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"Aoodya was her name. What else can I tell you about her, to describe her? She was a child, and all life came as play to her, yet she understood love to the tips of her little madder-brown fingers.
"'My friend, said he at last, 'I suppose you will be suspecting me; yet I give you my word and the Hadji Hamid is no liar that if Aoodya is a Berbalang, or a daughter of Berbalangs, the same was unknown to me when I married you. "'I'll believe that, I answered; 'the more by token that I never suspected you.
I called twice, leaned my head against the door-post and panted; called again, and, getting no answer, walked stupidly back across the compound to the gate. "The sentry there was pointing. I believe he was telling me, too, that Aoodya, with the child in her arms, had passed out some while before. But as he waved a hand towards the plain I saw a figure running there, and recognised Hamid.
I puzzled my head over this favour, until Aoodya explained. 'You see, she said, 'it was done to oblige the Hadji Hassan. This was the old man who had listened to my performance on the bombardon. He lived in a stockaded house on the far side of the island, the chieftancy of which he and Hamid shared between them and without dispute. "'How should it oblige Hassan? I asked.
'Steady! he said again. "Aoodya had a start of twenty yards or more, and in the first half-minute she actually managed to better it. Hamid, beside me, rubbed a bullet quickly on the rind of one of his lime-fruits and rammed it home. He took an eternal time about it; and below, now, the man was gaining.
For as my kris went into the flank of him, above the hip, Hamid's second shot cut down through his neck. His face at the moment rested sideways against the branch, and I suppose the bullet passed through to the bough and cost me Aoodya.
"I should tell you, sir, that by this time I was the father of a fine boy; and that Aoodya doted on him.
I had no wife at home to vex my conscience at all. All day we played about Hamid's verandah like two children, and Hamid watched us with a sort of twinkle in his eye, seemingly well content. It was plain he had taken a fancy to me, and I thought, as time passed, he grew friendlier. "I blessed the old fellow, too. Had he not given me Aoodya?
The crowd of Berbalangs had disappeared. "He found the track which Aoodya had missed, and as he led me up and out of the crater I heard him talking talking.
Perhaps Aoodya had missed the track; at any rate the ledge we were now following grew shallower as it curved over the corner of the beach and ran sheer over the water of the lake. A jungle tree leaned out here, with a clear drop of a hundred feet.
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