Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/282

 taken to the rice-block, he counted on it thirty-two carved notches

Then he gave the old woman as many Spanish dollars as would pay for a buffalo, and left Badoor. At Tjilangkahan, he bought a fisherman’s prao, and with it, after a few days’ sailing, reached the Lampongs, where the rebels resisted the Dutch Government.

He joined a band of Bantammers, not so much for the purpose of fighting as for that of finding Adinda. For he was of a gentle nature, and more susceptible to sorrow than to bitterness.

One day when the rebels had been again defeated, he wandered about in a village that had just been taken by the Dutch army, and that therefore was in flames. Saïdyah knew that the band which had there been annihilated had consisted largely of Bantammers. Like a ghost he roamed about in the huts that were not yet entirely destroyed by the fire, and found the dead body of Adinda’s father with a klewang-bayonet wound in the breast. Next to him Saïdyah saw the three murdered brothers of Adinda, youths, almost children yet, and a little farther the body of Adinda, naked, horribly mutlated

A narrow strip of blue linen had entered into the gaping breastwound that appeared to have ended a prolonged struggle

Then Saïdyah ran towards some Dutch soldiers who with levelled muskets drove the last surviving rebels into the fire of the burning houses. He threw himself on the broad-sword bayonets, pressed forward with all his might, and with a final effort pushed back the soldiers until the bayonets pierced him to the hilts.

And shortly after there was great jubilation in Batavia on account of the latest victory which again had added so many laurels to those already won by the Dutch-Indian army. And the Governor-General wrote to the Motherland that peace had been restored in the Lampongs. And the King of the Netherlands, advised by his Ministers, again rewarded so much heroism with many orders of knighthood.