In spite of Lord Jim’s entreaties, the boy would not sleep on the mattress and refused to sleep with anything but a goatskin rug, a state of affairs for which Lila chastised the boy endlessly. Some nights, early in spring, when the wind howling off the bay sliced through the thin walls and rattled the windowpanes, the boy awoke shivering and huddled about the flame of a candle for warmth. Other nights the boy was troubled by dreams. One dream in particular would not let him rest. He dreamed of the Siwash standing in a field at the edge of a high bluff. It was the dead of night in the dream, and the moon cast a purple glow upon his people, who stood expressionless, as still as statues — 132 Indians in all, scattered along the edge of the bluff, with no one stationed closer to the edge than his mother, her braided hair pulled back tight, her arms at her sides, gazing hypnotically over the ledge, where a hundred feet below, a riotous sea pounded the shoreline. Behind the Siwash, the mountains reared up like shadows.
