294 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



In short, every thing was made ready to do battle. 

 Meantime the six praiis came to anchor off the beach. 

 One of them had the required pass from the Dutch 

 authorities at Ceram, allowing his boat to come to 

 Kayeli, but the others had no such papers, and, ac- 

 cording to their own story, had become frightened at 

 the great guns in Ceram, and had also deserted their 

 homes. This seemed to me so probable that I went 

 down on the beach, and, if the authorities had al- 

 lowed it, I would have taken half a dozen natives in 

 a canoe and boarded every one of the praus myself, 

 and found out what they contained. I was impor- 

 tuned to come back from the shore, but as I had been 

 in battle myself, I did not purpose to get frightened 

 and hide in the fort until I could see some cause 

 for it. After a long consultation, it was decided 

 that I should not be permitted to inspect the praus, 

 and a number of Malays were sent off to carefully 

 examine each of the dangerous vessels. This was 

 done, and the report brought back that there were 

 only three or four natives in each, and that as to 

 weapons, not one of them had even an old flint-lock. 

 Tlius ended the alann, and once more the usual dull 

 routine set in, but this time to be broken by a cir- 

 cumstance as romantic as it was peculiar. 



In our little community of nine persons there was 

 a young officer. He was affable, energetic, and withal 

 a good military man for one of his years, but, unfor- 

 tunately, his mind had been fed on novels until this 

 world appeared to him little more than half real. 

 He was engaged to a young lady, who lived also in 

 our little village. Besides liis romantic notions. 



