Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/360

 they seized upon the dark ground, and communicated their blaze in larger and larger circles, meeting, crossing, unrolling, turning, wandering, and uniting in patches of fire and lightnings of golden lustre on the azure ground there was red, and blue, and silver, and purple, and yellow, and gold, in all this oh God! that was the daybreak, that was seeing Adinda again!

Saïdjah had not learnt to pray, and it would have been a pity to teach him; for a more holy prayer, more fervent thanksgiving than was in the mute rapture of his soul, could not be conceived in human language. He would not go to Badoer—to see Adinda in reality seeming to him less pleasurable than the expectation of seeing her again. He sat down at the foot of the ‘Ketapan,’ and his eyes wandered over the scenery. Nature smiled at him, and seemed to welcome him as a mother welcoming the return of her child, and as she pictures her joy by voluntary remembrance of past grief, when showing what she has preserved as a keepsake during his absence. So Saïdjah was delighted to see again so many spots that were witnesses of his short life. But his eyes or his thoughts might wander as they pleased, yet his looks and longings always reverted to the path which leads from Badoer to the Ketapan tree. All that his senses could observe was called Adinda He saw the abyss to the left, where the earth is so yellow, where once a young buffalo sank down into the depth,—they had descended with strong