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"I stood by the table holding the despatch-box firmly in my hands as Ballantyne had urgently asked me to do." "Quite so," said Mr. Travers; and the attention of the court was now directed to that despatch-box and the portrait of Bahadur Salak which it contained.
The rain, swishing down through the night in torrents and cataracts, clears at sunrise, and though heavy clouds still veil the heights of Salak, the transparent beauty of the morning crystallises the atmosphere, and sharply defines every feature of the landscape.
Thresk looked at, the central figure with a keen and professional interest. Salak was a notorious figure in the Indian politics of the day the politics of the subterranean kind. For some years he had preached and practised sedition with so much subtlety and skill that though all men were aware that his hand worked the strings of disorder there was never any convicting evidence against him.
Language and customs change as we cross the saddle between the blue peaks of Salak and Gedeh; gay crowds bring fruits to picturesque wayside markets, bearing bamboo poles laden with golden papaya and purple mangosteen, or plaited baskets containing the conglomerate native cuisine.
The reason why Ballantyne asked me to take the photograph of Bahadur Salak was that since I was going on board straight from the train it could be no danger to me." "Then why didn't you go straight on board?" asked Pettifer. "I'll tell you," Thresk replied.
On the one side there's Salak the great national leader, Salak the deliverer, Salak professing from his prison in Calcutta that he has never used any but the most legitimate constitutional means to forward his propaganda. And here on the other is Salak in his garden-chair amongst the burglars. Not a good thing to possess this photograph, Mr. Thresk.
At our feet the river ran bubbling and fretting over the brown stones. In returning we skirted the central lake, and, having crossed the avenue, passed down a broad roadway lined with rich foliage. This was so arranged as to afford a view of Mount Salak to the southern windows of the Governor-General's residence.
As the average monthly temperature does not vary more than two degrees all the year round in Java, the process of preparing the ground, sowing, and reaping go on simultaneously in the ricefields. Every now and then we come across a queer little Noah's-ark cottage in the midst of bananas and bamboos, with a tall palm or two waving overhead. Salak remains long in sight.
The little voyage ends at Tandjon Priok, nine miles from Batavia, for a volcanic eruption of Mount Salak in 1699 filled up the ancient harbour, and necessitated the removal of shipping to a deep bay, as the old city was landed high and dry through the mass of mud, lava, and volcanic sand, which dammed up the lower reaches of the Tjiligong river, and destroyed connection with the sea.
But none the less Salak and his friends could not like the prospect of the production of that photograph in Calcutta, and would hardly be scrupulous what means they took to prevent it. Then why had not Ballantyne destroyed it? Thresk asked the question and was fairly startled by the answer.
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