Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/267

 Saidyah thought a moment and said: “Count the moons. I shall stay away thrice twelve moons the present moon does not count. See, Adinda, cut a notch in your rice-block every new moon. When you shall have cut three times twelve notches, then the next following day I shall arrive under the ketapan. Promise that you will be there!”

“Yes, Saïdyah, I shall be under the ketapan near the diati-wood when you return.”

Saïdyah then tore a strip from his blue head-kerchief, which was very much worn, and he gave the little piece of linen to Adinda, that she might keep it as a pledge. And so he left her and Badoor.

He walked on for many days. He passed Rangkas-Betoong, that was not yet the chief centre of Lebak, and Waroong-Goonoong where the Assistant-Resident then lived, and the next day he saw Pandyglang, that lies there as in a garden. Yet another day and he arrived at Serang, and stood amazed at the splendour of so large a place with many houses, built of stone and roofed with red tiles. Saïdyah had never seen anything like it. He stayed there one day because he was tired, but at night in the coolness he went on, and came to Tangerang the following day, before the shadow had descended to his lips, although he wore the large straw hat which his father had left behind for him.

At Tangerang he bathed in the river near the ferry, and then rested in the house of an acquaintance of his father’s, who showed him how to plait straw hats, such as those that came from Manilla. He stayed there one day to learn this, for he thought it might afterwards enable him to earn money, in case he should not succeed in Batavia. The following day, towards nightfall, as it grew cool, he thanked his host very much, and travelled on. As soon as it was quite dark, so that no one should see it, he took out the leaf in which he kept the melatti Adinda had given him under the ketapan-tree. For he had become heavy-hearted at the thought that he would not see her for so long a time. The first day, and also the second, he had felt less deeply how very much he was alone, for