground for such a motive—I say, for such a
motive.” And then the mighty orator looked round him with a “What
do you think of me now?” expression, and enjoyed his victory over
the old woman. But the latter was not to be driven from the field so
easily.
“You go along with your French talk. I know nothing about that,—
and yet I think I know quite as much as you do yourself. But this I
know, that it doesn’t look well for you, of all people, to abuse the
schoolmaster anyway. Even though it were as clear as a post above
the water that the Dominie had stolen, you ought to stand up for
him! Do you understand me—eh?”
The rich farmer understood quite well. When his youngest boy had
been lying ill some months ago, he had been too mean to send for a
doctor, though he could well afford it, and had called the
schoolmaster to his assistance. Then, as at other times, the Dominie
had said “No,” to keep up appearances, as he was not supposed to
practise any more; but he had thought “Yes,” and acted on his
thought. And the rich farmer had paid him nothing. This was why he
now hurriedly turned away from this covert attack, muttering
something about “old creatures getting quite childish,” but abstained
from further contradiction.
But the old woman could not be everywhere at once to take the
Dominie’s part, and the conclusion of most conversations was this:
“Yes, you see, folks don’t call a cow piebald, when there’s not a spot
about her.”
Suddenly, however, all voices were hushed before the reverently-
uttered magic formula, “The Burgomaster!”
The crowd parted to let him pass, and he went up to the council-
chamber, where the faithful Kobus, in his Sunday suit, was awaiting
him. He was already going to meet the burgomaster, in order to tell
him that “they” were all there; but the great man was looking straight
in front of him, as stiff as a poker, and making, in a direct line, for his
official chair, like a guest who, on being ushered in, looks neither to
right nor left, but makes straight for the lady of the house.
This was “the proper form.” Kobus was so impressed by this
ceremonial that he stared with open mouth and eyes, and remained
immovable, like a masculine counterpart of Lot’s wife. The
burgomaster had elegant manners, that he had.
“Are all present?” asked the burgomaster, suddenly.
Kobus awakened with a start from his ecstatic trance. “Yes, your
worship,” he answered, regaining his composure.
“Then the trial may begin,” said the President of the Court. “And
you, Veldwachter, do you caligraph it!”
“I—I don’t altogether understand, your worship.”
“Caligraph, Veldwachter!”
 “Oh!—ah!—hm—yes, I don’t understand——.”
“Write it down, Veldwachter. Caligraphy—that is the art of writing,
you know.”
“All right, your worship.” Kobus sat down at a table, took up a pen,
and bent over a sheet of paper. But the paper was destined to remain
unsoiled. For, all of a sudden, the burgomaster looked round him,
and, probably struck by the emptiness of the room, inquired,
“Veldwachter, are all the witnesses present?”
“All the witnesses are present, your worship,” answered Kobus,
indicating, with a majestic wave of the hand, his solitary son Hannes,
who sat so forlorn, that, looking at him and the schoolmaster, it
would have been hard to say which was witness and which
defendant; for the Dominie had his handcuffed hands on his knees
under the table, and you would not have guessed from his calm
features—pale and worn with the fatigues of the last few days—that
he was accused of any crime.
“But,” pursued Kobus, “your worship has just said something that
gives me an idea. Ought there not to be some other witnesses?”
“Other witnesses?”
“Yes, I mean witnesses to witness for him, do you see? I mean to
say, Hannes sits here, for instance, to speak against—I mean against
the Dominie,—but ought there not to be some witnesses to speak for
him as well?”
The burgomaster began to think. This was a difficult question, one
of those ticklish and delicate problems, the solution of which forms
the principal raison d’être of a burgomaster’s career. If only this
miserable trial had never begun! He cast a furtive glance at the
defendant. If only he could consult the Dominie, and ask him to look
up his books about the matter! But away with such humiliating
thoughts! No; better, if it must be, to manifest his ignorance in a
more becoming way: “Veldwachter, is that what they do in town? It
was different in my time.”
“They do it that way now, your worship.”
“Then we had better move with the times, and adapt ourselves to
the new usages. But where are the—the for-witnesses to come from?”
“Oh! there’s a whole crowd outside the door, your worship—
perhaps you might find one among them. And if there’s no one to be
had—well, at any rate, we’ve done our best to find one.”
“Go outside, then, and proclaim a summons, on my behalf.”
Kobus went and did so, wording the “proclamation” as clearly as
he knew how. But a deathly stillness was all the answer he received.
For though many a simple soul was honestly convinced of the
defendant’s innocence, and though here and there a solitary voice
had been raised in his favour,—to go in there, into the council-
chamber,—to stand before the tribunal,—that was more than those
timid folk could undertake.
Suddenly, however, a shrill voice cried, “Well, if no one else will do
it, I will.” And the little old woman who had already taken up the
cudgels for the Dominie, forced her way hastily to the front of the
crowd.
“Look’ee there; Auntie’s going to speak,” cried various voices.
Every one repeated, laughing, “Auntie’s going to speak!” for under
this name the old lady was known to all the village.
Auntie cared neither for laughter nor tears, but went straight
forward, climbed the court-house steps, and then suddenly turned
round, waved her thin old arms, and cried as loud as she could,
“You’re a pack of cowards, the lot of you,—do you hear, you great
loobies?” Then she disappeared inside. And though she was a funny
figure enough as she stood there, no one thought of laughing,—they
all felt the truth of Auntie’s words too deeply.
 “YOU’RE A PACK OF
COWARDS.”

Auntie was conducted inside by the veldwachter, and her eye

immediately fell on her client. The Dominie remained seated in the
same attitude, discouraged and dejected—deeply humiliated by the
thought that, at his age, with his aspirations and such a past behind
him, he should have to bow his head beneath the weight of a criminal
accusation! The trouble dimmed his thinking powers, and drove the
blood through his veins at lightning speed. What a hammering in his
pulses—what a thumping in his temples—what a rushing in his ears!
He felt like a swimmer who has been long under water, and finds it
press more and more crushingly on him, and hears its noise in his
ears. That was the fever—the fever that was rising higher and higher
in his blood, and brought that unnatural flush to his usually pale
cheeks.
Auntie looked at the sad spectacle he presented, and her
indignation rose, and craved for immediate utterance.
“Burgomaster!” she began, “don’t you call it a shame that the
Dominie——”
But her flow of words was immediately interrupted by the
burgomaster: “Silence! witness, this is not as it should be. You have
come here to give your evidence voluntarily, and to do this effectually
all the forms must be observed. Witness, what is your name?”
 “Well, I never—my name! Just as though the whole village didn’t
know me? Come, come, Burgomaster, every one knew my name long
before yours was ever thought of; and do you want to pretend that
you don’t know me? No, man, that won’t do. All those grand
manners won’t go down with old Auntie. All the same, I can tell you
plainly why the poor fellow could not have stolen the pears; and so
you are quite out of it, with all your fine forms and speeches, do you
see? Now just let me ask you, if he took the pears, where did he leave
them,—say?”
And Auntie placed her arms akimbo, and assumed an attitude
which seemed to say, “Your turn now—come on!”
But the opposite party remained passive. The burgomaster, as it
happened, was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which seemed as
though it could not come to an end. It was a pity, for, but for that,
surely, the wise man would have answered the conundrum with
Solomonic perspicuity. The veldwachter-clerk said, “Hm, hm—yes,
yes,” and covered his beard with his hand. The witness for the
prosecution yawned with ennui and hunger. The defendant sat still,
and looked at the old woman with rigid eyes.
But all things come to an end, and so did the presiding judge’s
cough. However, he seemed to have coughed away all his judicial
sagacity, for he remained silent. Not so Kobus Mulders, who
awakened from his reverie after this fashion—
“Yes, yes,—where did he leave them? I only say, your worship,—
where did he leave the pears, if he stole them?”
“Oh, yes, that’s what I should like to know,” said Auntie, shortly,
and closed her lips with a look of firm conviction.
Another pause.
“Yes,” resumed Kobus, “he can’t have swallowed them all down at
once.” This joke appeared to him so inexpressibly funny, that he
burst into a loud hoarse laugh, which was echoed by no one except
Hannes. But suddenly the joker’s features became rigid, and he
looked at every one present with a face whose expression plainly
said, “How is it possible that I did not think of it before?” and
exclaimed, “I know! Your worship, the little chest that we found in
Klaas’s cottage the day after he died——”
 “Well, Kobus?” asked the burgomaster, in great excitement—so
much so that he quite forgot to speak officially.
“It is the Dominie’s, and now I understand everything. The
Dominie didn’t steal, and Auntie is quite right. It could not be, either.
Just listen. The Dominie has been at his doctoring again. He went to
see Klaas when he was dying, and forgot to take his medicine-chest
away with him when he left. I am quite sure it is his medicine-chest,
because it is the same thing I used to see in his hands in the old
times, when nobody minded his doctoring folks. And the time just
corresponds. On the day after we arrested the Dominie, I went to see
Klaas, and found him dead. It’s as plain—as—well, it’s quite plain!”
Every one had listened with the greatest attention, and the
explanation seemed to have made a deep impression on all. The
Dominie, however, seemed to feel it most. He suddenly started up
out of his apathy, leaned his handcuffed hands on the table, and tried
to speak. Everything melted into a dull roar inside his head—the light
turned to scarlet—he had fainted.
All of them hastened up to help him—Auntie foremost, in spite of
her old legs. Slowly he came to himself again, and then he tried to
think. He remembered what had happened, in a dim sort of way.
What now? What should he answer if they asked him whether
Kobus’s supposition was correct? It was—and yet, if he
acknowledged that he had gone to Klaas on that particular evening to
give him medical help, then he would have to expect for the future so
strict a supervision of his forbidden practice, that it would
thenceforth be almost impossible to carry it on. And he could not
give it up—he could not, and would not. But to be looked on as a
thief! Oh, if he could only think—think quietly and calmly. But this
fever! this fever! No, it was his duty, his calling, and he must be true
to it, though he should be crushed by the contempt of the whole
world—the world he longed to do good to. And wildly, as a wave of
delirium swept over him, he said, “No! no! no! I didn’t do that! The
chest is not mine! I know nothing about it, and wish to know nothing
—do you hear? I am no doctor; I am only a poor schoolmaster! I am
much too stupid to be a doctor, and I have never done anything of
the sort! I’m a thief—a wretched thief—a thief!” He cried shrilly once
more, with all his strength, “A thief!” and let his burning head drop
on his heaving breast.
 His hearers looked at each other. Not one of them now believed in
his guilt, and even in the burgomaster—who was only narrow-
minded, not bad-hearted—every hostile feeling now gave place to
pity.
“Come, Dominie,” he said, laying his hand on the old man’s
shoulder, “come, you mustn’t make so much of it as all that. We all
understand the whole business now; and as for the medicine-chest, I
forbid every one here present to say one word about it!” At these
words the burgomaster looked round him with such a solemn air of
command, that Kobus cast down his eyes, and Hannes shuddered
with sheer reverence. But the great man, mindful of his duties as
presiding judge, went on—“Now, defendant, you are acquitted; you
may go.”
But Auntie flew up in a storm of indignation. “What! go? My
patience, me! Burgomaster, don’t you see the poor soul can hardly sit
in his chair? Come, Hannes, you great lout, what are you loafing
about there for, you great long booby, you? Run out, and tell them to
send some menfolks to carry the Dominie home. Quick now!”
This classic oration produced a visible impression on Hannes, and,
before long, he came back with several men, who carried the
schoolmaster away, Auntie walking behind, and saying, from time to
time, “Take care! take care!” When it became known outside that the
Dominie’s innocence was established, every one set up a loud cry of
joy.
Inside, however, the burgomaster and Kobus were looking at each
other with serious faces. “I haven’t written down anything, with all
the confusion,” said Kobus. The burgomaster considered. If the
matter were reported in town, he would probably get well laughed at
for his mistake. And what about the forms in which such a narrative,
if reported, would have to be clothed? No; it was best to put the
whole thing aside, and say no more about it.
“Veldwachter, it seems to me that this matter is not now of
sufficient importance for us to communicate it to the judicial
authorities of the parquet; so you may go too.”
Without understanding half of this speech, Kobus was able to
catch the burgomaster’s drift,—the matter was at an end. So he went
home, reflecting how frightfully learned the burgomaster was.
C. K. Elout.
 MY HERO.

I was a boy of twelve or thirteen, and, just like other boys of that
age, full of life, mischief, ideals, and illusions.
A good-for-nothing little scamp out of school, I was, under the
master’s eye, a queer mixture of the genuine mischief-loving boy and
the zealous pupil. If I found no attraction in the dry science of
arithmetic and the rules of grammar, all the more did I feel attracted
by the history of all nations in general, and ours in particular.
Yet not altogether; it was only the warlike Spartans and Romans,
our own crusading knights, and the fierce and enterprising Gueux,—
in short, only those whom I looked upon as heroes who could arrest
my attention.
Frequently it vexed me that my lunch-slice of bread and butter did
not consist of black, coarse bread; sometimes I felt a deep disdain for
my clothes, so different from those in which the Roman legions
marched to victory; all peaceable merchant-vessels were an
abomination to me,—I knew but one ideal—to be a hero.
What I understood by a hero was not quite clear, even to myself,—
only this was certain, that no one could be a hero unless he had won
many great battles over stronger adversaries, or had blown up his
ship in order to save the flag, or ended his glorious life covered with
wounds in the breast (never in the back, of course!). In short, my
idea of a hero was somewhat complicated; but this much was certain,
that a great hero ought to be able to show a large number of wounds
and scars, and that his bravery should be equalled by his generosity.
I wished to be a hero myself, but as I quite understood that I was
too young for the position at present, my great desire was, at least, to
see and know a hero.
 I sought everywhere for this superior being, and thought at last
that I had found my ideal in our new “odd man,” who had been a
soldier, and had a large scar on his cheek.
From this one outward and visible token of his bravery, I argued
that he must have more hidden about his person, under his clothes.
These wounds, alas! I could never hope to see, as he did not live in
the house, but came every day to clean boots and run errands.
I was, however, firmly convinced that they existed. The only
drawback to his greatness was the fact that he had both his arms and
no wooden leg. I would much rather it had been otherwise, but
managed to content myself with his many unseen wounds.
I was still seeking an opportunity of asking him how and when he
had become a hero, when I was suddenly bereft of my illusion.
Our kitchenmaid was beforehand with me.
One day, when I had furtively slipped out to the kitchen, in order
to question Frans, I heard Mie, our maid, say—
“I say, Frans, have you been in the wars, that you have such a mark
over your face?”
Then he replied—
“In the wars! I believe you! We’ve nothing more to do with wars in
this country, now! No,—when I was leaving the service, I treated my
chum one night. But he got drunk and outrageous, and chucked me
through a window, so that I cut my face open. No—I didn’t get it in
the wars—and jolly glad of it, too!”
I stood thunderstruck—the tears rose in my eyes.
No wounds on his breast! Even the scar was a delusion and a
snare. I no longer believed in living heroes. They no longer existed.
But I was going to be a hero all the same. And till I was able to re-
introduce the breed, I would content myself with the dead heroes of
the past.
 “I HAD FURTIVELY
SLIPPED OUT TO THE
KITCHEN.”

But there were so many of them—and I wanted a special hero all to

myself. Where should I find him?
De Ruyter was a hero, killed by the enemy’s shot—but I had
nowhere read that he had many wounds.
Bayard!—but I knew so little of him—and besides, he was not a
Dutchman.
Cæsar—Napoleon—Blücher!—but how about the wounds?
Besides, every one knew that these were heroes; and I wanted one
for myself—for my own special worship—not one of the universally
famous ones.
My search, however, was not to be fruitless long. I found my hero
in the following way.
There were to be drains laid down round the old church in our city;
and the ground being dug up for that purpose, a number of skulls
and bones were found in the black earth.
All the boys of the school went to look as soon as they could get
away, and it may be supposed that I did not remain behind. We were
all inspired with a frenzied enthusiasm for relics of antiquity. We
grubbed about in the earth of the opened graves, to find coins, pots,
or even potsherds if we could get nothing else. We envied the town