They talk of Babalatchi and of the strong woman who carried her blind father through the surf under the fire of the warship from the north.

The companions of that piratical and son-less Aeneas are dead now, but their ghosts wander over the waters and the islands at night--after the manner of ghosts--and haunt the fires by which sit armed men, as is meet for the spirits of fearless warriors who died in battle.

There they may hear the story of their own deeds, of their own courage, suffering and death, on the lips of living men.

That story is told in many places.

On the cool mats in breezy verandahs of Rajahs' houses it is alluded to disdainfully by impassive statesmen, but amongst armed men that throng the courtyards it is a tale which stills the murmur of voices and the tinkle of anklets; arrests the passage of the siri-vessel, and fixes the eyes in absorbed gaze.