Not expecting the arrival of enemies he provided no store of food or water.

He was killed whilst trying to reach the well, probably at night." He vividly pictured the scene--a brave, hardy European keeping at bay a boatload of Dyak savages, enduring manfully the agonies of hunger, thirst, perhaps wounds.

Then the siege, followed by a wild effort to gain the life-giving well, the hiss of a Malay parang wielded by a lurking foe, and the last despairing struggle before death came.
He might be mistaken.

Perchance there was a less dramatic explanation.
But he could not shake off his, first impressions.

They were garnered from dumb evidence and developed by some occult but overwhelming sense of certainty.
"What was the poor devil doing here ?" he asked.