Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/344

 and not of his own will, the animal had gone further than Saïdjah, for scarcely had it conquered the momentum which rules all matter even after the cause has ceased, when it returned, and placing its big body, supported by its big feet, like a roof over the child, fumed its horned head towards the tiger, which bounded forward but for the last time. The buffalo caught him on his horns, and only lost some flesh, which the tiger took out of his neck, The tiger lay there with his belly torn open, and Saïdjah was saved. Certainly there had been ‘ontong’ in the ‘oeser-oeseran’ of the buffalo.

When this buffalo had also been taken away from Saïidjah’s father and slaughtered

I told you, reader, that my story is monotonous.

When this buffalo was slaughtered, Saïdjah was just twelve, and Adinda was wearing ‘sarongs,’ and making figures on them. She had already learned to express thoughts in melancholy drawings on her tissue, for she had seen Saïdjah very sad. And Saïdjah’s father was also sad, but his mother still more so; for she had cured the wound, in the neck of the faithful animal which had brought her child home unhurt, after having thought, by the news of Adinda’s brothers, that it had been taken away by the tiger. As often as she saw this wound, she thought how far the claws of the tiger, which had entered