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.
110173 The captain looked at his watch.
110174 After four minutes and twenty seconds a brown head emerged to his left, about sixty meters away; with a strange, desperate shudder which seemed at the same time as if paralysed, the Sinhalese clawed at the rocks, in one hand he had the knife, in the other some pearl bearing oysters.
110175 The captain scowled.
110176 “So, what’s wrong?”
110177 he asked, sharply.
110178 The Sinhalese was still slithering up the rock, unable to speak with the horror of it.