110159 “Tell him, then,” he snarled, “that he is a …” and he spoke without pausing for breath for a good eleven minutes.
110160 The half-cast translated what he had said, as far as his vocabulary was able; and then he once again translated the Bataks long, but objective, verdict back to the captain.
110161 “They say they might be willing to relinquish taking you to court, Captain, if you pay a fine into the hands of the local authorities.
110162 They suggest,” here he hesitated, “two hundred rupees, Captain; but that seems rather a lot.
110163 Offer them five.”
110164 Captain van Toch’s complexion began to break out in purple blotches.
110165 First he offered to murder all the Bataks in the world, then the offer went down to giving them all three hundred good kickings, and finally he agreed to content himself with stuffing the mayor and putting him on display in the colonial museum in Amsterdam; for their part, the Bataks went down from two hundred rupees to an iron pump with a wheel, and finally insisted on no more than that the captain give the mayor his petrol cigarette lighter as a token.
110166 (“Give it to him, Captain,” urged the half-cast of Cubanese and Portuguese, “I’ve got three cigarette lighters in my store, even if they don’t have wicks.”)
110167 Thus, peace was restored on Tana Masa; but Captain J. van Toch now knew that the dignity of the white race was at stake.
110168 That afternoon a boat set out from the Dutch ship, Kandon Bandoeng, with the following crew: Captain J. van Toch, Jensen the Swede, Gudmundson the Icelander, Gillemainen the Finn, and two Sinhalese pearl fishers.
110169 The boat headed straight for Devil Bay.
110170 At three o’clock, when the tide was at its highest, the captain stood on the shore, the boat was out watching for sharks about a hundred meters offshore, and both the Sinhalese divers were waiting, knife in hand, for the signal to jump into the water.
110171 “Now you go in,” the captain told the farther of the two naked savages.
110172 The Sinhalese jumped into the water, waded out a few paces and then dived.