THE MAN WITH THE SENSE OF HUMOR 175
of sun-bathing professors in bathing-trunks, only, of course, it was a loincloth that they wore.
"By
the rajah's orders, however, all the spectacles were at once collected
and put back into my bag, to make sure that no one's sight in his realm
should be as good as the rajah's own."
"And then?" I interjected.
"Then
I was told that my belongings had been sent for from the rest-house,
and that I was to be the rajah's guest during the rest of my stay. No
more talk of head-chopping now.
"This
gave me an opportunity of seeing a great deal of the rajah and of
discovering that, fierce and untamed as he was, yet he could be managed
and made amenable to reason. Like most Malays, he loved a game of
chess, and when I had beaten him in game after game, I taught him
several openings which I had off pat. This pleased him even more than
my gift of spectacles. We got on famously together, and he made such a
great fuss of me that his people became jealous.
"It
was high time I should get away, or someone would start threading my
rice with bamboo slivers or use some other refined means of removing me
from the path of the local patriots, so I said to the rajah one day,
'Tuan, the longer I remain your guest, the more difficult it will
become for me to tear myself away.' This was literally true, I feared.
" 'Why must you go at all?' he asked.
"
'Because my business calls me,' I replied, 'and there is nothing in
these parts that will further it. I have a wife and children who depend
on me. You know, Tuan, I am only a trader in pearl-shell and pearls,
and I must go where these things are to be had.'
"
'That is simple,' he said. 'Why did you not ask me for these things
before, after you had restored to me the sight of my youth? I could not
have refused you anything then.'
"
'No,' I said, quoting a well-known text from the Koran, to the effect
that he who expects favors in return for a kindly deed has thereby
forfeited the merit he would otherwise have
