‘With its lower lids which came up right over its eyes. That’s a tapa.’

Captain J. van Toch twisted his glass of palm wine between his fleshy fingers. ‘Sure you weren’t drunk, eh? You weren’t sloshed?’

‘Of course I was, sir. Otherwise I wouldn’t have rowed out there. The Bataks don’t like people to … to disturb the devils.’

Captain van Toch shook his head. ‘Come on, man, no such thing as devils. And if there were they’d look like Europeans. Probably was some fish or something.’

‘A fish,’ the cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese stammered, ‘a fish hasn’t got any hands, sir. I’m not a Batak, sir, I went to school in Badjoeng … perhaps I can still recite the Ten Commandments and other scientifically proved doctrines; an educated person can tell the difference between a devil and an animal. You ask the Bataks, sir.’

‘Nigger superstitions, man,’ the captain declared with the jovial superiority of the educated. ‘Scientifically it’s nonsense. Surely a devil can’t live in water. What would he be doing there? Shouldn’t listen to natives’ gossip, man. Somebody called the bay Devil Bay and the Bataks have been afraid of it ever since. That’s the long and the short of it,’ said the captain, bringing his massive palm down on the table. ‘There’s nothing there, man; that’s scientifically evident, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed the half-breed who had been to school in Badjoeng. ‘But no man in his right senses has any business in Devil Bay.’

Captain J. van Toch turned florid. ‘What?’ he shouted. ‘You filthy Cuban, you think I’m scared of your devils? We’ll see about that,’ he said, rising to the full majesty of his ample fourteen stone. ‘I’m not wasting my time here with you when I have business to attend to. But remember one thing: there are no devils in the Dutch colonies; if there are any at all, then they are in the French colonies. Yes, there might well be some there. And now get me the mayor of this lousy kampong.’

The dignitary referred to was not too difficult to find: he was squatting next to the half-breed’s shop, chewing sugar cane. He was a naked elderly gentleman, and a lot thinner than mayors as a rule come in Europe. A short way behind him, keeping an appropriate distance, squatted the entire village, complete with women and children, evidently in expectation of being filmed.

‘Now listen to me, man,’ Captain van Toch addressed him in Malay (he might equally well have addressed him in Dutch or in English since the venerable old Batak did not understand a word of Malay and the whole of the captain’s speech had to be interpreted into the Batak dialect by the cross between a Cuban and a Portuguese; but for some reason or other the captain regarded the Malay language as more suitable). ‘Now listen to me, man, I need a few big strong brave fellows to go hunting with me. Understand? Hunting.’

The half-breed translated and the mayor nodded his head to indicate he understood. He thereupon turned to his wider audience and delivered a speech to them with obvious success.

‘The chief says,’ the half-breed interpreted, ‘that the whole village will go hunting with the tuan captain, where the tuan wishes.’

‘There you are.