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In the evening stood within four miles of the southern island of Laurots. These islands are high and steep, covered with wood, and uninhabited. The easternmost island seems, by bearings, badly laid down, being not far enough to the southward and eastward. The southern island is called by the Bugis, Mata Siri; the eastern, Kadapangan; the northern one, Kalambow.
In his turn, the Jaguar was so interested, so fascinated by the child that he was oblivious to all else. Had he been suffering from hunger his intentions might have been different. But with food so plentiful, the thought of attack had not even occurred to him. Mata, mother of the child soon missed her offspring and went in search of it.
Don't you remember me, Master Tatsu? I am Mata, the old servant, and your Umè's nurse. I I was not always kind to you, I fear. I opposed your marriage, fearing for her some such sorrow as that which came. But it is past. The gods allowed it.
But, remembering his royal word, he shook off his grief and took counsel with his astrologers, who had foretold that the unborn prince would prove either a glorious blessing or a dire curse to the land. And now, by the awful omen of the birds, they declared that the Queen had conceived the evil spirit Kala Mata, and that she must be put to death, she and the fiend with her.
Mata, silent for once, had crept to her child-mistress' close-shut walls, heard the last sobbing words of a Buddhist prayer for the dead, and burst through the shoji in scant time to catch back the stroke of a dagger from the girl's slim, upraised throat. Her terrified screams summoned Kano and the neighbors as well. A priest hurried down from the temple on the hill.
For a few days Tatsu did nothing but lie on the mats; or wander, aimlessly, over the house and garden. He came whenever Mata summoned him to meals, and ate them with old Kano, observing all outer semblances of respect. But it seemed an automaton who sat there, eating, drinking, and then, at the last, bowing over to the exact fraction of an inch, each time, and moving away to its own rooms.
He spoke her name once, twice; he ventured inside the house, and called, but she did not come. He made his way to the veranda, and was about to leave for the shore, when he heard a step behind him. He turned quickly. It was the Circassian girl, Mata. He spoke to her in Arabic, and she smiled at him. "What is it?" he asked, for he saw she had come from her mistress.
Umè could reach the highest shelf without standing on an inverted rice-pot, or the even more precarious fish-cleaning bench. And again, for a reason not quite plain to herself, Mata decided not to call.
The present takes the form of four antique beads, or of some other object worth about one dollar; it is termed LASAT MATA, for it is supposed that if it were omitted the artist would go blind, and some misfortune would happen to the parents and relations of the girl undergoing the operation of tatu.
Mata, indeed, hastened to give a whole koku of rice to the poor in thank-offering that one sensible person besides herself was now implicated in the wedding preparations. Uchida justified, many times over, her belief in him. In the district near the Kano home he rented, in Tatsu's name, a small cottage, paying for it by the month, in advance.
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