Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III FOR THE BROWN MAN'S BIRTHRIGHT MAURICE crawled from under his bed-curtains and paddled bareshod across the floor to the corner in which his books were tumbled together in a disorderly pile. He turned them over, selected three or four from among them, and carried them back to his sleeping-place. One or two were clad in old calf, scratched and dilapidated, another was bound in faded leather, a fourth in glaring modern cloth; all were volumes which concerned themselves with the history of Malaya, and especially of Sumatra. Maurice turned them up, one by one, to see what they could tell him about Acheh. In these pages he read again the wonderful romance of this obscure kingdom, which has never found a Prescott to record its triumphs and its tragedies, from the first coming of the Portuguese filibusters, in 1509, until the thread of connected narrative breaks off suddenly, inexplicably, nearly two centuries later. He read of Acheh, a mere dependency of the little State of Pedir, governed by a slave sent to rule over it from the court of its liege lord; of the slave's son, Ibrahim, who threw his aged father into prison when he pleaded the cause of loyalty, and wrested the kingship from his faltering grip; who overthrew the ruler of Pedir, annexed the neighbouring country of Paseh in spite of the efforts of the Portuguese to stay his onslaughts, and then hurled fleet after fleet against the white strangers, reducing them often to sorry straits, his bitter hatred against their race never for an instant dormant, never completely satisfied. Maurice read of attack after attack, of ships and men squandered in hundreds and thousands, of siege and battle and raid, of the inexhaustible fury which animated this king against the men of the swarthy breed which, of all European...
Synopsis
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.