his lucky craft. He was liked for his reckless generosity, for his
unswerving honesty, and at first was a little feared on account of his
violent temper. Very soon, however, they found him out, and the word
went round that Captain Tom's fury was less dangerous than many a man's
smile. He prospered greatly. After his first--and successful--fight with
the sea robbers, when he rescued, as rumour had it, the yacht of some
big wig from home, somewhere down Carimata way, his great popularity
began. As years went on it grew apace. Always visiting out-of-the-way
places of that part of the world, always in search of new markets for
his cargoes--not so much for profit as for the pleasure of finding
them--he soon became known to the Malays, and by his successful
recklessness in several encounters with pirates, established the
terror of his name. Those white men with whom he had business, and who
naturally were on the look-out for his weaknesses, could easily see that
it was enough to give him his Malay title to flatter him greatly. So
when there was anything to be gained by it, and sometimes out of pure
and unprofitable good nature, they would drop the ceremonious "Captain
Lingard" and address him half seriously as Rajah Laut--the King of the
Sea.

He carried the name bravely on his broad shoulders. He had carried it
many years already when the boy Willems ran barefooted on the deck of
the ship Kosmopoliet IV. in Samarang roads, looking with innocent eyes
on the strange shore and objurgating his immediate surroundings with
blasphemous lips, while his childish brain worked upon the heroic idea
of running away. From the poop of the Flash Lingard saw in the early
morning the Dutch ship get lumberingly under weigh, bound for the
eastern ports. Very late in the evening of the same day he stood on the
quay of the landing canal, ready to go on board of his brig. The night
was starry and clear; the little custom-house building was shut up, and