THE
FURTHER
SI! OF
SILENCE
•▼
SIR HUGH
CLIFFORD
Qtnntell Uttnreraittj Sitbtatg
3tt(aca. New fnrh
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE
SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND
THE GIFT OF
HENRY W. SAGE
1891
Cornell University Library
PR 6005.L72F9
The further side of silence /
3 1924 023 396 140
Cornell University
Library
The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
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THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Malayan Monochromes
The Downfall of the Gods
Further India
Studies in Brown Humanity
The Further Side
of Silence
By
Sir Hugh Clifford, K. C. M. G.
Garden City, New York, Toronto
Doubleday, Page & Company
1922
Copyright, 1916! 1922, by
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
TO MY WIFE
Je vois bien vos mains
Fermees au mal, ouvertes au bien,
Vos mains puissantes et douces
Comme une branche sous la mousse.
Je vois bien vos mains,
Vos mains fideles,
Qui me montrent le chemin,
Mais je ne vois pas vos ailes.
Christiansborg Castle
Gold Coast, May 10, 191S
PREFACE
NOBODY, I am assured, ever reads a preface.
I consider, therefore, that I may safely re-
gard this foreword as a confidential docu-
ment, written for the sole purpose of salving my own
sensitive conscience. From this point of view I
regard it as necessary, for it seems to me that the
imposture involved in issuing as a work of fiction a
volume which is in the main a record of fact, should
be frankly confessed from the outset. A knowledge
of the truth that these initial pages will remain to
some extent a secret between me, the proofreader,
and the printer, will enable me, however, to write of
personal things with a larger measure of freedom
than I should otherwise be bold enough to use.
The, stories composing this book, with a single ex-
ception — "The Ghoul," which reached me at second
hand- — are all relations of incidents in which I have
had a part, or in which the principal actors have been
familiarly known to me. They faithfully reproduce
conditions of life as they existed in the Malayan
Peninsula before the white men took a hand in the
government of the native states, or immediately
after our coming — things as I knew them between
1883 and 1903 — the twenty years that I passed in
that most beautiful and at one time little frequented
viii PREFACE
corner of Asia. They are written with a full ap-
preciation of the native point of view, and of a people
for whom I entertain much affection and sympathy.
Incidentally, however, they will perhaps help to
explain why British civil servants in the East oc-
casionally lay themselves open to the charge of
being animated by "a hungry acquisitiveness" and
a passion for annexing the territory of their native
neighbours.
Fate and a rather courageous Colonial Governor
ordained that I should be sent on a special mission
to the Sultan of Pahang — a large Malayan state
on the eastern seaboard of the Peninsula — before
I was quite one and twenty years of age. This
course was not, at the time, as reckless and desperate
as it sounds. I had already more than three years'
service and had acquired what was reckoned an
unusual acquaintance with the vernacular. The
mission would entail a long overland journey and
an absence of more than three months' duration.
Senior men who possessed the necessary qualifica-
tions could not be spared for so protracted a period,
and thus the choice fell upon me, to my very great
content.
My object was to obtain from the Sultan the
promise of a treaty surrendering the management
of his foreign relations to the British Government,
and accepting the appointment of a Political Agent
at his court. This I obtained and bore in triumph
to Singapore, whence I immediately returned to
negotiate the details of the treaty, and subsequently
PREFACE ix
to reside at the Sultan's court as the Agent in ques-
tion.
This meant that I was privileged to live for nearly
two years in complete isolation among the Malays
in a native state which was annually cut off from
the outside world from October to March by the
fury of the northeast monsoon; that this befell me
at perhaps the most impressionable period of my
life; that having already acquired considerable fa-
miliarity with the people, their ideas and their
language, I was afforded an unusual opportunity of
completing and perfecting my knowledge; and that
circumstances compelled me to live in a native hut,
on native food, and in native fashion, in the company
of a couple of dozen Malays — friends of mine, from
the western side of the Peninsula, who had elected
to follow my fortunes. Rarely seeing a white face
or speaking a word of my own tongue, it thus fell
to my lot to be admitted to Us coulisses of life in a
native state, as it was before the influence of Euro-
peans had tampered with its eccentricities.
Pahang, when I entered it in 1887, presented an
almost exact counterpart to the feudal kingdoms
of mediaeval Europe. I saw it pass under the "pro-
tection" of Great Britain, which in this case was
barely distinguishable from "annexation." I sub-
sequently spent a year or so fighting in dense forests
to make that protection a permanency, for some
of the chiefs resented our encroachment upon
their prerogatives; and when I quitted the land
a decade and a half later, it was as safe and al-
x PREFACE
most as peaceful and orderly as an English country-
side.
Thus at a preposterously early age I was the
principal instrument in adding 15,000 square miles
of territory to the British dependencies in the East;
arid this fact forces me to the conclusion that my
share in the business stands in need of some ex-
planation and defence, if readers who are not them-
selves Britishers are to be persuaded that I am not
merely a thief upon a rather large scale. The
stories and sketches contained in this book supply
ine with both. I, who write, have with my own
eyes seen the Malayan prison; have lived at a
Malayan court; have shared the life of the people
of all ranks and classes in their towns and villages,
in their rice-fields, on their rivers, and in the mag-
nificent forests which cover the face of their country.
I have travelled with them on foot, by boats, and
raft. I have fought with and against them. I have
camped with the downtrodden aboriginal tribes
of jungle-dwelling Sakai and Semang, and have heard
from their own lips the tales of their miseries. I
have watched at close quarters, and in intolerable
impotericy to aid or save, the lives which all these
people lived before the white men came to defend
their weakness against the oppression and the wrong
wrought to them by tyrants of their own race; and
I have seen them gradually emerge from the dark
shadow in which their days were passed, into the
daylight of a personal freedom such as white men
prize above most mundane things.
PREFACE xi
The late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a'
recent British Prime Minister, once gave vent to
the aphorism that "good government can never be
a satisfactory substitute for self-government." That
may or may not be true; but the Malays, be it
remembered, never possessed "self-government."
The rule of their rajas and chiefs was one of the
most absolute and cynical autocracies that the mind
of man has conceived; and the people living under
it were mercilessly exploited, and possessed no rights
either of person or of property. To their case,
therefore, the phrase quoted above has only the
most remote and academical application; but no
words or sentiments, no matter how generous or
beautiful, would avail to staunch the blood which I
saw flow, or to dry the tears which I saw shed in
Pahang when I lived in that native state under its
own administration.
If, then, my stories move you at all, and if they
inspire in you any measure of pity or of desire to
see the weak protected and their wrongs avenged,
you may judge how passionate was the determina-
tion to make the recurrence of such things impossible
whereby I and my fellow workers in Malaya were
inspired. For we, alas, lived in the midst of the
happenings of which you only read.
Hugh Clifford,
Government House,
The Gold Coast,
British West Africa,
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface . vii
I. The Further Side of Silence . . 3
II. The Were-tiger 40
III. The Experiences of Raja Haji
Hamid 56
IV. . Droit Du Seigneur 65
V. In the Valley of the Telom . - . . 77
VI. The Inner Apartment .... 103
VII. The Ghoul .115
VIII. A Malayan Prison 135
IX. He of the Hairy Face .... 148
X. The Flight of Chep, the Bird . .166
XI. A Daughter of the Muhammadans . 187
XII. The Lone-hand Raid of Kulop
Sumbing 215
XIII. The Flight of the Jungle-folk . . 244
XIV. One Who Had Eaten My Rice . . 272
XV. At a Malayan Court .... 299
XVI. The Amok of Dato' Kaja Blji Derja 319
XVn. A Malayan Actor-manager . . .341
XVIII. Tukang Burok's Story .... 358
XIX. In Chains 375
L'Envoi 406
saii
SIR HUGH CLIFFORD
By RICHARD Le GALLIENNE
THOUGH these powerful and beautiful stories
have already reached a wide audience, they
deserve a wider, and readers to whom they
are still unknown are missing an imaginative pleasure
such as can be found in no other writers of my ac-
quaintance except Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr.
Joseph Conrad, with whom, because of his subjects
matter, it is natural to class Sir Hugh Clifford; as I
see James Huneker has done before me. So far as
treatment is concerned, however, Sir Hugh Clifford
owes nothing to those writers. His method is his
own and his experience, out of which his stories, as
he tells us, have sprung, is perhaps even more his
own than theirs. For, with the one exception of
"The Ghoul"— as Sir Hugh Clifford tells us in his
own preface, itself a thrilling document — these
stories are veritable stuff of his own life as a British
Government official. He has seen these happenings
with his own eyes, and known the actors in them.
To have done that, when little more than a boy, is
a romance in itself, one of those romantic opportuni-
ties which more than once have repaid the servants
of the "far-flung" British Empire for the hazards
xv
xvi SIR HUGH CLIFFORD
and the ennui of a service, the loyalty and efficiency
of which have made that empire. Thus, as Sir
Hugh Clifford himself laughingly observes, "at a
preposterously early age," he was "the principal
instrument in adding 15,000 square miles of terri-
tory to the British dependencies in the East;"
while incidentally, as has so often happened in
England's "island story," finding himself, in the
interval of his governmental occupations, as a literary
artist. A book might well be written of governors,
cavalry officers, and civil servants, of his Britannic
Majesty, who have thus light-heartedly won dis-
tinction, by amusing themselves with their pens in
the exile of their lonely out-posts, doing the ^hing
only for fun, regarding themselves merely as ama-
teurs, and discovering their gifts by chance. Far
from amateurs indeed they have often proved, but
on the contrary lineal descendants of those "com-
plete" men and gentlemen of old time, to whom the
sword and the pen came alike naturally, such as was,
to name but one, that Charles Sackville, Earl of
Dorset, who wrote at sea, while commanding the
British fleet, one of the most fascinating sea-songs
in the language —
To all you ladies now at land
We men at sea indite.
One would like, to be introduced to the "profes-
sional writer" who could write a love-story stranger
and more beautiful with such a poignant heart-
break in it, and with so magical a setting, as that
SIR HUGH CLIFFORD xvii
which gives the title to this volume — "The Further
Side of Silence." Mr. W. H. Hudson himself in
"Green Mansions" has not given us a lovelier "belle
sauvage" than Pi-Noi as she first blossoms on the
eyes of her future lover, Kria, from the primeval
forest, while he paddles up the Telom River one fate-
ful day:
"A clear, bell-like call thrilled from out the first,
so close at hand that the surprise of it made Kria
jump and nearly drop his paddle; and then came
a ripple of words, like little drops of crystal, which
made even the rude Sakai tongue a thing of music,
freshness, and youth. Next the shrubs on the bank
were parted by human hands, and Pi-Noi — Breeze
of the Forest- emerging suddenly, stepped straight-
way into Kria's life and into the innermost heart of
him."
The story is here for the reader to enjoy and study
for himself, for it is worth studying as well as enjoy-
ing for the subtle, modulated treatment of the wild
soul of little Pi-Noi, for whom the creatures of the
forest and the forest itself are more her comrades
and intimates than any human beings, and whose
necessity to play truant with them at intervals even
from her lover makes so piteous a tragedy.
One other observation suggests itself — how the
"civilizing" work on which Sir Hugh Clifford was
engaged inevitably destroys the romance which
he thus perpetuates; for alas! that romance can
only live so long as the superstition and cruelty
which it was the British Commissioner's business to
xviii SIR HUGH CLIFFORD
up-root survive in their native dramatic combina-
tions. With the abolition of such tyrants as we
read of in "Droit du Seigneur," the Malay Peninsula
becomes, to use Sir Hugh Clifford's own words, "as
safe and almost as peaceful and orderly as an English
countryside." But the trouble with making the
world safe for democracy and other things is that
it makes it entirely unsafe for Romance. Sir Hugh
Clifford did his governmental work so well in Pahang
that probably if he returned there to-day he would
find no stories to write!
THE FUBTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
SOME years before the impassive British
Government came to disturb the peace of
primitive nature and to put an end to the
strife of primitive man, Kria, son of Mat, a young
Malay from one of the western states, sneaked up
into the Telom and established himself as a trader
on its banks well within the fringe of the Sakai
eountry.
Aided by a few Sakai — feeble and timid jungle-
folk, the aboriginal possessors of the Peninsula—
but mainly with his own hands, he built himself
a house with walls of thick, brown bark, raised to a
height of some six feet above the ground on stout,
rough-hewn uprights, and securely thatched with
bertam palm leaves. It was a rude enough affair,
as Malay houses go, but compared with the primitive
and lopsided architecture of the Sakai it was palatial.
The fact that this stranger had planned and built
such a mansion impressed the fact of his innate
racial superiority upon the jungle-dwellers once and
for all. Here, they saw, was Genius, no less; though
their language (winch among other things has only
three numerals and as many names for colours) con-
tained no word even remotely conveying any such
s
4 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
idea. The mere fact that their poor vocabulary
was straightway beggared by the effort to express
their admiration, left them mentally gasping; where-
fore Kria, son of Mat, a very ordinary young Malay,
endowed, as it chanced, with few of the forceful
qualities of his race, found himself of a sudden an
object of almost superstitious hero-worship.
Kria presently made the discovery anent solitude
which is attributed to Adam. He was a Malay and
a Muhammadan, to whom the naked, pantheistical
Sakai is a dog of indescribable uncleanliness. Thirty
miles down river there was a Malay village where
many maidens of his own breed were to be had,
almost for the asking, from their grateful parents
by a man so well-to-do as Kria had now become;
but these ladies were hard-bit, ill-favoured young
women, prematurely gnarled by labour in the rice-
fields and tanned to the colour of the bottom of a
cooking-pot by exposure to sun and weather. Or-
dinarily, however, the aggressive plainness of these
damsels might not have affected the issue; but it
chanced that the particular devil whose province
it is to look after misalliances was as busy here in
this hidden nook of the forest as ever he is in May-
fair. It was surely by his contrivance that Kria,
Malay and Muhammadan that he was, fixed his
heart upon a Sakai girl — herself the daughter of
Sakai, nude, barbarous, and disreputable — and the
blame may with greater certainty be allotted to
him, because Kria's first meeting with her was in
no sense of his seeking.
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 5
He had come up the Telom one day from his new
house in a dugout imported from down-country,
whose finish converted it, in the eyes of his neigh-
bours, into a floating miracle. Kria sat lordly in
the stern, steering the little craft with a heavy
wooden paddle, while two sweating and straining
Sakai punted her forward against the rush of the
current. He wore the loose blouse, serviceable short
pants, huddled, many-coloured waistcloth, and the
variegated cotton headkerchief which constitute the
costume of the average up-country Malay; but
judged by debased, local standards, Solomon in all
his glory could hardly be held to owe a heavier debt
of gratitude to his tailor. The two men who worked
his boat, for example, wore nothing save a dirty
strip of bark cloth twisted carelessly about their
loins, more, it would appear, for the advantage
of having about the person something into which
to stick a woodknife, or a tobacco-bamboo, than to
subserve any end connected with propriety. Their
bodies were scaly with leprous-looking skin disease,
and the shaggy shocks of their hair stood out around
their heads in regrettable halos. They were smeared
with the gray dust of wood ashes, for it is the man-
ner of these hill-folk to go to bed in their fireplaces,
whereof the smoke, as their own proverb has it, is
their coverlet. This, on their lips, is not a com-
plaint, but a boast. Standards of comfort differ
widely, and the Sakai, simple soul, is genuinely im-
pressed by the extraordinary convenience of thus
being able to keep warm o' nights.
6 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
Suddenly, as the canoe crept round a bend in
the bank, something plunged headlong out of the
shadows and dived into the forest on the left. It
leaped with a speed so startling, and was swallowed
up so instantly, that it was gone before Kria had
time even to reach for his musket; but the Sakai
boatmen, who, like the rest of their people, had the
gift of sight through the back of their heads, at
once set up a succession of queer animal calls and
cries which spluttered off presently into the hiccough-
ing monosyllables which serve these folk as speech.
A moment later a clear, bell-like call thrilled from
out the forest, so close at hand that the surprise of
it made Kria jump and nearly drop his paddle; and .
then came a ripple of words, like little drops of
crystal, which made even the rude Sakai tongue a
thing of music, freshness, and youth. Next the
shrubs on the bank were parted by human hands,
and Pi-Noi — Breeze of the Forest — emerging sud-
denly, stepped straightway into Kria's life and into
the innermost heart of him.
She was a Sakai girl of about fifteen years of age,
naked save for a girdle of dried, black water weed,
a string of red berries round her neck, and a scarlet
blossom stuck in her hair. She stood there, poised
lightly upon her feet, in the agile pose which enables
the jungle-folk instantly to convert absolute im-
mobility into a wondrous activity. Her figure, just
budding into womanhood, was perfect in every
line, from theslender neck to the rounded hips, the
cleanly shaped limbs and the small, delicate feet,
<9
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 7
the whole displayed with a divine unconsciousness
which is above mere modesty.
Her skin, smooth as velvet and with much the
same downy softness of surface, was an even yellow-
brown, without fleck or blemish, and upon it diamond
points of water glistened in the sunlight. Her black
and glossy hair was twisted carelessly into a mag-
nificent knot at the nape of her neck, little rounded
curls straying here and there to soften cheek and
forehead. Her face, an oval of great purity, glowed
with youth and life. Her lips had something of
the pretty pout of childhood. Her chin was firmly
modelled; her nose was straight, with nostrils rather
wide, quivering,, and sensitive; her little ears nestled
beneath the glory of her hair.
But it was the eyes of this child which chiefly
seized and held the attention. Marvellously large
and round, they were black as night, with irises set
in whites that had a faint blue tinge, and with well-
defined, black eyebrows arching above them. Their
expression was one rarely seen in the human face,
though it may be noted now and again in the eyes
of wild creatures which have learned to know and
partially to trust mankind. It was at once shy and
bold, inviting and defiant; friendly, too, within
limits; but, above all, watchful and on the alert for
flight or for defence at the least hint of danger. Her
gaze was bent upon Kria, and it seemed to him the
most alluring thing that he had ever seen. As he
looked, he caught his breath with an audible gasp
of astonishment and delight.
8 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
Love at first sight is a disease very prevalent in
Asia, for with the Oriental the lust of the eye is
ever the mightiest of forces, and the sorry pretence
that the mind rules the passions is not recognized
by him as a tenet subscription to which is demanded
by self-respect. The Malays name it "the madness,"
and by this Kria now was smitten, suddenly and
without warning, as men sometimes are stricken
down by the stroke of a vertical sun. Pi-Noi might
be a daughter of the despised jungle-folk, an infidel,
an eater of unclean things, a creature of the forest
almost as wild as the beasts with which she shared
a common home; but to KJria she was what the first
woman was to the first man. She was more. Stand-
ing thus upon the river's brink, with her feet in
the crystal ripples, with the tangle of vegetation
making for her lithe figure a wondrous background,
with the sunlight playing in and out of the swaying,
green canopy above her head and dappling her clear
skin with shifting splashes of brightness and shadow,
she symbolized for him the eternal triumph of her
sex — the tyrannous, unsought power of woman.
Pi-Noi, after looking curiously at the Malay,
spoke to her countrymen in their own language, and
Kria, who had acquired a working knowledge of
the primitive jungle jargon, answered her himself :
"We are going up-stream to Che-ba' Per-lau-i.
The boat is large and your little body will not sink
it. We will bear you with us. Come!"
She looked at him quizzically, and her face was
softened by a little ripple of laughter. It was the
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 9
first time that she had heard her native tongue
spoken with a foreign accent, and the oddity of the
thing amused her. Then she stepped lightly into
the canoe and squatted in the bow.
The boat resumed its journey up-river, warring
with the current; was tugged and hauled over fallen
trees and round threatening ridges of rock; was towed
up difficult places by long lines of rattan; was
manoeuvred inch by inch up rapids, where the
waters roared furiously; or glided in obedience to
the punters along the smooth, sun-dappled reaches;
and all that dreamy afternoon Pi-Noi sat in the
bow, her back turned to Kria, her face averted.
She was almost motionless, yet to the Malay, whose
eyes pursued her, she conveyed an extraordinary
impression of being at once absorbed and keenly
alert. Nothing that was happening, or that had
happened recently in the jungle all about her, was
hidden from Pi-Noi, though she seemed barely
to move her head, and once she lifted her voice in a
thrilling imitation of a bird's call and was answered
at once from both sides of the stream. Though she
sat consentingly in Kria's boat, he was subtly con-
scious that she was, in some strange fashion, an
integral part of the forest that surrounded them;
that she was a stranger to the life of mankind, as
he understood it — the life of folk of his own race —
who, at best, are only trespassers upon Nature's vast
domain. He held his breath fearfully, possessed
by the idea that at any moment this girl might vanish
whence she had come, and thereafter be lost to him
10 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
forever. He felt her to be as free as the jungle
breeze, whose name she bore, and as little to be held
a prisoner by the hand of man. This added at once
a dread and a new attraction to her physical beauty.
Kria forgot the inherited contempt of the Malay
for the Sakai, the disgust of the Muhammadan for
the devourer of unclean things, the conviction of
his people that union with a jungle-dweller is an
unspeakable abomination. He only remembered that
he was a man, hot with love; that she was a woman,
elusive and desirable.
II
Kria's brief wooing was purely a commercial
transaction, in which Pi-Noi herself was the last
person any one dreamed of consulting. The naked
jungle-folk who were her papa and mamma developed
unsuspected business aptitude at this juncture of
their affairs, the number of knife-blades, cooking-
pots, rolls of red twill, flints and steels, and the
like, which they demanded, maintaining a nice
proportion to Kria's growing passion for the girl.
As this became hotter day by day, there was little
haggling on his part, and presently an amazing sum
(from first to last it cannot have fallen far short
of fifteen shillings sterling) was paid to Pi-NoiV
parents, to their great honour, glory, and satisfaction,
and during an unforgettable forenoon the Sakai of
all ages and both sexes gorged themselves to re-
pletion at Kria's expense. Then Pi-Noi was placed
upon an ant heap, and a shaggy pack of hiccoughing
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 11
male relatives girt the place about in attitudes of
defence. It was now Kria's task to touch the girl's
hand in spite of the resistance of her defenders.
This is all that survives among the hill-people of
the old-time custom of marriage by capture; and
when the bridegroom is one of their own folk it
still happens sometimes that he carries a sore and
bleeding head and a badly bruised body to his
marriage bed. The bride, at such times, darts
hither and thither within the ring of her kinsmen,
with real or simulated desire to evade her conqueror,
till the latter has the luck to touch her hand or to
bring her to the ground by a well-aimed blow from
his club.
Kria, however, had an unusually easy time of it,
for the Sakai hold all Malays in awe, and Pi-Noi was
hampered by the unaccustomed silk garments with
which her husband's generosity had clothed her.
Very soon, therefore, Kria, his eyes blazing, gave a
great cry as he won a grip upon her wrist, and at
once Pi-Noi, in obedience to established custom,
submitted herself to his control. Hand in hand,
the man and wife sped across the clearing in the
direction of the river, with a string of hooting, ges-
ticulating, shock-headed, naked savages trailing out
behind them. Below the high bank Kria's canoe
was moored, and leaping into her, they pushed out
into midstream. Then the current caught them;
the dugout became suddenly a thing instinct with
life; a bend hid the Sakai camp from view; and,
amid the immense, hushed stillness of the forest
12 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
afternoon, these two set out upon the oldest and
newest of all pilgrimages.
With the strong current aiding them, they had
only a journey of a few hours to make, a time short
enough for any lovers' transit, though Kria was busy
steering the boat, and Pi-Noi sat in the bows helping
to direct its course by an occasional timely punt.
He had won his heart's desire, and the home to
which he was bearing his love lay close at hand; yet
even during this honeymoon journeying down the
clear, rapid-beset river and through the heart of
that magnificent wilderness of woodland, Kria had
leisure in which to experience the assaults of a mys-
terious and perplexing jealousy. He was as utterly
alone with the girl as if they two were the first or
the last of their kind to wander across the face of the
earth; yet he had an uneasy consciousness that
Pi-Noi had companions, invisible and inaudible to
him, in whose presence he knew himself to be de
trop* In spite of her silence and immobility, he
knew instinctively that always she was holding in-
timate commune with animate nature in a language
which had its beginning upon the further side of
silence. It was not only a tongue which he could
not hear. It seemed to cleave an abyss between
them; to wrench her from his grasp ere ever he had
securely won her; to lift her out of his life; to leave,
him yearning after her with piteous, imploring face
upturned and impotent, outstretched arms.
Suddenly the thought of this girl's elusiveness
shook him with a panic that checked his heartbeats.
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 13
She. was journeying with him now of her own free
will, but what if her will should veer? What if the
lures of the jungle should prove too strong for such
spells as his poor love and longing could lend him
wit to work? What if that cruel wilderness whence
she had come should yawn and once more engulf
her? As Kria steered the boat with mechanical
skill, and, watching the girl with hungry eyes, knew
himself to be by her totally forgotten, he experi-
enced with new force and reason the dread which
alloys the delight of many a lover even in the su-
preme moment of possession — the haunting terror
of loss. Kria went in fear, not only of Time and
Death, those two grim highwaymen who lie in wait
for love; there was also the Forest. Every last,
least twig of it, every creature that moved unseen
beneath its shade, was his enemy, and it was through
long files of such foemen that he bore the bride- they
threatened to ravish from him. And thus — the
girl abstracted and aloof, the man a prey to besetting,
though as yet vaguely formulated, fears — Kria and
Pi-Noi wended their way downstream, through the
wonder of the tropical afternoon, to begin in their
new home the difficult experiment of married life.
Ill
Pi-Noi was very much a child, and, childlike,
she found delight in new toys. The palatial house
which now was hers; the wealth of cooking-pots;
the beautiful Malay silks which Kria had given to
her; the abundance of good food, and Kria's extrav-
14 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
agant kindness, were all new and very pleasant
things. She was playing at being a Malay house-
wife with all the elaborate make-believe which is a
special faculty of the child mind. She would load
her small body with gay clothes, clamp ornaments
of gold about her wrists, stick long silver pins in
her glossy hair, and strut about, laughing raptur-
ously at this new, fantastic game. But throughout
she was only mimicking Malayan ways for her own
distraction and amusement; she was not seriously
attempting to adapt herself to her husband's con-
ception of femininity. She would often cross-ques-
tion Kria as to the practices of his womenfolk,
and would immediately imitate their shining exam-
ple with a humorous completeness. This pleased
him, for he interpreted all this irresponsible child's
play as the pathetic efforts of a woman to fulfil the
expectations of the man she loves.
The illusion was short lived. Very soon Pi-Noi,
the novelty of her new grandeur wearing thin, began
to be irked by the tyranny of Malayan garments.
All her life she had gone nude, with limbs fetterless
as the wings of a bird. For a space the love of
personal adornment, which is implanted in the heart
of even the most primitive of feminine creatures,
did battle with bodily discomfort; but the hour
came when ease defeated vanity. Kria, returning
home from a short trip upstream, found his wife,
who did not expect him, clothed only in her water-
weed girdle, lying prone in the sun-baked dust
before their dwelling, crooning a strange ditty to
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 15
herself, and kicking two rebellious bare legs joyously
Jin the air.
He was horribly shocked and outraged; for though
a naked Sakai girl was one of the commonest sights
in the valley, this girl was his wife, and he had been
hugging to his heart the belief that she was rapidly
developing into a decorous Malayan lady. Also his
eye, which had become accustomed to see her clad
with the elaborate modesty of his own womenkind,
saw in her pristine nudity an amazing impropriety.
Feeling wrathful and disgraced, he rushed at her
and tried to seize her, but she leaped to her feet in
the twinkling of an eye and eluded him with forest-
bred ease. He brought up short, panting hard,
after an inglorious chase; and much petting, coaxing,
and pleading were needed before he could lure her
back into the house and persuade her to don even
one short Malayan waist skirt. He had to fight
his every instinct, for he longed to take a stick to
her, being imbued with the Malay man's unshakable
belief in the ability of the rod to inspire in a wife a
proper sense of subordination; but he did not dare.
Malayan women accept such happenings with the
meekness which experience reserves for the inevi-
table; but in the forest Pi-Noi had a protector — a
protector who never left her.
The compromise of the short waist skirt duly
effected, things again went on smoothly for a space.
Kria suspected that Pi-Noi broke the inadequate
compact unblushingly whenever he was absent;
but he loved the girl more madly every day, and
16 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
was not looking for trouble, if it might by any means
be shirked.
Some ten days later another incident occurred to
break upon his peace. Pi-Noi, in common with all
the people of her race and other nocturnal animals,
was a restless bedfellow, waking at frequent inter-
vals through the night, and being given at such times
to prowling about the house in search of scraps of
food to eat and tobacco to smoke. Kria detested
this peculiarity, since it emphasized the difference
of race and of degrees of civilization which yawned
between him and his wife, but he ignored it until
one evening, when he had waked to find her gone,
and had wide-eyed awaited her return for something
over an hour. Then he went in search of her.
He hunted through the hut in vain; passed to the
door, and finding it open, climbed down the stair-
ladder into the moonlight night. A big fire had been
lighted that evening, to the windward of the house,
in order that the smoke might drive away the sand-
flies, and in the warm, raked-out wood ashes Kria
found his wife. She was sleeping "as the devils
sleep," with her little, perfectly formed body, draped
only by the offending girdle, stretched at ease upon
its breast, and with her face nestling cozily upon her
folded arms. All about her the soft gray ashes
were heaped, and her skin was seen, even in the
moonlight, to be plastered thickly with great smears
of the stuff. To Kria, a Malay of the Malays, whose
only conception of comfort, propriety, and civili-
zation was that prevailing among his people, this
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 17
discarding of his roof tree, this turning of the back
upon decency and cleanliness and convention, was
an incomprehensible madness, but also an act of
unspeakable perversity and naughtiness. White with
anger, he looked at the sleeping girl, and even
as he looked, warned by the marvellous jungle-
instinct, she awoke with a leap that bore her a
dozen feet away from him. One glance she cast at
his set face, then plunged headlong into covert.
Wrath died down within him on the. instant, and
was replaced by a great fear. Frantically he ran
to the spot where she had vanished, calling upon her
by name. In vain search he wandered to the edge
of the clearing, and so out into the forest, pleading
with her to return, vowing that he would not harm
a hair of her head, cajoling, entreating, beseeching,
and now and again breaking forth into uncontrol-
lable rage and threat. All night he sought for her.
The cold gray dawn, creeping up through banks of
mist, to look chillingly upon a dew-drenched world,
found him, with blank despair in his heart, with
soaked clothes and sodden flesh tattered by the
jungle thorns, making his way back to his empty
house with the plodding pain of a man in a night-
mare. A last hope was kindled as he drew near —
the hope that Pi-Noi might have crept homeward
while he wandered through the night looking for
her — but it flickered up for an instant only to die,
as the fire had died above the gray ashes which
still bore the imprint of her little body.
Kria, sitting lonely in his hut, looked forth upon
18 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
a barren world, and saw how desolate is life when
love has fled.
IV
As soon as Kria had pulled himself together suf-
ficiently to enable him to think out a course of
action, he set off for the Sakai camp, whence he
had taken his wife; but her people had, or professed
to have, no news of her. She had always been
liar, they averred — more liar even than the rest of
her people. (Liar means "wild," as animals which
defy capture are wild.)
"The portals of the jungle are open to her," said
her father indifferently. He was squatting on the
ground, holding between his crooked knees a big,
conical, basketwork fish-trap which he was fashion •
ing. He spoke thickly through half a dozen lengths
of rattan which he held in his mouth, the ends hang-
ing down on either side like a monstrous and dis-
reputable moustache, and he did not so much as
raise his eyes to look at his son-in-law. "She will
come to no harm," he grunted. "Perhaps presently
she will return."
But Kria did not want his wife "presently" or
"perhaps"; he wanted her now, at once, without a
moment's delay. He explained this to the assembled
Sakai with considerable vehemence.
"That which is in the jungle is in the jungle,"
they said oracularly. Folk who are liar, they ex-
plained, are very difficult to catch, resent capture,
and if brought back before their wanderlust is an
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 19
expended passion, are very apt to run away again.
Then the laborious business of tracking and catch-
ing them has to be undertaken anew, to the immense
fatigue and annoyance of every one concerned. It
is better, they urged, to let such people grow weary
of the jungle. at their leisure; then, in the fullness of
time, they will return of their own free will.
The limitations of their intellects and vocabularies
made it impossible for the Sakai to express them-
selves quite as clearly as this, but the above repre-
sents the gist of their dispassionate opinions. They
took several torturing hours and innumerable mono-
syllables to explain them to Kria, who gnashed and
raved in his impatience.
"Pi-Noi is so excessively liar," said that young
woman's mamma, speaking with a sort of dreamy
indifference while, with noisy nails, she tore at her
scaly hide. "She is so incurably liar that it would
be better, Inche', to abandon her to the jungle and
to take one of her sisters to wife in her stead. Jag-ok N
here," she added, indicating with outthrust chin
a splay-faced little girl, who, in awful fashion, was
cleaning fish with her fingers, " Jag-ok N is hardly to
be called liar at all. Besides, she hates being
beaten, and if you use a rod to her, she would make,
I am convinced, a very obedient and amenable
wife. We will let you have Jag-ok N very cheap— say
half the price you paid for Pi-Noi, her sister."
But Kria did not want Jag-ok N , who was ill favoured
and covered from tip to toe with skin diseases, at
any price at all. He wanted her sister, who was still
20 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
to him the only woman in the world. The slack
indifference of the Sakai maddened him, and in
the end he threatened to trounce his father-in-law
soundly if that worthy elder did not forthwith aid
him in tracking the recalcitrant Pi-Noi.
In an instant A-Gap, the Rhinoceros, as Pi-Noi's
papa was named, was standing before Kria, shaking
as a leaf is shaken, for the Sakai's inherited fear of
the Malay is an emotion which has for its justi-
fication a sound historical basis. Immediately the
whole camp was in a turmoil; the danger call was
sounding, and those of the Sakai to whom escape
was open were melting into the forest as swiftly
and noiselessly as flitting shadows. A-Gap and
two younger men, however, squealing dismally, were
clutched by their frowsy elf-locks, hustled on board
Kria's canoe, and soon were paddling rapidly down-
stream in the direction of his house. The hour of
their arrival was too late for anything further to
be done that day, so Kria spent a miserable night,
and awoke next morning to find that the three
Sakai had disappeared. They had cut a hole in
the bamboo floor, and had dropped noiselessly
through it on to the earth beneath, what time Kria
had been tossing upon the mat which he had placed
athwart the doorway. They had arrived at two
conclusions: firstly, that Kria was mad, which made
him a highly undesirable companion; and, secondly,
that if he caught Pi-Noi he would very certainly
kill her. They were convinced of his insanity be-
cause he was making such an absurd fuss about the
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 21
recovery of a particular girl, when all the time, as
everybody knew, there were hundreds and hundreds
of others, just as good, to be had for the asking.
Their reasonable fears for Pi-Noi's safety were based
upon the argument that a person who would beat
a man would certainly kill a woman. On the whole,
they concluded, it would be at once more whole-
some and more pleasant to go away now, and to
avoid Kria for the future.
Kria, unaided, tried some very amateurish track-
ing on his own account, his great love setting at
naught the Malay's instinctive horror of entering
the jungle unaccompanied. He succeeded only in
getting hopelessly bushed, and at last won his way
back to his house, almost by a miracle. He was
worn out with anxiety and fatigue, foot-sore, heart-
sore, weary soul and body, and nearly starved to
death. The Sakai seemed to have vanished from
the forest for twenty miles around; his trading was
at a standstill; he was humiliated to the dust; and
his utter impotence was like a load of galling fetters
clamped about his soul. Yet all the while his love
of Pi-Noi and his hungry longing for her were only
intensified by her absence and her heartlessness. He
missed her— was haunted by the sound of her voice —
was tortured by elusive wraiths of her which emerged
suddenly to mock him from the forest's pitiless.depths.
V
The moon had been near the full on the night
when the wanderlust, as the Sakai called it, had
22 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
come to Pi-Noi. A little crescent was hanging just
above the forest in the wake of the sunset before
Kria received any hint of her continued existence.
Returning one evening to his house from a visit to
his fish-weir, he found on the threshold a small heap
of jungle-offerings — wild duri-an and other fruit, the
edible shoot of the ibul palm, and a collection of
similar miscellaneous trash. At this sight the blood
flew to Kria's face, then stormed back into a heart
that pumped and leaped. These things shouted
their meaning in his ears.
Trembling with joyful agitation, Kria passed to
the inner room of the house, and examined Pi-Noi's
store of clothes. Not only a silk waistcloth, but a
long blouse, such as Malayan women wear as an
upper garment, were missing. Evidently Pi-Noi
was bent upon doing the thing handsomely now
that she had decided upon submission, and to that
end was pandering with a generous completeness
to his absurd prejudices on the subject of wearing
apparel. Also she must be close at hand, for it was
unlikely that she would stray far into the jungle
clad in those delicate silks.
Pi-Noi's surrender was an instant victory for her.
No sooner had Kria made his discovery than, with
a wildly beating heart, he was standing in the door-
way, calling softly, in a voice that shook and
failed him,, using a pet name known only to Pi-
Noi and to himself. All his rage, all his humilia-
tions, all his sufferings were forgotten. He only
knew that Pi-Noi had come back to him, and
THE FURTHER SIDE OP SILENCE 23
that all at once he was thankful and tearful and
glad.
"Chep!" (Little Bird!) he cried. "Chep! Are
you there, Fruit of my Heart? Come to me, Little
One! Come, O come!"
From somewhere in the brushwood near at hand
came the sound of musical laughter — the laughter
of a woman who knows her po'ver, and finds in its
tyrannous exercise a triumph and delight.
"Is there space in the house for me?" she inquired
demurely, tilting her head and gazing at him in
mockery, while again a ripple of light laughter
broke from her lips. "Or shall I go to my other
house . . . the forest?"
Kria, his withers wrung by the conviction of her
elusiveness and his own impotence, tortured, too,
by a fear lest even now some capricious perversity
might induce her again to desert him, could only
stammer out wild protestations of love and welcome.
The girl was thoroughly aware that she was com-
plete mistress of the situation, and even Kria was
tempted to believe that he, not she, was the wrong-
doer. In moments of rage, during her absence,
he. had often promised himself that, if he ever laid
hands upon her again, he would give her the very
soundest whipping that the forest had ever seen
administered to an erring wife; but now these vows
were forgotten. All he desired was to have her back,
on any terms, at any price, at no matter what
sacrifice, of pride, of honour, of self-respect. Even
in that instant of passion and emotion he saw,
24 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
though dimly, that this woman was killing his
soul.
Reassured at last as to the amiability of Kria's
intentions, Pi-Noi drew near him after the manner
of other wild forest creatures, her every muscle
braced for flight; and then she was in his arms,
and he had borne her up the stair-ladder with in-
finite tenderness, crooning and weeping over her
with broken words of love.
VI
Thus began the years of Kria's slavery — only three
little years of life, as men count time, but an eter-
nity; no less, if judged by the number and violence
of the emotions packed within them. While they
lasted, periods of almost delirious delight alternated
with seasons of acute mental suffering and moral
struggle. Sometimes for six weeks or more at a
time Pi-Noi would live contentedly under his roof,
and he would strive to trick himself into the belief
that the wanderlust was dead in her. Then, upon
a certain day, his watchful eyes would note a subtle
change. She would be lost to him, sitting in the
doorway of the hut with parted lips, while into her
eyes there crept a dreamy, faraway mystery. The
depths of her absorption would be so profound that
she would take no heed of words addressed to her;
and Kria would know, in his miserable heart, that
she was listening to the voices which begin upon the
further side of silence, and was holding inaudible
commune with the forest world. He would guard her
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 25
then stealthily, sleeplessly, so that his business was
neglected, and his body was parched with the fever
bred of anxiety and want of rest; but sooner or later
nature would overcome him, and he would awake
with a shock from the sleep of exhaustion to see
Pi-Noi's scattered garments heaped about the floor,
and to find that the girl herself had once more eluded
his vigilance.
Then would pass weeks of misery, of fierce jealousy,
of rage, of longing, of fear, for he was racked always
by the dread lest this time she should not come back.
But through all he loved her, hating and crying shame
upon himself because of his love; and so often as she
returned to him, so often was her sinning ignored.
He dared not punish her with word or blow. The
forest was her ally and his bitter enemy. It afforded
her a refuge too accessible, secure and final.
It was during one of these periods of anguish that
Kria received the first visit that had been paid to
him by men of his own breed since his arrival in
the valley. After days of watchfulness Pi-Noi had
eluded him that morning, a little before the dawn,
and when Kria had awaked from slumberings which
had been a mere ravel of nightmares, it had been
to the knowledge that the grim forest had swal-
lowed her, and that yet another season of misery, of
torturing imaginings, and of suspense lay before
him. A couple of hours later his unexpected visitors
arrived.
The party consisted of three Malays — Kulop Rtau,
a native of Perak, who in those days was reputed to
26 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
be the most noted master of jungle-lore in the
Peninsula, and two young men from the Jelai Valley
in Pahang. They had come to search for gutta in
the forests of the Telom, and for loot in the Sakai
camps.
With the frankness which distinguishes Malays,
and a lonely man's craving for sympathy, Kria
forthwith related to these strangers the story of his
married life and all the ignominy which was his,
at the same time asking their advice as to the action
which he might most fittingly take. Kulop Rlau
was cynical.
"She is only a Sakai," he said. "Why do you
not kill her and thereafter seek a wife among the
maidens of the Jelai Valley? That were more proper
than to suffer yourself to be thus villainously en-
treated by this jungle-wench."
Kria hung his head. He could not bring himself
to reveal the shameful secret of his love; but Kulop
Riau, whose experiences were not confined to the
forest, looked at him and understood.
"These jungle hussies," he declared with the
dogmatic assertion proper to an expert, "these
jungle hussies are often deeply skilled in witchcraft,
and it is plainly to be discerned that this wench has
cast a glamour over you. Brother, I apprehend
that ft would be wise to slay her, for your soul's
sake, as speedily as may be, else surely you will be
a thrall to her magic in life, and in death you will
most unquestionably go to stoke the fires of the
Terrible Place. Therefore, it were wise and whole-
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 27
some and not unpleasant to kill her with as much
speed, thoroughness, and circumspection as may
be possible."
But Kria, who loved the girl, not only in spite of
her heartlessness, but because she so tortured him,
would have naught of counsels such as this. If Pi-
Noi had abided with him after the constant fashion
of other wives, it is possible that his passion would
have spent itself, and their union would have be-
come a mere embodiment of the commonplace.
Despite her beauty and grace, he might easily have
grown weary of this woman of a lesser breed if he
had ever possessed her utterly, but the very in-
security of his tenure of her lent to her an added and
irresistible fascination.
Something of this, vaguely, and gropingly, was
forced upon the understanding of old Kulop Riau,
who was thereby completely convinced of the ac-
curacy of his original diagnosis. That the witch
should be a Sakai, an eater of unclean things, fore-
doomed in common with all her race to burn eter-
nally in Hell by the wise decree of Allah, the Merciful,
the Compassionate,, and that her victim should
be a Malay and True Believer, shocked his every
racial and religious prejudice. Though, on his own
account, he had constant dealings with jungle demons
— the which is an abomination — he suddenly re-
called the fact that he was a Muhammadan, and
as such recognized that Kria's position was at once
humiliating and highly improper.
"In any event, it were well to know how she passes
28 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
the days during which the jungle claims her," he
said. "It seems to me that this hussy has kept you
too long in ignorance of the naughtiness of her heart,
the degradation and ignominy of her behaviour, and
the extraordinary vileness and impropriety of her
carriage."
"I would very willingly learn why she thus leavt s
me and what she does at such seasons," said poor
Kria. "But the forests are vast, and she vanishes
into their depths even as a stone sinks through still
waters and is lost to sight. She is one of the wild
things of the jungle, and if she has a mind to keep
her secret, who shall wrest it from her?"
"It is very plainly to be seen, brother, that you
are village-bred," said Kulop Riau with immense
contempt. "The portals of the jungle are not flung
wide for you. The Spectre Huntsman and the
Forest Fiends do not count you among the tale
of their children. If this were not so. .
But the thing is too simple to demand explanation!"
"But you . . ." cried Kria breathlessly. "You,
could you track her? Could you answer for me all
these intolerable questions?"
"That could I, and with ease, were I minded
to take so much trouble," said Kulop scornfully.
"But I have come hither to transact business of
mine own. However, such is the love I bear you,
little brother" (the two had met for the first time
that day) " that I might turn me aside from mine own
affairs to do you this service — at a price."
The concluding words awoke Kria's keen com-
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 29
mercial instincts, and a very pretty piece of haggling
forthwith ensued. But even here Pi-Noi shackled
him. He loved her, and his necessity was old Ku-
lop's opportunity, as that astute worthy very per-
fectly perceived; wherefore the price, paid in rubber,
which Kria drew with many sighs from his hoarded
store, proved in the end to be frankly extortionate.
He longed to lay at rest, once for all, the cruel ghosts
of the imagination which had haunted him, but now
that the chance of discovery had come to him, he
was oppressed by terror at the thought of what it
might reveal.
Time was precious if Pi-Noi's trail was to be struck
while it was still fresh, and a short hour sufficed for
preparations. Then the party, Kulop Riau lead-
ing, with his long muzzle-loader on his shoulder,
Kria following, and the two Jelai youngsters bring-
ing up the rear, left the clearing and entered the for-
est. Old Kulop had made a cast round the clearing
while the others were busy packing the rice and
the cooking-pots, and he had hit off the line which
Pi-Noi had taken at the first attempt. A trail once
struck by a man of Kulop's skill and knowledge of
forest-lore, few accidents less efficient than an earth-
quake or a cyclone would suffice to check or stay
him.
VII
Pi-Noi's spoor pfoved at the first singularly clear.
She had so long been convinced of her complete
immunity from pursuit that she had become care-
30 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
less, and had made use of none of the precautions
for the confusion of her trail such as are supplied
by the baffling woodcraft of her people. This was
as well, and saved the trackers much time; for the
very existence of the Sakai, it must be remembered,
has depended for hundreds of years upon their
ability to evade Malay slave-hunters.
At a distance of some eight miles from her start-
ing point (it took Kulop Riau and his party nearly
five hours to reach it) she had stopped in a little
open glade of the forest to dance ecstatically with
her slender, bare feet upon the rich, cool grasses be-
side a stream, which tumbled downward, with a
mighty chattering, in the direction of the Telom.
Here she had bathed luxuriously in the running
water, had stretched herself to enjoy a sun-bath
upon a flat rock in midstream, and thence had
pounced upon and captured with her hands a huge,
fruit-eating Icrai fish. She had carried the creature
ashore, had cleaned it and scraped off its scales, and
pulled some rattan from the jungle, and had fash-
ioned therefrom a knapsack into which she had
stowed the fish. Thereafter she had climbed a
hibiscus to rob it of its blossoms for her hair, had
danced again in sheer joy of being alive, and then
had continued her wanderings.
The tracks, as old Kulop Riau pointed them out
to Kria, one by one, told the story of this little halt-
ing with such distinctness of detail that Pi-Noi's
husband could picture to himself every act and mo-
tion of his wayward wife; could almost visualize
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 31
her, alone and wild with joy, in that hidden nook
of the jungle; and found himself understanding for
the first time something of the exaltation and ex-
hilaration of spirit that had been hers as she entered
once more into her birthright of forest freedom.
At this point Kulop Riau found it difficult to pick
up the trail afresh. He took wide casts up and
down stream, examining both banks closely, but for
nearly an hour he was at fault. He quested like a
hound, his shoulders hunched, his head low-stooping
from his thick neck, his eyes intent, fixed for the
most part on the ground, but throwing now and
again quick glances to the right or left. All the
while he maintained with himself a monotonous,
unintelligible, mumbled monologue. Kria, follow-
ing him closely and straining his ears to listen, could
catch here and there a familiar word, but the speech
as a whole was an archaic jargon from which no single
strand of connected thought was to be unravelled,
and the old tracker was seemingly deaf to all the
eager questions addressed to him.
The Jelai lads, shuddering a little, whispered to
Kria that the Jungle Demons had entered into and
possessed the body of the old tracker, and one of
them fell to repeating the names of Allah and his
Prophet fearfully, under his breath. It was a nerve-
sawing experience to find one's self thus cast away in
the trackless forest with this inspired demoniac
for one's sole guide and leader; but Kria was not
greatly impressed. He knew Pi-Noi.
At last, about a mile upstream, Kulop Riau sud-
32 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
denly became rigid as a pointer, and stood glaring
at a spot on the left bank where a hanging leaf oozed
sap from a bruised twig. He broke forth into a
low rumble of unintelligible gibberish, and drew
himself with many grunts out of the bed of the
stream. No other sign of Pi-Noi's passage was
visible to his companions, but Kulop Riau, though
he still muttered ceaselessly, trudged forward now
with confidence. A quarter of a mile farther on he
drew Kria's attention, by a gesture, to a tiny mucous
smear on the bark of a tree. The fish, bulging
through the meshes of the knapsack, had left that
mark. The trail was Pi-Noi's.
The afternoon was now far advanced, and when
next he struck a stream, Kulop called a halt and
bade his companions cook the evening meal. He
himself crossed the rivulet and entered the forest
beyond, returning later with word that the trail was
easier over yonder, and that he had learned its
general trend.
The meal was eaten almost in silence, for Kulop
Riau, when possessed by his Jungle Spirits, was an
awe-inspiring companion. Kria and the Jelai lads,
too, were fagged and weary, but since the moon was
near the full, their leader would not suffer them to
rest. Pi-Noi had gained a long start of them, which
they must try to recover.
Kria, worn out body and soul, was racked by an
agony of baffled curiosity as he stumbled on and on,
and watched the old tracker bristling, with many
growls and grumblings, over each fresh secret that
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 33
the spoor revealed to him. It was evident that he
was reading in the invisible signs which he alone had
the power to interpret, some story that excited him
strangely, but he did not heed and seemed not even
to hear the eager questions with which Kria plied
him.
About midnight he called a halt.
"There is still plenty of light," Kria protested.
"Here we will camp," Kulop Riau reiterated with
a snarl.
"But " Kria began, when the other cut him
short.
"When you are in childbed, do as the midwife
bids you," he said; and ten minutes later the old
man was fast asleep, though even in his slumber he
still muttered restlessly.
The dawn broke wan and cheerless, the feeble
daylight thrusting sad and irresolute fingers through
the network of boughs and leaves overhead. A dank,
chill, woebegone depression hung over the wilder-
ness. The riot and the glory of the night were
ended; the long ordeal of the hot and breathless day
was about to begin. The forest was settling itself
with scant content to its uneasy slumbering.
After the manner of all jungle-people, Kulop Riau
awoke with the dawn, and an hour later the morning
rice had been cooked and eaten. The old tracker
prepared himself a quid of betel nut with great de-
liberation, and sat chewing it mechanically, his
body swinging slowly to and fro, his eyes nearly
dosed, his lips busy, though none save vague sounds
34 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
came from them. Kria, watching him with grow-
ing irritation, for a while was fearful to disturb him;
but at last, unable longer to endure the delay and
suspense, he burst out with an eager question.
"When do we take up the trial anew?" he asked.
Kulop Riau, coming up to the surface slowly from
the depths of his abstraction, gazed at Kria for a
space through unseeing eyes, while the question
that had been spoken filtered through the clouds
obscuring his brain. Then he jerked out an answer
of five words:
"When you are in childbed!" and closed his
mouth with a snap, not even troubling himself to
complete the proverb.
Once more Kria knew himself to be impotent.
Here again he had no course open to him but to
sit and wait.
The long, still, stifling day wore toward evening,
minute by minute and hour by hour, while the four
men lay under the shelter of a rough lean-to of
thatch, inactive but restless, and Kria thought
bitterly of the amount and value of the rubber
which he in his folly and trustfulness had handed
over to Kulop Riau in advance. Late in the after-
noon that worthy spoke to his companions for the
first time for many hours, bidding them prepare
food, and a little before the sunset, after the meal
had been despatched, he rose to his feet, hiccoughed
loudly, stretched himself elaborately, and made
ready to resume his march. In an instant Kria
was by his side, with an expression of joyful relief,
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 35
but Kulop told him curtly to bide where he
was.
"This time," he said, "I go forward alone. One
may not scout in this forest with three pairs of feet
crashing through the underwood at one's heels like
a troop of wild kine. Stay here till I return."
Without another word, he lounged off, with his
long musket over his shoulder, and was soon lost to
view. He went, as the Sakai themselves go, flitting
through the trees as noiselessly as a bat.
"Did I not say truly that he is possessed by the
Demons of the Forest? " said one of the Jelai youths.
" Ya Allah ! Fancy going into this wilderness alone
for choice, and with the darkness about to fall!"
Thereafter followed for Kria a miserable > night,
for while the Jelai lads slept beside him, he lay
awake, a prey to a thousand torturing thoughts and
memories, and oppressed by a load of vague fore-
bodings.
VIII
Kria awoke in broad daylight to find old Kulop
Riau, his dew-drenched clothes soiled with the earth
of the jungle, bending over him with a light of wild
excitement and exultation blazing in his eyes.
"Come, brother," he said. "I have found the
wench. Come!"
Without another word, he turned away into the
forest, Kria following him as best he might, binding
about his waist as he ran the belt from which hung
his heavy woodknife.
36 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
Kulop strode along at a great pace for a matter of
two or three miles, now and again directing Kria's
attention to some trifling mark on earth or trunk or
shrub which told of the passing of Pi-Noi.
"See here, brother," he said, indicating a place
where the grass had much the appearance of a large
hare's form. "There was one awaiting her. He
sat there for a long time, listening for her coming,
and there was much joy in that meeting. Behold
here, and here, and here, how they danced together,
as young fawns caper and leap — the hussy, your wife,
and this youth of her own people. Like goes to
like, brother, and a wild woman seeks ever a wild
man, in no wise respecting the laws of wedlock.
This wench has betrayed you. See, here they cooked
food, yams of his gathering and the fish that she
had brought, and he fashioned a nose-flute to make
beast noises with, and thereafter there was more
dancing, ere they bathed together in the stream,
the shameless ones ! and moved forward again, head-
ing always for the Great Salt Lick!"
Kria, rent by devils of jealousy and rage, his face
drawn and ghastly, his hands opening and clenching
convulsively, said never a word; but his eyes took
in each detail of the story recorded by the clear
imprints upon grass and earth, and the yielding mud
at the river's brink. Mechanically he followed
Kulop Riau when the latter once more dived into
the underwood.
"From this point," the old man was saying, "I
abided no longer by the trail. They were making
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 37
for the Great Salt Lick, and thither went I by a cir-
cuitous path of mine own contrivance. This time
we go by a shorter route. Come."
Five miles farther on the forest thinned out sud-
denly and gave place to an irregular space, roughly
circular in shape, the surface of which resembled a
ploughed field. Though the red soil was rich, barely
so much as a tuft of grass grew upon it — a strange
sight in a land where green things sprout into lusty
life almost as you watch them; for this was one of the
natural saline deposits not infrequently found in
Malayan jungles. Hither flock all the beasts of
the forest, from the elephant, the rhinoceros, and
the tiger to the red dogs, the tiny mouse-deer no
larger than a rabbit, and even the stoats and weasels,
to lick the salt and to knead and trample the earth
with countless pads and claws and hoofs.
Kria looked out upon the place, and as he looked
his heart stood still, while for a moment all things
were blotted out in a blinding, swirling mist of
blood-stained darkness. He reeled against a trunk,
and stood there sobbing and shaking ere he could
muster force to look again.
At the foot of a big tree some twenty yards away
the body of Pi-Noi, its aspect strangely delicate and
childlike, lay coiled up in death. There was a little
blue hole below her left breast where the cruel bullet
had entered, and the wild swine and the hungry red
dogs had already been busy.
Kria, reeling like a drunken man, staggered across
the open space toward the dead body of his wife.
38 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE
Kulop Riau stood looking on with the air of a crafts-
man surveying his masterpieces.
Dazed and broken-hearted, Kria stood for a
space gazing down upon his wife's peaceful face. It
seemed to him as though she slept, as he so often
had seen her sleeping in that house to which her fitful
presence had brought such an intoxication of de-
light; and suddenly all anger was dead within him,
and there surged up in its place all manner of tender
and endearing memories of this dead girl who had
been to him at once his torture and his joy.
With a face livid and working, he turned savagely
upon Kulop Rtau.
"And the man," he cried. "What of the man?"
"He lies yonder," said Kulop Rlau, with the
triumphant air of an artist whose work can defy
criticism, and he pointed with his chin, Malayan
fashion, in the direction of a clump of bush near the
edge of the salt lick. "I shot him as he fled.
See, they were camped for the night in the man-
nest which they had built for themselves in the tree
fork up there, animals and strangers to modesty
that they were!" He expectorated emphatically
in token of his unutterable disgust.
Kria strode to the spot, gazed for an instant, and
then gave a great cry of pain and rage and misery.
"The man is her brother," he yelled. "And you
— you have killed her who was guiltless of all sin!"
"Is that so?" said Kulop calmly. "Then, very
certainly, it was so decreed by Fate, the inscrutable,
and by Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!
THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 39
Also you are well rid of this jungle hussy who, in
the end, would, beyond all doubt, have dragged your
soul to. . . . Have done! Let be! Are you
mad? Arrrrgh. . . ."
But Kulop Riau spoke no other word in life.
When the Jelai lads tracked and found them, both
men were dead and stiff. Kulop still grasped the
woodknife which he had plunged again and again
into Kria's body; but the latter's fingers were locked
in the old tracker's throat in a grip which, even in
death, no force could relax. None the less, though
they could not separate them, they buried them both
— since they were Muhammadans, and, as such,
claimed that service at the hands of their fellows.
But Pi-Noi's little body they left to the beasts of
the forest which in life had been her playmates.
THE WERE-TIGER
IN THE more remote parts of the Malay Penin-
sula five and twenty years ago we lived in
the Middle Ages, surrounded by all the appro-
priate accessories of the dark centuries. Magic and
evil spirits, witchcraft and sorcery, spells and love-
potions, charms and incantations are, to the mind
of the unsophisticated native, as much a matter of
everyday life, and almost as commonplace, as is the
miracle of the growing rice or the mystery of the
reproduction of species. This basic fact must be
realized by the European, if the native's view of
human existence is to be understood, for it underlies
all his conceptions of things as they are. Tales of
the marvellous and of the supernatural excite inter-
est and it may be fear in a Malayan audience, but
they occasion no surprise. Malays, were they given
to such abstract discussions, would probably dis-
pute the accuracy of the term "supernatural" as
applied to much that white men would place un-
hesitatingly in that category. They know that
strange things have happened in the past and are
daily occurring to them and to their fellows. Such
experiences are not common to all, just as one man
here and there may be struck by lightning while
¥)
THE WERE-TIGER 41
his neighbours go unscathed; but the manifestations
of electric force do not appeal to them as less or more
unnatural than other inexplicable phenomena which
fill human life with awe.
The white man and the white man's justice are
placed by this in a position at once anomalous and
embarrassing. Unshaken native testimony, we hold,
provides evidence which justifies us in sentencing a
fellow creature to death or to a long term of im-
prisonment; yet we hesitate to accept it or to regard
it as equally conclusive when it points, no less un-
erringly, to the proved existence of, say, the Malayan
loup garou. The Malays of Saiyong, in the Perak
Valley, for instance, know how Haji Abdullah, the
native of the little state of Korinchi, in Sumatra,
was caught stark naked in a tiger-trap, and there-
after purchased his liberty at the price of the buffaloes
he had slain while he marauded in the likeness of
a beast. The Malays of other parts of the Penin-
sula know of numerous instances of Korinchi men
who have vomited feathers, after feasting upon
fowls, when for the nonce they had assumed the
likeness of tigers; and of other men of the same race
who have left their garments and their trading-
packs in thickets, whence presently a tiger has
emerged. The Malay, however, does not know that
his strange belief finds its exact counterpart in al-
most every quarter of the globe where man has
found himself in close association with beasts of
prey, but such knowledge would neither strengthen
nor weaken his faith in that which he regards as a
42 THE WERE-TIGER
proven fact. The white man, on the other hand,
may see in the universality of this superstition
nothing more than an illustration of the effect of an
abiding fear upon the human mind; but that ex-
planation — if explanation it can, indeed, be called —
does not carry him much farther along the path of
discovery. Meanwhile, he has to shoulder aside as
worthless masses of native evidence, which in any
other connection he would accept as final.
II
The Slim valley lies across the mountain range
which divides Pahang from PSrak. It used to be
peopled by Malays of various races — Rawas and
Menangkabaus from Sumatra, men with high-
sounding titles and vain boasts wherewith to carry
off their squalid, dirty poverty; Perak Malays from
the fair Kinta Valley, prospecting for tin or trading
skilfully; fugitives from troublous Pahang, long
settled in the district; and the sweepings of Java,
Sumatra, and the Peninsula.
Into the Slim Valley, some thirty years ago, there
came a Korinchi trader named Haji Ali, and his
two sons, Abdulrahman and Abas. They came, as
is the manner of their people, laden with heavy packs
of sdrong — the native skirt or waistcloth — trudging
in single file through the forest and through the
villages, hawking their goods among the natives of
the place, driving hard bargains and haggling cun-
ningly. But though they came to trade, they stayed
long after they had disposed of the contents of their
THE WERE-TIGER 43
packs, for Haji Ali took a fancy to the place. In
those days, of course, land was to be had almost for
the asking; wherefore he and his two sons set to
work to clear a compound, to build a house, with a
grove of young cocoanut trees planted around it,
and to cultivate a rice swamp. They were quiet,
well-behaved people; they were regular in their
attendance at the mosque for the Friday congre-
gational prayers; and as they were wealthy and
prosperous, they found favour in the eyes of their
poorer neighbours. Accordingly, when Haji Ali let
it be known that he desired to find a wife, there was a
bustle in the villages among the parents of marriage-
able daughters, and though he was a man well past
middle life, a wide range of choice was offered to
him.
The girl he finally selected was named Patimah,
the daughter of poor folk, peasants who lived on
their little patch of land in one of the neighbouring
villages. She was a comely maiden, plump and
round and light of colour, with a merry face to cheer,
and willing fingers wherewith to serve a husband.
The wedding-portion was paid ; a feast proportionate
to Haji Ali's wealth was held to celebrate the oc-
casion; and the bride, after a decent interval, was
carried off to her husband's house among the newly
planted fruit trees and palm groves. This was
not the general custom of the land, for among Malays
the husband usually shares his father-in-law's home
for a long period after his marriage. But Haji Ali
had a fine new house, brave with wattled walls
44 THE WERE-TIGER
stained cunningly in black and white, and with a
luxuriant covering of thatch. Moreover, he had
taken the daughter of a poor man to wife, and could
dictate his own terms, in most matters, to her and
to her parents.
The girl went willingly enough, for she was ex-
changing poverty for wealth, a miserable hovel for
a handsome home, and parents who knew how to
get out of her the last ounce of work of which she
was capable, for a husband who seemed ever kind,
generous, and indulgent. She had also the satis-
faction of knowing that she had made an exceedingly
good marriage, and was an object of envy to all her
contemporaries. None the less, three days later,
at the hour when the dawn was breaking, she was
found beating upon the door of her father's house,
screaming to be taken in, trembling in every limb,
with her hair disordered, her garments drenched
with dew from the underwood through which she
had rushed, and in a state of panic bordering on
dementia.
Her story — the first act in the drama of the were-
tiger of Slim — ran in this wise:
She had gone home with Haji Ali to the house in
which he lived with his two sons, Abdulrahman and
Abas, and all had treated her kindly and with cour-
tesy. The first day she had cooked the rice in-
sufficiently, and though the young men had grumbled
Haji Ah had said no word of blame, when she had
expected a slapping, such as would have fallen to
the lot of most wives in similar circumstances.
THE WERE-TIGER 45
She had, she declared, no complaint to make of her
husband's treatment of her; but she had fled his
roof forever, and her parents might "hang her on
high, sell her in a far land, scorch her with the sun's
rays, immerse her in water, burn her with fire," ere
aught should induce her to return to one who hunted
by night in the likeness of a were-tiger.
Every evening, after the hour of evening prayer,
Haji Ali had left the house on one pretext or an-
other, and had not returned until an hour before the
dawn. Twice she had not been aware of his return
until she had found him lying on the sleeping-mat
by her side; but on the third night she had remained
awake until a noise without told her that her husband
was at hand. Then she had arisen and had hastened
to unbar the door, which she had fastened on the
inside after Abdulrahman and Abas had fallen
asleep. The moon was behind a cloud and the
light she cast was dim, but Patlmah had seen clearly
enough the sight which had driven her mad with
terror.
On the topmost rung of the ladder, which in this,
as in all Malay houses, led from the ground to the
threshold of the door, there rested the head of a full-
grown tiger. Patimah could see the bold, black
stripes that marked his hide, the bristling wires of
whisker, the long, cruel teeth, the fierce green light
in the beast's eyes. A round pad, with long curved
claws partially concealed, lay on the ladder-rung,
one on each side of the monster's head; and the
lower portion of the body, reaching to the ground,
4G THE WERE-TIGER
was so foreshortened that, to the girl, it looked like
the body of a man. Pathnah stood gazing at the
tiger from the distance of only a foot or two, for
she was too paralyzed with fear and could neither
move nor cry out; and as she looked, a gradual trans-
formation took place in the creature at her feet.
Much as one sees a ripple of cool air pass over the
surface of molten metal, the tiger's features pal-
pitated and were changed, until the^ horrified girl
saw the face of her husband come up through that of
the beast, just as that of a diver comes up from the
depths through still waters. In another moment
Pathnah understood that it was Haji Ali, her hus-
band, who was ascending the ladder of .his house,
and the spell which had held her motionless was
snapped. The first use which she made of her re-
covered power to move was to leap past him through
the doorway, and to plunge into the jungle which
edged the compound.
Malays do not love to travel singly through the
forest, even when the sun is high, and, in ordinary
circumstances no woman could by any means be
prevailed upon to do such a thing. But Patimah
was distraught with fear; and though she was alone,
though the moonlight was dim and the dawn had
not yet come, she preferred the terror-haunted
depths of the jungle to the home of her were-tiger
husband. Thus she forced her way through the
brushwood, tearing her clothes, scarifying her flesh
with thorns, catching her feet in creepers and trail-
ing vines, drenching herself to the skin with dew,
THE WERE-TIGER 47
and so running and falling, and rising to run and
fall again, she made her way to her father's house,
there to tell the tale of her appalling experi-
ence.
The story of what had occurred was speedily
noised abroad through the villages, • and was duly
reported to the nearest white man, who heard it
with the white man's usual scepticism; while the
parents of marriageable daughters, who had been
mortified by Haji Ali's choice of a wife, hastened
to assure Patimah's papa and mamma that they had
always anticipated something of the sort.
A really remarkable fact, however, was that Haji
Ali made no attempt to regain possession of his wife;
and this acquires a special significance owing to the
extraordinary tenacity which characterizes all Su-
matra Malays in relation to their rights in property.
His neighbours drew a natural inference from his
inaction, and shunned him so sedulously that thence-
forth he and his sons were compelled to live in almost
complete isolation.
But the drama of the were-tiger of Slim was to
have a final act.
One night a fine young water-buffalo, the property
of the Headman, Penghulu Mat Saleh, was killed
by a tiger, and its owner, saying no word to any man,
constructed a cunningly arranged spring-gun over
the carcase. The trigger-lines were so set that if
the tiger returned to finish his meal — which, after
the manner of his kind, he had begun by tearing a
48 THE WERE-TIGER
couple of hurried mouthfuls out of the rump — he
must infallibly be wounded or killed by the bolts
and slugs with which the gun was charged.
Next night a loud report, breaking in clanging
echoes through the stillness an hour or two before
the dawn was due, apprised Penghulu Mat Saleh
that some animal had fouled the trigger-lines. The
chances were that it was the tiger; and if he were
wounded, he would not be a pleasant creature to
meet on a dark night. Accordingly, Penghulu Mat
Saleh lay still until morning.
In a Malayan village all are astir very shortly
after daybreak. As soon as it is light enough to see
to walk, the doors of the houses open one by one,
and the people of the village come forth, huddled to
the chin in their sMimut, or coverlets. Each man
makes his way down to the river to perform his
morning ablutions, or stands or squats on the bank
of the stream, staring sleepily at nothing in par-
ticular, a motionless figure outlined dimly against
the broad ruddiness of a Malayan dawn. Presently
the women of the village emerge from their houses,
in little knots of three or four, with the children
astride upon their hips or pattering at their heels.
They carry clusters of gourds in their hands, for it
is their duty to fill them from the running stream
with the water which will be needed during the day.
It is not until the sun begins to make its power
felt through the mists of morning, when ablutions
have been carefully performed and the drowsiness
of the waking-hour has departed from heavy eyes.
THE WERE-TIGER 49
that the people of the village turn their indolent
thoughts toward the business of the day.
Penghulu Mat Saleh arose that morning and went
through his usual daily routine before he set to work
to collect a party of Malays to aid him in his search
for the wounded tiger. He had no difficulty in find-
ing men who were willing to share the excitement of
the adventure, for most Malays are endowed with
sporting instincts; and he presently started on his
quest with a ragged following of nearly a dozen at his
heels, armed with spears and kris and having among
them a couple of muskets. On arrival at the spot
where the spring-gun had been set, they found that
beyond a doubt the tiger had returned to his kill.
The tracks left by the great pads were fresh, and the
tearing up of the earth on one side of the dead
buffalo, in a spot where the grass was thickly flecked
with blood, showed that the shot had taken effect.
Penghulu Mat Saleh and his people then set down
steadily to follow the trail of the wounded tiger.
This was an easy matter, for the beast had gone
heavily on three legs, the off hind-leg dragging use-
lessly. In places, too, a clot of blood showed red
among the dew-drenched leaves and grasses. None
the less, the Penghulu and his party followed slowly
and with caution. They knew that a wounded
tiger is an ill beast to tackle at any time, and that
even when he has only three legs with which to
spring upon his enemies, he can on occasion arrange
for a large escort of human beings to accompany him
into the land of shadows.
50 THE WERE-TIGER
The trail led through the brushwood, in the midst
of which the dead buffalo was lying, and thence into
a belt of jungle which covered the bank of the river
and extended upstream from a point a few hundreds
of yards above Penghulu Mat Saleh's village to
Kuala Chin Lama, half a dozen miles away. The
tiger had turned up-river after entering this patch of
forest, and half a mile higher he had come out upon
a slender foot-path through the woods.
When Penghulu Mat Saleh had followed the trail
thus far, he halted and looked at his people.
"What say you?" he whispered. "Do you know
whither this track leads?"
His companions nodded, but said never a word.
They were obviously excited and ill at ease.
"What say you?" continued the Penghulu.
"Do we follow or not follow?"
"It is as you will, O Penghulu," replied the oldest
man of the party, speaking for his fellows. "We
follow whithersoever you go."
"It is well," said the Penghulu. "Come, let us
go."
No more was said when this whispered colloquy
was ended, and the trackers set down to the trail
again silently and with redoubled caution.
The narrow path which the tiger had followed led
on in the direction of the river-bank, and ere long
the high wattled bamboo fence of a native compound
became visible through the trees. Penghulu Mat
Saleh pointed at it, turning to his followers.
"See yonder," he said.
THE WERE-TIGER 51
Again the little band moved forward, still tracing
the slot of the tiger and the flecks of blood upon the
grass. These led them to the gate of the compound,
and through it, to the 'dman, or open space before
the house. Here the spoor vanished at a spot where
the rank spear-blades of the lalang grass had been
crushed to earth by the weight of some heavy body.
To it the trail of the limping tiger led. Away from
it there were no footprints, save those of the human
beings who come and go through the untidy weeds and
grasses which cloak the soil in a Malayan compound.
Penghulu Mat Saleh and his followers exchanged
troubled glances.
"Come, let us ascend into the house," said the
former; and forthwith led the way up the stair-
ladder of the dwelling where Haji Ali lived with his
two sons, and whence a month or two before Patimah
had fled during the night time with a deadly fear in
her eyes and an incredible story faltering upon her
lips.
The Penghulu and his people found Abas, one of
the Haji's sons, sitting cross-legged in the outer
apartment, preparing a quid of betel nut with
elaborate care. The visitors squatted on the mats
and exchanged with him the customary salutations.
Then Penghulu Mat Saleh said:
"I have come hither that I may see your father.
Is he within the house?"
"He is," replied Abas laconically.
"Then, make known to him that I would have
speech with him."
52 THE WERE-TIGER
"My father is sick," said Abas in a surly tone, and
again his visitors exchanged glances.
"What is that patch of blood in the lalang grass
before the house?" asked the Penghulu conversa-
tionally, after a slight pause.
"We killed a goat yesternight," Abas answered.
"Have you the skin, O Abas?" enquired the Head-
man. "I am renewing the faces of my drums and
would fain purchase it."
"The skin was mangy and therefore we cast it
into the river," said Abas.
The conversation languished while the Penghulu's
followers pushed the clumsy wooden betel-box along
the mat covered floor from one to the other, and
silently prepared their quids.
"What ails your father?" asked the Penghulu
presently, returning to the charge.
"He is sick," a rough voice said suddenly, speak-
ing from the curtained doorway which led into the
inner apartment.
It was the elder of the two sons, Abdulrahman,
who spoke. He held a sword in his hand, a kris
was stuck in his girdle, and his face wore an ugly
look. His words came harshly and gratingly with
the foreign accent of the Korinchi people. He con-
tinued to speak, still standing near the doorway.
"My father is sick, O Penghulu," he said. "More-
over, the noise of your words disturbs him. He de-
sires to slumber and be still. Descend out of the
house. He cannot see you. Attend to these my
words."
THE WERE-TIGER 53
Abdulrahman's manner and the words he spoke
were at once so rough and so defiant that the Head-
man saw that he would have to choose between a
scuffle, which would certainly mean bloodshed, and
an ignominious retreat. He was a mild old man,
and he drew a monthly stipend from the Govern-
ment of Perak. He did not wish to place this in
jeopardy, and he knew that the white men enter-
tained prejudices against bloodshed and homicide,
even if the person slain was a wizard or the son of a
wizard. He therefore decided in favour of retreat.
As they were climbing down the stair-ladder, Mat
Tahir, one of the Penghulu's men, plucked him by the
sleeve and pointed to a spot beneath the house.
Just below the place in the inner apartment where
Haji Ali might be supposed to be lying stretched
upon the mat of sickness, the ground was stained a
dull red colour for a space of several inches in circum-
ference. The floors of Malayan houses are made of
laths of bamboo laid parallel one to another at
regular intervals and lashed together with rattan.
The interstices thus formed are convenient, as the
slovenly Malays are thereby enabled to use the
whole of the ground beneath the house as a slop-pail,
waste-basket, and rubbish-heap. The red stain,
situated where it was, had the appearance of blood —
blood, moreover, from some one within the house
whose wound had been recently washed and dressed.
It might equally, of course, have been the rinsings
of a spittoon reddened by the expectorated juice
of the betel nut, but its stains are rarely seen in such
54 THE • WERE-TIGER
large patches. Whatever the origin of the stain,
the Penghulu and his people were afforded no oppor-
tunity of examining it more closely, for Abdulrahman
and Abas, truculent to the last, followed them out
of the compound and barred the gate against them.
Then the Penghulu, taking a couple of his people
with him, set off on foot for Tanjong Malim in the
neighbouring district of Bernam, where lived the
white man under whose administrative charge the
Slim valley had been placed. He went with many
misgivings, for he had had some experience of the
easy scepticism of white folk; and when he returned,
more or less dissatisfied some days later, he learned
that Haji Ali and his sons had disappeared. They
had fled down river on a dark night, without a soul
being made aware of their intended departure.
They had not stayed to reap their crop, which even
then was ripening in the fields; to dispose of their
house and compound, upon which they had ex-
pended, not only labour, but "dollars of the whit-
est," as the Malay phrase has it; not even to collect
their debts, which chanced to be rather numerous.
This was the fact which struck the white district
officer as by far the most improbable incident of
any connected with the strange story of the were-
tiger of Slim, and for the moment it seemed to him
to admit of only one explanation. Haji Ali and his
sons had been the victims of foul play. They had
been quietly done to death by the simple villagers of
Slim, and a cock-and-bull story had been trumped
up to account for their disappearance.
THE WERE-TIGER 55
The white man would probably still be holding
fast to this theory, were it not that Haji Ali and his
sons happened to turn up in quite another part of
the Peninsula a few months later. They had noth-
ing out of the way about them to mark them from
their fellows, except that Haji Ali limped badly with
his right leg.
THE EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAH HAMTD
THESE things were told to me by Raja Haji
Hamid as he and I lay smoking on our
sleeping-mats during the cool still hours
before the dawn. He was a member of the Royal
Family of Selangor, and he still enjoyed throughout
the length and breadth of the Peninsula the immense
reputation for valour, invulnerability, successful
homicides, and other manly qualities and achieve-
ments which had made him famous ere ever the
white men came. He had accompanied me to the
east coast as chief of my followers — an excellent
band of ruffians who (to use the phrase at that
time current among them) were helping me to serve
as "the bait at the tip of the fish-hook" at the court
of the Sultan of an independent Malay state. He
had been induced to accept this post partly out of
friendship for me, but mainly because he was thus
enabled to turn his back for a space upon the
deplorably monotonous and insipid conditions to
which British rule had reduced his own country,
and because, in the lawless land wherein I was then
acting as political agent, he saw a prospect of re-
newing some of the stirring experiences of his youth.
Raja Haji and I had passed the evening in the
Sultan's bdlai, or hall of state, watching the Chinese
56
EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI HAMID 57
bankers raking in their gains, while the Malays of
all classes gambled and cursed their luck with the
noisy slapping of thighs and many references to
Allah and to his Prophet — according to whose teach-
ing gaming is an unclean thing. The sight of the
play and of the fierce passions which it aroused had
awakened many memories in Raja Haji, filling him
with desires that made him restless; and though he
had refrained from joining in the unholy sport, it
was evident that the turban around his head — which
his increasing years and his manifold iniquities had
driven him to Mecca to seek — was that night irk-
some to him, since it forbade public indulgence in
such forbidden pleasures.
Now as we lay talking, ere sleep came to us, he
fell to talking of the old days in Selangor before the
coming of the white men.
" Ya, Allah, Tuan," he exclaimed. "I loved those
ancient times exceedingly, when all men were shy of
Si-Hamid, and none dared face his kris, the ' Chinese
Axe.' I never felt the grip of poverty in those days,
for my supplies were ever at the tip of my dagger,
and very few were found reckless enough to with-
hold aught that I desired or coveted.
"Did I ever tell you, Tuan, the tale of how the
gamblers of Klang yielded up the money of their
banks to me without resistance or the spinning of
a single dice-box? No? Ah, that was a pleasant
tale and a deed which was famous throughout
Selangor, and gave me a very great name.
'It was in this wise. I was in sorry case, for the
»i
58 EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAH HAMID
boats had ceased to ply on the river through fear of
me, and my followers were so few that I could not
rush a town or even loot a Chinese kong-si house.
As for the village people, they were as poor as I,
and save for their womenfolk (whom, when I desired
them, they had the good sense to surrender to me
with docility) I never harassed them.
"Now, upon a certain day, my wives and my
people came to me asking for rice, or for money with
which to purchase it; but I had naught to give them,
only one little dollar remaining to me. It is an
accursed thing when the little ones are in want of
food, and my liver grew hot within me at the thought.
None of the womenfolk dared say a word when they
saw that mine eyes waxed red; but the little children
wept aloud, and I heard them and was sad. More-
over, I, too, was hungry, for my belly was empty.
Wherefore, looking upon my solitary dollar, I called
to me one of my men, and bade him go to the Chinese
store and buy for me a bottle of the white men's
perfume.
"Now when my wife — the mother of my son —
heard this order, she cried out in anger: 'Are you
mad, Father of Che' Bujang, that you throw away
your last dollar on perfumes for your lights of love,
while Che' Bujang and his brethren cry for rice? '
"But I slapped her on the mouth and said, 'Be
still!' for it is not well for a man to suffer a woman
to question the doings of men.
"That evening, when the night had fallen, I put
on my fighting-jacket, upon which were inscribed
EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI HAMID 59
many texts from the Holy Book, my short drawers,
such as the Bugis folk weave; and I bound my kris,
the 'Chinese Axe' about my waist, and took in my
hand my so famous sword, 'the Rising Sun.' Three
or four of my young men followed at my heels, and
I did not forget to take with me the bottle of the
white man's perfume.
" I went straight to the great Klang gaming-house,
which at that hour was filled with gamblers; and
when I reached the door, I halted for the space of an
eye flick, and spilled the scent over my right hand
and arm as far as the elbow. Then I rushed in
among the gamblers, suddenly and without warn-
ing, stepping like a fencer in the war dance, and
crying 'Amok ! Amok !' till the coins danced upon
the gaming-tables. All the gamblers stayed their
hands from the staking, and some seized the hilts
of their daggers. Then I cried aloud three times,
'I am Si-Hamid, the Tiger Unbound!' — for by
that name did men then call me. ' Get you to your
dwellings, and that speedily, and leave your money
where it is or I will slay you ! '
"Many were terrified, a few laughed, some hesi-
tated, some even scowled at me in naughty fashion,
clutching their coins; but none did as I bade them.
'"Pigs and dogs,' I cried. 'Are your ears deaf
that you obey me not, or are you sated with living
and desire that your shrouds should be made ready?
Do instantly my bidding, or I will kill you all, as a
kite swoops upon little chickens. What powers do
you possess and what are your stratagems that you
60 EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI HAMID
fancy you can prevail against me? For it is I, Si-
Hamid — I, who am invulnerable — I whom the very
fire burns, but cannot devour!'
"With that, I thrust my right hand into the flame
of a Chinese gaming-lamp, and being saturated with
the white man's perfume, it blazed up bravely, even
to my, elbow, doing me no hurt, while I waved it
flaming above my head.
"Verily the white men are very clever, who so
cunningly devise the medicine of these perfumes.
"Now, when all the people in the gambling-house
saw that my hand and arm were burned with fire,
but were not consumed, a great fear fell upon them,
and they fled shrieking, no man staying to gather
up his silver. This presently I counted and put
into sacks, and my youths bore it to my house, and
my fame waxed very great in Klang. Men said
that henceforth Si-Hamid should be named, not
the Tiger Unbound, but the Fiery Rhinoceros.*
It was long ere the nature of my stratagem became
known; and even then no man of all the many who
were within the gambling-house at Klang that night
had the hardihood or the imprudence to ask me for
*B3dak apt, the Fiery Rhinoceros, a monster of ancient Malayan myth. It
is supposed to have quitted the earth in the company of the dragon and the lion
at the instance of the magician Sang Kelembai. The latter, whose spoken word
turned to stone all animate and inanimate things that he addressed, fled the earth
through fear of mankind, of whose size and strength he had obtained a mistaken
impression. This arose from the sight of a man's sarong hanging from the top of
a tall bamboo, upon which it had been placed when the yielding stem was pulled
down to within a man's reach, and by the discovery of a little, glassy-headed, tooth-
less man asleep in a hammock, whom Sang Kelembai mistook for a newly born
infant. Before his departure, he inadvertently taught mankind how to make and
use a casting-net.
EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI HAMID 61
the money which I had borrowed from him and
from his fellows.
" Ya, Allah, Tvian, but those days were exceedingly
good days. I cannot think upon them for it makes
me sad. It is true what is said in the quatrain of
the men of Kedah —
"Pulau Ptnang hath a new town
And Captain Light is its king.
Think not of the days that are gone
Or you will bow low your head and your tears will flow.
"Ya, Allah! Ya Tuhan-ku! Verily I cannot
endure these memories."
He lay tossing about upon his mat, muttering
and exclaiming; and for a space I let him be. The
thought of the old, free, lawless days, when it sud-
denly recurs to a Malayan raja of the old school,
whose claws have been cut by the British Govern-
ment, is to him like a raging tooth. It goads him
to a maddened restlessness, and obliterates, for
the time being, all other sensations. Words, in
such circumstances, are useless; and in this particular
instance I was hardly in a position to offer sympathy
or consolation, seeing that Raja Haji and I were
at that time engaged in an attempt to do for an-
other Malayan state, and for the rajas who had
battened upon it, all that my friend regretted so
bitterly that the white men had done for Selangor
and for him.
Gradually he became calmer, and presently began
62 EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI HAMID
to chuckle comfortably to himself. Soon he spoke
again.
"I remember once, when I was for the moment
rich with the spoils of war, I gambled all the evening
in that same gaming-house at Klang, and lost four
thousand dollars. It mattered not at all on which
quarter of the mat I staked, nor whether I went ko-o,
li-am, or tang* I pursued the red half of the die, as
one chases a dog, but never once did I catch it. At
length, when my four thousand dollars were finished,
I arose and departed, and my liver was hot in my
chest. As I came out of the gaming-house, a China-
man whom I knew, and who loved me, followed
after me and whispered in my ear : ' Hai-yah, XJnglcu !
You have lost much to-night. It is not fitting.
That wicked one was cheating you; for he hath a
trick whereby he can make the red part of the die
turn to whichever quarter of the mat he chooses.'
'"Is this true?' I asked. And he made answer,
'It is indeed true.'
"Then I loosened the 'Chinese Axe' in its scab-
bard, and turned back into the gaming-house. First
I seized the Chinaman by his pigtail, though he
♦Three of the methods of staking employed in the Chinese game which the
Malays call ie-po. The mat is divided into four sections, and a die, one half of
which is white and the other half red, is hidden in a solid brass box, which is then
set spinning in the centre of the mat. The gamblers bet as to the quarter of the
mat toward which the red half of the die will be found to be facing when the top
of the box is lifted. Ko-o is staking on a single section, and if successful three
times the amount of the stake is paid. Li-am is staking on two adjoining sec-
tions of the mat, and if the red die faces toward either of them, the player receives
double the amount of his stake. Tang is staking on two opposite sections of the
mat, and again double the amount of the stake is paid if the red half of the die
faces toward either of them.
EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI HAMID 63
yelled and struggled, loudly proclaiming his inno-
cence; and my followers gathered up all the money
in his bank — nearly seven thousand dollars, so that
it took six men to carry it. Thus I departed to my
house, with the Chinaman and the money, none
daring to bar my passage.
"When we had entered the house, I bade the
Chinaman be seated, and I told him that I would
kill him, even then, if he did not show me the trick
whereby he had cheated me. This he presently
did; and for a long time I sat watching him and
practising, for I had a mind to learn the manner of
his art, thinking that later I might profit by it.
Then, just as the dawn was breaking, I led the
Chinaman down to the river by the hand, for I was
loath to make a mess within my house; and when I
had cut his throat, and had sent his body floating
downstream, I washed myself, performed my re-
ligious ablutions, prayed the morning prayer, and
so betook myself to my sleeping-mat, for my eyes
were heavy from long waking."
"Kasih-an China I I am sorry for the China-
man," I said.
"Why are you sorry for him?" asked Raja Haji.
"He had cheated me, wherefore it was not fitting
that he should live. Moreover, he was a China-
man and an infidel, and the lives of such folk were
not reckoned by us as being of any worth. In
Kinta, before Tuan Birch came to Perak, they had
a game called main china — the Chinaman game —
each man betting upon the number of coins which a
64 EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI HAMID
passing Chinaman carried in his pouch, and upon
whether that number were odd or even. There-
after, when the bets had been made, they would
kill the Chinaman and count the coins."
"They might have done that without killing the
Chinaman," I said.
"That is true," rejoined Raja Haji. "But it was
a more certain way, and moreover it increased their
pleasure. But, Tuan, the night is very far advanced
and we are weary. Let us sleep."
Verily life in an independent Malay state thirty
years ago, like adversity, made one acquainted with
some strange bedfellows.
DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
ONE morning, not so very many years ago,
old Mat Drus, bare to the waist, sat cross-
legged in the doorway of his house, in the
little sleepy village of KM6ndong on the banks of
the Pahang River. A single wide blade of lalang
grass was bound filet-wise about his forehead to
save appearances, for all men know that it is un-
mannerly to wear no headdress, and Mat Drus had
mislaid his kerchief. His grizzled hair stood up
stiffly above the bright green of the grass-blade;
his cheeks were furrowed with wrinkles; and his
eyes were old and dull and patient — the eyes of
the driven peasant, the cattle of mankind. His
lips, red with the stain of areca nut, bulged over a
damp quid of Java tobacco, shredded fine and rolled
into a ball the size of a large marble. His jaws
worked mechanically, chewing the betel nut, as a
cow chews the cud, and his hands were busy with a
little brass tube in which he was crushing up a fresh
quid, for his teeth were old and ragged and had
long been powerless to masticate the nut without
artificial aid. The fowls clucked and scratched
about the litter of trash with which the space before
the house was strewn; and a monkey of the kind the
Malays call brok, ,and train to pluck cocoanuts, sat
65
CO DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
on a wooden box fixed on the top of an upright pole,
searching diligently for fleas and occasionally emit-
ting a plaintive, mournful whimper. In the dim
interior of the house the forms of two or three women
could be indistinctly seen, and their voices sounded
amid the recurring clack of crockery. Now and
again a laugh — the laugh of a very young girl —
rippled out, its merry cadences striking a note of
joyousness and youth.
Presently a youngster, brilliantly dressed in silks
of many colours, swaggered into the compound.
He carried a kris in his girdle, and a short sword,
with a sheath of polished wood, in his hand.
"O Che' Mat Drus," he cried, as soon as he caught
sight of the old man in the doorway.
"What thing is it?" inquired the latter, pausing
in the preparation of his betel quid, and raising
weary eyes to gaze on the newcomer.
"The Grandfather (Chief) sends greetings and
bids you come on the morrow's morn to the rice-field
— you and all your folk, male and female, young and
old — to aid in plucking the tares from amid the
standing crop."
"It is well," mumbled Che' Mat Drus, resuming
his pounding stolidly.
"But listen. The Grandfather sends word that
no one of your household is to remain behind. Do
you understand? The womenfolk also must come,
even down to the girl Minah, whom your son Daman
hath recently taken to wife."
"If there be no sickness, calamity, or impediment
DROIT DU SEIGNEUR 67
we will surely come," Mat Drus made answer, em-
ploying the cautious formula of his people.
"And forget not the girl Minah," added the youth.
But here a third voice broke into the conversation
— a voice shrill and harsh and angry, which ran up
the scale to a rJainful pitch, and broke queerly on the
higher notes.
"Have you the heart, Kria? Have you the heart
to bring this message to my man. We are both of
age, you and I. We know and understand. May
the Grandfather die by a spear cast from afar! May
he die a violent death, stabbed, bowstrung and im-
paled crosswise! May he die vomiting blood, and
you, too, Kria, who are but the hunting-dog of the
Chief!"
"Peace! Peace!" cried Mat Drus in an agitated
voice, turning upon his wife a face that betokened
an agony of fear. "Hold your peace, woman with-
out shame. And Kria, do you tell the Grandfather
that we will surely come, aye, and the girl Minah
also, according to his bidding; and heed not the
words of this so foolish woman of mine."
"I care not to bandy words with a hag," said
Kria. "But the Grandfather will be wroth when
he learns of the ill things that your woman has
spoken."
- "They are without meaning — they are of no ac-
count — the words of a woman who is growing child-
ish," protested Mat Drus. "Pay no heed to them,
and I pray you, speak not to the Grandfather con-
cerning them."
08 DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
"She hath a wicked mouth, this woman of yours,
and it is not fitting that such words should be spoken.
I am loath to repeat them to the Grandfather, for
were I to do so, a great evil would certainly overtake
you. Show me that spear of yours — the ancient
spear with a silver hasp at the base of the blade. I
have a mind to borrow it. Ah, it is a good spear,
and I will take it as an earnest of the love you bear
me."
"Take it," said Mat Drus meekly; and Kria hav-
ing possessed himself of this weapon, which he had
long coveted, swaggered off to pass the word to other
villagers that the Chief required their services for
the weeding of his rice crop.
The sun stood high in the heavens, its rays beat-
ing down pitilessly upon the broad expanse of rice-
field. A tall fence of bamboo protected the crop,
shutting it off on the one side from the rhododendron
scrub and the grazing-grounds beyond which rose
the palm and fruit groves and the thatched roofs
of the village, and on the other three from the foresi,
which formed a dark bank of foliage rising abruptly
from the edge of the land which had been won from
it by the labour of successive generations of men.
The cubit-high spears of the pddi carpeted the earth
with vivid colour, absorbing the sun's rays and re-
fracting them, and the transparent heat haze danced
thin and restless over the flatness of the cultivated
fields. The weeders, with their sarongs wound
turban-wise about their heads to protect them from
DROIT DU SEIGNEUR 69
the sun, squatted at their work — men, women, and
little children — the vertical rays dwarfing their
shadows into malformed almost circular patches
around their feet. They moved forward in an
irregular line, digging out the tares by the roots with
their clumsy parangs.
Near the centre of the largest field a. temporary
hut had been erected, walled and thatched with
palm fronds. Within it was garnished with a ceiling-
cloth of white cotton, from which on all sides de-
pended wall-hangings of the same material and of
many colours. The only furniture were the sleeping-
mat and pillows of the Chief, and numerous brass
trays, covered by square pieces of patchwork, and
filled with food and sweetmeats specially prepared
for the occasion. These reposed upon a coarse mat
fashioned from the plaited fronds of dried m&ng-
kuang palms. In the interior of the Malay Penin-
sula in those days the luxury accessible to even the
richest and most powerful natives was of a some-
what primitive order; but to the eyes of the sinir-
pie villagers the interior of this hut represented
as advanced a standard of comfort and civiliza-
tion as did the chateau of a noble in pre-revolu-
tionary France to the peasants who dwelt on his
estate.
About noon the Chief emerged from his hut and
began a tour of inspection among the weeders,
throwing a word to one or another of the men, and
staring boldly at the women, with the air of a farmer
apprizing his stock. Half a dozen well-armed and
70 DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
gaudily clad youths followed at the heels of their
master.
Old Mat Drus and his son Daman, with three or
four women, were squatting near the edge of the
jungle, weeding diligently, and as the Chief drew
near, Mtnah, the girl who had recently married
Daman crept a little closer to her husband.
The Chief halted and stood for a while gazing
at the group of toilers. He was a big, burly fellow,
of a full habit of body, and well past middle age.
He had a large, square, brutal face, garnished with
a ragged fringe of beard that proclaimed his Su-
matran descent, and his feet and hands were of
unusual size. When he spoke his voice was harsh
and coarse.
"What is the news, Mat Drus?" he asked, em-
ploying the common formula of greeting.
"The news is good, O Grandfather," replied- Mat
Drus, stopping in his work, and turning submissively
toward the Chief. All the rest of the party, squat-
ting humbly in the dust, moved so as to face their
master, the womenfolk bowing low their heads to
evade the hungry eyes of the Chief.
"Who is this child?" the great man inquired, in-
dicating Mlnah with his outthrust chin.
"She is the wife of your servant's son, O Grand-
father," replied Mat Drus.
"Whose daughter is she?"
"She is your servant's daughter, O Grandfather,"
an old and ill-favoured woman made answer, from
her place at Mat Drus's elbow.
DROIT DU SEIGNEUR 71
"Verily a sdlak fruit," cried the Chief. "An ugly
tree, thorny and thin, are you, but you have borne
a pretty, luscious fruit."
The weeders laughed obsequiously.
"How very witty are the words of our Grand-
father!" ejaculated Mat Drus, in a voice carefully
calculated to reach the ears of his master. The
Chief did not even condescend to look at him.
"Dainty Fruit," he said, addressing Minah,
"you are parched by reason of your toil and the
heat. Come to my hut yonder, and I will give you
delicious sweetmeats to slake the thirst in that pretty
throat of yours."
"Don't want to," mumbled the girl.
"Nay, but I bid you come," said the Chief.
" Go, child," urged her mother.
"Don't want to," the girl repeated, edging more
close to Daman, as though seeking his protec-
tion.
"What meaneth this?" roared the Chief, whose
eyes began to wax red. "Do as I bid, you daughter
of an evil mother."
"She is afraid," pleaded Mat Drus in a trembling
voice. "Be not wroth, O Grandfather. She is very
young, and her fears are heavy upon her."
"May she die & violent death!" bellowed the
Chief. "Come, I say. Come!"
"Go, child, go," urged all the women in a chorus
of frightened whispers; but the girl only nestled
closer to her husband.
"Are your ears deaf?" cried the Chief. "Come
72 DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
forthwith, or in a little you shall be dragged to my
hut."
"Have patience, O Grandfather," said Daman
sulkily. "She is my wife to me. She doth not
desire to go. Let her be."
"Arrogant one!" screamed the Chief. "You are
indeed a brave man to dare to flout me. Already
I hear the new-turned earth shouting for you to
the coffin planks. You shall lend a hand to drag
her to my hut."
At the word Daman leaped to his feet. Until now,
like the rest of his fellows, he had squatted humbly
at the feet of the Chief — a serf in the presence of his
lord; but now he stood erect, an equal facing an equal
— a man defending his womenfolk from one who
sought to put a shame upon them and upon him.
"Peace, Daman! Have patience!" cried Mat
Drus, his voice shaking with terror; but his son had
no thought to spare for any save the Chief just then.
His clear young eyes looked unflinchingly into the
brutal, bloodshot orbs set in the sodden, self-indulgent
face of his enemy, and the Chief's gaze faltered and
quailed. Daman's palm smote his wooden dagger-
hilt with a resounding slap, and the Chief reeled
hastily backward, almost losing his footing. The
youngster, inspired by the passion of fury and in-
dignation that possessed him, was lifted out of him-
self. The traditions of a lifetime were forgotten,
together with the fear of rank and power that custom
had instilled into him. The peasant had given place
to the primordial man, fighting for his woman
DROIT DU SEIGNEUR 73
against no matter what odds, and had the two been
alone it would, in that hour, have gone ill with the
Chief.
The latter's armed youths surged up around their
tottering master, and the coward felt his courage
returning to him when he realized that they were at
hand.
No word was spoken for a little space, as the
enemies eyed one another; but Minah, crouching
close to Daman's mother, whimpered miserably,
though a thrill of love and admiration ran through
her as she marked the bearing of her man.
Suddenly Kria, who stood a little to the right of
the Chief, raised his arm in the act to throw, and
the intense sunlight flashed for a moment on the
naked blade of a spear — a spear with a silver hasp-
which, until recently, had been the property of
Daman's father. Kria's eye sought that of the
Chief, and the latter signalled to him to use his
weapon. Immediately the long spear, with its
shining blade, flew forward with incredible velocity,
like a snake in the act of striking; but Daman leaped
aside, and the missile hissed harmlessly past him.
"Strike with the paralyzer," yelled the Chief;
and at the word one of his youths ran forward and
stabbed swiftly and repeatedly at Daman with a
long, uncanny-looking weapon. It was a very long
forked spear, with two sharp blades, barbed and of
unequal length; and in spite of Daman's frantic
efforts to avoid the thrusts of his assailant, the longer
of the two points was presently driven deep into his
74 DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
chest. He was now powerless, for the barbed tip
could not be withdrawn, and the sharp point of the
shorter blade prevented him from running up the
spear, and getting to close quarters with his hris,
as has frequently been done in the Peninsula by one
mortally stricken.
The women screamed shrilly, and Minah sought
to run to her husband's aid, but those around her
held her fast in spite of her tears and struggles.
The weeders from all parts of the field had assem-
bled, and stood watching the unequal fight, the men
standing aloof, murmuring sullenly, but not daring
to interfere, the women huddled together in terrified
groups, wailing piteously — and above the tumult the
coarse laugh of the Chief rang out.
"Verily a fish at the tip of a fish spear! Watch
how he writhes and wriggles! Have a care not to
kill him until we have had our sport with him.! "
But Daman, who had not uttered a sound, was
still fighting gamely. He soon found that it was
impossible for him to wrench the barbed spear from
his breast, and seeing this, he threw his kris violently
in the face of the man who had stabbed him. The
snaky blade flew straight as a dart, and the tip ripped
open the cheek and eyelid of Daman's assailant.
Blinded by the blood, the latter dropped the end
of the spear, and Daman now strove manfully, in
spite of the agony it occasioned him, to wrench the
blade free. This was an unexpected turn for affairs
to take, and the Chief's laughter stopped abruptly.
"Kill him! Kill him!" he screamed to his men:
DROIT DU SEIGNEU'R 15
and forthwith Kria, who had recovered his weapon,
stabbed Daman full in the throat with the broad
spear-blade. The murdered man collapsed on the
ground, giving vent to a thick, choking cough, and
no sooner was he down than all the Chief's youths
rushed in to whet their blades in his shuddering flesh.
Mlnah, distraught with grief and horror, threw
herself prostrate upon the ground, seeking to shut
out the sight with her tightly clasped hands; and as
she lay on the warm earth, the wailing of the women,
the rough growlings of the men, and the soft whis-
perings of the steel blades, piercing the now lifeless
body of her husband, told her that all was over.
The day waned, the darkness shut down over the
land, and the moon rose above the broad, still river,
pale and passionless, looking calmly down upon a
world which, bathed in her rays, seemed unutterably
peaceful and serene. But all through that night,
and during many days and nights to come, the
pitiful wailing of a girl broke the stillness of the
silent hours in the neighbourhood of the Chief's
compound. It was only Minah mourning for her
dead, and taking more time than her friends thought
altogether necessary to become accustomed to her
surroundings as one of the household of the Chief.
Her new lord was not unnaturally annoyed by
her senseless clamour; and beating, he discovered,
tended only to increase the nuisance. But crumpled
rose leaves are to be met with in every bed of flowers,
and the Chief had, at any rate, the satisfaction of
76 DROIT DU SEIGNEUR
knowing that for the future the season of weeding
would be a merry time for him, and that all would
be conducted with seemliness and with order, with-
out any risk of his peace or his pleasure being further
disturbed by rude and vulgar brawls.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
VERY far away, in the remote interior of
Pahang, there is a river called the Telom —
an angry little stream, which fights and
tears its way through the vast primeval forest,
biting savagely at its banks, wrestling petulantly
with the rocks and boulders that obstruct its path,
squabbling fiercely over long, sloping beds of shingle,
and shaking a glistening mane of broken water, as
it rushes downward in its fury. Sometimes, during
the prevalence of the northeast monsoon, when the
rain has fallen heavily in the mountains, the Telom
will rise fourteen or fifteen feet in a couple of hours;
and then, for a space, its waters change their temper
from wild, impetuous rage to a sullen wrath which
is even more formidable and dangerous. But it is
when the river is shrunken by drought that it is most
of all to be feared; for at such times sharp and jagged
rocks, over which, at ordinary seasons, a bamboo
raft is able to glide in safety, prick upward from the
bed of the stream to within an inch or two of the
surface, and rip up everything that chances to come
in contact with them as cleanly as though it were
cut with a razor. At the foot of the largest rapid
in the Telom one of these boulders forms, in dry
weather, a very efficient trap for the unwary. The
.77
78 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
channel narrows somewhat at this point, and is con-
fined between high walls of rock, water-worn to a
glassy smoothness, and the raging torrent pouring
down the fall is obstructed by the jagged blocks of
granite, with which the river-bed is studded. One
of these leans slightly upstream, for the friction of
ages has fashioned a deep cavity at the point where
the full force of the river strikes it; and when the
waters are low, it is impossible for a raft to avoid
this obstacle.
The rafts, which are the only craft in use upon the
upper reaches of Malayan rivers, are formed of
about eighteen bamboos lashed side by side, and
held in horizontal position by stout wooden stays,
bound firmly above and across them by lacings of
rattan. They are usually some twenty feet in
length, the bow consisting of the larger ends of the
bamboos, trimmed so as to present an even front to
the stream, and the sterns of the tapering extremities
cut short a couple of feet or so from their tips.
Bamboos of rather larger size than the others are
selected to form the two sides of the raft, and in the
centre a low platform, some four feet square, is
raised above the general level, and floored with
split and flattened bamboos for the accommodation
of a passenger or baggage. Each bamboo, of course,
consists of a series of more or less watertight com-
partments — quite watertight at the outset, very
imperfectly so later on, when the rafts have been
subjected to the rough usage to which a journey
down a rock- and rapid-beset river exposes them; but
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 79
even at their worst they possess great flotage, though
their very lightness causes them to wallow knee-deep
as they whirl headlong down a fall at a pace that is
exhilarating, with the angry waters roaring around
and over them. The more shrunken the stream,
the more desperate the pace at which a bamboo raft
spins down the rapids, for the height of the fall
suffers no change, while in the dry season the volume
of water is insufficient to break the drop and soften
the descent.
Thus it befalls that, when the river is low, a raft
sent charging down this big rapid of the Telom, be-
tween the sheer walls of granite, comes to eternal
grief when it strikes the leaning rock which obstructs
the channel near its foot. A sound like a scream —
the agonized pain cry of the bamboos — is heard above
the tumult of the waters as the raft strikes the
boulder; another second, and the bow is fast wedged
beneath the projecting ledge of rock; again the
bamboos give a despairing shriek, and the tail of
the raft rises swiftly to a perpendicular position.
For a moment it waggles irresolutely, and then, like
the sail of a windmill, it whirls round in the air, the
bow held firmly in position by the rock, serving as
its axle, and smites the waters beyond with a re-
sounding flap. Every one of the bamboos is smashed
in an instant into starting, shrieking slivers, which
have edges that can cut as sharply as the keenest
knife. If there be men on board, they are cast high
into the air, are broken pitilessly upon the rocks,
are wounded horribly by the matchwood that was
80 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
once their raft, or are to be seen battling desperately
with that raging torrent. If, however, he can reach
the water without sustaining serious hurt, a stout
swimmer has a good chance of life, for a strong cur-
rent sets off, as well as toward, every midstream
boulder, and, if use be made of this, a man may win
in safety to the calmer waters down below the rapid.
Jeram Musoh Karam — the Rapid of the Drowned
Enemy — this place is named in the vernacular;
and native tradition tells of an invading expedition
utterly destroyed in this terrible, rock-bound death-
trap. But men who know the records of the river
tell you that it spares friend no more than it once
spared foe; and since Malays are ever wont to take
their chance of danger rather than submit to the
abandonment of a raft, and to the labour which con-
structing another in its place entails, the number of
its kills waxes larger and larger as the years slip away.
The probability that its supply of victims will be
fairly constant is strengthened by the fact that it is
precisely at the season when the river is at its low-
est that the valley of the Telom fills with life. The
black tin ore, found in the sands and shingles which
form the bed of the stream, is only accessible dur-
ing a drought, and the Malays come hither in little
family parties to wash for it. All day long, men,
women, and small children stand in the shallows,
deftly manipulating their big flat wooden trays,
sluicing the lighter sands over the edges, picking
out and throwing away the pebbles, and storing
the little pinches of almost pure tin, which in the end
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 81
remain, in the hollows of bamboos, which they carry
slung from their waists. At night-time they camp
in rude palm-leaf shelters, built on the banks of
the stream; roast in the cleft of a split stick such fish
as they have caught; boil their ration of rice; and
when full-fed, discuss the results of the day's toil,
ere they he down to sleep, lulled by the night songs
of the forest around them. The quantity of tin
won by them is not large; but Malays are capable
of a great deal of patient labour if it chances to take
a form that they happen, for the moment, to find
congenial, and these tin-washing expeditions serve
to break the monotony of their days.
During the dry season, moreover, the jungles are
one degree less damp and sodden than at other
times, and the searchers for getah rattan, and other
jungle produce, seize the opportunity to penetrate
into the gloomy depths of the forest where these
things are to be found. Nothing is more dreary
than a sojourn in such places when the rains come
in with the northeast monsoon, for then the sun is
unable to force a ray through the sodden canopy of
leaves and branches overhead to dry what the down-
pours have soaked, the drip from above never ceases,
even when for a little the rain abates, and the leeches
go upon the warpath in their millions during all
the hours of daylight. By a merciful disposition of
Providence, these rapacious and insidious blood
suckers go to bed at dusk like humans. Were it
otherwise, a night passed among them in a Malayan
forest would mean certain death.
82 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
Meanwhile, the magnificent duri-an groves, which
grow on the banks of the upper reaches of the Telom,
are rich with a profusion of fruit, and the semi- wild
tribes of Sdkai come from far and near to camp be-
neath the shade of the giant trees, and to gorge
rapturously. They erect small shacks just beyond
the range of the falling fruit, for a blow from a
duri-an, which is about the size of a Rugby football,
and covered all over with stout, pyramidal thorns,
is a by no means infrequent cause of death in the
Malay Peninsula. By day and night they main-
tain their watch, and when, during the hours of
darkness, the dulled thud of the fruit falling into
the underwood is heard, a wild stampede ensues
from the shelters of the jungle dwellers, in order
that it may be immediately secured. This is nec-
essary, for every denizen of the forest, including the
big carnivora, delight in the duri-an, and are at-
tracted to it by its strange and wonderful smell;
and a man must be quick in the gathering if he
would avoid a fight for possession with some of the
most formidable of his natural enemies.
But it is not only by human beings that the valley
of the Telom is overrun during the dry season of the
year; for it is then that the great salt lick of Mtsong
is crowded with game. The Mlsong is a small
stream that falls into the Telom on its left bank,
some miles above the rapids. About a couple of
thousand yards up the Misong, from its point of
junction with the Telom, there is a spot where its
right bank, though covered with virgin forest, is
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 83
much trodden by the passage of game. The under-
wood, usually as dense as a thick-set hedge, is here so
worn down that it is thin and sparse. The trees are
smooth in places, and the lower branches have been
trimmed evenly, just as those of the chestnuts in
Bushy Park are trimmed by the fallow-deer; and
here and there the trunks are marked by great belts
of mud, eight feet from the ground, showing where
wild elephants have stood, rocking to and fro, gently
rubbing their backs against the rough bark. Great
clefts are worn in the river bank on both sides
of the stream, such as the kine make near Malayan
villages at the points where they are accustomed
daily to go down to water; but on the Mfsong these
have been trodden down by the passage of wild
animals.
A bold sweep of the stream forms at this point a
rounded headland, flat and level, and covering, it
may be, some two acres of ground. Here and there
patches of short, closely cropped grass colour the
ground a brilliant green, but, for the most part, the
earth underfoot has the appearance of a deeply'
ploughed field. This is the salt lick of Mlsong.
The soil is here impregnated with saline deposits,
and the beasts of the forest come hither in their mul-
titudes to lick the salt, which to them — as to the
aboriginal tribes of the Peninsula also — is "sweeter"
than anything in the world. Sakai or Semang will
squat around a wild-banana leaf, on to which a bag
of rock salt has been emptied, and devour it glut-
tonously, sucking their fingers, like a pack of greedy
84 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
children round a box of sugar plums. It is Nature
in them howling for the corrective which alone can
keep scurvy at arm's length from the perpetual
vegetarian; and the beasts of the forest, driven by
a similar craving, risk all dangers to obey a like
command. When the waters of the Mlsong are
swollen with rain, the salt cannot be got at, and
the lick is deserted, but in dry weather all the sur-
rounding jungle is alive with game, and at night-
time it is transformed into a sort of Noah's Ark.
In the soft and yielding earth may be seen the slot
of deer of a dozen varieties; the hoof prints of the
wild buffalo, the strongest of all the beasts; the long
sharp scratches made by the toes of the rhinoceros;
the pitted trail and the deep rootings of the wild
swine; the pad track of the tiger; the tiny footprints
of the kanchil, the perfectly formed little antelope,
which is not quite as heavy as a rabbit; and the
great round sockets punched in the clay by the
ponderous feet of elephants. Here come, too, the
black panther and the tapir, the packs of wild dogs,
which always hunt in company, and the jungle cats
of all kinds, from the brute which resembles a tiger
in all save its bulk, to the slender spotted creature,
built as lightly as a greyhound. Sitting in the fork
of a tree, high above the heads of the game, so that
your wind cannot disturb them, you may watch all
the animal life of the jungle come and go within a
few yards of you, and if you have the patience to
keep your rifle quiet, you may see a thousand won-
derful things on a clear moonlit night.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 85
It was to the salt lick of Misong that my friend
Pandak Aris came one day, with two Sakai com-
panions, from his house below the rapids. When
I knew him, he was an old man of seventy or there-
about, wizened and dry, with deep furrows of
wrinkle on face and body. His left arm- was shrivelled
and powerless, and he bore many ugly scars besides.
His closely cropped hair was white as hoarfrost,
and from his chin there depended a long goat's
beard of the same hue, which waggled to and fro
with the motion of his lips. Two solitary yellow
fangs were set in his gums, and his mouth was a
cavern stained to a dark red colour with betel-nut
juice. His words came indistinctly through his
quid and the wad of coarse tobacco which he held
wedged between his upper lip and his toothless gums;
but he had many things to tell concerning the jungles
in which he had lived so long, and of the Sakai folk
with whom hehad associated, and, whenever I chanced
to tie up my boat for the night at his bathing-raft,
we were wont to sit talking till the dawn was redden-
ing in the east, for age had made of him a very bad
sleeper.
In his youth he had come across the Peninsula
from Rembau, near its western seaboard, to the
interior of Pahang, on the other side of the main
range of mountains, which run from north to south.
He had had no special object in his journey, but had
drifted aimlessly, as young men will, to the fate that
awaited him, he knew not where. She proved to
be a Jelai girl whose people lived near the limits of
86 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
the Sakai country, and, after he had married her,
they took up their abode a couple of days' journey
up the Telom River, where they might be completely
alone, for no other Malays lived permanently in this
valley. She had borne him three sons and two
daughters, and he had planted cocoanuts and fruit
trees, which now cast a grateful shade about his
dwelling, and cultivated a patch of rice annually
in a new clearing on the side of one of the neigh-
bouring hills. Thus he had lived, quite contentedly,
without once leaving the valley, for nearly fifty
years before I first met him. He had remained,
during all that long, long time, wrapped in a seclusion
and in an untroubled peace and quiet almost un-
imaginable to a modern European; rarely seeing a
strange face from year's end to year's end, concerned
only with the microscopic incidents in which he was
himself concerned, and entirely undisturbed by the
hum and throb of the great world without. Think
of it, ye white men! He had only one life on earth,
and this is how he spent it — like the frog beneath the
half cocoanut shell, as the Malay proverb has it,
which dreams not that there are other worlds than
his. Wars had raged within sixty miles of his home,
but his peace had not been broken; immense changes
had been wrought in political, social, and economic
conditions from one end of the Peninsula to the
other, but they had affected him not at all. The
eternal forest, in which and by which he lived, had
remained immutable; and the one great event of
his life, which had scored its mark deeply upon both
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 87
his mind and his body, was that which had befallen
him at the salt lick of Misong, a score of years and
more before I chanced upon him.
He told me the tale brokenly, as a child might
do, as he and I sat talking in the dim light of the
ddmar torch, guttering on its clumsy wooden stand,
set in the centre of the mat-strewn floor; and ever
and anon he pointed to his stiff left arm, and to
certain ugly scars upon his body, calling upon them
to bear witness that he did not lie.
It was in the afternoon that Pandak Aris and his
two Sakai followers reached the salt lick of Mlsong.
They had been roaming through the forest all day
long, blazing getah trees, for it was Pandak Aris's
intention to prepare a large consignment of the
precious gum, so that it might be in readiness when
the washers for tin came up into the valley during
the next dry season. The Malay and his Sakai all
knew the salt lick well, and as it was an open space
near running water, and they were hungry after
their tramp, they decided to halt here and cook rice.
They built a fire near the base of a giant tree, which
grew a hundred yards or so inland from the left
bank of the stream, at a point where the furrowed
earth of the lick begins to give place to heavy jungle.
The dry sticks blazed up bravely, the flame showing
pale and almost invisible in the strong sunlight of
the afternoon, while thin vapours danced frenziedly
above it. The small black metal rice pot was
propped upon three stones in the centre of the
crackling fuel, and while one of the Sakai sat stirring
88 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
the rice, with a spoon improvised from a piece of
wood, and the other plucked leeches from his bleed-
ing legs, and cut them thoughtfully into pieces with
his parang, Pandak Aris began to prepare a quid of
betel nut from the ingredients, which he carried in
a set of little brass boxes, wrapped in a cotton hand-
kerchief. The gentle murmur of bird and insect,
which precedes the wild clamour of the sunset hour,
was beginning to purr through the forest, and the
Misong sang drowsily as it pattered over its pebbles.
Pandak Aris's eyes began to blink sleepily, and the
Sakai who had dismembered his last leech, stretched
himself in ungainly wise, and then, rolling over on
his face, was asleep before his nose touched the grass.
This is the manner of the Sakai, and of some of
the other lower animals.
Suddenly a wild tumult of noise shattered the
stillness. The Sakai, who was minding the rice,
screamed a shrill cry of warning to his companions,
but it was drowned by the sound of a ferocious
trumpeting, not unlike the sound of a steam siren,
the explosive crashing of boughs and branches, the
rending of underwood, and a heavy, rapid tramping
that seemed to shake the ground. The cooking
Sakai had swung himself into a tree, and was now
swarming up it, like a monkey, never pausing to
look below until the topmost fork was reached. His
sleeping fellow had awakened, at the first alarm,
with a leap that carried him some yards from the
spot where he had been lying — for the Sakai, who
can fall asleep like an animal, can wake into com-
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 89
plete alertness as abruptly as any other forest crea-
ture. A second later, he, too, was sitting in the
highest fork of a friendly tree; and from their perches
both he and his companion were scolding and chat~
tering like a couple of terrified apes. And all this
had happened before Pandak Aris, who had only
been dozing, had fully realized that danger was at
hand. Then he also bounded to his feet, and as he
did so, two long white tusks, and a massive trunk
held menacingly aloft, two fierce little red eyes, and
an enormous bulk of dingy crinkled hide came into
view within a yard of him.
Pandak Aris dodged behind the trunk of the big
tree with amazing rapidity, thus saving himself
from the onslaught of the squealing elephant, and a
moment later he, too, had swung himself into safety
among the branches overhead; for a jungle-bred
Malay is quick enough on occasion, though he cannot
rival the extraordinary activity of ^he Sakai, which
is that of a startled stag.
The elephant charged the fire savagely, scattering
the burning brands far and wide, trampling upon the
rice pot, till it was flattened to the likeness of a piece
of tin, kneading the brass betel boxes deep into the
earth, keeping up all the while a torrent of ferocious
squealings. The whole scene only lasted a moment
or two, and then the brute whirled clumsily about,
and still trumpeting its war-cry, disappeared into
the forest as suddenly as it had emerged from
it.
Pandak Aris and the two Sakai sat in the trees,
90 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
and listened to the crashing of the elephant through
the underwood growing fainter and fainter in the
distance, until at last it died away.
"How can one name such ferocity as this?" mur-
mured Pandak Aris, with the aggrieved, half won-
dering patience of the Oriental, in whose long-
enduring soul calamity never awakens more than a
certain mild disgust. He looked down very sadly
upon the flattened metal which had once been his
rice pot, and upon the shapeless lumps of brass
deeply embedded in the soil, which had so lately
contained the ingredients for his quids.
The two Sakai, gibbering in the upper branches,
shook the boughs on which they were seated, with
the agony of the terror which still held them.
"The Old Father was filled with wrath," whis-
pered the elder of the two. He was anxious to
speak of the brute that had assailed them with the
greatest respect, and above all things to avoid proper
names. Both he and his fellow were convinced that
the rogue was an incarnation of their former friend
and tribesman Pa' Patin — the Spike Fish — who had
come by his death on the salt lick two years earlier;
but they were much too prudent to express this
opinion openly, or at such a time. In life, Pa' Patin
had been a mild enough individual, but he seemed
to have developed a temper during his sojourn in
the land of shades, and the two Sakai were not going
to outrage his feelings by making any direct allusion
to him.
Presently, Pandak Aris climbed down from his
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 91
tree, and began somewhat ruefully to gather to-
gether his damaged property. He cried to the two
Sakai to come down and aid him, but they sat shud-
dering in their lofty perches and declined to move.
Pandak Aris quickly lost his temper.
"Come down!" he yelled at them. "Descend
out of the branches, ye children of sin! May you
die violent deaths! Come down! Are your ears
deaf that you obey me not? "
But the terrified Sakai would not budge, and
maintained an obstinate silence.
Pandak Aris, capering in his impotent rage, miscalled
them with all that amplitude of vocabulary which,
upon occasion, the Malays know how to use. He
threatened them with all manner of grievous punish-
ments; he tried to bribe the trembling wretches with
promises of food and tobacco; he flung stones and
sticks at them, which they evaded without the least
difficulty; at last he even condescended to entreat
them to come down. But all was in vain. The
Sakai are still, to some extent, arboureal in their
habits, and when once fear has driven them to seek
safety in the trees, some time must elapse before
sufficient confidence is restored to them to embolden
them again to face the dangers of life upon the
ground. Pandak Aris would willingly have wrung
their necks, could he but have got within reach
of them; but he knew the hopelessness of attempt-
ing to chase these creatures through the branches,
for Sakai can move among the treetops with the
instinctive dexterity of monkeys. At length, there-
92 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
fore, very much out of temper, he abandoned the
idea of persuading his companions to rejoin him that
eight.
Meanwhile, much time had been wasted, and
already the waters of the Mtsong were running red
beneath the ruddy glow overhead that marked the
setting of the sun. The tocsin of the insect world
was ringing through the forest, and the birds' chorus
was slowly dying into silence. High above the top-
most branches of the trees, the moon, not yet at
the full, was showing pale and faint, though each
moment the power of its gentle light was gaining
strength. Pandak Aris glanced at these things, and
drew from them a number of conclusions. It was
too late for him to push on to the mouth of the
Misong, near which his camp had been pitched
that morning; for no Malay willingly threads the
jungle unaccompanied, and least of all after darkness
has fallen. It was too late, also, to erect a camp on
the salt lick, for after the shock which his nerves
had sustained from the attack of the rogue elephant,
he had no fancy for penetrating into the forest to
cut the materials for a hut, unless at least one of the
Sakai would go with him. Therefore, he decided to
camp on the bare earth at the foot of the monstei
tree near which he stood. It would be fairly light,
he told himself, until some three hours before the
dawn, and though his rice pot had been smashed,
and he would have to go supperless to bed, he would
light a big fire and sleep beside its protecting blaze.
But here an unexpected difficulty presented itself.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 93
The flint and steel, with which the fire was to be
kindled, was nowhere to be found. With the rest
of Pandak Aris's gear, it had been tossed into the
undergrowth by the rogue elephant, and the fading
light refused to reveal where it had fallen. Pandak
Aris searched with increasing anxiety and a feverish
diligence for half an hour, but without result, and
at the end of that time the darkness forced him to
abandon all hope of finding it. If he could have
lighted upon a seasoned piece of rattan, a really
dry log, and a tough stick, he could have ignited a
fire by friction; but rattan grows green in the jungle,
and no suitable log or piece of stick were at the
moment available.
Pandak Aris lay down upon the warm earth be-
tween the buttress roots of the big tree, and swore
softly, but with fluency, under his breath. He
cursed the Sakai, the mothers that bore them, and
all their male and female relatives to the fifth and
sixth generation, and said many biting things of
fate and destiny. Then he rolled over on his side»
and fell asleep. The roots of the tree, between
which he lay, had their junction with the trunk at a
height of some two or three feet above the surface
of the ground. Thence they sloped downward, at
a sharp angle, and meandered away through the
grass and the underwood, in all manner of knotty
curves and undulations. Pandak Aris, occupying
the space between two of these roots, was protected
by a low wall of very tough wood on either side of
him? .extending from his head to his hips, just beyond
94 IX THE VALLEY OP THE TELOM
the reach of his fingertips as he lay, but gradually
dwindling away to nothing.
The placid light of the moon flooded the jungle
with its soft radiance, lending a ghostly and mys-
terious air to this little clearing in the forest, and
peopling it with fantastic shadows. It shone upon
the face of the sleeping Malay, and upon the two
Sakai hunched up, with their heads between their
knees, snoring uneasily in the treetops. The ants
ran hither and thither over Pandak Aris's body, and
the jungle hummed with the myriad night noises of
nocturnal birds and insects, but the rhythm of this
gentle murmur did not disturb the sleepers.
Suddenly the two Sakai awoke with a start. They
^aid never a word, but they listened intently. Very
far away, across the Mfsong, a dry branch had
snapped, with a faint but crisp sound. The ear of an
European would hardly have detected the noise,
even if its owner had been listening for it, but it
had sufficed to arouse the sleeping Sakai into an alert
wakefulness. It was repeated again and again.
Now several twigs and branches seemed to snap
simultaneously; now there came a swishing sound, as
of green leaves ripped from their boughs by a giant's
hand; and then for a space silence would ensue.
These sounds grew gradually louder and more dis-
tinct, and for nearly an hour the Sakai sat listening
to them while Pandak Aris still slept. At the end
of that time a soft squelching noise was suddenly
heard, followed presently by a pop, like the drawing
of a big cork; and this was repeated many times, and
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 95
was succeeded by the splashing of water sluiced over
hot, rough hides. Even a white man would at once
have interpreted the meaning of this; but again the
Sakai would have outdistanced him, for their ears
had told them, not only that a herd of elephants,
which had been browsing through the forest, had
come down to water in the Mlsong, but also the
number of the beasts, and that one of them was a
calf of tender age.
The wind was blowing from the jungle across the
river to the trees where the men were camped, so the
elephants took their bath with much leisure, undis-
turbed by their proximity, splashing and wallowing
mightily in the shallows and in such pools as they
could find. Then they floundered singly ashore, and
later began working slowly round, under cover of the
jungle, so as to get below the wind before venturing
out upon the open space of the salt lick. The
Sakai, high up in the trees, could watch the surging
of the underwood, as the great beasts rolled through
it, but the footfall of the elephants made no neise,
and except when one or another of the animals
cracked a bough or stripped it of its leaves, the
progress of the herd was wonderfully unmarked
by sound. The wind of the Sakai passed over their
heads, though from time to time they held their
moistened trunk tips aloft, searching the air with
them, but they presently scented Pandak Aris. In-
stantly a perfect tumult of trumpetings and squeal-
ings broke the stillness of the night, and was fol-
lowed by a wild stampede. Pandak Aris^ awake at
96 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
last, listened to the crashing and tearing noise caused
by the herd flinging itself through the underwood,
and fancied that they were charging down upon him
full tilt. It is often well-nigh impossible in the
jungle to tell the direction in which big game are
moving when they are on the run, but this time the
elephants had been seized with panic and were in
desperate flight.
Over and over again, while the light of the moon
still held, game of all kinds made its way to a point
below the wind, whence to approach the salt lick,
and each time the tainted wind told them that men
were in possession. The savage blowing and snort-
ing of the wild kine, the grunting protests of a herd
of swine, the abrupt, startled bark of a stag, and
many other jungle sounds all were heard in turn, and
each was succeeded by the snapping of dry twigs or
the crashing of rent underwood, which told of a
hasty retreat.
At first Pandak Aris sought safety in the branches
of the tree, but very soon the agony of discomfort
caused by his uneasy seat and by the red ants which
swarmed over him, biting like dogs, drove him once
more to brave the perils of the earth.
At about 2:30 a. m. the moon sank to rest, and a
black darkness, such as is only to be found at night-
time in a Malayan forest, shut down upon the land.
Though Pandak Aris squatted or lay at the edge of
the open, he could not distinguish the branches
against the sky, nor see his own hand, when he
waggled it before his eyes; and the impenetrable
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 97
gloom that enveloped him wrought his already over-
strained nerves to a pitch of agonized intensity.
And now a fresh horror was lent to his situation,
for the larger game no longer troubled themselves to
approach the salt lick from below the wind. From
time to time Pandak Aris could hear some unknown
beast floundering through the waters of the Mlsong,
or treading softly upon the kneaded earth within a
few feet of him. He was devoured by sand-flies,
which he knew came to him from the beasts that now
were crowding the salt lick, and they fastened on his
bare skin, and nestled in his hair, driving him almost
frantic by the fierce itching which they occasioned.
Now and again some brute would pass so near to
him that Pandak Aris could hear the crisp sound of
its grazing, the noise it made in licking the salt, or
the rhythm of its heavy breath. Occasionally one
or other of them would wind him, as the sudden
striking of hoofs against the ground, or an angry
snorting or blowing, would make plain. But all
this time Pandak Aris could see nothing.
Many times he clambered into the tree, but his
weaiy bones could find no rest there, and the ferocity
of the red ants quickly drove him to earth again.
Shortly before the dawn Pandak Aris was startled
out of an uneasy, fitful doze by the sound of some
huge animal passing very close to him. He could
hear the sound of its movements more distinctly
than he had yet heard those of any of the other
beasts which had peopled his waking nightmare;
and as he still lay listening, there came suddenly a
98 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
mighty blowing, then a ferocious snort, and some
monster — he knew not what — charged him vic-
iously.
Pandak Aris was lying flat upon the ground, with
the sloping buttress roots of the tree on each side of
him, and the beast passed over him, doing him no
hurt, save that a portion of the fleshy part of his
thigh was pinched by a hoof that cut cleanly, for
Pandak Aris could feel the warm blood trickling down
his leg. He was not conscious of any pain, however,
and continued to lie flat upon the earth, too terrified
to move, and almost choked by the wild leaping of
his heart.
But his invisible assailant had not yet done with
him. The reek of a hot, pungent breath upon his
face, which well-nigh deprived him of his reason, told
him that some animal was standing over him. In-
stinctively, he felt for his parang — the long, keen-
edged knife from which the jungle-bred Malay is
never, for an instant, separated — drew it gently from
its clumsy wooden scabbard at his girdle, and grasped
the hilt firmly in his right hand.
Presently, to an accompaniment of much snort-
ing and blowing, some hard object was insinuated
beneath his body. Pandak Aris moved quickly, to
avoid this new horror, and clung convulsively to the
ground. Again and again, first on one side and then
on the other, this hard, prodding substance sought to
force itself below him. It bruised him terribly, driv-
ing the wind from his lungs, sending dull pangs
through his whole body at each fresh prod, and leav-
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 99
ing him faint and gasping. It seemed to him that it
was pounding him into a jelly.
How long this ordeal lasted Pandak Aris never
knew. For an eternity, it seemed to him, every
energy of his mind and body was concentrated in the
effort to prevent his enemy from securing a hold on
him, and he was dimly aware that he was partially
protected, and that his assailant was greatly ham-
pered by the buttress roots by which his body was
flanked. It was a desperate struggle, and Pandak
Aris felt as though it would never end, and the
situation was unchanged when day began slowly to
break.
Dawn comes rapidly in Malaya up to a certain
point, though the sun takes time to arise from under
its bedclothes of white mist. One moment all is
dark as the bottomless pit; another, and a new sense
is given to the watcher — the sense of form. A
minute or two more, and the ability to distinguish
colour comes to one with a shock of surprise — a dim
green manifests itself in the grass, the yellow of a
pebble, the brown of a faded leaf, the grayness of a
tree trunk, each is revealed as a new and unexpected
quality in a familiar object. So it was with Pandak
Aris. All in a moment he began to see; and what he
saw did not help to reassure him. He looked up at
a vast and overwhelming bulk standing over him — -
a thing of heavy, heaving shoulders and ferocious,
lowered head, still seen only in outline — and knew
his assailant for a selddang, the wild buffalo of eastern
Asia, which is the largest of all the beasts, save only
100 IX THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
the elephant, and is reputed to outmatch even him in
strength. Then, as the light increased, Pandak Aris
could see the black hairy hide, the gray belly, the
long fringe of shaggy hair at the monster's throat,
the smoking nostrils, wide open and of a dim red, and
the cruel little eyes glaring savagely at him.
Almost before he knew what he had done, Pandak
Aris had grasped his parang in both hands, and with
the strength of desperation had drawn its long., keen
edge across the brute's throat. A torrent of blood
gushed into the man's face, blinding him, and the
selddang, snorting loudly, stamped with its off fore-
foot. The heavy hoof alighted upon Pandak Aris's
left arm, crushing it to a jelly, but the wounded limb
telegraphed no signal of pain to the brain, which was
working too absorbedly on its own account to be able
to take heed of aught else.
Furious with pain and rage, the selddang tried again
and again to gore the man with its horns, but the
buttress roots baffled its efforts, and all the while the
parang worked by Pandak Aris's still uninjured hand
sawed relentlessly at the brute'? throat. Very soon
the bull began to feel the deadly sickness which comes
before death, and it fell heavily to its knees. It
floundered to its feet again, bruising Pandak Aris
once more as it did so. Then it reeled away, sinking
to its knees again and again, while the blood pumped
from the widening gap in its throat. Presently it
sank to the ground, and after repeated attempts to
rise, and tearing up the earth in its death-agony,
it lay still forever.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM 101
"Yonder lies much meat," grunted one of the
Sakai to his fellow. That was their only comment
upon the struggle, the end of which they had wit-
nessed.
Now that danger was past and the daylight come
again, they climbed down out of the treetops. They
bent over the insensible body of Pandak Aris, and
when they found that he was still alive, they ban-
daged his wounds, not unskilfully, with strips torn
from his sarong, and stanched the bleeding with the
pith which they ripped out of the heart of a trap
tree. Then they built a makeshift raft, and placed
the wounded man upon it, together with as much
selddang beef as it would carry. Wading down-
stream, one at the bow and one at the stern of the
raft, they reached the camp at the mouth of the
Mlsong, which they had quitted the preceding morn-
ing, and there they lighted a fire and indulged in a
surfeit of the good red meat.
Pandak Aris was as tough as are most jungle-bred
Malays, and he was blessed with a mighty constitu-
tion; wherefore, when he regained consciousness, he
also feasted upon the body of his enemy.
"I cut his throat, Tuan," he said to me in after
days. "I cut his throat, and I mind me that while
doing so, I murmured the word Bishmillah — in the
name of Allah. Therefore it was lawful for me to
eat of the meat, for the beast had been slaughtered
according to the rites of the Muhammadans."
For my part, I was less surprised at the ease with
which he had salved his conscience than at his
102 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TELOM
ability to touch meat at all in his then shattered
condition. However, the Sakai got him back to his
house, rafting him carefully downstream, and Minah,
his wife, who was a knowledgeable soul, tended him
devotedly, till nought save scars and a useless left arm
remained to tell of his encounter with the selddang.
This was the one notable incident that had served
to break the dead monotony of Pandak Aris's many
days of life; but perhaps he was right in thinking that
that single night on the salt lick of MIsong had held
enough excitement and adventure to last any reason-
able man for a lifetime.
THE INNER APARTMENT
IF YOU go up the Pahang River for a hundred
and eighty miles, you come to a spot where the
stream divides itself into two main branches,
and where the name "Pahang" dies an ignominious
death in a small ditch which debouches at their point
of junction. The river on your left is the Jelai, and
that on your right is the Tembeling. If you go up
the latter, you presently come to big flights of rapids,
a few gambir plantations, and a great many of the
very best ruffians in the Malay Peninsula, most of
whom, a quarter of a century ago, were rather par-
ticular friends of my own. If, on the other hand, you
follow the Jelai up its course, past Kuala Lipis, where
the river of that name falls into it on its right bank,
and on and on and on, you come at last t© the wild
Sakai country where, in my time, the Malayan
language was still unknown, and where the horizon
of the aboriginal tribes was formed by the impene-
trable jungle shutting down on the far side of a slen-
der stream, and was further narrowed by the limita-
tions of intellects that were unable to conceive an
arithmetical idea higher than the numeral three.
Before you run your nose into these uncleanly places,
however, you pass through a district spattered with
Malay habitations; and if you turn off up the Telang
X03
104 THE INNER APARTMENT
River, you find a little open country and some pros-
perous looking villages.
One day in July, 1893, a feast in honour of a wed-
ding was being celebrated in a village situated in
this valley. The scene was typical. The head and
skin of a water buffalo — a black one, of course, for
Malays will not eat the meat of one of the mottled,
pink brutes, which are the alternative breed — and
the fly -infested pools of blood which marked the spot
where it had been slaughtered and where its carcase
had been dismembered, were prominent features in
the foreground, lying displayed in a highly unap-
petizing manner in a little open space at the side
of one of the houses. In one part of the village two
men were posturing in one of the more or less aimless
sword dances which are so dear to all Malays, in
which the performers move with incredible slowness,
ward off the imaginary blows struck at them by
hypothetical adversaries, and approach one another
only at infrequent intervals and then with the most
meagre results. A ring of spectators squatted on the
grass around them, subjecting their movements to
the keenest criticism, and taking an apparently
inexhaustible interest in their unexciting display.
Drums and gongs, meanwhile, beat a rhythmical
time, that makes the heaviest heels itch to move more
quickly; and now and again the crowd of onlookers
whooped and yelled in shrill, far-sounding chorus.
This choric shout — the sorak, as the Malays call it-
is raised by them when engaged either in sport or in
battle; and partly from association, partly by reason
THE INNER APARTMENT 105
of the shrill lilt of it, I, for one, can never hear it
without a thrill. The Malays are very sensitive
to its infection of sympathetic excitement, and the
sound of it speedily awakes in them a sort of frenzy
of enthusiasm.
All the men present were dressed in many -coloured
silks and tartans, and were armed with daggers, as
befits warriors; but if you chanced to possess an eye
for such details, you would have noticed that gar-
ments and weapons alike were worn in a fashion
calculated to excite the ridicule of a down-country
Malay. The distinction between the town and
country mouse is as marked in the Malay Peninsula
as elsewhere, and it is rarely that the man from the
ulu — the upper reaches — can master all the intrica-
cies of language, habit, and custom which lend their
cachet of superiority to the men of the more polite
districts.
In a bdlai — a large building raised on piles, and
protected by a high-pitched thatch roof, but fur-
nished with low half walls only, an erection specially
constructed for the purposes of the feast — a number
of priests and pilgrims and persons of pious reputa-
tion were seated, gravely intoning the Kuran, but
pausing to chew betel quids and to gossip scanda-
lously at frequent intervals. Prominent among them
were many white-capped lebai — that class of ficti-
tious religious mendicants whose members are usu-
ally among the most well-to-do men of the village,
but who accept as their right, and without shame,
the charitable doles of the faithful in exchange for
106 THE INNER APARTMENT
the prayers which they are ready on all occasions
to recite. The wag of the district was also present
among them, for he is an inevitable feature of most
Malayan gatherings, and is generally one of the local
holy men. It is not always easy to understand how
he acquired his reputation for humour, but once
gained it has stood steady as a rock. His mere
presence is held to be provocative of laughter, and as
often as he opens his mouth the obsequious guffaw
goes up, no matter what the words that issue from
his lips. Most of his hearers, on the present occasion,
had listened to his threadbare old jests any time
these twenty years past, but the applause which
greeted them, as each in turn was trotted out, was
none the less hearty or genuine on that account.
Among Malays novelty and surprise are not held to
be essential elements of humour. They will ask for
the same story, or laboriously angle for the same
witticism, time after time; prefer that it should be
told in the same way, and expressed as nearly as
possible in the same words at each repetition; and
they will invariably laugh with equal zest and in pre-
cisely the same place, in spite of the hoary antiquity
of the thing, after the manner of a child. Similarly ;
it is this tolerance of, nay, delight in, reiteration that
impels a Malayan raja, when civilized, to decorate
his sitting-room walls with half a dozen replicas of
the same unattractive photograph.
Meanwhile the womenfolk had come from far and
near to help in the preparation of the feast, and the
men of the family having previously done the heavy
THE INNER APARTMENT 107
work of carrying the water, hewing the firewood,
jointing the meat, and grinding the curry stuff, the
female population was busily engaged in the back
premises of the house cooking as only Malay women
can cook, keeping up all the time a constant shrill
babbling, varied by an occasional scream of direction
from some experienced hag. The younger and pret-
tier girls had carried their work to the doorways, pre-
tending that more light was necessary than could be
found in the dark interior of the house, and seated
there with a mighty affectation of modesty, they were
engaging at long range in a spirited interchange of
"eyeplay" — as the Malays call it — with the young-
sters of the village. Much havoc, no doubt, was thus
wrought in susceptible male hearts, but most of the
sufferers knew that maidens and matrons alike would
be prepared, as occasion offered, to heal with a limit-
less generosity the wounds they so wantonly inflicted.
That is one of the things that make life so blithe a
business for the average young Malay. He is always
in love with some woman or another, and knows that
its consummation is merely a question of opportunity
in the provision of which he shows equal energy and
ingenuity.
The bride, of course, having been dressed in smart
new silks of delicious tints, and loaded with gold
ornaments, borrowed for the occasion from their
possessors from many miles around, was left in
solitude, seated on the geta — or raised sleeping
platform — in the dimly lighted inner apartment,
there to await the ordeal known to Malay cruelty as
108 THE INNER APARTMENT
sanding. The ceremony that bears this name is
one at which the bride and bridegroom are brought
together for the first time. They are officially sup-
posed never to have seen one another before, though
few self-respecting Malays allow their fiancSes to be
finally selected for them until they have had more
than one good look at them. To effect this, a Malay,
accompanied usually by one or two trusty friends,
creeps one evening under the raised floor of the lady's
house, and peeps at her through the bamboo laths or
through the chinks of the wattled walls. At the
sanding, however, stealth is no longer necessary.
The bride and bridegroom are led forth by their
respective relatives, and are placed side by side upon
the dais prepared for the purpose, where they remain
seated for hours, while the assembled male guests
eat a hearty meal, and thereafter chant interminable
verses from the Kuran. During the whole of this
time they must sit motionless, no matter how pain-
fully their cramped legs may ache and throb, and
their eyes must be downcast and fixed upon their
hands which, scarlet with henna, lie motionless one
on each knee. Malays who have endured the sand'
ing assure me that the experience is trying in the
extreme, and that the publicity of it is highly em-
barrassing, the more so since it is a point of honour
for the man to try to catch an occasional glimpse
of his bride out of the corner of his eyes, without
turning his head a hair's breadth, and without being
detected by the onlookers in the appalling solecism
of moving so much as an eyelash.
THE INNER APARTMENT 10ft
The bridegroom is conducted to the house of his
fiancee there to sit in state, by a band of his male
relations and friends, some of whom sing shrill verses
from the Kuran, while others rush madly ahead,
charging, retreating, capering, dancing, yelling, and
hooting, brandishing naked weapons, and engaging
in a highly realistic sham-fight with the bride's
relatives and their friends, who rush out of her com-
pound to meet them, fling themselves into the heart
of the excited mob, and do not suffer themselves to
be routed until they have made a fine show of resis-
tance.
Traditional customs, such as this, are among the
most illuminating of archaeological relics. They are
perpetuated to-day for old sake's sake, laughingly,
as a concession to the conventions, by people who
never stay to question their origin, or to spare a
thought to the forgotten social conditions or religious
observances to the nature of which they testify. ""Yet
each one of them is a fragmentary survival that
whispers, to those who care to listen, of strange and
ancient things. Thus the right claimed in England
to kiss any girl who at Christmas is caught beneath
the mistletoe, is the innocent shadow thrown across
the present by the wild, indiscriminate orgies which
were wont to be held under the oak trees in Druidical
Britain, in celebration of the winter solstice. The
practice of "blooding" a boy who, for the first time,
is in at the death of a fox, points to the fact that of
old, in merry England, the anointing of the young
and untried warriors with the blood of the slain was a
110 THE INNER APARTMENT
part of the established military ritual. Similarly,
the Malayan custom which compels a youth, who has
killed his first man, to lick the blood from his kris
blade, or it may be even to swallow a tiny piece of
flesh cut from the neighbourhood of his victim's
heart, indicates that cannibalism was once an ap-
proved feature of war as waged by the Malays.
In the same way, the sham fight which, among these
people, marks the arrival of a bridegroom, bears wit-
ness to a time when marriage by capture was at once
a stern reality, and the only honourable way in
which a bride might be won. The antagonism of the
male members of a family to the man who desires
to oossess himself of their daughter or sister is a
strong, natural instinct, and it is easy to understand
that, long after forcible abduction had ceased to be a
reality, self-respect demanded that some show of
resistance should be offered before the detested in-
truder was suffered to lead his wife away. In some
of the wilder and more remote parts of the Malay
Peninsula the aboriginal Sakai still place a girl on
an ant-hill, and ring her about by a mob of her male
relations, who do not allow her suitor to approach her
until his head has been broken in several places.
Who can doubt that the adoption of a similar practice
in England would find much favour with many school-
boy brothers, if it could be made a customary feature
of their sisters' marriage ceremonies?
The bride, as has been said, had been left in the
inner apartment, there to await her call to the dais;
and the preparations were in full swing — the men
THE INNER APARTMENT 111
and women enjoying themselves each after their
own fashion, the former idling while the latter worked
— when suddenly a dull thud, as of some falling body,
was heard within the house. The women rushed in
to enquire its cause, and found the little bride lying
on the floor with a ghastly gash in her throat, a small
clasp-knife on the mat by her side, and all her pretty
garments drenched in her own blood. They lifted
her up, and strove to stanch the bleeding; and as
they fought to stay the life that was ebbing from
her, the drone of the priests and the beat of the drums
came to their ears from the men who were making
merry without. Then suddenly the news of what
had occurred reached the assembled guests, and the
music died away and was replaced by a babble of ex-
cited voices.
The father of the girl hurried in, thrusting his way
through the curious crowds which already blocked
the narrow doorways, and holding his daughter in
his arms, he entreated her to tell him who had done
this thing.
"It is mine own handiwork," she said.
"But wherefore, child of mine," cried her mother,
"but wherefore do you desire to kill yourself?"
"I gazed upon my likeness in the mirror," the girl
sobbed out, speaking painfully and with difficulty,
"and looking, I beheld that I was very hideous, so
that it was not fitting that I should any more live.
Therefore I did it."
And until she died, about an hour later, this was
the only explanation that she would give.
112 THE INNER APARTMENT
The matter was related to me by the great up-
country chief, the Dato' Maharaja Perba of Jelai,
who said that he had never heard of any parallel case.
I warned him solemnly not to let the thing become a
precedent; for there are many ill-favoured women in
his district, and if they had all followed the girl's
example, the population would have suffered con-
siderable depletion. Later, however, when I learned
the real reasons which had led to the suicide, I was
sorry that I had ever jested about it, for the girl's
was a sad little story.
Some months earlier a Pekan Malay had come up
the Jelai on a trading expedition, and had cast his
eyes upon the girl. To her he was all that the people
of the surrounding villages were not. He walked
with a swagger, wore his weapons and his clothes
with an air that none save a Malay who has been
bred in the neighbourhood of a raja's court knows
how to assume, and was full of brave tales, to which
the elders of the village could only listen with wonder
and respect. Just as Lancelot enthralled Elaine, so
did this man — a figure no less wonderful and splen-
did to this poor little upcountry maid — come into
her life, revolutionizing her ideas and her ideals, and
filling her with hopes and with desires of which
hitherto she had never dreamed. Against so prac-
tised and experienced a wooer what could her simple
arts avail? Snatching at a moment's happiness and
reckless of the future, she gave herself to him, hoping,
thereby, it may be, to hold him in silken bonds
through which he might not break; but what was
THE INNER APARTMENT 113
all her life to her was to him no more than a passing
incident. One day she learned that he had returned
downstream. The idea of following him probably
never even occurred to her, for Malayan women have
been robbed by circumstance of any great power of
initiative; but, like others before her, she thought that
the sun had fallen from heaven because her rush-light
had gone out.
Her parents, who knew nothing of this intrigue,
calmly set about making the arrangements for her
marriage — a matter concerning which she, of course,
would be the last person in the world to be consulted.
She must have watched these preparations with
speechless agony, knowing that the day fixed for her
wedding must be that upon which her life would
end; for she had resolved to die faithful to her false
lover, though it was not until the very last that she
summoned up sufficient courage to kill herself. That
she ever brought herself to the pitch of committing
suicide is very marvellous, for that act is not only
opposed to all natural instincts, but is specially re-
pugnant to the spirit of her race. The male Malay,
driven to desperation, runs amok; the Malay woman
endures and submits. But this poor child of four-
teen, who so early had learned the raptures and the
tragedies of a great love, must have been possessed
of extraordinary force of character. Secretly and
in silence she resolved; fearlessly she carried her
resolve into execution; and dying concealed the love
affair which had wrought her undoing, and the fact
of her approaching maternity. And perhaps there
114 THE INNER APARTMENT
lurked some elements of truth in the only explanation
which she gave with her dying breath. She had
looked into the mirror and it had condemned her, for
though she had won love, her love had abandoned
her.
THE GHOUL
WE HAD been sitting late upon the veranda of
my bungalow at Kuala Llpis, which, from
the top of a low hill covered with coarse
grass, overlooked the long, narrow reach formed by
the combined waters of the Lipis and the Jelai.
The moon had risen some hours earlier, and the river
ran white between the black masses of forest, which
seemed to shut it in on all sides, giving to it the
appearance of an isolated tarn. The roughly cleared
compound, with the tennis ground which had never
got beyond the stage of being dug over and weeded,
and the rank growths beyond the bamboo fence,
were flooded by the soft light, every tattered detail
of their ugliness standing revealed as relentlessly as
though it were noon. The night was very still, but
the heavy, scented air was cool after the fierce heat
of the day.
I had been holding forth to the handful of men who
had been dining with me on the subject of Malay
superstitions, while they manfully stifled their yawns.
When a man has a working knowledge of anything
which is not commonly known to his neighbours, he is
apt to presuppose their interest in it when a chance
to descant upon it occurs, and in those days it was
only at long intervals that I had an opportunity of
115
116 THE GHOUL
forgathering with other white men. Therefore, 1
had made the most of it, and looking back, I fear that
I had occupied the rostrum during the greater part
of that evening. I had told my audience of the pen-
anggal — the "Undone One" — that horrible wraith
of a woman who has died in childbirth, who comes
to torment and prey upon small children in the guise
of a ghastly face and bust, with a comet's tail of
blood-stained entrails flying in her wake; of the
mdti-dnalc, the weird little white animal which makes
beast noises round the graves of children, and is
supposed to have absorbed their souls; and of the
polong, or familiar spirits, which men bind to their
service by raising them up from the corpses of babies
that have been stillborn, the tips of whose tongues
they bite off and swallow after the infant has been
brought to life by magic agencies. It was at this
point that young Middleton began to pluck up his
ears; and I, finding that one of my hearers was at
last showing signs of being interested, launched out
with renewed vigour, until my sorely tried compan-
ions, one by one, went off to bed, each to his own
quarters.
Middleton was staying with me at the time, and he
and I sat for a while in silence, after the others had
gone, looking at the moonlight on the river. Middle-
ton was the first to speak.
"That was a curious myth you were telling us
about the polong," he said. "There is an incident
connected with it which I have never spoken of
before, and have always sworn that I would keep to
THE GHOUL 117
myself; but I have a good mind to tell you about it,
because you are the only man I know who will not
write me down a liar if I do."
"That's all right. Fire away," I said.
"Well," said Middleton. "It was like this. You
remember Juggins, of course? He was a naturalist,
you know, dead nuts upon becoming an F. R. S.
and all that sort of thing, and he came to stay with
me during the close season* last year. He was hunt-
ing for bugs and orchids and things, and spoke of
himself as an anthropologist and a botanist and a
zoologist, and Heaven knows what besides; and he
used to fill his bedroom with all sorts of creeping,
crawling things, kept in very indifferent custody,
and my veranda with all kinds of trash and rotting
green trade that he brought in from the jungle. He
stopped with me for about ten days, and when he
heard that duty was taking me upriver into the
Sakai country, he asked me to let him come, too. I
was rather bored, for the tribesmen are mighty shy
of strangers and were only just getting used to me;
but he was awfully keen, and a decent beggar enough,
in spite of his dirty ways, so I couldn't very well say
'No.' When we had poled upstream for about a
week, and had got well up into the Sakai country, we
had to leave our boats behind at the foot of the big
rapids, and leg it for the rest of the time. It was
very rough going, wading up and down streams when
one wasn't clambering up a hillside or sliding down
* "Close season," i. e. from the beginning of November to the end of February,
during which time the rivers on the eastern seaboard of the Malay Peninsula used to
be closed to traffic on account of the North East Monsoon,
118 THE GHOUL
the opposite slope — you know the sort of thing —
and the leeches were worse than I have ever seen
them — thousands of them, swarming up your back,
and .fastening in clusters on to your neck, even when
you had defeated those which made a frontal attack.
I had not enough men with me to do more than hump
the camp-kit and a few clothes, so we had to live on
the country, which doesn't yield much up among the
Sakai except yams and tapioca roots and a little
Indian corn, and soft stuff of that sort. It was all
new to Juggins, and gave him fits; but he stuck to it
like a man.
"Well, one evening when the night was shutting
down pretty fast and rain was beginning to fall,
Juggins and I struck a fairly large Sakai camp in the
middle of a clearing. As soon as we came out of the
jungle, and began tightroping along the felled timber,
the Sakai sighted us and bolted for covert en masse.
By the time we reached the huts it was pelting in
earnest, and as my men were pretty well fagged out,
I decided to spend the night in the camp, and not to
make them put up temporary shelters for us. Sakai
huts are uncleanly places at best, and any port has
to do in a storm.
"We went into the largest of the hovels, and there
we found a woman lying by the side of her dead
child. She had apparently felt too sick to bolt with
the rest of her tribe. The kid was as stiff as Herod,
and had not been born many hours, I should say.
The mother seemed pretty bad, and I went to her,
thinking I might be able to do something for her;
THE GHOUL 119
but she did not seem to see it, and bit and snarled at
me like a wounded animal, clutching at the dead
child the while, as though she feared I should take
it from her. I therefore left her alone; and Juggins
and I took up our quarters in a smaller hut nearby,
which was fairly new and not so filthy dirty as most
Sakai lairs.
"Presently, when the beggars who had run away
found out that I was the intruder, they began to come
back again. You know their way. First a couple
of men came and peeped at us, and vanished as
soon as they saw they were observed. Then they
came a trifle nearer, bobbed up suddenly, and peeped
at us again. I called to them in Se-noi*, which
always reassures them, and when they at last sum-
moned up courage to approach, gave them each a
handful of tobacco. Then they went back into the
jungle and fetched the others, and very soon the place
was crawling with Sakai of both sexes and all ages.
"We got a meal of sorts, and settled down for the
night las best we could; but it wasn't a restful busi-
ness. Juggins swore with eloquence at the uneven
flooring, made of very roughly trimmed boughs,
which is an infernally uncomfortable thing to lie
down upon, and makes one's bones ache as though
they were coming out at the joints, and the Sakai
are abominably restless bedfellows as you know. I
*SS-noi— one of the two main branches, into whjch the Sakai are divided. The
other is called Ti-mi-au by the SS-noi. All the Sakai dialects are variants of the
languages spoken by these two principal tribes, which, though they have many
words in common, differ from one another almost as much as, say, Italian from
Spanish.
120 THE GHOUL
suppose one ought to realize that they have as yet
only partially emerged from the animal, and that,
like the beasts, they are still naturally nocturnal.
Anyway, they never sleep for long at a stretch,
though from time to time they snuggle down and
snore among the piles of warm wood ashes round the
central fireplace, and whenever you wake, you will
always see half a dozen of them squatting near the
blazing logs, half hidden by the smoke, and jabbering
like monkeys. It is a marvel to me what they find
to yarn about: food, or. rather the patent impossi-
bility of ever getting enough to eat, and the stony-
heartedness of Providence and of the neighbouring
Malays must furnish the principal topics, I should
fancy, with an occasional respectful mention of
beasts of prey and forest demons. That night they
were more than ordinarily restless. The dead baby
was enough to make them uneasy, and besides,
they had got wet while hiding in the jungle after our
arrival, and that always sets the skin disease, with
which all Sakai are smothered, itching like mad.
Whenever I woke I could hear their nails going on
their dirty hides; but I had had a hard day and was
used to my hosts' little ways, so I contrived to sleep
fairly sound. Juggins told me next morning that
he had had une nuit blanche, and he nearly caused
another stampede among the Sakai by trying to get a
specimen of the fungus or bacillus, or whatever it is,
that occasions the skin disease. I do not know
whether he succeeded. For my own part, I think
it is probably due to chronic anaemia — the poor
THE GHOUL 121
devils nave never had more than a very occasional
full meal for hundreds of generations. I have seen
little brats, hardly able to stand, white with it, the
skin peeling off in flakes, and I used to frighten Jug-
gins out of his senses by telling him he had contracted
it when his nose was flayed by the sun.
"Next morning I woke just in time to see the still-
born baby put into a hole in the ground. They
fitted its body into a piece of bark, and stuck it in
the grave they had dug for it at the edge of the clear-
ing. They buried a flint and steel and a woodknife
and some food, and a few other things with it,
though no living baby could have had any use for
most of them, let alone a dead one. Then the old
medicine man of the tribe recited the ritual over the
grave. I took the trouble to translate it once. It
goes something like this :
"'0 Thou, who hast gone forth from among those
who dwell upon the surface of the earth, and hast
taken for thy dwelling-place the land which is beneath
the earth, flint and steel have we given thee to kindle
thy fire, raiment to clothe thy nakedness, food to
fill thy belly, and a woodknife to clear thy path.
Go, then, and make unto thyself friends among those
who dwell beneath the earth, and come back no
more to trouble or molest those who dwell upon the
surface of the earth.'
"It was short and to the point; and then they
trampled down the soil, while the mother, who had
got upon her feet by now, whimpered about the
place like a cat that had lost its kittens. A mangy,
122 THE GHOUL
half-starved dog came and smelt hungrily about the
grave, until it was sent howling away by kicks from
every human animal that could reach it; and a poor
little brat, who chanced to set up a piping song a few
minutes later, was kicked and cuffed and knocked
about by all who could conveniently get at him with
foot, hand, or missile. Abstenance from song and
dance for a period of nine days is the Sakai way of
mourning the dead, and any breach of this is held to
give great offence to the spirit of the departed and
to bring bad luck upon the tribe. It was considered
necessary, therefore, to give the urchin wbo had
done the wrong a fairly bad time of it in order to
propitiate the implacable dead baby.
" Next the Sakai set to work to pack all their house-
hold goods — not a very laborious business; and in
about half an hour the last of the laden women, who
was carrying so many cooking-pots, and babies and
rattan bags and carved bamboo-boxes and things,
that she looked like the outside of a gipsy's cart at
home, had filed out of the clearing and disappeared
in the forest. The Sakai always shift camp, like
that, when a death occurs, because they think the
ghost of the dead haunts the place where the body
died. When an epidemic breaks out among them
they are so busy changing quarters, building new
huts, and planting fresh catch crops that they have
no time to procure proper food, and half those who
are not used up by the disease die of semi-starvation.
They are a queer lot.
f 'Well, Juggins and I were left alone, but my men
THE GHOUL 123
needed a rest, so I decided to trek no farther that
day, and Juggins and I spent our time trying to get
a shot at a selddang*, but though we came upon great
ploughed-up runs, which the herds had made going
down to water, we saw neither hoof nor horn, and
returned at night to the deserted Sakai camp, two
of my Malays fairly staggering under the piles of
rubbish which Juggins called his botanical specimens.
The men we had left behind had contrived to catch
some fish, and with that and yams we got a pretty
decent meal, and I was lying on my mat reading by
the aid of a ddmar torch, and thinking how lucky
it was that the Sakai had cleared out, when suddenly
old Juggins sat up, with his eyes fairly snapping at
me through his gig-lamps in his excitement.
"T say,' he said. 'I must have that baby. It
would make a unique and invaluable ethnological
specimen.'
"'Rot,' I said. 'Go to sleep, old man. I want
to read.'
'"No, but I'm serious,' said Juggins. 'You do
not realize the unprecedented character of the oppor-
tunity. The Sakai have gone away, so their sus-
ceptibilities would not be outraged. The potential
gain to science is immense — simply immense. It
would be criminal to neglect such a chance. I regard
the thing in the light of a duty which I owe to human
knowledge. I tell you straight, I mean to have that
baby whether you like it or not, and that is flat.'
'Seladang The gaur or wild buffalo. It is the same as the Indian variety, but in
the Malay Peninsula attains to a greater size than in any other part of Asia.
124 THE GHOUL
"Juggins was forever talking about human knowl-
edge, as though he and it were partners in a business
firm.
'"It is not only the Sakai one has to consider,' I
said. 'My Malays are sensitive about body snatch-
ing, too. One has to think about the effect upon
them.'
"'I can't help that,' said Juggins resolutely. 'I
am going out to dig it up now.'
"He had already put his boots on, and was sorting
out his botanical tools in search of a trowel. I saw
that there was no holding him.
"'Juggins,' I said sharply. 'Sit down. You are
a lunatic, of course, but I was another when I allowed
you to come up here with me, knowing as I did that
you are the particular species of crank you are.
However, I've done you as well as circumstances
permitted, and as a mere matter of gratitude and
decency, I think you might do what I wish.'
'"I am sorry,' said Juggins stiffly. 'I am ex-
tremely sorry not to be able to oblige you. My duty
as a man of science, however, compels me to avail
myself of this god-sent opportunity of enlarging
our ethnological knowledge of a little-known
people.'
"'I thought you did not believe in God,' I said
sourly; for Juggins added a militant agnosticism to
his other attractive qualities.
"'I believe in my duty to human knowledge,' he
replied sententiously. 'And if you will not help me
to perform it, I must discharge it unaided.'
THE GHOUL 125
"He had found his trowel, and again rose to his
feet.
Don't be an ass, Juggins,' I said. 'Listen to me.
I have forgotten more about the people and the
country here than you will ever learn. If you go
and dig up that dead baby, and my Malays see you,
there will be the devil to pay. They do not hold
with exhumed corpses, and have no liking for or
sympathy with people who go fooling about with
such things. They have not yet been educated up
to the pitch of interest in the secrets of science which
has made of you a potential criminal, and if they
could understand our talk, they would be convinced
that you needed the kid's body for some devilry
or witchcraft business, and ten to one they would
clear out and leave us in the lurch. Then who would
carry your precious botanical specimens back to the
boats for you, and just think how the loss of them
would knock the bottom out of human knowledge
for good and all.'
"'The skeleton of the child is more valuable still,'
replied Juggins. 'It is well that you should under-
stand that in this matter — which for me is a question
of my duty — I am not to be moved from my purpose
cither by arguments or threats.'
"He was as obstinate as a mule, and I was pretty
sick with him; but I saw that if I left him to himself
he would do the thing so clumsily that my fellows
would get wind of it, and if that happened I was
afraid that they might desert us. The tracks in
that Sakai country are abominably confusing, and
126 THE GHOUL
quite apart from the fear of losing all our camp-kit,
.vhich we could not hump for ourselves, I was by no
means certain that I could find my own way back
to civilization unaided. Making a virtue of ne-
cessity, therefore, I decided that I would let Juggins
have his beastly specimen, provided that he would
consent to be guided entirely by me in all details
connected with the exhumation.
" ' You are a rotter of the first water,' I said frankly.
'And if I ever get you back to my station, I'll have
nothing more to do with you as long as I live. All
the same, I am to blame for having brought you up
here, and I suppose I must see you through.'
'"You're a brick,' said Juggins, quite unr^oved
by my insults. 'Come on.'
"'Wait,' I replied repressively. 'This thing can-
not be done until my people are all asleep. Lie
down on your mat and keep quiet. When it is safe,
I'll give you the word.'
"Juggins groaned, and tried to persuade me to let
him go at once; but I swore that nothing would in-
duce me to move before midnight, and with that I
rolled over on my side and lay reading and smoking,
while Juggins fumed and fretted as he watched the
slow hands of his watch creeping round the dial.
"I always take books with me into the jungle, and
the more completely incongruous they are to my
immediate surroundings the more refreshing I find
them. That evening, I remember, I happened to be
rereading Miss Florence Montgomery's "Misunder-
stood" with the tears running down my nose; and
THE GHOUL 127
by the time my Malays were all asleep, this incidental
wallowing in sentimentality had made me more sick
with Juggins and his disgusting project than ever.
"I never felt so like a criminal as I did that night,
as Juggins and I gingerly picked our way out of the
hut across the prostrate forms of my sleeping Malays;
nor had I realized before what a difficult job it is to
walk without noise on an openwork flooring of un-
even boughs. We got out of the place and down the
crazy stair-ladder at last, without waking any of my
fellows, and we then began to creep along the edge
of the jungle that hedged the clearing about. Why
did we think it necessary to creep? I don't know.
Partly we did not want to be seen by the Malays, if
any of them happened to wake; but besides that, the
long wait and the uncanny sort of work we were after
had set our nerves going a bit, I expect.
"The night was as still as most nights are in real,
pukka jungle. That is to say, that it was as full
of noises — little, quiet, half-heard beast and tree
noises — as an egg is full of meat; and every occasional
louder sound made me jump almost out of my skin.
There was not a breath astir in the clearing, but miles
up above our heads the clouds were racing across
the moon, which looked as though it were scudding
through them in the opposite direction at a tremen-
dous rate, like a great white fire balloon. It was
pitch dark along the edge of the clearing, for the
jungle threw a heavy shadow; and Juggins kept
knocking those great clumsy feet of his against the
stumps, and swearing softly under his breath.
128 THE GHOUL
"Just as we were getting near the child's grave
the clouds obscuring the moon became a trifle
thinner, and the slightly increased light showed me
something that caused me to clutch Juggins by the
arm.
'"Hold hard!' I whispered, squatting down in-
stinctively in the shadow, and dragging him after me.
'What's that on the grave?'
"Juggins hauled out his six-shooter with a tug,
and looking at his face, I saw that he was as pale as
death and more than a little shaky. He was pressing
up against me, too, as he squatted, a bit closer, I
fancied, than he would have thought necessary at
any other time, and it seemed to me that he was
trembling. I whispered to him, telling him not to
shoot; and we sat there for nearly a minute, I should
think, peering through the uncertain light, and trying
to make out what the creature might be which was
crouching above the grave and making a strange
scratching noise.
"Then the moon came out suddenly into a patch
of open sky, and we could see clearly at last, and
what it revealed did not make me, for one, feel any
better. The thing we had been looking at was kneel-
ing on the grave, facing us. It, or rather she, was
an old, old Sakai hag. She was stark naked, and
in the brilliant light of the moon I could see her long,
pendulous breasts swaying about like an ox's dew-
lap, and the creases and wrinkles with which her
withered hide was criss-crossed, and the discoloured
patches of foul skin disease. Her hair hung about
THE GHOUL 129
her face in great matted locks, falling forward as she
bent above the grave, and her eyes glinted through
the tangle like those of some unclean and shaggy
animal. Her long fingers, which had nails like
claws, were tearing at the dirt of the grave, and her
body was drenched with sweat, so that it glistened
in the moonlight.
"'It looks as though some one else wanted your
precious baby for a specimen, Juggins,' I whispered;
and a spirit of emulation set him floundering on to
his feet, till I pulled him back. 'Keep still, man,'
I added. 'Let us see what the old hag is up to.
It isn't the brat's mother, is it?'
"'No,' panted Juggins. 'This is a much older
woman. Great God! What a ghoul it is ! '
"Then we were silent again. Where we squatted
we were hidden from the hag by a few tufts of rank
lalang grass, and the shadow of the jungle also cov-
ered us. Even if we had been in the open, however,
I question whether the old woman would have seen
us, she was so eagerly intent upon her work. For full
five minutes, as near as I can guess, we squatted
there watching her scrape and tear and scratch at
the earth of the grave, with a sort of frenzy of energy;
and all the while her lips kept going like a shivering
man's teeth, though no sound that I could hear came
from them.
"At length she got down to the corpse, and I saw
her lift the bark wrapper out of the grave, and draw
the baby's body from it. Then she sat back upon
her heels, threw up her head, just like a dog, and
130 THE GHOUL
bayed at the moon. She did this three times, and
I do not know what there was about those long-drawn
howls that jangled up one's nerves, but each time
the sound became more insistent and intolerable,
and as I listened, my hair fairly lifted. Then, very
carefully, she laid the child's body down in a position
that seemed to have some connection with the points
of the compass, for she took a long time, and con-
sulted the moon and the shadows repeatedly before
she was satisfied with the orientation of the thing's
head and feet.
" Then she got up, and began very slowly to dance
round and round the grave. It was not a reassuring
sight, out there in the awful loneliness of the night,
miles away from every one and everything, to watch
that abominable old beldam capering uncleanly
in the moonlight, while those restless lips of hers
called noiselessly upon all the devils in hell, with
words that we could not hear. Juggins pressed up
against me harder than ever, and his hand on my arm
gripped tighter and tighter. He was shaking like a
leaf, and I do not fancy that I was much steadier.
It does not sound very terrible, as I tell it to you here
in comparatively civilized surroundings; but at the
time, the sight of that obscure figure dancing silently
in the moonlight with its ungainly shadow scared me
badly.
"She capered like that for some minutes, setting
to the dead baby as though she were inviting it to
join her, and the intent purposefulness of her made
me feel sick. If anybody had told me that morning
THE GHOUL 131
that I was capable of being frightened out of my
wits by an old woman, I should have laughed; but
I saw nothing outlandish in the idea while that gro-
tesque dancing lasted.
"Her movements, which had been very slow at
first, became gradually faster and faster, till every
atom of her was in violent motion, and her body
and limbs were swaying this way and that, like the
boughs of a tree in a tornado. Then, all of a sudden,
she collapsed on the ground, with her back toward
us, and seized the baby's body. She seemed to nurse
it, as a mother might nurse her child; and as she
swayed from- side to side, I could see first the curve
of the creature's head, resting on her thin left arm,
and then its feet near the crook of her right elbow.
And now she was crooning to it in a cracked false+to
chant that might have been a lullaby or perhaps
some incantation.
"She rocked the child slowly at first, but very
rapidly the pace quickened, until her body was
swaying to and fro from the hips, and from side to
side, at such a rate that, to me, she looked as though
she were falling all ways at once. And simultane-
ously her shrill chanting became faster and faster,
and every instant more nerve-sawing.
"Next she suddenly changed the motion. She
gripped the thing she was nursing by its arms, and
began to dance it up and down, still moving with
incredible agility, and crooning more damnably than
ever. I could see the small, puckered face of the
thing above her head every time she danced it up,
132 THE GHOUL
and then, as she brought it down again, I lost sight
of it for a second, until she danced it up once more.
I kept my eyes fixed upon the thing's face every time
it came into view, and I swear it was not an optical
illusion — it began to be alive. Its eyes were open
and moving, and its mouth was working, like that of
a child which tries to laugh but is too young to do it
properly. Its face ceased to be like that of a new-
born baby at all. It was distorted by a horrible
animation. It was the most unearthly sight.
"Juggins saw it, too, for I could hear him drawing
his breath harder and shorter than a healthy man
should.
"Then, all in a moment, the hag did something.
I did not see clearly precisely what it was; but it
looked to me as though she bent forward and kissed
it; and at that very instant a cry went up like the
wail of a lost soul. It may have been something in
the jungle, but I know my Malayan forests pretty
thoroughly, and I have never heard any cry like it
before nor since. The next thing we knew was that
the old hag had thrown the body back into the grave,
and was dumping down the earth and jumping on it,
while that strange cry grew fainter and fainter. It
all happened so quickly that I had not had time to
think or move before I was startled back into full
consciousness by the sharp crack of Juggins's revolver
fired close to my ear.
'"She's burying it alive!' he cried.
"It was a queer thing for a man to say, who had
seen the child lying stark and dead more than thirty
THE GHOUL ' 133
hours earlier; but the same thought was in my mind,
too, as we both started forward at a run. The hag
had vanished into the jungle as silently as a shadow.
Juggins had missed her, of course. He was always
a rotten bad shot. However, we had no thought
for her. We just flung ourselves upon the grave,
and dug at the earth with our hands, until the baby
lay in my arms. It was cold and stiff, and putre-
faction had already begun its work. I forced open its
mouth, and saw something that I had expected.
The tip of its tongue was missing. It looked as
though it had been bitten off by a set of shocking
bad teeth, for the edge left behind was like a saw.
'"The thing's quite dead,' I said to Juggins.
'"But it cried — it cried!" whimpered Juggins.
'I can hear it now. To think that we let that horri-
ble creature murder it.'
"He sat down with his head in his hands. He was
utterly unmanned.
"Now that the fright was over, I was beginning to
be quite brave again. It is a way I have.
"'Rot,' I said. 'The thing's been dead for hours,
and anyway, here's your precious specimen if you
want it.'
"I had put it down, and now pointed at it from a
distance. Its proximity was not pleasant. Juggins,
however, only shuddered.
"'Bury it, in Heaven's name,' he said, his voice
broken by sobs. 'I would not have it for the world.
Besides, it was alive. I saw and heard it.'
"Well, I put it back in its grave, and next day we
134 THE GHOUL
left the Sakai country. Juggins had a whacking
dose of fever, and anyway we had had about enough
of the Sakai and of all their engaging habits to last
us for a bit.
"We swore one another to secrecy as Juggins,
when he got his nerve back, said that the accuracy of
our observations was not susceptible of scientific
proof, which, I understand, was the rock his religion
had gone to pieces on; and I did not fancy being told
that I was drunk or that I was lying. You, however,
know something of the uncanny things of the East,
so to-night I have broken our vow. Now I'm going
to turn in. Don't give me away."
Young Middleton died of fever and dysentery,
somewhere upcountry, a year or two later. His name
was not Middleton, of course; so I am not really
"giving him away," as he called it, even now. As
for his companion, though when I last heard of
him he was still alive and a shining light in the scien-
tific world, I have named him Juggins, and as the
family is a large one, he will run no great risk of being
identified.
A MALAYAN PRISON
I HAVE said that the Malays* taken in bulk,
have no bowels. The story I am about to tell
illustrates the truth of this assertion rather
forcibly. The particular incident related happened
on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula in the year
of grace 1895. The native gaol, of which mention
is made, was visited by me a month or two before
I wrote the account of it; and it and its numerous
counterparts continued to exist in some of the inde-
pendent Malay States on the east coast, until the
British eventually took charge of their affairs in 1910.
It is useful to bear facts such as these in mind lest>
in our honest solicitude for the rights and liberties of
mankind, we should subscribe too enthusiastically
to the dictum of the late Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman that good government can never be a
satisfactory substitute for self-government. From
this opinion thousands of my friends in Malaya
would passionately dissent, and as to whether the
craven wretches who thus submit to alien rule can
plead any justification for their heresy, let the readers
of this story judge. For the rest, I must frankly
admit that it is not a pretty tale, and I would counsel
persons who prefer to ignore the existence of uncom-
fortable things to give it a wide berth.
I3d
136 A MALAYAN PRISON
In one of the States on the east coast of the Penin-
sula there lived, some twenty years ago, a Raja who,
though he was not the ruler of the country, was a man
of exalted position and stood possessed of consider-
able power. This man owned much land, many
cattle, several wives, a host of retainers, and a num-
ber of slave-debtors. Also his reputation for kind-
ness of heart stood high among the people. This
last fact is worth remembering, having regard to
what I am about to relate. Native public opinion
in no wise reprobated him for his share in the matter;
which shows that when a Malay of standing bore the
character of a brute or a bully he had earned it by
the commission of atrocities for which simple people,
like you and me, do not even know the technical
names.
Upon a certain day a kris was stolen from this
Raja, and suspicion fastened upon one of his slave-
debtors, a man named Talib. As it happened, the
fellow was innocent of the theft; but his protestations
were not believed, and his master forthwith consigned
him to the pen-jdra, or. local gaol. The tedious
formality of a trial played no part in Malayan judicial
proceedings, and nothing in the nature of the sifting
of evidence was regarded as necessary. The stolen
dagger was the property of a prince. The suspect
was a man of no account. That was enough; and
Talib went to gaol accordingly, the Raja issuing an
order — a sort of lettre de cachet — for his admission.
To European ears this does not sound very terrible.
Miscarriages of justice are not unknown, even in
A MALAYAN PRISON 137
civilized lands; and in semi-barbarous countries such
things are, of course, to be looked upon as being
all in the day's march. Unfortunately, however, a
pen-jdra in independent Malaya only resembles the
prisons with which white men are acquainted in the
fact that both are places designed for the accommo-
dation of criminals. Some ugly things are to be read
in the pages of "It Is Never too Late to Mend," but
the prison described by Charles Read might rank
for comfort with a modern work-house beside the
gaol in which Talib was confined.
It was situated in one of the most crowded portions
of the native town. It consisted of two rows of
cages, placed back to back, each one measuring some
six feet in length, two feet in width, and five feet in
height. These cages were formed of heavy slabs of
wood, set close together, with spaces of about two
inches in every ten for the admission of light and air.
The floors, which were also made of wooden bars,
were raised about six inches from the ground; and the
cages, which were twelve in number, were surrounded
at a distance of about two feet by a solid wall made
of very thick planks of hard wood, mortised firmly
together. No sanitary appliances of any kind were
provided; and though a prisoner, once placed in a
cell, was not allowed to come out of it again for a
moment until the necessary money-payment had
been made, or until death brought him merciful
release, the precincts were never cleaned out, nor
were any steps taken to prevent the condition of the
captives from being such as would disgrace that of a
138 A MALAYAN PRISON
wild beast in a small travelling menagerie. The
space before the floor and the ground, and the interval
which separated the cells from the wooden walls set
so close about them, was one seething, writhing
mass of putrefaction. Here in the tropics, under a
brazen sun, all unclean things turn to putrid, filthy
life within the hour; and in a Malayan pen-jd:a,
wither no breath of wind could penetrate, the atmos-
phere was heavy with the fumes bred of the rotten-
ness of years, and the reeking pungency of offal that
was new.
This, then, was the place of confinement to which
Talib was condemned; nor did his agonies end here,
for the gnawing pangs of hunger were added to his
other sufferings. He was handed over to the gentle
care of the per-tanda, or executioner — an official who,
in the independent Malay States, united the kindly
office of life-taker and official torturer with the
hardly more humane post of gaoler. This man, like
most of his fellows, had been chosen in the beginning
on account of his great physical strength and an
indifference to the sight of pain which was remarkable
even among an insensible people; and the calling
which he had pursued for years had endowed the
natural brutality of his character with an abnormal
ferocity. He was, moreover, an official of the an-
cient East — a class of worthies who require more su-
pervision to restrain them from pilfering than do even
the Chinese coolies in a gold mine, where the precious
metal winks at you in the flickering candlelight.
Needless to say, the higher state officials were not so
A MALAYAN PRISON 139
forgetful of their dignity, or so lost to a sense of
propriety, as to pry into the doings of a mere execu-
tioner; so the per-tanda enjoyed to the full the advan-
tages of a free hand. During the months of the
year when the mouth of the river was accessible to
native craft he had the right to collect dues of rice
and fish from all vessels and fishing-boats using the
harbour; but during the "close season," when the
northeast monsoon was raging, no allowance of any
kind was made to him for the board of the prisoners in
his charge. In these circumstances, since a per-
tanda is not a philanthropical institution, it was only
aatural that he should pervert to his own use, and
sell to all comers, the collections which he made dur-
ing the open season, so that his household might not
be without a sufficiency of rice and raiment during the
dreary six months that the hatches were down for the
monsoon. Death from slow and lingering starvation
was, therefore, a by no means uncommon incident
in the pen-jdra; and one of Talib's earliest experi-
ences was to witness the last agonies of a fel-
low-captive in an adjoining cell, who came from
upcountry, knew no one in the capital, and so had died
painfully of gradual inanition. Talib himself was
a trifle more fortunate, for food was daily brought to
him by a girl who had been his sweetheart before his
trouble fell upon him; and though his hunger-pangs
could not be wholly allayed by such slender doles
as she contrived to save for him from her own ration
of rice and fish, he, for the time, was not exposed to
actual danger of death from want. But always he
140 A MALAYAN PRISON
was tortured by fear. He knew that the horror of
his surroundings was growing upon the girl; that
each visit demanded of her a new and a stronger
effort, that other men were wooing her; and that
sooner or later she would turn to them, and thrust
from her mind the memory of the loathesome crea-
ture into which he knew himself to be rapidly degen-
erating. In that hour he would be robbed alike of
his love and of his daily food.
The prisoner in the cage on Talib's left was little
more than a skeleton when the latter first entered the
gaol. He lay huddled up in a corner, with his hands
pressed against his sunken stomach and the sharp
angles of his bones peeping through his bed-sores —
motionless, miserable, and utterly degraded, but
stirred to a sort of frenzy, now and again, by the
sight or smell of cooked food. Talib saved a small
portion of his own insufficient meal for this man, for
he was new to the prison, and had not yet acquired
the brutal selfishness and indifference that charac-
terized the other inmates; but the poor wretch
was already too far gone for any such tardy aid to
avail to save him. Though he snatched avidly at
the stuff which Talib passed, in grudging handfuls,
through the bars of his cell, it was with difficulty
that he could swallow a grain of it. When, too, a
little had at last been forced down his shrunken gul-
let his enfeebled stomach rejected it, and violent
spasms and vomitings ensued, which seemed to rend
his stricken frame much as a fierce gust of wind rips
through the palm-leaf sail of a native fishing-smack.
A MALAYAN PRISON 141
After a day or two he became wildly delirious, and
Talib then witnessed a terrible sight. A raving
maniac in a well-ordered asylum, where padded walls
and careful tendance do much to save the afflicted
body from the blind fury of the disordered brain, is
an appalling thing to see; but in the vile cage in
which this wretched creature was confined there was
nothing to restrain the violence he was practising
upon himself. With the strength of madness he
dashed his head and body relentlessly against the
unyielding walls of his cell. He fell back crushed and
bleeding, foaming at the mouth with a bloody froth,
and making beast noises in his throat. The per-
tanda, attracted by the noise, rested his back against
the surrounding wall and rocked to and fro, con-
vulsed with laughter, each brutal jest that he uttered
being greeted with obsequious titters from the caged
animals around him.
But the madman was oblivious of him and of all
things. Once more, as the frenzy took him, shaking
him as a terrier shakes a rat, he flung himself at the
bars, and after another fearful paroxysm, fell back
inert upon the floor. For hours he lay there ex-
hausted, but wildly restless; too spent to struggle, and
too demented and tortured to be still. He moaned,
he groaned, he raved and cursed with vile and filthy
words, bit and snapped like a dog in its madness,
strove to gnaw the loathsome rags which had long
ceased to cover his nakedness, and then again was
still, save for the incessant rolling of his head, and
the wilder motion of his eyes, which blazed with
142 A MALAYAN PRISON
fever. The per-tanda, wearied by so tame an exhibi-
tion, withdrew to his house; and a little before the
dawn, when the chill breeze, which comes up at that
hour out of the China Sea, was making itself felt
even in the fetid atmosphere of the place, his reason,
for a space, returned to him, and he spoke to Talib
in a thin, faraway voice, his words punctuated by
many gasps and sighs and pauses.
"Little brother," he whispered, "do you also
watch? For not long now shall your elder brother
endure these pains. The order is come. Have you'
any water? I thirst sore. No matter, it is the fate
to which I was born. The hair of the heads of all
men alike is black, but the lot of each of us is pecu-
liar to himself. . . . Listen. I stole five dollars
from a chief. ... I did it because my wife
was very fair, and she abused me, saying that I gave
her neither ornaments nor raiment. . . . Brother,
I was detected, and the chief consigned me to
the pen-jdra. ... I knew not then that it was
my wife, and none other, who gave the knowledge of
my theft to the chief, he in whose household I had
been born and bred. . . . He desired her, and
she loved him; and now he has taken her to wife, I
being as one already dead, and the woman being
legally divorced from me. They said that they
would set me free if I would divorce her, and I let
fall the talak in the presence of witnesses, thinking
thereby to escape from this place. But . . .ah,
brother, I thirst. Have you no water? . . ,
While the woman was yet bound to me, she sent me
A MALAYAN PRISON 143
food by one of the chief's slaves, and it was from him
that I learned the plot that had undone me. . . .
I thirst, I thirst. Have you no water, little brother?
. . After I had divorced her the rice did not
come any more. ... I want water. My mouth
is hard and rough as the skin of a skate, and it is dry
as the fish that has been smoked above the fire. Have
you no water? . . . Ya Allah! Maimunah,
heart of my heart, fruit of my eyes! Water, I pray
you. Water. Water. O mother! O mother! O
mother of mine! Water, mother! ... I die
. . . I die . . . mother ...
His voice trailed away into inarticulate moanings,
and in an hour he was dead.
Next day his body was carried out for burial, and
for a time his cage remained untenanted.
On Talib's right a man was confined who was so
haggard, meagre, filthy, diseased, and brutal in his
habits that it was difficult to believe that he was alto-
gether human, His hair fell in long, tangled, matted,
vermin-infested shocks, almost to his waist. His
eyes — two smouldering pits of flame — were sunken
deep into his yellow parchment-like face. His cheek-
bones were so prominent that the sharp edges seemed
about to cut their way through the skin, and his
brows jutted forward like the bosses on the forehead
of a fighting ram. The dirt of ages festered in the
innumerable wrinkles and creases of his body; and
he hardly moved, save to scratch himself fiercely,
much as a monkey tears at his flea-infested hide. A
small ration of rice and fish was brought to him daily
144 A MALAYAN PRISON
by an old and withered hag — his wife of former
years — who made a meagre living for him and for
herself by hawking sweet-stuffs from door to door.
She came to him twice daily, and he flung himself
ravenously upon the food with guttural noises of
satisfaction, devouring it in bestial fashion, while she
cooed at him through the bars, with many endearing
epithets, such as Malay women use to little children.
Not even his revolting degradation had been able to
kill her love, though its wretched object had long ago
ceased to understand it or to recognize her, save as
the giver of the food which satisfied the last appetite
which misery had left to him. He had been ten
years in these cages, and had passed through the
entire range of feeling of which a Malay captive in a
native gaol is capable — from acute misery to despair,
from despair, by slow degrees, to stupid indifference
and dementia, until at the long last he had attained
to the condition which Malays call kdleh. This means
a complete insensibility, a mental and physical
anaesthesia so absolute that it reduces a sentient
human being to the level of an inanimate object,
while leaving to him many of the disgusting qualities
of an ape.
Talib himself had as yet reached only the first
stage of his suffering, and the insistent craving for one
breath of fresh air grew and grew and gathered
strength, until it became an overmastering longing
that day and night cried out to be satisfied. His
memories tortured him — memories of the chill
morning hour at which he had been wont to step
A MALAYAN PRISON 145
forth from his house into the dusk of the dawning,
and to make his way to the river which poured its
cool flood seaward beneath the curtain of white mist;
of the long slanting sunrays beginning to dry the dew,
as he walked through the wet grass to the rice-fields
behind the village; of the return home, as the heat
became intense, with the pale and cloudless sky over-
head, and the vivid green of the vegetation covering
all the earth; of the long, lazy hours spent in the cool
interior of the thatched house; of the waning of the
day, as the buffaloes began to troop down to water;
of the falling of the night, with its smell of wood-
smoke and the cooking meal; of the deep sleep that
used to come to the sound of the humming chorus
from the insect world without. For these things
meant for him liberty — the freshness and cleanliness
of God's good earth — all the common happenings
which had made life beautiful, but which till now he
had never thought about or prized.
At last he could no longer restrain his passionate
desire to escape, if only for a few hours, from the
horrors of the pen-jdra, and, reckless of consequences,
he told the per-tanda that if he could be taken to a
place a day's journey up the river, he could set his
hand upon the missing kris which, he said, he had
hidden there. He was perfectly aware that the
dagger was not, and never had been, buried at that
spot, for he knew as little concerning its whereabouts
as the per tanda himself. He could foresee that his
failure would be followed by worse punishment. But
he heeded not. He would breathe the fresh, un-
146 A MALAYAN PRISON
tainted air once more, would see once again the sky
arching above him, would hear the murmur of run-
ning water, the sighing of the wind through the fruit
trees and its stir among the fronds — would be quit
for a space of the horrors and the putrefaction of his
surroundings, and would see, smell, hear, and enjoy
all the sights, scents, sounds, and familiar things for
which he hungered with so sick a longing.
Accordingly, the chief having been communicated
with, he was one day taken upriver to the place he
had named; but the reek of the cage clung to him,
and the fresh air was to him made foul by it. The
search was fruitless, of course; he was beaten by the
boatmen, who had had their trouble for nothing;
and, sore and bleeding, he was placed once more in
his cage, with the added pain of heavy chains to
complete his sufferings. An iron collar was riveted
about his neck, and attached by ponderous links to
chains passed about his waist and to rings around his
ankles. The fetters galled him, preventing him from
lying at ease in any attitude, and they speedily
doubled the number of his bed-sores. The noisy,
bloated flies buzzed around him now in ever-increas-
ing numbers, feasting horribly upon his rottenness, as
he sat all day sunken in stupid, wide-eyed despair.
A Chinese lunatic had been placed in the vacant
cage on his left — a poor mindless wretch who cried
out to all who visited the prison that he had become a
Muhammadan, vainly hoping thereby to meet with
some small measure of pity from the worshippers of
Allah j the merciful and compassionate God. Tho
A MALAYAN PRISON 147
bestial habits of this man, whose mental disease was
intensified by his misery and by the disgusting char-
acter of his environment, imported a new horror
into Talib's life; but he himself was fast sinking into
the stolid, animal existence of his right-hand neigh-
bom*. I saw him, precisely as I have described him,
and learned his story, in April, 1895, and since the
state in which he was awaiting his lingering death was
at that time independent, I was, of course, powerless
to effect his deliverance. Of his end I know nothing,
but his future held no prospect of release, and the
best that one could hope for him was an early death,
or failing that, a speedy arrival at the happy condi-
tion which is locally called kdleh. To add to the
horror of it all, there were two women and one small
child confined in the cages at the time of my visit,
but upon their sufferings I have refrained from
dwelling.
Readers of this true tale will perhaps realize how
it comes to pass that some of us men of the out*
skirts — who have seen things, not merely heard oj
them — are apt to become rather strong "imperial-
ists," and to find it at times difficult to endure with
patience those ardent defenders of the Rights of
Man, who bleet their comfortable aphorisms in the
British House of Commons, and cry shame upon our
"hungry acquisitiveness."
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
IF YOU put your finger on the map of the Malay
Peninsula, an inch or two from its exact centre,
you will find a river in Pahang territory which
has its rise in the watershed that divides that state
from its northern neighbours Kelantan and Treng-
ganu. It is called the Tembeling, and after its
junction with the Jelai, at a point some two hundred
miles from the sea, the combined rivers are named
the Pahang. The Tembeling is chiefly remarkable
for the number and magnitude of its rapids, for the
richness of its gutta-bearing trees, and as being the
scene of some of the most notable exploits of the
legendary magician Sang Kelembai, whose last days
on earth are supposed to have been spent in this
valley. The inhabitants of the district were, in my
time, a ruffianly lot of jungle-dwelling Malays,
preyed upon by a ruling family of Wans — a semi-
royal set of nobles, who did their best to live up to
the traditions of their class. Chiefs and people alike
were rather specially interesting because — though
of this they had no inkling — they represented the
descendants of one of the earliest waves of Malay
invaders of the Peninsula — folk who came, not from
Sumatra, as did the ancestors of the bulk of the
natives of British Malaya, but from the islands of
148
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 149
the Archipelago further south. In many localities
the offspring of the earlier invaders have resisted
conversion to Muhammadanism, and are regarded
by the Malays of to-day as part of the aboriginal
pagan population of the Peninsula; but the people
of the Tembeling valley have embraced the faith of
Islam, and their origin is not suspected by themselves
or their neighbours. It is clearly to be traced, how-
ever, in certain peculiar customs that have been
preserved among them, and by the use of a few local
words, not generally understanded of the people of
the Peninsula, but common enough in northern
Borneo and other parts of the Archipelago.
The Tembeling Valley is bisected by a set of rapids,
which render navigation excessively difficult for a
distance of some five miles, and above which large
boats cannot be taken. Below this obstruction, the
natives are chiefly noted for the quaint pottery which
they produce from the clay that abounds there, and
the rude shapes and the ruder tracery of their vessels
have probably suffered no change since the days
when the men who dealt with the middle men who
trafficked with Solomon's emissaries, sought gold
and peafowl and monkeys in the fastnesses of the
Malay Peninsula — as everybody knows. Above the
rapids the natives, from time immemorial, have
planted enough gambir to supply the wants of the
entire betel-chewing population of Pahang; and as
the sale of this commodity brought in a steady in-
come, they were for the most part too indolent to
plant their own rice. Rice being the staple of all
150 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
Malays, without which they cannot live, the grain
used to be sold to them by downcountry Malays at
an exorbitant price, and the profits on the gambir
crop was thus skilfully diverted into the pouches of
wiser men.
A short distance upstream from the junction of the
Tembeling and the Jelai, and midway between that
point and the big rapids, there is a straggling village
called Ranggul, the houses of which, built of wattled
bamboos and thatched with palm leaves, stand on
piles upon the river bank, amid groves of cocoanut
and areca-nut palms, fruit trees and clumps of smooth-
Jeaved banana plants. The houses are not set
very close together, but a man calling can make
himself heard with ease from one to another; and
thus the cocoanut palms thrive, for they, the Malays
aver, grow net with pleasure beyond the range of
Vhe human voice.
The people of Ranggul are no more indolent than
other upcountry Malays. They plant a little rice
in the swamp behind the village, when the sea-
son comes round. They work a little jungle-prod-
uce — rubber, rattans, ddmar-pitch, and the like
— when the pinch of poverty drives them to it.
The river is, of course, their principal highway, and
they never walk if a boat will take them to their
destination. For the rest, they take life very easily.
If you chance to visit Ranggul during any of the hot
hours of the day, you will find most of its male
inhabitants lying about in their dark, cool houses, or
seated in their doorways. They occupy themselves
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 151
with such gentle tasks as whittling a stick or hacking
aimlessly at the already deeply scored threshold-
block with their heavy wood-knives. Sitting thus,
they croak snatches of song, with some old-world
refrain to it", breaking off, from time to time, to
throw a remark over their shoulders to the women-
folk, who share the dim interiors of the huts with the
cats, the babies, and the cooking-pots, or to the little
virgin daughter* carefully secreted on the shelf over-
head amid a miscellaneous collection of dusty rub-
bish, the disused lumber of years. Here the maiden
is securely hidden from the sight of the passing neigh-
bour, who stops to gossip with the master of the
house, and sits for a space, propped upon the stair-
ladder, lazily masticating a quid of betel nut. Na-
ture has been very lavish to the Malay, and has pro-
vided him with a soil that produces a maximum of
food in return for a minimum of grudging labour;
but, rightly viewed, he has suffered at her hands an
eternal defeat. In the tropics, no less than in the
arctic regions, Nature has proved too strong a
competitor for mankind. In the latter she has forced
men to hibernate, paralyzing their energies for more
than half the year; in the former, she has rushed in to
obliterate the works of human beings with so ap-
palling a rapidity, if for a moment their efforts to
withstand her have been relaxed, that here, too, they
have abandoned the unequal contest. In the far
north and in the tropics alike, it is men drawn from
temperate climates, where <they have learned to bend
Nature in her weaker phases to their will, who have
152 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
come to renew the struggle with weapons which thej
have wrested from the enemy in the course of the age-
long conflict. But in neither instance can the new-
comers look for active assistance from the people of
the lands they have invaded. The cool, moist fruit
groves of Malaya woo men to the lazy enjoyment of
their ease during the parching hours of midday, and
the native, who long ago has retired from the fight
with Nature, and now is quite content to subsist upon
her bounty, has caught the spirit of his surroundings,
and is very much what environment and circum-
stances have combined to make him. Those of us
who cry shame upon the peoples of the tropics for
their inertia would do well to ponder these things,
and should realize that energy is to the natives of the
heat-belt at once a disturbing and a disgusting
quality. It is disturbing because it runs counter to
the order of Nature which these people have ac-
cepted. It is disgusting because it is opposed to
every tenet of their philosophy.
Some five and fifty years ago, when Che' Wan
Ahmad — who subsequently was better known as Sul-
tan Ahmad Maatham Shah K. C. M. G. — was col-
lecting his forces in Dungun, preparatory to making
his last and successful descent into the Tembeling
Valley, whence to overrun and conquer Pahang,
the night was closing in at Ranggul. A large house
stood at that time in a somewhat isolated position,
within a thickly planted compound, at one extremity
of the village. In this house seven men and two
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 153
women were at work on the evening meal. The men
sat in the centre of the floor on a white mat made of
the plaited leaves of the menglcuang palm, with a
plate piled with rice before each of them, and a brass
tray, supporting numerous small china bowls of curry,
placed where all could reach it. They sat cross-
legged, with bowed backs, resting their weight upon
their left arms, the hands of which lay flat on the
floor, with the wrists so turned that the fingers
pointed inward. They messed the rice with their
right hands, mixing the curry well into it, and ex-
pressing the air between grain and grain, ere they
carried each large ball of it swiftly to their mouths,
and propelled it into them with their thumbs along
the surfaces of their hollowed and closely joined
fingers. If rice is your staple, it is almost a necessity
that you should eat it in this fashion, for when a
spoon is used it is aerated, windy stuff of which it is im-
possible to consume a sufficient quantity. As for the
cleanliness of the thing, a Malay once remarked to me
that he could be sure that his fingers had not been
inside the mouths of other folk, but had no such feel-
ing of certainty with regard to the spoons of Euro-
peans.
The women sat demurely in a half-kneeling posi-
tion, with their feet tucked away under them, minis-
tering to the wants of the men. They uttered no
word, save an occasional exclamation when they drove
away a lean cat that crept too near to the food, and
the men also held their peace. Malays regard meals
as a serious business which is best transacted in
154 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
silence. From without there came the hum of insects,
the chirping of crickets in the fruit trees, and" the
deep, monotonous note of the bullfrogs in the rice-
swamps.
When the men had finished their meal, the women
carried the dishes to a corner near the fireplace, and
there set to on such of the viands as their lords had
not consumed. If you had looked carefully, however,
you would have seen that the cooking-pots, over
which the women presided, still held a secret store
reserved for their own use, and that the quality of the
food in this cache was by no means inferior to that of
the portion which had been allotted to the men. In
a land where women wait upon themselves, labour
for others, and have n6ne to attend to their wants
or to forestall their wishes, they generally develop a
sound working notion of how to look after themselves;
and since they have never known a state of society,
such as our own, in which women occupy a special
and privileged position, it does not occur to them
that they are the victims of male oppression.
Each of the men had meanwhile folded a lime-
smeared leaf of the sm^-vine into a neat, oblong
packet,' within which was enclosed parings of the
betel nut and a fragment or two of prepared gambir,
taking the ingredients of their quids from the little
brass boxes in the clumsy wooden box that lay before
them on the mat. Next they had rolled a pinch of
Javanese tobacco — potent stuff which grips you by
the throat as though you were a personal enemy — -
in a dried shoot of the nipah-palm, had lighted these
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 155
improvised cigarettes at the ddmar-torch which pro-
vided the only light, and at last had broken the silence
which so long had held them.
The talk flitted lightly over many subjects, all of
a concrete character; for talk among natives plays
for the most part around facts, rarely around ideas,
and the peace of soul induced by repletion is not
stimulating to the mind. Che' Seman, the owner of
the house, and his two sons, Awang and Ngah, dis-
cussed the prospects of the crops then growing in the
fields behind the village. Their cousin, Abdullah,
who chanced to be passing the night in his relatives'
house, told of a fall which his wife's step-mother's
brother had come by when climbing a cocoanut tree.
Mat, his biras (for they had married two sisters,
which established a definite relationship between
them according to Malay ideas) , added a few more or
less repulsive details to Abdullah's description of the
corpse after the accident. These were well received,
and attracted the attention of the two remaining
men, Potek and Kassim, who had been discussing
the price of rice and the varying chances of getah-
hunting; whereupon the talk became general. Potek
and Kassim had recently come across the mountains
from Dungun, in Trengganu, where the claimant to
the sultanate of Pahang was at that time collecting
the force, which later invaded and conquered the
country. They told all that they had seen and
heard, multiplying their figures with the daring
recklessness common to a people who rarely regard
arithmetic as one of the exact sciences; but even this
1*56 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
absorbing topic could not hold the attention of their
audience for long. Before Potek and Kassim had
well finished the enumeration of the parts of heavy
artillery, the hundreds of elephants and the thou-
sands of the followers, with which they credited the
adventurous but slender bands of ragamuffins who
followed the fortunes of Che' Wan Ahmad, the mas-
ter of the house broke into their talk with words on a
subject which just then had a more immediate in-
terest than any other for the people of the Tembeling
Valley. Thus the conversation slipped back into the
rut in which the talk of the countryside had run,
with only casual interruptions, for many weeks.
"He of the Hairy Face* is with us once more,"
Che' Seman suddenly announced; and when his
words had caused a dead silence to fall upon his
hearers, and had even stilled the chatter of the
women and children near the fireplace, he continued :
"At the hour when the cicada becomes noisy,f
I met Imam Sidik of Gemuroh, and bade him stay
to eat rice, but he would not, saying that He of the
Hairy Face had made his kill at Labu yesternight,
and that it was expedient for all men to be within
*Si-PHdong — He of the Hairy Face — is one of the names used by jungle-bred
Malays to describe a tiger. They will not use the beast's ordinary name, lest the
sound of it should reach his ears, and cause him to come to the speaker.
\When the cicada becomes noisy — sunset. The Malays use many such phrases
to indicate the time of day, «. g.: When the Jowls jump off their perches, about 5:30
A.M.; Before the flies are on the wing, about 6 a.m.; When the heal breaks forth,
about 7 a.m.; When the sun is halfway up, about 9 a.m.; When the plough is idle f
from 9:30 to about 11 a.m.; When the shadows are circular, noon; When the day
changes, viz., from morning to afternoon, about 1 p.m.; When the buffaloes go down
to water, an hour before sunset, i. e.. about 5 p.m.; When the fowls begin to doze,
the beginning of night; When the children are fast asleep, about 9 P.M.
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 157
their houses before the darkness fell. And so saying,
he paddled his boat down stream, using the "dove"
stroke.* Imam Stdik is a wise man, and his talk
is true. He of the Hairy Face spares neither priest
nor prince. The girl he killed at Labu was a daughter
of the Wans — Wan Esah was her name."
"That makes three-and-twenty whom He of the
Hairy Face had slain in one year of maize,"f said
Awang, in a low, fear-stricken voice. "He toucheth
neither goats nor kine, and men say he sucketh more
blood than he eateth flesh."
"It is that that proves him to be the Thing he is,"
said Ngah.
"Your words are true," said Che' Seman solemnly.
"He of the Hairy Face was in the beginning a man
like other men — a Semang, a negrit of the woods.
Because of his cruelty and his iniquities and the
malignity of his magic, his own people drove him
forth from among them, and now he lives solitary
in the jungles, and by night transforms himself into
the shape of Him of the Hairy Face, and feasts upon
the flesh of human beings. This is a fact well known
and attested."
/ "It is said that it is only the men of Korinchi who
possess this art," interposed Abdullah, in the tone of
one who seeks to be reassured.
"They also practise magic of a like kind," rejoined
*The "dove" stroke is a very rapid stroke made with the paddle lifted high
in the air, and driven into the water and drawn back with great.force. It is always
used for the finish of a canoe-race. The origin of the term is unknown.
tA year of maize — three months; a year of rice — six months; a year, without
any qualification, is the Muhammadan year pf twelve months of thirty days ea<*
158 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
Seman. "But it is certain' that He of the Hairy
Face was in the beginning a Semang — a negrit of the
woods; and when he goeth abroad in human guise,
he is like all other Semang to look upon. I and many
others have come upon him, now and again, when wc
have been in the forests seeking for jungle-produce.
He is old and wrinkled and very dirty, covered with
skin disease, as with a white garment; and he roameth
alone naked and muttering to himself. When he
spies men he makes haste to hide himself; and all
folk know that it is He who harries us by night in our
villages. If we venture forth from our houses during
the hours of darkness, to the bathing-raft at the
river's edge, to tend our sick, or to visit a friend,
Si-Ptidong is ever to be found watching, and thus the
tale of his kill waxeth longer and longer."
"But at least men are safe from him while they sit
within their houses," said Mat.
"God alone knoweth," answered Che' Seman
piously. "Who can say where safety abides when
He of the Hairy Face is seeking to glut his appetites?
He cometh like a shadow, slays like a prince, and then
like a shadow he is gone. And ever the tale of his
kills waxeth longer and yet more long. May God
send Him very far away from us! Ya Allah! It is
He, even now! Listen!"
At the word a dead silence, broken only by the hard
breathing of the men and women, fell upon all within
the house. Then very faintly, and far away up-
stream, but not so faintly but that all could hear it,
as they listened with straining ears and suspended
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 159
heart-beats, the long-drawn, howling, snarling moan of
a hungry tiger rose and fell above the murmur of
the insect-world without. The Malays call the roar
of the tiger aum, and as they pronounce it, the word
is vividly onomatopoetic, as those of us who have
heard it in lonely jungle places during the silent
night watches can bear witness. All who have lis-
tened to the tiger in his forest freedom know that he
has many voices. He can give a barking cry, which
is not unlike that of a deer; he can grunt like a
startled boar, and squeak like the monkeys cowering
and chattering at his approach in the branches over-
head; he can shake the earth with a vibrating,
resonant purr, like the sound of distant thunder in
the foothills; he can mew and snarl like an angry
wildcat; and he can roar almost like a lion. But it
is when he lifts his voice in the long-drawn moan
that the men and beasts of the jungle chiefly fear him.
This cry means that- he is hungry, but also that he is
so sure of his kill that he cares not if all the world
knows that his belly is empty. There is in its note
something strangely horrible, for it is as though the
cold-blooded, dispassionate cruelty, peculiar to the
feline race, has in it become suddenly articulate.
These sleek, glossy-skinned, soft-footed, lithe, almost
serpentine creatures torture with a grace of move-
ment and gentleness in strength which have in them
something infinitely more terror-inspiring than the
blundering charge and savage goring of the gaur, or
the clumsy tramplings and kneadings with which the
elephant destroys its victims.
160 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
Again the long-drawn moan broke upon the still-
ness. The water-buffaloes in the byre heard it, and
were panic-stricken. Mad with fear they charged
the walls of their pen, bearing all before them, and
a moment later could be heard plunging wildly
through the brushwood and splashing through the
soft mud of the pddi-Aelds, the noise of their stampede
growing fainter and fainter with distance. The lean
curs, suddenly awakened, whimpered miserably and
scampered off in every direction, while the sleepy
fowls, beneath the flooring of the house, set up a
drowsy and discordant screeching. The folk within
were too terror-stricken to speak; for extremity of
fear, which lends voices to the animal world, renders
voluble human beings dumb. And all this while
the cry of the tiger broke out again and again, ever
louder and louder, as He of the Hairy Face drew
nearer and yet more near.
At last it sounded within the very compound in
which the house stood, and its sudden proximity
caused Mat to start so violently that he overturned
with his elbow the pitch-torch at his side, and ex-
tinguished the flickering light. The women, their
teeth chattering like castanets, crowded up against
the men, seeking comfort in physical contact with
them. The men gripped their spears, and squatted
trembling in the half-light cast by the dying embers
of the fire, and by the flecks cast upon floor and wall
by the moonbeams struggling through the interstices
of the wattling and the thatch of the roof.
"Fear not, Minah/' Che' Seman whispered; in 3
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 161
hoarse, strained voice, to his little daughter, who
nestled quaking against his breast. "In a space
He will be gone. Even He of the Hairy Face will
do us no hurt while we sit within the house."
Che' Seman spoke with his judgment supported by
the experience of many generations of Malays; but
he knew not the nature of the strange animal with
which he was now confronted. Once more the moan-
like howl set the still air vibrating, but this time its
note had changed, and gradually it quickened to the
ferocious, snarling roar, which is the charge-song of
the tiger, as the beast rushed at the house and flung
itself against the bamboo wall with a heavy, jarring
thud. A shriek from all the seven distraught
wretches within went up on the instant; and then
came a scratching, tearing sound, followed by a soft
flop, as the tiger, failing to effect a landing on the low
roof, fell back to earth. The men leaped to their
feet, clutching their weapons convulsively, bewildered
by fear and by the darkness; and led by Che' Seman,
they raised nbove the wailing of the women, a
quavering, half-hearted sorak — the Malayan war-
cry, which is designed as much to put courage into
those who utter it, as to dismay the enemy whom it
defies.
Mat, the man who had upset the torch, alone
failed to add his voice to the lamentable outcry of his
fellows. Seeking to hide himself from the raging
brute without, he crept, unobserved by the others,
up into the shelflike loft, in which Mfnah had been
wont to sit, when strangers were about, during the
162 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
short days of her virginity. This place consisted of a
platform of stout laths suspended from the roof in
one corner of the house, and amidst the dusty lumber
that filled it, Mat now cowered, sweating with terror.
A minute or two of silence and of sickening sus-
pense followed the tiger's first unsuccessful charge.
But presently the howl broke forth anew, quickened
rapidly to the charge-roar, and again the house shook
beneath the impact as the weight of the great animal
was hurled at it. This time the leap of Him of the
Hairy Face had been judged more surely; and a crash
overhead, a shower of leaflets of thatch, and an omi-
nous creaking of the beams apprised the cowering folk
within the house that their enemy had secured a
foothold on the roof.
The fragmentary, throaty sorak, which Che' Seman
had urged his companions to raise, died away into a
sobbing silence, disturbed only by the sound of
breaths drawn thickly and by the hysterical weeping
of the women. Then all were smitten with dumb-
ness, as gazing upward in awful fascination, they saw
the thatch torn violently apart by the great claws of
the tiger. There were no firearms in the house, but
instinctively the men clutched their spears, and held
them in readiness to resist the descent of their assail-
ant; and thus for a moment all. remained spellbound,
with their eyes fastened upon the horror above them.
A flood of moonlight, infinitely quiet and peaceful,
poured in upon them through the yawning gap in the
thatch, and against it the immense, square head of
Him of the Hairy Face was darkly outlined, the
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 163
black bars on the brute's hide, the flaming eyes, and
the long cruel teeth being plainly visible, framed in
the hole which its claws had made.
The timbers of the roof bent and cracked anew
under the unwonted weight, and then, with the
agility of a cat, He of the Hairy Face leaped lightly
down, and was in among them before they knew.
The striped hide was slightly wounded by the up-
thrust spears, but the shock of the beast's leap boi'e
all who had resisted it to the floor. The tiger never
stayed to use its jaws. It sat up, much in the atti-
tude of a kitten playing with a ball of worsted dangled
before its eyes, and striking out rapidly and with
unerring aim, speedily disposed of all its victims.
Che' Seman and his two sons, Awang and Ngah,
were the first to fall. Then lang, Che' Seman's
wife, was flung reeling backward against the wall
with her skull crushed out of all resemblance to any
human member by a single, playful buffet from one of
those mighty pads. Kassim, P6tek, and Abdullah
fell before the tiger in quick succession; and Mtnah,
the little girl who had nestled against her father for
protection, lay now beneath his body, sorely wounded,
almost demented by terror, but still alive and con-
scious. Mat, cowering on the shelf overhead, and
gazing fascinated at the carnage going on below him,
was the only inmate of the house who remained un-
injured.
He of the Hairy Face killed quickly and silently
while there were yet some alive to resist him. Then,
purring gently, he passed from one crumpled form
164 HE OF THE HAIRY FACE
to the other, sucking at the blood of each of his vic-
tims, after the manner of a mongoose. At last he
reached the body of Che' Seman; and Mlnah, seeing
him draw near, made a feeble effort to evade him.
He pounced upon her like a flash, and then, under the
eyes of the horrified Mat, an appalling scene was
enacted. The tiger played with and tortured the
girl, precisely as we have all seen a cat treat a maimed
mouse. Again and again Minah crawled laboriously
away, only to be drawn back by her tormentor when
he seemed at last to have exhausted his interest in
her. At times she lay still in a paralysis of inertia,
only to be goaded into agonized motion once more
by a touch of the tiger's claws. Yet, so cunningly
did he manipulate his victim, that — as Mat after-
ward described it — "a time sufficient to enable a
pot of rice to be cooked" elapsed ere the girl was
finally put out of her misery.
Even then, He of the Hairy Face did not quit the
scene of slaughter. Mat, lying prone upon the shelf,
watched him through the long hours of that night of
terror, playing with the mangled corpses of each of
his victims in turn. He leaped from one to the other,
apparently trying to cheat himself into the belief
that they still lived, inflicting upon them a series of
fresh wounds with teeth and claws. The moonlight,
pouring through the torn thatch, revealed him frol-
icking among the dead with all the airy, light-
hearted agility and grace of a kitten playing with its
own shadow on a sunny lawn; and it was not until
the dawn was beginning to break that he tore down
HE OF THE HAIRY FACE 165
the door, leaped easily to the ground, and betook
himself to the jungle.
When the sun was up, an armed party of neigh-
bours came to the house to see if aught could be done
to aid its occupants. They found the place a sham-
bles, the bodies hardly to be recognized, the floor-
laths dripping blood, and Mat lying face-downward
on the shelf, with his reason tottering in the balance.
The corpses, though they had been horribly mutilated,
had not been eaten, the tiger having contented
himself with drinking the blood of his victims, and
playing his ghastly game with them till daybreak
interrupted him.
This is, I believe, the only well-authenticated in-
stance of a tiger attacking men within their closed
house in the heart of a Malayan village; and the
circumstances are so remarkable in every way, that
it is perhaps only natural that the natives of Pahang
should attribute the fearlessness of mankind, and
the lust of blood displayed by Him of the Hairy
Face, to the fact that he was no ordinary wild beast,
but a member of the human family who, by means of
magic agencies, had assumed a tiger's shape, the
better to prey upon his kind.
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
IN A large Sakai camp on the banks of the
upper reaches of the Jelai River, at a point
some miles above the last of the scattered
Malay villages, the annual harvest home was being
held one autumn night in the year of grace 1893.
The occasion of the feast was the same as that which
all tillers of the soil are wont to celebrate with bucolic
rejoicings, when the year's crop has been got in; and
the name which I have applied to it awakens the
perennial nostalgia of the exile by conjuring up the
picture of many a long summer day in the quiet
country at Home. Again, in imagination, he watches
the loaded farm-wains labouring over the grass or
lumbering down the leafy lanes; again the scent of
the hay is in his nostrils, and the soft English gloam-
ing — so delicious by contrast with the short-lived
twilight of the tropics — is lingering over the land.
The reapers astride upon the load exchange their
barbarous badinage with those who follow afoot;
the pleasant glow of health, that follows upon a long
day of hard work in the open air, warms the blood;
and in the eyes of all is the light of expectation, born
of the thought of the good red meat, and the lashings
of ale and cider, awaiting them at the farmhouse
two miles across the meadows.
166
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIBD 167
But in the distant Sakai country the harvest home
has little in common with such scenes as these.
The rice-crop planted in the clearing in the forest,
hard by the spot in which the camp is pitched, has
been reaped laboriously in the native fashion, each
ear being severed from its stalk separately and by
hand. Then, after many days, the grain has at last
been stored in the big circular boxes, formed of the
bark of a giant tree, and securely thatched with
palm leaves; and the Sakai women, who throughout
have performed the lion's share of the work, are set
to husk some portions of it for the evening meal.
This they do with clumsy wooden pestels, held as
they stand around a troughlike mortar fashioned
from the same material, the ding-dong-ding of the
pounders carrying far and wide through the forest.
At the joyful sound, all wanderers from the camp —
whose inhabitants have for months been subsisting
upon roots and berries — turn their faces homeward
with the eagerness bred of empty stomachs and the
prospect of a long-expected surfeit. The rice is
boiled in cooking-pots, manufactured in Europe and
sold to them by the Malays, if the tribe be so fortu-
nate as to possess such luxuries; otherwise a length of
bamboo is used, for that marvellous vegetable
growth is made to serve every conceivable purpose
by the natives of the far interior of the Peninsula.
The fat, new rice is sweet to eat, for when freshly
reaped, its natural, oleaginous properties have not
yet evaporated. It differs as widely from the parched
and arid stuff you know in Europe as does the butter
168 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
in a cool Devonshire dairy from the liquid, yellow
train oil we pour out of tins and dignify by that
name in the sweltering tropics. The Sakai devour
it ravenously and in incredible quantities, for not
only does it afford them their first full meal for
months, but they are eating against time, since they
know that iv a day or two the Malays will come up-
stream to "barter" with them, and that then the
bulk of the priceless stuff will be taken from them,
almost by force, in exchange for a few axe heads,
flints and steels, and the blades of native wood-
knives. Therefore, they pack themselves while the
opportunity is still with them, and so long as their
distended stomachs will bear the strain of a few ad-
ditional mouthfuls.
Thus, while the darkness is shutting down over the
forest, is the harvest supper devoured in a Sakai
camp, with gluttony and beast noises of satisfaction
and repletion; but when the meal has been finished,
the sleep of the full-fed may not fall upon the
people. The Sakai, who quail before the appalling
strength of Nature, at whose hands they have suf-
fered an eternal defeat, lie. in perpetual terror of the
superhuman beings by whom they believe Nature to
be animated. Before rest can be sought, the spirits
of the forest and of the streams, and the demons of
the grain must be thanked for their gifts, and pro-
pitiated for such evil as has been done to them. The
inviolate jungle has been felled to make the clearing,
its virgin growths being ravaged with axe head and
fire brand. The rice has been reaped and brought
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 169
into store. Clearly the spirits stand in need of com-
fort and reparation for the injury which has been
wrought, and for the loss which they have sustained.
An apologetic mood is felt by the tribe to be appro-
priate upon their part, and Sakai custom— well-nigh
as ancient as the hills in which these people live —
provides for such emergencies.
The house of the headman or of the local wizard —
and the Sakai, as the Malays will tell you, are deeply
versed in magic arts — is filled to the roof with the
sodden green growths of the jungle. The Sakai,
having trespassed upon the domain of the spirits,
now invite the demons of the woods and of the grain
to share with them the dwellings of men. Then,
when night has fallen, the whole tribe of Sakai —
men, women, and little children — casting aside their
bark loin-clouts, creep into the house, stark naked
and entirely unarmed. Grovelling together in the
darkness, amid the leaves and branches with which
the place is crammed, they raise their voices in a weird
chant, which peals skyward till the dawn has come
again.
No man can say how ancient are these annual
orgies, nor trace with certainty the beginnings in
which they originated. Perhaps they date back to a
period when huts, and garments even of bark, were
newly acquired things, and when the Sakai suffered
both ungladly, after the manner of all wild jungle
creatures. It may be that, in those days, they cast
aside their bark loin-cloths to revel once more in
pristine nakedness, amid the green boughs of the
170 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
jungle, on occasions of rejoicing, and at such times
thrust behind them all memory of the more or less
decorous mating of man with the maid of his choice,
and of the bars of close consanguinity which ex-
perience was teaching them to rear up between mem-
bers of the opposite sexes. Be that how it may, the
same ceremony is performed, to the immense scandal
of the Malays, in every camp scattered throughout
the broad Sakai country, and the same ancient chant
is sung during the long, still night which follows the
garnering of the rice crop. The Malays call this cus-
tom ber-jermun — which more or less literally means
"to pig it" — because they trace a not altogether fanci-
ful resemblance between the huts stuffed with jungle, in
which these orgies are held, and the jermun, or nestlike
shelters which wild boars construct for their protection
and comfort.
But though the Malays, very properly, despise the
Sakai, and reprobate all their heathenish ways and
works, upon the occasion of which I write, Sentul —
a man of the former race — was not only present, but
was debasing himself to the extent of taking an active
part in the demon worship and the unclean ceremonies
of the infidels.
He was a Malay of the Malays — a Muhammadan
who, in his saner moments, hated all who prayed to
devils (other than those enshrined in the traditions
of his own people) or who bowed down to stocks and
stones. But for the time being, he was mad. He
had come upstream, a few weeks earlier, to trade with
the forest-dwellers, and when his companions had
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 171
returned to the Malay villages, he had remained
behind. Since then he had shared the life of the
inmates of the Sakai camp, forgetful of his superiority
of religion and of race,, and to-night was herding
naked, amid the green stuff, with the chanting jungle
people. And all this had befallen him because the
flashing glance from a pair of pretty eyes,, set in the
face of a slender Sakai girl, had blinded him and
deprived him of reason.
The wife of his own race, and the child whom he
had left with her in the hut downriver, troubled him
not at all. All considerations of honour and duty
and of the public opinion, which in the matter of a
liaison with an infidel woman can, among Malays,
be uncommonly rigid, were forgotten. He only knew
that life no longer seemed to hold for him anything
of good unless CMp, the Bird, as her people named
her, could be his. In the abstract, he despised the
Sakai even more vehemently than of old; but for
this girl's sake he smothered his feelings, dwelt among
her kinsfolk as one of themselves, losing thereby the
last atom of his self-respect, and consciously risking
his soul's salvation. Yet all this sacrifice of his
ideals had hitherto been unavailing, for Ch&p was
the wife of a Sakai named Ku-fsh — the Porcupine —
who had not only declined to sell her at even the
extravagant price which the Malay had offered for
her, but guarded her jealously, and gave Sentul no
opportunity of prosecuting his intimacy.
On her side, she had quickly divined Sentul's pas-
sion for her; and as he was younger and richer than
172 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
Ku-ish, better favoured in his person, and more-
over a Malay — a man of the dominant race — she was
both pleased and flattered by his admiration. Such
exotic notions as a distinction between right and
wrong boiled themselves down in her intelligence into
a desire to be well fed and clothed, and a reluctance
to risk a severe whipping at the hands of the muscular
Ku-ish. She knew that Sentul, who also attracted
her physically, could provide her with hitherto un-
attainable luxuries. She hoped he would be able to
protect her from the wrath and violence of her hus-
band, since there are few Sakai who dare to defy a
Malay; and having thus thought the matter out, so
far as such a process was possible to her, she now
merely awaited a fitting opportunity to elope with
her lover.
Their chance came on the night of the harvest
home. In the darkness Sentul crept close to Chep,
and when the chant was at its loudest, he whispered
in her ear that his dugout canoe lay ready yonder,
moored to the river bank, and that he loved her.
Together they stole out of the hut, unobserved by the
Sakai folk, who sang and grovelled in the darkness.
The boat was speedily found, and the lovers, stepping
into it, pushed noiselessly out into the stream.
The river at this point hustles its shallow waters,
with much fuss and uproar, down a long, sloping
bed of shingle, and the noise swallowed up the sound
of the paddles. Chep, seated in the stern, held the
steering oar, and Sentul, squatting in the bows, pro-
pelled the boat downstream with rapid and vigorous
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 173
strokes. Thus they journeyed on in silence through
a shadowy world. The wonderful virgin forest— im-
mense banks of vegetation rising sheer from the
river's brink on either hand — made of the stream a
narrow defile between 'lowering walls of darkness.
The boughs and tree-tops overhead, converging
closely, reduced the sky to a slender, star-bespangled
ribbon. A steel-like glint played here and there upon
the surface of the running water, and its insistent
roar, sinking now and again to a mere murmur, was
blent with mysterious whisperings. Once in a long
while an argus pheasant would yell its ringing chal-
lenge from its drumming-ground on a neighbouring
hill-cap or the abrupt bark of a spotted deer, or the
cry of some wild beast would momentarily break in
upon the stillness. Sentul and ChSp were travelling
on a half-freshet, and this, in the far upper country,
where the streams tear over their beds of rocks or
pebbles through the gorges formed by their high
banks, and where each drains a big catchment area,
means that their boat was tilted downriver at a head-
long pace. The dawn was breaking when the fugi-
tives reached their destination — the Malay village in
which Sentul had his home; and by then a good fifty
miles separated them from the Sakai camp, and they
felt themselves to be safe from pursuit.
To understand this, you must realize what the
Sakai of the interior is. Men of the aboriginal race
who have lived for years surrounded by Malay habi-
tations are as different from him as are the fallow
deer in an English park from the sambhur of the
174 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
jungles. Sakai who have spent all their lives among
Malays, who have learned to wear clothes, to count
up to ten, or it may be even twenty, are hardly to
be distinguished from their neighbours, the other
primitive upcountry natives! They are not afraid
to wander through the Malay villages; they do not
rush into the jungle or hide behind trees at the ap-
proach of strangers; a water-buffalo does not inspire
them with as much terror as a tiger; and they do not
hesitate to make, comparatively speaking, long jour-
neys from their homes if occasion requires. In all
this they are immeasurably more sophisticated than
their kinsmen, the semi-wild Sakai of the centre of the
Peninsula. These folk trade with the Malays, it is
true; but the traffic has to be carried on by visitors
who penetrate for the purpose into the Sakai coun-
try. Most of them have learned to speak Malay,
though many are familiar only with their own jerky,
monosyllabic jargon, and when their three numerals
have been used, fall back, for further arithmetical
expression, upon the word Jcerp", which means
"many." For clothes they wear the narrow loin-
clout, fashioned of the prepared bark of certain
trees — a form of garment which only very partially
covers their nudities; they go, not without reason,
in great terror of the Malays, and are as shy as the
beasts of the forest; and never willingly do they quit
that portion of the country which is still exclusively
inhabited by the aboriginal tribes. It was to semi-
savage Sakai such as these that Chep and her
people belonged.
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 175
There are tribes of other and wilder jungle-dwellers
living in the fastnesses of the forests of the broad
Sakai country — men who fly at the approach of even
the tamer tribesmen. Their camps may occasion-
ally be seen, on a clear day, far up the hillsides on
the jungle-covered uplands of the remote interior;
their tracks are sometimes met with, mixed with
those of the bison and rhinoceros, the deer and the
wild swine; but the people themselves are but rarely
encountered, and when glimpsed for an instant, van-
ish like shadows. The tamer Sakai trade with them
in the silent fashion of the aborigines, depositing the
articles of barter at certain spots in the forest, whence
they are removed by the wild men and replaced by
various kinds of jungle produce. Of these, the most
valued are the long, straight reeds, found only in the
more remote parts of the forest, which are used by the
wild men and by the tamer tribes folk alike to form
the inner casings of their blowpipes. All these
aborigines are straight-haired peoples, the colour
of whose skins is, if anything, somewhat lighter than
is usual among their Malayan neighbours; but the
jungles of the Peninsula harbour also a race of negrits
— little sturdy black men with jutting, prognathous
features, and short curly hair that clings closely to
their scalps. They resemble an African negro seen
through the wrong end of a field-glass; they live in
improvised shelters, and are nomadic hunters; and
though some of the tamer among them curb their
restlessness sufficiently to plant an occasional catch-
crop, their civilization is somewhat lower than that
176 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
of the Sakai, and they prefer to wander about in small
family groups rather than to dwell together in village
communities.
Chep, of course, was deeply embued with the tradi-
tions of her people, and her fancy for Sentul, her ap-
preciation of the material comfort with which he
would be able to surround her, and her confidence
in his ability to protect her, had alone succeeded in
nerving her to leave her tribe and to turn back upon
the forest country with which she was familiar. A
great fear fell upon her when, the last of her known
landmarks having been left far behind, she found
herself floating downstream through cluster after
cluster of Malay villages. The instinct of her race,
which bids the Sakai plunge headlong into the forest
at the approach of a stranger, was strong upon her,
and her heart beat violently, like that of some wild
bird held in the human hand. All her life the Malays,
who preyed upon her people, had been spoken of with
fear and suspicion by the simple Sakai grouped at
night-time around the fires in their squalid camps.
Now she found herself alone in the very heart — for
such to her it seemed — of the Malayan country.
She gazed with awe and admiration at the primitive
houses around her, which were poor enough speci-
mens of their kind, but which revolutionized her
notions as to the possibilities of architectural achieve-
ment. The groves of palms and fruit trees were
another marvel, for her experience of agriculture had
hitherto been confined to a temporary clearing in
the forest. She felt, as the Malays put it, like a
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 177
deer astray in a royal city. Sentul, moreover, was
changed in her sight. While he had lived among her
people as one of themselves, he had seemed to her to
be merely a superior sort of Sakai. Now she realized,
seeing him in his proper environment, that he was, in
truth, a Malay — a man of the dominant, foreign
race which, from time immemorial, had enslaved her
people; and at that thought her spirit sank. Pur-
suit, which she had feared during the earlier hours of
the night, became now for her a hope. It meant, in
spite of the very workmanlike whipping which would
accompany recapture, a possibility of deliverance-^-
escape from this strangers' land, and a return to the
peaceful forest she had so foolishly quitted. But
in her eyes the prospect was infinitely remote.
She knew how hearty was the fear with which her
people regarded the Malays; how averse they were
from being lured out of the jungles with which they
were familiar; and Sentul, who had acquired a
fairly intimate knowledge of the ways and character
of the Sakai, fully shared her conviction that he and
the girl he had abducted were now out of the reach
of the tribesmen.
Accordingly Chgp and her lover halted at the
latter's village, and took up their abode in his house.
Of that homecoming I possess no details. SentuPs
Malay wife, who was the mother of his children,
must have regarded the new importation from up
river with peculiar disfavour. A co-wife is always
a disagreeable accretion, but when she chances to
belong to the despised Sakai race, the natural dis-
178 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
content which her arrival in the household occasions
is inevitably transformed into a blazing indignation.
Malay women, however, can sometimes patch up a
modus vivendi with the obviously intolerable as well
as any of their sex, when circumstances are too strong
for them; and Sentul's lawful wife did not carry
her opposition farther than to stipulate that Chep
and she should be accommodated in separate huts.
The Sakai girl was delighted with her new home.
In her eyes it was a veritable palace compared with
the miserable shacks which contented her own people;
and the number and variety of the cooking-pots,
the large stock of household stores, the incredibly
luxurious flock sleeping mat, and above all the pretty
Malayan garments of silk and cotton of which she
had suddenly become the bewildered possessor filled
her woman's soul with pleasure. Also, Sentul was
kind to her, and she ate good boiled rice twic°
daily, which was to her an undreamed-of content.
Sooner or later the irresistible longing for the jungle,
which is bred in the very marrow of the forest-dwell-
ers, would awaken in her, and drive her back to her
own people; but of this she knew nothing as yet, and
for the time she was happy.
In the Sakai camp it was not until the day had
dawned that the devil-worshippers, looking at one
another's tired and pallid faces through heavy, sleep-
less eyes, as they crawled forth from the sodden,
draggled tangle of vegetation in the house, noted that
two of their number were missing. The quick sight
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 170
of the jungle-people at once spied the trail left by the
passage of the man and woman, and following it,
they crowded down to the place where the dugout
had been moored. Here they squatted on the ground
and began to smoke.
"Rej-a-roj!"they exclaimed, in the barbarous jargon of
the jungle-folk. "Lost !" and then relapsed into silence.
"May she be devoured by a tiger!" snarled Ku-fsh,
the Porcupine, who was making guttural noises deep
down in his throat; and at the word all his hearers
shuddered, and drew closer one to another. The
curse is the most terrible that the jungle-people
know; and if you shared your home with the great
cats, as they do, you also would regard it with fear
and respect. To speak of a tiger openly, in such a
fashion, is moreover extraordinarily unlucky, as the
monster, hearing itself mentioned, may look upon it
as an invitation to put in an immediate appearance.
Ku-ish said little more, for the Sakai, when prey
to emotion, make but a slight use of the meagre
vocabulary at their command. He presently rose,
however, and went back to the camp and unslung
an exceedingly ancient matchlock, which was sus-
pended from a beam in the roof of the headman's
hut. It was the only gun which the tribe possessed,
and was their most precious possession; but no one
interfered with the Porcupine or tried to stay him
when, musket on shoulder, he slipped into the forest,
heading downstream.
Two days later, in the cool of the afternoon, Sentul
180 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
left Chep, the Bird, in her new house, busying herself
with the preparation of the evening meal, and ac-
companied by his small son — the child of his out-
raged wife — went forth to catch fish in one of the
swamps at the back of the village. These marshy
places, which are to be found in the neighbourhood
of so many Malay habitations, are ready-made rice-
fields; but as the cultivation of a pdda swamp de-
mands more exacting labour than most Malays are
willing to expend upon it, they are often left to lie
fallow, while crops are grown in clearings on the hills
round about. In dry weather the cracked, parched
earth, upon which no vegetation sprouts, alone
marks the places which, in the rainy season, are pools
of stagnant water; but so surely as these ponds re-
appear, the little muddy fishes, which the Malays
call ruan and sepat, are to be found in them. What
is the manner of their subterranean existence during
the months of drought, or how they then contrive to
support life, no man clearly knows, but a heavy
shower suffices to bring them once more to the sur-
face, and they never appear to be any the worse for
their temporary interment.
Sentul carried two long joran, or Malayan fishing-
rods, over his shoulder, and his small naked son
pattered along at his heels bearing in his hands a tin
containing bait. The child crooned to himself, after
the manner of native children, but his father paced
ahead of him in silence. He was in a contented and
comfortable mood, for the satisfaction of his desire
for Chep had soothed him body and soul.
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 181
Arrived at the swamp, which was now a broad pool
of water with here and there a tuft or two of rank
rushes showing above the surface, S6ntul and his son
each took a rod and began patiently angling for the
little fishes. The sun crept lower and lower, quick-
ening its pace as it neared the western horizon, till
its slanting rays flooded the surface of the pool with the
crimson hue of blood. The sky overhead was dyed
a thousand gorgeous tints, and the soft light of the
sunset hour in Malaya mellowed all the land. Sen-
tul had watched many a hundred times the miracle
of beauty which, in these latitudes, is daily wrought
by the rising and the setting sun, and he looked now
upon the colour-drenched landscape 'about him with
the complete indifference to the glories of nature
which is one of the least attractive qualities of the
Malays. If the orgy of splendour above and the
reddened pool at his feet suggested anything to him,
it was only that the day was waning, and that it was
time to be wending his way homeward.
He set to work to gather up his fishing-tackle
while his son, squatting on the ground at his side,
passed a rattan cord through the fishes' gills to their
mouths, so that the take might be carried with
greater ease. While they were thus engaged a slight
rustle in the high grass behind them caused both
father and son to start and look round. Not a
breath of wind was blowing; but none the less, a few
feet away from them, the spear-shaped grass tufts
were agitated slightly, as though the stalks were being
rushed against by the passage of some wild animal.
182 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
"Hasten, little one," said Sentul uneasily. "Per-
chance it is the striped one."
But as he spoke the words the grass was parted
by human hands, and Sentul found himself gazing
into the wild and bloodshot eyes of Ku-ish, the Por-
cupine, along the length of an ancient gun-barrel.
He had time to note the rust upon the dulled metal,
the fantastic shape of the clumsy sight, and the blue
tattoo-marks on the nose and forehead of his enemy.
All these things he saw mechanically, in an instant
of time; but ere he could move hand or foot the
world around him seemed to be shattered into a thou-
sand fragments to the sound of a deafening explosion,
and he lay dead upon the grass, with his skull blowta
to atoms.
At the sight Sentul's son fled screaming along the
edge of the pool; but Ku-lsh's blood was up, and he
started in pursuit. The little boy, finding flight
useless, flung himself down in the long grass, and
cowering there, raised his arms above his head,
shrieking for mercy in his childish treble. Ku-ish,
for answer, plunged his spear again and again into
the writhing body at his feet; and at the second blow
the distortions of terror faded from his victim's face
and was replaced by that expression of perfect peace
that is only to be seen in its completeness in the coun-
tenance of a sleeping child.
Ku-ish gathered up the fish and took all the to-
bacco that he could find upon Sentul's body; for a
Sakai never quite loses sight of those perennial
cravings of appetite which he is doomed never alto-
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 183
gether to satisfy. Then, when the darkness had
shut down over the land, he crept softly to Chip's
house, and bade her come forth and join him. She
came at once, and without a word; for your Sakai
woman holds herself to be the chattel of whatever
man chances at the moment to have possessed him-
self of her, forcibly or otherwise. She wept furtively
when Ku-ish told her, in a few passionless sentences,
of how he had killed Sentul and his child; and she
bewailed herself at the top of her voice when, at the
first convenient halting-place, she received the hand-
some trouncing which Sentul dealt out to her, with no
grudging hand, as her share in the general chastise-
ment. But when the welting was over she followed
him meekly enough, with the tears still wet upon her
cheeks, and made no effort to escape. Thus Ku-fsh,
the Porcupine, and Ch&p, the Bird, made their way
back through the strange forests, until they had once
more regained the familiar Sakai country, and were
safe among their own people.
Pursuit in such a place is hopeless; for a Sakai
comes and goes like a shadow, and can efface himself
utterly if he desire so to do. Thus, though Sentul's
relatives clamoured for vengeance, little could be
done. I was at that time in charge of the district
where these things occurred, and it was only with
the greatest difficulty, and after pledging myself to
guarantee their personal immunity, that I was able
to induce the various Sakai headmen to meet me
near the confines of their country. My request that
Ku-lsh should be handed over to me for trial was
184 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
received by the assembled elders as a suggestion that
was manifestly ridiculous. Ku-ish, they observed
sententiously, was in the jungle, the portals of which
were closed to all save the Sakai. Unaided by them,
neither white man nor Malay could ever hope to set
hands upon him. They would take no part in the
hunt. I could not bring any material pressure to
bear, as I had undertaken that no harm should befall
them at the meeting, and when we had once separated
they could vanish quite as effectively as Ku-ish
had done. They were fully aware of all this, and
were irritatingly placid and happy. It looked like
an absolute impasse.
At length a very aged man, the principal Sakai
elder present, a wrinkled and unimaginably dirty
old savage, scarred by encounters with wild beasts,
and gray with skin diseases and wood-ashes, lifted
up his voice and spoke, shaking his straggling mcp
of grizzled hair in time to the cadence of his words.
"There is a custom, Tuan," he said. "There is a
custom when such things befall. The Porcupine
hath killed the Gob* and our tribe must repay
sevenfold. Seven lives for the life of a Gob. It is
the custom."
He spoke in Malay, which gave him an unusual
command of numerals, and he had attained to a degree
of civilization and experience which enabled him to
perform the brain-cracking feat of counting up to ten.
The proposal sounded generous, but a little in-
quiry presently revealed the old chief's real inten-
*Gofr— Stranger, i. e., any person who is not a Sikai.
THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 185
tions. His suggestion was that the blood-money
to be exacted from his tribe should take the form of
seven human beings, who were to be duly delivered
to the relatives of the dead man as slaves. These
seven unfortunates were not to be members of his
own or Ku-Ish's tribe, but were to be captured by
them from among the really wild people of the hills,
who had had no share in the ill-doing, which it
was my object to punish. The Porcupine and his
brethren, he explained, would run some risk, and
would be put to a considerable amount of trouble
and exertion before the seven wild Sakai could be
caught, and this was to be the measure of their
punishment. The blameless savages of the moun-
tains I was, moreover, assured, were not deserving
of any pity, as they had obviously been created in
order to provide the wherewithal to meet such emer-
gencies, and to supply their more civilized neighbours
with a valuable commodity for barter. The old
chief went on to tell me that his tribe would be merci-
fully free from all fear of reprisals as owing to some
incomprehensible but providential superstition, the
wild Sakai never pursued a raiding party beyond a
spot where the latter had left a spear sticking up-
right in the ground. This, he said, was well known
to the marauders, who took care to avail themselves
of the protection thus afforded to them as soon as
ever their captives had been secured. The assembled
Sakai were unable to account for the paralysis with
which the sight of this abandoned spear invariably
smote the wild folk, but the extraordinary conven-
186 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD
ience of the thing evidently appealed strongly to their
utilitarian minds.
Blood-money in past times, I was assured by Ma-
lays and Sakai alike, had always been paid in this
manner when it was due from the semi-wild tribes of
the interior. It was the custom; and Sentul's
relatives were urgent in their prayers to me to accept
the proposal. Instead, I exacted a heavy fine of
getah* and other jungle produce from the tribe to
which Ku-fsh, the Porcupine, belonged. This was
regarded as a monstrous injustice by the Sakai, and
as an inadequate indemnity by the Malays; and I
thus gave complete dissatisfaction to all parties
concerned, as is not infrequently the fate of the
adjudicating white man. However, as the Oriental
proverb has it, "an order is an order till one is strong
enough to disobey it"; so the fine was paid by the
Sakai and accepted by the Malays with grumblings
of which I only heard the echoes.
The really remarkable features of the incident"
related are that Ku-ish ever plucked up the courage
to quit the jungles with which he was familiar and
to penetrate alone into the Malayan country, and
that he, the son of a down-trodden race, dared for
once to pay a portion of the heavy debt of vengeance
for long years of grinding cruelty and wicked wrong
which the Sakai owe to the Malays.
"Gelah — Gutta-percha.
A DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
THE sunset hour had come as I passed up the
narrow track that skirted the river bank,
with a mob of villagers at my heels. Old
men were there who had seen many strange things
in the wild days before the coming of the white men;
dull peasants, who seemed too stolid and stupid to
have ever seen anything at all; and swaggering young-
sters, grown learned in the mysteries of reading and
writing, fresh from our schools and prepared at a
moment's notice to teach the wisest of the vdlage
elders the only proper manner in which an egg may
be sucked. The rabble which every Malay village
spews up nowadays, when one chances to visit it, is
usually composed of these elements — the old men
whose wisdom is their own and of its kind deep and
wide; the middle-aged tillers of the soil, whose lives
are set in so straitened a rut that they cannot peep
over the edges, and whose wisdom is that of the field
and the forest; and the men of the younger genera-
tion, most of whose knowledge is borrowed, extraor-
dinarily imperfect of its kind, and fortified by the
self-confidence of ignorance. The men of the first
two classes are gradually dying out, those of the last
are replacing them; and the result sometimes tempts
one to ask the heretical question whether European
187
188 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
systems of education are really as practically educa-
tive as the unsystematic transmission of accumulated
knowledge and tradition which they have superseded.
The path along which I was walking was to all
intents and purposes the main street of the village.
On my right, a dozen feet away, the ground fell
suddenly and perpendicularly to the brown waters
of the Jelai, which at this point had cut for themselves
a deep channel through the clay soil. Here and
there the bank had been worn into a chenderong — a
deep cleft formed by the buffaloes trampling their
way down to water; and at regular intervals bathing
rafts were moored, and rude steps had been cut to
render them more easily accessible. On my left
the thatched roofs of the Malayan houses showed
in an irregular line running parallel to the river,
amid groves of fruit trees and coco and areca nut
palms. On the other side of the Jelai the jungle
rose in a magnificent bank of vegetation eighty feet
in height, sheer from the river's brink.
The glaring Malayan sun, sinking to its rest,
blazed full in my eyes, dazzling me, and thus I saw
but dimly the figure that crossed my path, heading
for the running water on my right. Silhouetted
blackly against the furnace mouth in the west it
appeared to be the form of a woman bowed nearly
double beneath the weight of a burden slung in a
cloth across her back — a burden far too heavy for her
strength. This, however, is a sight that is only too
common in Asiatic lands; for here, if man must idle
and loaf, woman must work as well as weep, until
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 189
at last the time comes for the long, long rest under
the lovegrass and the spear-blades of the lalang in
some shady corner of the peaceful village burial-
ground. Accordingly, I took no special notice of the
laden woman moving so painfully athwart the sun-
glare ahead of me, until my arm was grasped vio-
lently by the headman, who was walking just
behind me.
"Have a care, Tuan!" he cried in some agitation.
"Have a care. It is Mlnah and her man. It is the
sickness that is not good — the evil sickness. Go not
near to her, Tuan, lest some ill thing befall."
The perverse instinct of the white man invariably
prompts him to set at instant defiance any warning
that a native may be moved to give him. This
propensity has added considerably to the figures
which represent the European death-rate throughout
Asia, and, incidentally, it has led to many of the acts
of reckless daring which have won for Englishmen
their Eastern Empire. It has also set the native
the hard task of deciding whether the greater sub-
ject for wonder is the courage or the stupidity of the
men who rule him. I had lived long enough among
natives to know that there is generally a sound reason
to justify any warning they may give; but nature, as
usual, was stronger than acquired experience or com-
mon sense, so I released my arm from the headman's
grip, and walked up to the figure in front of me.
It was, as I had seen, that of a woman bowed
beneath the weight of a heavy burden, — a woman
still young, not ill-looking, light coloured for a
190 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
Malay, and possessed of a pair of dark eyes the expres-
sion of which was peculiarly soft and tender. I only
noticed this later, and perhaps a knowledge of her
story helped then to quicken my perceptions; but
at the moment my attention was completely absorbed
by the strange bundle which she bore.
It was a shapeless, thing, wrapped in an old cloth,
soiled and tattered and horribly stained, which was
slung over the woman's left shoulder, across her
breast, and under her right armpit. Out of the
bundle, just above the base of the woman's own neck,
there protruded a head that lolled backward as she
moved — a head, gray-white in colour, hairless, sight-
less, featureless, formless — an object of horror and
repulsion. Near her shoulders two stumps, armed
with ugly bosses at their tips, emerged from the
bundle, motiveless limbs that swayed and gesticu-
lated loosely. Near her own hips two membeis,
similarly deformed, hung down almost to the groand,
dangling limply as the woman walked — limbs that
showed a sickly grayish colour in the evening light,
and ended in five white patches where the toes should
have been. It was a leper far gone in the disease
whom the woman was carrying riverward.
She did not pause when I spoke to her, rather she
seemed to quicken her pace; and presently she and
her burden, the shapeless head and limbs of the
latter bobbing impotently as the jolts shook them,
disappeared down the river bank in the direction of
the running water.
I stood still where she had left me, shocked by what
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 191
I had seen; for lepers, or indeed deformed people of
any kind, are remarkably rare among the healthy
Malayan villagers, and the sight had been as un-
expected as disgusting. Of the men behind me,
some laughed, one or two uttered a few words of
cheap jeer and taunt, and every one of them turned
aside to spit solemnly in token that some unclean
thing had been at hand. The headman, newly ap-
pointed and oppressed by a sense of his responsibili-
ties, whispered an apology in my ear.
"Pardon us, Tuan," he said. "It is an ill-omened
sight, and verily I crave forgiveness. It is not fitting
that this woman should thus pass and repass athwart
the track upon which you are pleased to walk, and
that she should bear so unworthy a burden. She is one
who hath been inadequately instructed by her parents,
one who knoweth nought of language or religion. I
pray you pardon her and the 'village. She is a bad
woman to bring this shame upon our folk."
"Who is she?" I inquired.
"She is Minah, a woman of this village, one
devoid of shame. And behold this day she has
smudged soot upon the faces of all of us by thus wan-
tonly passing across your path, bearing her man, the
leper; and I presently will upbraid her, yea, very
certainly, I will reprove her with many pungent
words."
"Is she also unclean?" I asked.
"No, Tuan, the evil sickness hath not fallen upon
her — yet. But her man is sore stricken, and though
we, who are of her blood, plead with her unceasingly,
192 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
bidding her quit this man, as by the Law of Mu-
hammad she hath the right to do, she will by no
means hearken to our words, for she, Tuan, is a
woman of a hard and evil heart, very obstinate and
headstrong."
He spoke quite simply the thought that was in his
mind. From his point of view there was nothing of
heroism, nothing of the glory of womanly tenderness
and devotion in the sight of this girl's self-sacrifice.
To him and to his fellows Minah's conduct was merely
a piece of inexplicable female folly, the unspeakable
perversity of a woman deaf to the persuasions and
advice of those who wished her well. As for white
men, they were even more incomprehensible than
women; so he turned upon me eyes that held more of
pity than surprise when I presently spoke of her in
praise.
"Of a truth," I said, "this woman is nobler than
any of her sex of whom I have heard tell in all this
land of Pahang. Your village, O Peng-hulu, hath
much right to be proud of this leper's wife. I charge
you say no word of reproach to her concerning her
crossing of my path; and give her this, it is but a
trifling sum, and tell her that it is given in token of
the honour in which I hold her."
This wholly unexpected way of looking upon a
matter which had long been a topic of discussion
in the village was clearly bewildering to the Malays
about me; but money is a useful and honourable
commodity, and the possession of anything calculated
to bring in cash does not fail to inspire some measure
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 193
of respect. My gift, therefore, had the effect of
stemming forthwith the undercurrent of jeers and
laughter at MInah and her husband which had been
audible among the Peng-hulu's followers ever since
the strange pair had come into view. The incident,
moreover, would tend to improve her position in the
village and to cause more consideration to be shown
to her by her neighbours.
"Tell her also," I said, as I stepped on board my
boat to begin the journey downstream. "Tell her
also that if there be aught in which she needs my aid,
now or hereafter, she hath but to come to me or to
send me word, and I will help her in her affliction
according to the measure of my ability."
"Tuan!" cried the villagers in a chorus of assent,
as my boat pushed out from the bank, and my men
seized their paddles for the homeward row; and thus
ended my first encounter with Minah, the daughter of
the Muhammadans, whom the threats of the village
elders, the advice of her friends, the tears and en-
treaties of her relatives, the contempt of most of her
neighbours, and the invitations of those who would
have wed with her, were alike powerless to lure from
the side of the shapeless wreck who was her husband.
Later I made it my business to inquire from those
who knew concerning this woman and her circum-
stances, and all that I learned served only to quicken
my sympathy and admiration.
Like all Malay women, Minah had been married,
when she was still quite a child, to a man whom she
194 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
had hardly ever seen, and with whom, prior to her
wedding, she would not for her life have been guilty
of the indecency of speaking a syllable. On the day
appointed for the ceremony she had been decked out
in all the finery and gold ornaments that her people
had been able to borrow from their neighbours for
many miles around, and had been led forth to take
her seat upon a dais, side by side with the stranger
into whose keeping she was about to be given. For
hours she had squatted there in an agony of cramped
limbs that she dared not relieve by the slightest
movement, and in a torture of embarrassment, while
the village folk — who composed the whole of her
world — ate their fill of the rich food provided for
them, and thereafter chanted endless verses from the
Kuran in sadly mispronounced Arabic. This ap-
palling publicity had almost deprived the dazed
little girl of her faculties, for hitherto she had been
kept in complete seclusion, and latterly had spent
most of her time on the para, or shelf-like upper
apartment of her father's house. She had been too
abjectly terrified even to cry, far less to raise her
eyes from her fingertips which, scarlet with henna,
rested immovably upon her knees.
Then, the wedding ceremonies having at last con-
cluded, she had been utterly miserable for many
days. She was not yet in her "teens," and to her a
man was much what the ogre of the fairy-tales is to
the imagination of other little girls of about the same
age in our nurseries at home — a creature of immense
strength and cruelty, filled with strange devouring
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 195
appetities, against whom her puny efforts to resist
could avail nothing. All women who are wives by
contract, rather than by inclination, experience some-
thing of this paralysis of fear when first they find
themselves at the mercy of a man; but for the girls of
a Muhammadan population this instinctive terror
of the husband has a tenfold force. During all the
days of her life a daughter of the Muhammadahs
has seen the power and authority of man undisputed
and unchecked by the female members of his house-
hold. She has seen, perhaps, her own mother put
away, after many years of faithfulness and love, be-
cause her charms have faded and her husband has
grown weary of her; she has seen the married women
about her cowed by a word, or even a look, from the
man who holds in his hands an absolute right to
dispose of his wife's destiny; she has watched the men
eating their meals apart — alone if no other member of
the masculine sex chanced to be present — because
women are not deemed worthy to partake of food in
the company of their superiors; and as a result of all
these things, the daughter of the Muhammadans has
learned to believe from her heart that man is indeed
fashioned in a mould more honourable than that in
which the folk of her own sex are cast. She sub-
scribes generally to the Malay theory that "it is not
fitting" that women should question the doings of
men, and she has no share in the quasi maternal, very
tolerant, yet half-contemptuous attitude which wo-
men in Europe are apt to assume toward the men
whom they love but are accustomed to regard in the
196 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
light of more or less helpless and irresponsible chil-
dren. Instead, the Muhammadan woman looks up
to a man as to a being who is nobler than herself,
endowed with mental and physical powers superior
to her own, who is often capricious, harsh, and
violent, who may be cajoled and placated, but
who fills her simple, trustful soul with fear and
awe.
Little Minah, therefore, had been frightened out
of her wits at the bare notion of being handed over to
a husband for his service and pleasure, and her
gratitude to her man had been extravagant and
passionate in its intensity when she found that he
was consistently kind and tender to her. For Ma-
mat, the man to whom this child had been so early
mated, was a typical villager of the interior, good-
natured and easygoing through sheer indolence,
courteous of manner, soft of speech, and caressing by
instinct, as are so many folk of the kindly Malayan
stock. He, too, perhaps, had felt something akin
to pity for the wild-eyed little girl who addressed
him in quavering monosyllables, and he found a new
pleasure in soothing and petting her. So, little by
little, his almost paternal feeling for her turned in
due season to a man's strong love, and awoke in her
a woman's passionate devotion. Thus, for a space,
Mamat and Minah were happy, though no children
were born to them, and Minah fretted secretly,
when the house was still at night-time, for she knew
that the village women spoke truly when they whis-
pered together that no wife could hope to hold the
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 197
fickle heart of a man unless there were baby fin-
gers to aid and strengthen her own desperate
grasp.
Two or three seasons came and went. Annually
the rich yellow crop was reaped laboriously, ear by
ear, and the good grain was garnered. Later the
ploughs were set going anew across the dry meadows,
and in the rice swamps the buffaloes were made to
trample and knead the soft earth into a quagmire.
Then sowing had been taken in hand, and while the
progress of the crop was closely marked and end-
lessly discussed, the villagers had kept all free from
weeds, working in rotation upon one another's land
in chattering groups until the time for reaping once
more came round. Mamat and Minah had taken
their share of the toil, and had watched nature giving
oirth to her myriad offspring with unfailing regu-
larity, but still no small feet pattered over the lath
flooring of their hut, and no child's voice made music
in their compound. Mamat seemed to have become
less lighthearted than of old, and he frequently re-
turned from the fields complaining of fever, and lay
down to rest tired and depressed. Minah tended him
carefully, but she watched him with misery in her
heart, for she told herself that the day was drawing
near that would see a co-wife, who should bear sons
to her husband, come to rob her of his love. There-
fore, at times, when Mamat was absent, she would
weep furtively as she sat alone among the cooking-
pots in the empty hut, and many were the vows of
rich offerings to be devoted to the shrines of the local
198 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
saints that she made if only they would insure to hei
the joy of motherhood.
Just before dusk one afternoon Mamat came back
to the hut, and as was his wont — for he was very
considerate to Minah, and ever anxious to aid her
in her work — he fell to boiling the rice at the little
mud fireplace at the back of the central living-room
where Minah was preparing the evening meal.
While he was so engaged he contrived by a clumsy
movement to over-set the pot, and the boiling water
streamed over the fingers of his right hand. Minah
gave a shrill cry in sympathy for the pain which she
knew he must be enduring; but Mamat looked up
at her with wondering eyes.
"What ails you, little one?" he asked, without a
trace of suffering in his voice.
" The water is boiling," cried Minah. " Ya Allah !
How evil is my destiny that so great a hurt should
befall you because you, unlike other men, stoop to
aid me in my work! O Weh, Weh, my liver is sad
because of your pain. Let me bind your fingers.
See, here is oil and much rag."
"What is the matter?" Mamat asked again, star-
ing at her uncomprehendingly. "Indeed I have
suffered no hurt. The water was cold. Look at
my fing . . ."
His voice faltered and his words ceased as he sat
gazing stupidly, in mingled astonishment and fear,
at his scalded hand. The little hut was reeking with
the odour emitted by that peeling skin and flesh.
"What is the meaning of this, Minah," he asked
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 199
presently, in an awed whisper. "The water was
certainly boiling for my fingers are all a-frizzle, yet
I felt no pain, and even now . . . What is it,
Mlnah?"
His wife inspected the ugly hand which he ex-
tended toward her, and was as bewildered as Mamat.
"Perchance you have acquired some magic art
that drives pain far from you," she suggested.
Among the villagers of the Malay Peninsula magic
is accounted so much a commonplace of everyday
experience that neither Mamat nor Minah saw
anything extravagant in her explanation. Mamat,
indeed, felt rather flattered by the idea, but he none
the less denied having had any dealings with the
spirits, and for some weeks he thought little more
about the discovery of his strange insensibility to
pain. The sores on his hands, however, did not heal,
and at length matters began to look serious, since he
could no longer do his usual share of work in the
fields. By Mlnah's advice the aid of a local medicine-
man of some repute was had recourse to, and for
days the little house was noisy with the sound of old-
world incantations, and redolent of the heavy odours
given off by the spices that burned in the wizard's
brazier. Mamat, too, went abroad with his hand* 1
stained all manner of unnatural hues, and was
hedged about by numerous taboos, which deprived
his life of a good deal of its comfort and his meals of
most things that made his rice palatable..
For some weeks, as is the manner of his kind in
Asia and out of it, the medicine-man struggled with
200 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
the disease he half recognized but lacked the courage
to name; and when at length disguise was no longer
possible, it was to Mtnah that he told the truth,
told it with the crude and brutal bluntness which
natives keep for the breaking of ill tidings. He lay
in wait for her by the little bathing raft on the
river's brink, where Mfnah was wont to fill the gourds
with water for her house, and he began his tale at
once without preface or preparation.
"Sister, it ft the evil sickness," he said. "Without
doubt it is the sickness that is not good. For me,
I can do nought to aid this man of thine, for the devil
of this sickness is a very strong devil. Therefore,
give me the money that is due to me, and suffer me
to depart, for I also greatly fear to contract the evil.
And, Sister, it were well for you speedily to seek a
divorce from Mamat, as in such cases is permitted
by law, lest you, too, become afflicted, for this disease
is one that can by no means be medicined, even if
Petera Guru himself were to take a hand in the
charming away of the evil humours."
No one in Malaya ever names leprosy. It is spoken
of as rarely as possible, and then by all manner of
euphonisms, lest hearing its name pronounced it
should seek out the speaker and abide with him for-
ever. But when the words "the evil sickness"
sounded in her ears, Minah understood their full
meaning. The shock was violent, the grief and
horror intense; yet her first conscious feeling was a
throb of relief, almost of joy. Her man was a leper!
No other woman would ever now be found to wed
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 201
with him; no co-wife would come into her life to
separate her from him; barren woman though she was,
the man she loved would be hers for all his days, and
no one would arise to dispute with her her right —
her sole right — to tend and comfort and cherish him.
The medicine-man turned away and walked slowly
up the path along the river bank, counting the
coppers in his hand, and Minah stood where he had
left her, gazing after him, a prey to tumultuous and
conflicting emotions. Then a realization of the
tragedy of it overwhelmed her, a yearning, pas-
sionate pity for the man she loved, and in an agony
of self-reproach she threw herself face downward
on the ground. Lying there among the warm damp
grasses, clutching them in her hands, and burying
her face in them to suppress her sobs, she prayed
passionately and inarticulately, prayed to the
leprosy itself, as though it were a sentient being,
entreating it, if indeed it must have a victim, to take
her a,nd spare her husband. Her rudimentary con-
ceptions of religion did not bid her turn to God in
the hour of her despair; and though, moved by the
instinct which impels all human beings in the hour of
their sorest need to turn for aid to invisible Powers,
she poured out plaint and supplication, her thoughts
were never for a moment directed Heavenward.
She was a daughter of the Muhammadans, unskilled
in letters, ignorant utterly of the teachings of her
faith, and, like all her people, she was a Malay first
and a follower of the Prophet accidentally, and, as
it were, by an afterthought. Therefore her cry was
202 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
raised to the demon of the leprosy, to the spirits of
wind and air and pestilence, and to all manner of
unclean beings who should find no place in the
mythology of a true believer. The old-world
superstitions of the Malays — the natural religion
of the people, tempered a little by the bastard Hin-
duism disseminated in its day by the great Brahman
empire of Kambodia, ere ever the Muhammadan
missionaries came to tamper with their simple
paganism — always comes uppermost in the native
mind in seasons of trouble or stress. In precisely
the same way, it is the natural man, the savage,
that ordinarily rises to the surface, through no matter
what superimposed strata of conventionalism, in
moments of strong emotion. But these things had
no power to help or comfort Minah, and any strength
that came to her during that hour that she passed,
lying prone and in agony, tearing at the lush grass
and stifling her lamentations, was drawn from her
own brave and generous heart, that fountain of
willing self-immolation and unutterable tenderness,
the heart of a woman who loves.
The evening sun was sinking amid the riot of
splendour which attends sunset in Malaya when at
last Minah gathered herself together, rearranged her
disordered hair and crumpled garments with deft
feminine fingers, and turned her face homeward.
Later still, when the evening meal had been dis-
patched and the lights extinguished, Minah, tenderly
caressing the head of her husband, which lay pil-
lowed upon her breast, whispered in his ears the
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 203
words which revealed to him the full measure of his
calamity. No more appalling message can come
to any man than that which makes known to him
that he has been stricken by leprosy, that foulest,
most repulsive, and least merciful of incurable dis-
eases; and Mamat, as he listened to his wife's falter-
ing speech, cowered and trembled in the semi-
darkness, and now and again, as he rocked his body
to and fro — for instinctively he had withdrawn him-
self from Mmah's embrace — gave vent to low sobs,
very pitiful to hear.
Leprosy has an awful power to blight a man utterly,
to rob him alike of the health and the cleanliness of
his body, and of the love and kindness which have
made life sweet to him; for when the terror falls
upon any one, even those who held him in closest
affection in the days when he was whole, too often
turn from him in loathing and fear.
As slowly and with pain Mamat began to under-
stand clearly, and understanding, to realize the full
meaning of the words that fell from his wife's lips,
he drew farther and farther away from her, in spite
of her restraining hands, and sat huddled up in a
corner of the hut, shaken by the hard, deep-drawn
tears that come to a grown man in the hour of misery,
bringing no relief, but merely adding one additional
pang to the intensity of his suffering. Vaguely he
told himself that, since Minah must be filled with
horror at his lightest touch, since she would now
surely leave him, as she had a right to do, he owed
it to himself, nud to what tattered remnant of self-
204 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
respect was left to him, that the first signal for separa-
tion should be made by him. It would ease the
situation for both of them, he felt, if from the begin-
ning he showed her plainly that he expected nothing
but desertion, that she was free to go, to leave him,
that he was fully prepared for the words that should
tell him of her intention, though for the moment they
remained unspoken. Therefore, though Mmah held
out her arms toward him, he repulsed her gently, and
retreating farther into the shadows, cried warningly:
"Have a care! Have a care lest you also become
infected by the evil."
Again Minah crept toward him, with arms
outstretched for an embrace, and again he evaded
her A little moonbeam struggling through the in-
terstices of the wattled walls fell full upon her face,
and revealed to him her eyes wide with sympathy,
dewy with tears, and yearning after him with a great
love. The sight was so unexpected that it smote him
with the violence of a blow, sending a strange thrill
through all his ruined body, and gripping his heart
so that he fought for breath like one distressed by
running.
"Have a care!" he cried again; but Mmah dis-
regarded his warning.
"What care I?" she replied. "What care I? Do
you think that my love is so slight a thing that it will
abide with you only in the days of your prosperity?
Am I like unto a woman of the town, a wanton who
loves only when all is well and when the silver dollars
are many and bright? Am I so fashioned that I
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 205
have no care for anyone save for myself? O Mamat,
my man to me, fruit of my heart ! After these years
that we have lived together in love, do you in truth
know me so little? Is it fitting that I, your wife,
should quit you now because the evil spirits have
caused this trouble to fall upon you? Weh, I love
you, I love you, I love you, and life would be of no
use to me without you. Come to me, Weh, come to
me !" And again she extended her arms toward him.
For long Mamat resisted, fighting agairfsV the
temptation to accept her sacrifice sturdily; but at
length the longing for human sympathy, and for
comfort in his great affliction — a desire which, in
time of trouble, a grown man feels as instinctively
as does the little child that, having come by some
hurt, runs to its mother to be petted into forgetful-
ness of his pain — proved too -strong for him; and he
sank down, sobbing unrestrainedly, with his head
in Minah's lap, and with her kind hands fondling and
caressing him.
And thus it came about that Minah made the
great sacrifice, which, in a manner, was to her no
sacrifice, and her husband brought himself to ac-
cept it as the one precious thing that capricious fate
had accorded to him.
Two or three years slid by after this, and as Mfnah
watched her husband, she marked the subtle changes
of the evil to which he was a prey working their cruel
will upon him. He had been far gone in the disease
even before the medicine-man had mustered courage
206 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
to name it, but for many months after the discovery
little change was noticeable. Then, as is its wont,
the leprosy took a forward stride; then halted for a
space, only to advance once more, but now with more
lagging feet. Thus, though the physical alterations
wrought by the ravages of the disease were increas-
.ingly terrible to Mfnah, who marked each change
take place gradually, step by step and from day to
day, beneath her eyes, underlying the deformed and
featureless face, the blind eye-sockets, the aimless,
swaying limbs with their maimed and discoloured
extremities, she saw as clearly as ever the face, the
glance, the gestures that had been distinctive of her
husband. And she loved this formless, mutilated
thing with all the old passionate devotion, and with a
new tenderness that awoke all her maternal instincts;
for to this childless woman Mamat was now both
husband and the baby that had never been born to her.
He was utterly dependent upon her now. Twice
daily she carried him upon her back down to the
river's edge, and bathed him with infinite care. To
her there seemed nothing remarkable in the act.
She had done it for the first time one day long before,
when his feet were peculiarly sore and uncomfortable,
had done it laughingly, half in jest, and he had
laughed, too, joining in her merriment. But now he
had become so helpless that there was no other way
of conveying him riverward, and she daily bore him
on her back unthinkingly, as a matter of course.
The weight of her burden diminished as time went on.
In the same way she had gradually fallen into the
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 207
habit of dressing and feeding him, having performed
these services for him now and again before there
was any absolute necessity therefor; but latterly his
limbs had become so useless that lacking her aid he
would have gone naked and have died of starvation.
She never lamented now that Allah or the Spirits —
Mlnah was always in doubt as to which of the two
had the larger share in the ordering of her world —
had not seen fit to send her a child in answer to her
prayer. Mamat occupied every cranny of her heart,
and in his helplessness made to her an appeal stronger
far thaD that which he had made to her in the years
of his unspoiled manhood. Most Asiatic women of
the better sort find the rdle of mother more naturally
congenial than that of wife, and all that was best in
Minah's nature rose up to fortify her in her trial.
She was quite blind to the nobility of her own devo-
tion, for thoughts of self played but a small part in the
consciousness of this daughter of the Muhammadans,
and though her simple vocabulary contained no word
to express the idea of "duty," she found in the per-
formance of the task which she had set herself a deep
content that transformed the squalor of her life into
a thing of wonder and beauty. And she had to work
for both her husband and herself, that there might be
rice in the cooking-pot and clothing for their bodies,
so her labours in house or in the fields was never
ended. The kindly village folk, who pitied her,
though they could not repress an occasional jeer at
her eccentric devotion to a leper, lightened her tasks
for her in half a hundred ways, and Mmah found her
208 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
rice plot tilled and the crop weeded, and the preciou>-
grain stored safely, without clearly knowing how the
work had been done at such comparatively slight cos!
to herself. And thus Minah and her man spent many
years of the joint life that even the Demon of the Lep-
rosy had been powerless to rob of all its sweetness.
It was some time after the white men had placed
Pahang under their protection, with the amiable
object of quieting that troubled and lawless land,
that a new terror came to Minah. Men whispered
together in the villages that the strange pale-faced
folk who now ruled the country had many ordinances
unknown to the old Rajas. The eccentricities and
excesses of the latter were hair-erecting things, but to
them the people were inured by the accumulated
experience of generations, whereas the ways of the
white men were inconsequent and inscrutable. The
laws which they promulgated were unhallowed by
Custom — the greatest of all Malayan fetishes — and
were not endeared to the native population by
age or tradition; and one of them, it was said,
provided for the segregation of lepers. In other
words, it was the habit of white folk to sentence
lepers to imprisonment for life, precisely as though
it were a crime for a man to fall a victim to a disease!
Minah listened to this talk, and was stricken dumb
with misery and bewilderment, as the village elders,
mumbling their discontent concerning a dozen lying
rumours, spoke also of this measure as one likely to
be put in force in Pahang.
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 209
The wanton cruelty of the notion was what chiefly
struck her. The old native rulers had been oppres-
sive, with hearts like flint and hands of crushing
weight, but they had always been actuated by a
personal motive, a motive which their people could
recognize and understand, the sort of motive
whereby the peasants felt that they themselves would
have been impelled if their relative positions had
been reversed. But why should the white folk covet
her man? Why should they scheme to rob her of
him, seeing that he was all she had, and they could
have no need of him? Why, too, should they punish
him with imprisonment for a calamity for which he
was in no wise to blame? What abnormal and crim-
inal instinct did the strangers hope to gratify by such
an aimless piece of barbarity? In imagination she
heard his fretful call, his mumbled speech, which none
save she could interpret or understand; and the
thought of the pitifulness of his condition, of his
utter helplessness, if deprived of her love and com-
panionship, aroused in her all the blind combativenrss
that lurks in all maternal creatures. In his de-
fence she would cast aside all fear and fight for him,
as a tigress fights for her cubs.
Mlnah managed with difficulty to bribe an old
crone to tend Mamat for a day or two. Then she set
off for Kuala Lipis, the town at which, she had heard
men say, the white men had their headquarters.
Until she started upon this journey downcountry
she had never quitted her own village, and to her the
twenty miles of river, that separated her home from
21j0 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
the town, was a road of wonder through an undis-
covered country. Kuala Lipis itself — the ordered
streets; the brick buildings, in which the Chinese
traders had their shops; the lamp-posts; the native
policemen standing at the corners of the roads,
shameless folk who wore trousers, but no protecting
sarong; the huge block of Government offices, for
to her this far from imposing pile appealed as a
stupendous piece of architecture; the made roads,
smooth and metalled; the wonder and the strange-
ness of it all — dazed and frightened her. What could
the white men, who already possessed so many
marvellous things, want with her man, the leper,
that they should desire to take him from her? And
what had she of power or of stratagem to appose to
their might? Her heart sank within her.
She asked for me, since I had bade her come to me
if she were in trouble, and presently she made her
way along the unfamiliar roads to the big Residency
on the river's bank, round which the forest clustered
so closely in the beauty which no hand was suffered
to deface. She was brought into my study, and
seated herself upon the mat-covered floor, awed
by the strangeness of her surroundings, and gazing
up at me plaintively out of those great eyes of hers,
which were wet with tears. Hers was the simple
faith of one who has lived all her days in the same
place, whither few strangers penetrate, and where
every man knows his neighbour and all his neigh-
bours' affairs. It never occurred to her that her
words might need explanation or preface of any kind,
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 211
in order that they might be rendered intelligible,
and so, fixing her gaze upon my face, she sobbed out
her prayer again and again,
"O suffer me to keep my man and my children.
O suffer me to keep my man and my children.
suffer them not to be taken away from me. Allah,
Tuan, suffer me to keep my man and my children."
I knew, of course, that she spoke of her "man and
her children" merely from a sense of decorum, since
it is coarse and indecent, in the opinion of an up-
country woman, to speak of "her husband" without
euphonism, even though she be childless; but, for
the moment, I supposed that she was the wife of
some man accused of a crime, who had come to me
seeking the aid that I had not the power to give.
"What has your man done?" I inquired
"Done, Tuan?" she cried. "What could he do,
seeing that he is as one already dead? Unless men
lifted him he could not move. But suffer him not to
be taken from me. He is all that I have, and in
truth I cannot live without him. Hang me on high,
Tuan, sell me in a far land, burn me till I am con-
sumed, duck me till I be drowned, but suffer not my
man and my children to be taken from me. I shall
die, Tuan, if you allow this thing to befall us."
Then suddenly the mist obscuring my memory
rolled away, and I saw the face of this woman, as I
had seen it once before, straining under a terrible
burden on the banks of the Jelai River, with the sun-
set glow and the dark masses of foliage making a
background against which it stood revealed. Then
%n DAUGHTER OP THE MUHAMMADANS
at last I understood, and her passionate distress
moved me intensely.
As a matter of fact, the question of the necessity
for segregating lepers in the Malay States under
British protection had shortly before been under
discussion, but so far as Pahang was concerned, I
had succeeded in persuading the Federal Government
that the country was not yet ripe for any such action.
Administration, all the world over, is from first to
last a matter of compromise, compromise between
what is right and what is expedient, what is for the
material welfare of the population and what is ad-
visable and politic in existing circumstances; and in
dealing with a new, raw country, whose people prior
to our coming had been living, to all intents and
purposes, in the twelfth century, great caution had
to be exercised by those of us who were engaged in
the delicate task of transferring them bodily into a
nineteenth-century atmosphere. Leper asylums in
the tropics are, at best, deplorable institutions. One
may admit their necessity, but the perennial dis-
content and unhappiness of their inmates are prover-
bial, and even the devoted service rendered to the
unfortunates by so many European women belonging
to religious orders, fails greatly- to ameliorate their
lot. When lepers are consigned to the charge of
ordinary paid attendants, the results are even more
depressing. It was with a feeling of keen relief,
therefore, that I was now able to reassure Minah.
"Have no fear, sister," I said, making use of the
kindly Malayan vocative which makes all the world
DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS 213
akin. "Your man shall not be taken from you.
Who is it that seeks to separate you from him?"
"Men say it is an order," she replied.
To the Oriental an "order" is a kind of impersonal
monster, invincible and impartial, a creature that
respects no man, and is cruel to all alike.
"Have no fear," I said. "It is true that I have
bidden the headmen of the villages report to me
concerning the number of those afflicted with the
evil sickness, but this is only done that we may be
able to aid those who suffer from it. Moreover, in
this land of Pahang, the number is small, and the
infection does not spread. Therefore, sister, have
no fear, and believe me, come what may, the Govern-
ment will not separate you from your man. Return
now in peace to your home, and put all trouble from
you. Moreover, if aught comes to sorrow you,
remember that I, or another, am here to listen to
your plaint."
As I finished speaking, the woman before me was
transformed. Her eyes filled with tears, her brown
skin faded suddenly to a grayish tint with the inten-
sity of her relief ; and before I could stay her, she had
thrown herself upon the matting at my feet, encircling
them with her warm clasp. I leaped up, humbled
exceedingly that such a woman should so abase her-
self before me, and angered by an Englishman's
instinctive hatred of a scene; and as I stooped to dis-
engage her hands, I heard her murmur, almost in a
whisper.
"Your servant hath little skill in speech, but in
214 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMADANS
truth, Tuan, you have made me happy — happy, as
though the moon had fallen into my lap — happy
as is the barren wife to whom it is given to bear a
son!"
And, as I looked into her face, it seemed to me to
shine with the beauty of her soul.
THE LONE-HAND RAID OF IttJLOP SUMBING
HE WAS an ill fellow to look at — so men who
knew him tell me — large of limb and very
powerfully built. To his broad and ugly
face a peculiarly sinister expression was imparted by
a harelip, which left most of the upper gums ex-
posed. It was to this latter embellishment that he
owed alike his vicious temper and the name by which
he was known. That his disposition should not
have been of the sweetest was natural enough, for
women did not love to look upon the gash in his lip ;
and whereas, in the land of his birth, all first-born
male children are called Kulop, his nickname of
Sumbing — which means "the chipped one" — dis-
tinguished him unpleasantly from his fellows, and
reminded him of his calamity whenever he heard it.
He was a native of Perak, and he made his way
alone, through the untrodden Sakai country, into.
Pahang. That is practically all that is known con-
cerning his origin. The name of the district in
which Kulop Sumbing had his home represented
nothing to the natives of the Jelai Valley, into which
he strayed on the other side of the Peninsula, and
now no man knows from what part of Perak this
adventurer came. The manner of his coming, how-
ever, excited the admiration and impressed itself
215
216 THE LONE-HAND RAID
upon the imagination of the people of Pahang — who
love pluck almost as heartily as they abominate toil
— so the tale of his doings is still told, though these
things happened nearly forty years ago.
Kulop Sumbing probably held a sufficiently cynical
opinion on the subject of the character of his coun-
trywomen, who are among the most venal of their sex.
He knew that no woman could love him for his
personal attractions, and that those who would be
willing to put up with him and with his disfigurement
would be themselves undesirable. On the other
hand, experience convinced him that many would be
ready to lavish their favours upon him if his money-
bags were well lined. Therefore he determined to
grow rich with as little delay as possible, and in order
to compass this end he looked about for some one
whom he could conveniently plunder. For this
purpose Perak was played out. The law of the white
men could not be bribed by a successful robber, and
of recent years the chances of evading it had been
much restricted. In these circumstances, he turned
his eyes across the border to Pahang, which was still
ruled by its own Sultan and his chiefs, and which
bore a notable reputation as a land in which ill
things might be done with impunity, to the great
profit and contentment of him who did them.
He had a love of adventure, was absolutely fear-
less, and was, moreover, a good man with his weapons.
To put these possessions to their proper uses more
elbow-room was necessary than Perak afforded, for
there a man was forever haunted by the threatening
THE LONE-HAND RAID 217
shadow of the central gaol; and as he did not share
the Malay's instinctive dread of travelling alone in
the jungle, he decided to make a lone-hand raid
into the Sakai country, which lies between P£rak
and Pahang. Here he would be safe from the grip
of the white man's, hand, hidden from the sight of the
Government's "eyes," as the Malays so inappro-
priately name our somnolent policemen; and here,
he felt sure, much wealth would come to the ready
hand that knew full well how to seize it. To Kulop
Sumbing, reasoning thus, the matter presented itself
in the light of a purely business proposition. Such
abstractions as ideas of right and wrong or questions
of ethics or morality did not enter into the calcula-
tion; for the average unregenerate Malay is honest
and law-abiding just as long as it suits his convenience
to be so, and not more than sixty seconds longer.
Virtue for virtue's sake makes not the faintest appeal
to him, but a love of right-doing may occasionally be
galvanized into a sort of paralytic life within him if
the consequences of crime are kept very clearly and
very constantly before his eyes. He will then discard
sin because sinning has become inconvenient. So
Kulop Sumbing kicked the dust of law-restrained
Perak from his bare brown soles, and set out for the
Sakai country in the remote interior of Pahang, into
which even the limping, lop-sided justice of a native
administration made no pretence to penetrate,
He carried with him all the rice that he could bear
upon his shoulders, two dollars in silver, a little salt
and tobacco, a handsome kris, and a long spear with
218 THE LONE-HAND RAID
a broad and shining blade. His supplies of foo/
were to last him until the first Sakai camps should
be reached, and after that, he told himself, all that
he might need would "rest at the tip of his dagger."
He did not propose seriously to begin his operations
until the mountain range, which fences the P£rak
boundary, had been crossed, so he was content to
leave the Sakai villages on the western slope un-
pillaged. He impressed some of the naked and
scared aborigines to serve as bearers, and levied
such supplies as he required; and the Sakai, who were
glad to get rid of him so cheaply, handed him on
from village to village with the greatest alacrity.
The base of the jungle-covered mountains of the
interior was reached at the end of a fortnight, and
Ktilop and his Sakai began to drag themselves np
the steep ascent by means of roots, trailing creepers,
and slender saplings.
Upon a certain day they attained the summit of a
nameless mountain, and threw themselves down,
panting for breath, upon the bare, circular diun>
ming-ground of an argus pheasant. On the crest of
nearly every hill and hogsback in the interior of the
Peninsula these drumming-grounds are found, patches
of naked earth trodden to the hardness of a threshing-
floor, and carpeted with a thin litter of dry twigs.
Sometimes, if you keep very still, you may hear the
cocks strutting and dancing, and mightily thumping
the ground, but no man, it is said, has ever actually
seen the birds going through their vainglorious per-
formance. At night-time their challenging yell-
THE LONE-HAND RAID 219
incredibly loud, discordant, yet clear — rings out
across the valleys, waking a thousand echoes, and the
cry is taken up and thrown backward and forward
from hill-cap to hill-cap. Judging by the frequency
and the ubiquity of their yells, the argus pheasants
must be very numerous in the jungles of the interior,
but so deftly do they hide themselves that they are
rarely seen, and the magnificence of their plumage,
which rivals that of the peacock, is only familiar
to us because the birds are often trapped by the
Malays.
At the spot where Kulop and his Sakai lay the
trees grew sparsely. The last two hundred feet of
the ascent had been a severe climb, and the ridge,
which formed the summit, stood clear of the tree-
tops which had their roots halfway up the slope.
As he lay panting Kulop Sumbing gazed down for
the first time upon the eastern side of the Peninsula,
the theatre in which ere long he proposed to play
a very daring part. At his feet were tree-tops of
every shade of green, from the tender, brilliant colour
which we associate with young corn to the deep and
sombre hue which is almost black. The forest fell
away beneath him in a broad slope, the contour of
each individual tree, and the gray, white, or black
lines which marked their trunks or branches grow-
ing less and less distinct, until the jungle covering
the plain became a blurred wash of colour that had
more of blue than green in it. Here and there, very
far away, the sunlight smote something that an-
swered with a dazzling flash, like the mirror of a
220 THE LONE-HAND RAID
heliograph, and this, Kulop knew, was the broad
reaches of a river. The forest hid all traces of human
habitation or cultivation, and no sign of life or move-
ment was visible save only a solitarv kite circling
and veering on outstretched, motionless wings, and
the slight, uneasy swaying of some of the taller trees
as a faint breeze sighed gently over the jungle. Here,
on the summit of the mountains, the air was damp
and chilly, and a cold wind was blowing, while the
sun seemed to have lost half its usual power; but in
the plain below the earth lay sweltering beneath the
perpendicular rays, and the heat-haze danced and
shimmered above the forest like the hot air above a
furnace.
During the next few days Kulop Sumbing and his
Perak Sakai made their way down the eastern slope
of the mountains, and through the silent forests,
which are given over to game and to the really wild
jungle-folk, who fly at the approach of human beings,
and discover their proximity as instinctively as do
the beasts which share with them their home.
Ktilop and his people passed several abandoned
camps belonging to these wild Sakai — mere rough
hurdles of boughs and leaves, canted on end to form
lean-to huts; but of their owners they saw no trace,
for even when these people trade with the tamer
Sakai they adopt the immemorial custom of silent
barter and never suffer themselves to be seen by the
men with whom they do business. Their principal
stock in trade are the long, straight reeds of which the
inner casing of the blowpipe is made, and these they
THE LONE-HAND RAID 221
deposit in certain well-known places in the jungle,
whence they are removed by the tamer tribesmen,
who replace them by salt, knife-blades, flints and
steels and other similar articles. Now and again
a successful slave-raid has resulted in the capture of a
few of these savages, but their extraordinary elusive-
ness, added to the fact that they live the life of the
primitive nomadic hunter, roaming the forest in
small family groups, renders them difficult to locate,
und impossible to round up in any large numbers.
Kulop Sumbing, of course, took very little interest
in them, for to his utilitarian mind people who pos-
sessed no property could make no claim upon the
attention of a serious man. Therefore, he pushed on
through the wild Sakai country, following game paths
and wading down the beds of shallow streams until
the upper waters of the Betok, the principal tributary
of the Jelai River, were struck. Here bamboos were
felled, a long, narrow raft was constructed, and
Kulop Sumbing, dismissing his Perak Sakai, began
the descent of the unknown river. He knew only
that the stream upon which he was navigating would
lead, if followed far enough, into the country in-
habited by Malays; that somewhere between it and
himself lay a tract peopled by semi-civilized Sakai;
that he proposed to despoil the latter, and would have
some difficulty in preventing the Pahang Malays from
pillaging him in their turn; but he fared onward un-
dismayed, alone save for his weapons, and was
filled with a sublime confidence in his ability to
plunder the undiscovered land that lay before him.
222 THE LONE-HAND RAID
When you come to think of it, there was some-
thing bordering upon the heroic in the action of this
Unscrupulous man with the marred face, who glided
gently down the river on this wild, lone-hand raid.
Even the local geography was unknown to him.
For aught he knew, the stream might be beset by im-
passable rapids and by dangers that would task his
skill and courage to the utmost; and even if he
triumphed over natural obstacles, the enmity which
his actions would arouse would breed up foemen for
him wherever he went. He was going forth de-
liberately to war against heavy odds, yet he poled
his raft down the river with deft punts, and gazed
calmly ahead of him with a complete absence of fear.
It was noon upon the second day of his lonely
journey down the Be'tok that Kulop sighted a large
Sakai camp, evidently the property of semi-tame
tribesfolk, set in a clearing on the right bank of the
rivei. The sight of a Malay coming from such an
unusual quarter rilled the jungle-people with super-
stitious fear, and in a few minutes every man, woman,
and child had fled into the forest.
Kulop went through the ten or fifteen squalid huts
which stood in the clearing, and an occasional grunt
of satisfaction signified that he approved of the
stores of valuable gum lying stowed away in the
sheds. He calculated that there could not be less
than seven pikul, a quantity that would fetch a good
six hundred Mexican dollars, even when the poor
price ruling in the most distant Malayan villages of
the interior was taken into consideration. This, of
THE LONE-HAND RAID 223
course, was long before such a product as plantation
rubber had come into existence in the East, and wild
gutta was much sought after by Europeans in the
towns of the straits settlements. Now, six hun-
dred dollars represented a small fortune to a man of
Kulop Sumbing's standing, and the sight of so goodly
a store of gum filled him with delight. But here he
found himself faced by a problem of some difficulty.
How was the precious stuff to be carried downstream
into the Malayan districts of Pahang? His raft
would hold about one pikul, and he felt reasonably
certain that the Sakai, who were fairly used to being
plundered by their Malayan neighbours, would not
interfere with him very seriously if he chose to re-
move that quantity and to leave the rest. But the
thought of the remaining six pikul was too much for
him. He could not find it in his heart to abandon it;
and of a sudden he was seized by a dull anger against
the Sakai who, he almost persuaded himself, were in
some sort defrauding him of his just dues.
Seating himself on the threshold-beam in the door-
way of one of the huts, he lighted a rokok — a ciga-
rette of coarse Javanese tobacco encased in a dried
shoot of the nipah palm, and set himself to think
out the situation and to await the return of the
tribesmen; and ever, as he dwelt upon the injury
which these miscreants were like to inflict upon him
if they refused to help him to remove the gutta,
his heart waxed hotter and hotter against them.
Presently two scared brown faces, scarred with
blue tattoo-marks on cheek and forehead, and sur-
224 THE LONE-HAND RAID
mounted by frowzy mops of sun-bleached hair, rose
stealthily above the level of the flooring a dozen
yards away, and peeped at him with shy, distrustful
eyes.
Kulop turned in their direction, and the bobbing
heads disappeared with astonishing alacrity.
"Come hither," Kulop commanded.
The heads reappeared once more, and in a few
brief words Kulop bade their owners have no fear,
but go back into the forest and fetch the rest of the
tribesfolk.
After some further interchange of words and con-
siderable delay and hesitation, the two Sakai sidled
off into the jungle, and presently a crowd of squalid
aborigines issued from the shelter of the trees and
underwood. They stood huddled together in an
uneasy group, gazing curiously at Kulop, while with
light feet they trod the ground gingerly, with every
muscle braced for a swift dart into cover at the first,
alarm of danger.
"Who among you is the headman?" asked Kulop.
"Your servant is the headman," replied an ancient
Sakai.
He stood forward a little as he spoke, trembling
slightly as he glanced up furtively at the Malay,
who sat cross-legged in the doorway of the hut. His
straggling mop of hair was almost white, and his
skin was dry and creased and wrinkled. He was
naked, as were all his people, save for a dirty loin-
clout of bark cloth, which use had reduced to a mere
whisp. His thin flanks and buttocks were gray with
THE LONE-HAND RAID £2&
the warm wood ashes in which he had been lying
when Kulop's coming interrupted his midday snooze.
"Bid these, your children, build me eight rafts of
bamboo, strong and firm, and moor them at the foot
of the rapid yonder, ' ' ordered Kulop . ' 'And hearken,
be not slow, for I love not indolence."
"It can be done," said the Sakai headman sub-
missively.
"That is well," returned Kulop. "And I counsel
you to see to it with speed, for I am a man very prone
to wrath:"
Casting furtive glances at the Malay, the Sakai
set to work, and by nightfall the new rafts were
completed. For his part, Kulop of the Harelip,
who had declared that he loved not indolence, lay
upon his back on the floor of the chief's hut, while
the jungle-people toiled for him, and roared a love
song in a harsh, discordant voice to the hypothetical
lady whose heart was presently to be subdued by the
wealth which was now almost within his grasp.
Kulop slept that night in the Sakai hut among tht.
restless jungle-folk. Up here in the foothills the au
was chilly, and the fire, which the Sakai never will-
ingly let die, smoked and smouldered in the middle
of the floor. Half a dozen long logs, all pointing to a
common centre, like the spokes of a broken wheel,
met at. the point where the fire burned red in the
darkness, and between these boughs, in the warm
gray ashes, men, women, and children sprawled in
every attitude into which their naked brown limbs
could twist themselves. Ever and anon some of
226 THE LONE-HAND RAID
them would arise and tend the fire, and then would
group themselves squatting around the blaze, and
jabber in the jerky, monosyllabic jargon of the abori-
gines. The pungent smoke enshrouded them, and
their eyes waxed red and watery, but they heeded
it not, for the warmth of fire is one of the Sakai's
few luxuries, and the discomforts connected with it
are to them the traditional crumpled rose leaf.
And Kulop of the Harelip slept the sleep of the just.
The dawn broke grayly, for a mist hung low over
the forest, white as driven snow, and cold and clammy
as the forehead of a corpse. The naked Sakai peeped
shiveringly from the doorways of their huts, and then
went shuddering back to the grateful warmth of
their fires, and the frowsy atmosphere within.
Kulop alone made his way down to the river bank,
and there performed his morning ablutions with
scrupulous care, for whatever laws of God or man a
Malay may disregard, he never is unmindful of the
virtue of personal cleanliness which, in an Oriental,
is ordinarily of more immediate importance to his
neighbours than all the godliness in the world.
His ablutions completed, Kulop climbed the steep
bank, and standing outside the headman's hut,
summoned the Sakai from their lairs in strident
tones, bidding them hearken to his words. They
stood or squatted before him in the white mist,
through which the sun, just peeping above the
jungle, was beginning to send long slanting rays of
dazzling white light.
Thev were cold and miserable — this little crowd of
THE LONE-HAND RAID 227
naked savages — and they shivered and scratched
their bodies restlessly. The trilling of the thrushes,
and the morning chorus raised by the other birds,
came to their ears, mingled with the whooping ot
troops of anthropoid -apes, but this joyous music
held no inspiration for the Sakai The extraordinary
dampness of the air during the first hours after day-
break, in these remote jungle places of the Peninsula!
chills men to the marrow and is appallingly depress-
ing. Moreover, the Sakai are very sensitive to cold,
and it is when dawn has roused them and the fierce
heat of the day has not yet broken through the mists
to cheer them, that their thin courage and vitality
are at the lowest ebb.
"Listen to me, you Sakai," cried Kulop in a loud
and wrathful voice; and at the word those of his
hearers who were standing erect made haste to as-
sume a humble squatting posture, and the shiverings
occasioned by the cold were increased by tremblings
born of fear.
If there be one thing that the jungle-folk dislike
more than another, it is to be called "Sakai" to their
faces, and they are never so addressed by a Malay
unless he wishes to bully them. The word, which
has long ago lost its original meaning, signifies a
slave, or some say, a dog; but by the aborigines it is
regarded as the most offensive epithet in the Malayan
vocabulary. In their own tongue they speak of
themselves as sen-oi — which means a "man" — as
opposed to gob, which signifies "foreigner"; for even
the Sakai has some vestiges of pride, if you know
228 THE LONE-HAND RAID
where to look for it, and from his point of view the
people of his own race are the only human beings
who are entitled to be classed as "men," without any
qualifying term. When speaking Malay, they allude
to themselves as Orang Bukit — men of the hills;
Orang Utan — men of the jungle; or Orang Ddlam —
the folk who live within, viz., within the forest.
They love to be spoken of as raayat — peasants, or
as raayat raja — the king's people; and the Malays,
who delight in nicely graded distinctions of vocative
in addressing men of various ranks and classes,
habitually use these terms when conversing with the
Sakai, in order that the hearts of the jungle-folk may
be warmed within them. When, therefore, the
objectionable term "Sakai" is applied to them, the
forest-dwellers know that mischief and trouble are
threatening them, and as they are as timid as any
other wild animals of the woods, they are forthwith
stricken with terror.
"Listen, you accursed Sakai," Kulop of the Hare-
lip cried again, waving his spear above his head.
"Mark well my words, for already I seem to hear the
warm earth calling to the coffin planks in which your
carcasses shall presently lie if you fail to do my
bidding. Go speedily and gather up all the gutta
that is stored in your dwellings, and bring it hither
to me lest some worse thing befall you."
The Sakai, eying him fearfully, decided that they
had to deal with a determined person whose irritable
temper would quickly translate itself from words
into deeds. Slowly, therefore, they rose up arid
THE LONE-HAND RAID 229
walked, each man to his hut, with lagging steps.
In a few minutes the great balls of rubber, with a
hole punched in each through which a rattan line
was passed, lay heaped upon the ground at Kulop's
feet. During the absence of the men, the women and
children had almost imperceptibly dribbled away,
and most of them were now hidden from sight behind
the huts or the felled trees of the clearing. But the
men when they returned brought with them some-
thing as well as the rubber, for each of the Sakai
now held in his hand a long and slender spear fash-
ioned from a bamboo. The weapon sounds harm-
less enough, but these wooden blades are strong, and
their points and edges are as sharp as steel. Kulop
Sumbing was shocked and outraged by this insolent
suggestion of resistance, and arrived at the conclu-
sion that prompt action must supplement rough
words.
"Cast away your spears, you swine of the forest!''
he yelled.
Almost all the Sakai did as Kulop bade them, fo\
the Malay stood for them as the embodiment of the
dominant race, and years of oppression and wrong
have made the jungle folk very docile in the presence
of the more civilized brown man. The old Chief,
however, clutched his weapon in his trembling hands v
and his terrified eyes ran round the group of his
kinsman, vainly inciting them to follow his example.
The next moment his gaze was recalled to Kulop of
the Harelip by a sharp pain in his right shoulder,
as the spear of the Malay transfixed it. His own
230 THE LONE-HAND RAID
spear fell from his powerless arm, and the little
crowd of Sakai broke and fled. But a series of
cries and threats from Kulop, as he ran around them,
herding them as a collie herds sheep, brought them
presently to a standstill.
No thought of further resistance remained in their
minds, and the gutta was quickly loaded on to the
rafts, and the plundered Sakai impressed as crews for
them. The rafts were fastened to one another, by
Kulop's orders, by a stout piece of rattan, to pre-
vent straying or desertion, and the conqueror sat
at ease on a low platform in the centre of the rear-
most raft, keeping a watchful eye on all, and main-
taining his mastery over the shuddering jungle-folk
by frequent threats and admonitions.
The wounded Chief, left behind in his hut, sent
two youths through the forest to bid their fellow
tribesmen make ready the poison for their blowpipe
darts, for he knew that no one would now dare to
attack Kulop of the Harelip at close quarters. But
the poison which the Sakai distil from the resin of the
ipoh tree requires some time for its preparation, and
if it is to be used with effect upon a human being
or any large animal, a specially strong solution is
necessary. Above all, if it is to do its work properly,
it must be newly brewed. Thus it was that Kulop
Sumbing had time to load his rafts with gutta taken
from two other Sakai camps, and to pass very nearly
out of the jungle people's country before the men
whom he had robbed were in a position to assume
the offensive.
THE LONE-HAND RAID 231
The Betok River falls into the Upper Jelai, a stream
which is also given over entirely to the Sakai, and it
is not until the latter river meets the Telom and the
Serau, and with their combined waters form the
lower Jelai, that the banks begin to be studded with
scattered Malayan habitations.
Kulop of the Harelip, of course, knew nothing of
the geography of the country through which he was
travelling, but running water, if followed down
sufficiently far, presupposed the discovery, sooner or
later, of villages peopled by folk of his own race.
Therefore, he pressed forward eagerly, bullying and
goading his Sakai into something resembling energy.
He had now more than a thousand dollars' worth of
rubber on his rafts, and he was growing anxious for
its safety. To the danger in which he himself went,
he was perfectly callous and indifferent.
It was at Kuala Merabau — a spot where a tiny
stream falls into the upper Jelai on its right bank —
that a small party of Sakai lay in hiding, peering
through the vegetation at the gliding waters down
which Kulop and his plunder must presently come.
Each man carried at his side a quiver, fashioned frpm
a single length of bamboo, ornamented with the
dots, crosses, zigzags, and triangles which the Sakai
delight to brand upon their vessels. Each quiver
was filled with darts about the thickness of a steel
knitting needle, and some fifteen inches in length,
with an elliptical piece of light wood at one end to
steady it in its flight, and at the other a very sharp '
tip, coated with the black venom of the ipoh sap.
832 THE LONE-HAND RAID
In their hands each man of the ambushing party
held a reed blowpipe, ten or twelve feet long, and
rudely but curiously carved.
Presently the foremost Sakai stood erect, his
elbows spread-eagled and level with his ears, his feet
heel to heel, his body leaning slightly forward from
the hips. His hands were locked together at the
mouthpiece of his blowpipe, the long reed being
held firmly by the thumbs and forefingers, which
were coiled above it, while the weight rested upon
the lower interlaced fingers of both hands. His
mouth, nestling closely against the wooden mouth-
piece, was puckered and his cheeks drawn in, like
those of a man who seeks to spit out a shred of tobacco
which the loose end of a cigarette has left between
his lips. His keen, wild eyes glared unflinchingly
along the length of his blowpipe, little hard wrinkles
forming at their corners.
"Pit!" said the blowpipe.
The wad of dry pith, which had been used to ex-
clude the air around the head of the dart, fell into
the water a dozen yards away, and the dart itself
flew forward with incredible speed, straight to the
mark at which it was aimed.
A slight shock on his right side, just above the hip
apprised Kulop that something had struck him, and
looking down. he saw the dart still quivering in his
waist. But, as luck would have it, Kulop carried
under his coat a gaudy bag, ornamented with beads,
and stuffed with the ingredients of the betel quid,
and in this the dart had embedded itself. The merest
THE LONE-HAND RAID 233
fraction of a second was all that Kulop needed to see
this, and to take in the whole situation. With him
action and preception kept even step. Before the
dart had ceased to shudder, before the Sakai on the
bank had had time to send another in its wake, before
the men poling his raft had fully grasped what was
happening, Kulop had seized the nearest of them by
his frowzy halo of elflocks, and had drawn him
screaming across his knees. The terrified creature
writhed and bellowed, flinging his body about wildly,
and his friends upon the bank feared to blow their
darts lest they should inadvertently wound their kins-
man while trying to kill the Malay.
"Have a care, you swine of the forest!" roared
Kulop, cuffing the yelling Sakai unsparingly in order
to keep his limbs in constant motion. "Have a care,
you sons of fallen women ! If you spew forth one more
of your darts, this man, your little brother, dies
forthwith by my kris."
The Sakai on the bank had no reason to doubt the
sincerity of Kulop's intentions, and as these poor
creatures love their relatives, both near and distant,
far more than is usual in more civilized communities
where those connected by ties of blood do not neces-
sarily live together in constant close association, they
dared not blow another dart. Moreover, one poi-
soned arrow had apparently gone home, and a single
drop of the powerful solution of the ipoh which they
were using sufficed, as they well knew, to cause death
accompanied by excrucioting agony. The attacking
party therefore drew off, and Kulop of the Harelip
234 THE LONE-HAND RAID
proceeded upon his way rejoicing; but he kept his>
Sakai across his knee, none the less, and occasionally
administered to him a sounding cuff for the stimula-
tion of his fellows.
Thus Kulop won his way in safety out of the Sakai
country, and that night he stretched himself to sleep
upon a mat spread on the veranda of a Malayan
house, in the full enjoyment of excellent health, the
knowledge that he was at last a rich man, and a
delightful consciousness of having performed great
and worthy deeds.
For a month or two he lived in the valley of the
Jelai, at Bukit Betong, the village which was the
headquarters of the Dato' Maharaja Perba, the
great upcountry chief, who at that time ruled most
of the interior of Pahang. He sold his rubber to
this potentate, and as he let it go for something less
than the market price, the sorrows of the Sakai were
the cause of considerable amusement to the local
authorities from whom they sought redress.
But Kulop of the Harelip had left his heart behind
him in Perak, for the natives of that State, men say,
can never long be happy when beyond the limits of
their own country, and must always sooner or later
make their way back to drink again of the waters of
their silver river. Perhaps, too, Kulop had some
particular lady in his mind when he set out upon hie
quest for wealth, for all the world over, if you trace
matters to their source, the best work and the most
blackguardly deeds of men are usually to be ascribed
to the women who sit at the back of their hearts,
THE LONE-HAND RAID 235
and supply the driving-power which impels them to
good or to evil.
One day Kulop of the Harelip presented himself
before the Dato' Maharaja Perba, as the latter lay
smoking his opium pipe upon the soft mats in his
house, and informed him that, as he had come to
seek permission to leave Pahang, he had brought a
present — "a thing trifling and unworthy of his
notice" — which he begged the chief to honour him
by accepting.
"When do you go down river?" inquired the Dato'
for the Jelai Valley is in the far interior of Pahang,
and if a man would leave the country by any of the
ordinary routes, he must begin his journey by trav-
elling downstream at least as far as Kuala Lipis.
"Your servant goes upstream" replied Kulop
Sumbing.
The Dato' gave vent to an expression of incredu-
lous surprise.
"Your servant returns the way he came," said
Kulop.
The Dato' burst out into a torrent of excited
expostulation. It was death, certain death, he said,
for Ktilop to attempt once more to traverse the Sakai
country. The other routes were open, and no man
would dream of staying him if he sought to return
to his own country by land or sea. The course he
meditated was folly, was madness, was an impossi-
bility. But to all these words Kulop of the Harelip
turned a deaf ear. He knew Malayan chieftains and
all their ways and works pretty intimately, and he
236 THE LONE-HAND RAID
had already paid too heavy a toll to the Dato' to
have any desire to see his honest earnings further
diminished by other similar exactions. If he took
his way homeward through country inhabited by
Malays, he knew that at every turn he would have
to satisfy the demands of the barons and chiefs and
headmen whose territory he would cross on his
journey, and the progressive dwindling of his hoard
which this would entail was a certainty that he would
not face. On the other hand, he held the Sakai in
utter contempt, and as at this stage of the proceedings
he was incapable of feeling fear, the Dato's estimate
of the risks he was running did not move him. A
sinister grin distorted his face as he listened to the
chief's words, for he regarded them as a cunning
attempt to induce him to penetrate more deeply into
Pahang in order that he might thereafter be plun-
dered with greater ease. Accordingly, he declined
to accept the advice offered to him, and a coupit
of days later he set out upon his return journey
through the forests.
He knew that it would be useless to attempt to
persuade any one to accompany him, so he went, as
he had come, alone. The dollars into which he
had converted his loot were hard and heavy upon his
back, and he was further loaded with a supply of rice,
dried fish, and salt; but his weapons were as bright
as ever, and to him they still seemed the only com-
rades which a reasonable man need hold to be essen-
tial. He travelled on foot, for single-handed he
could not pole a raft against the current, and he fol-
THE LONE-HAND RAID 237
lowed such paths as he could find, guiding himself
mainly by the direction from which the rivers flowed.
His plan was to Uscend the valley through which
the Betok ran, until the mountains were reached, and
after crossing them to strike some stream on the
Perak side of the range, down which it would be
possible to navigate a bamboo raft.
He soon found himself back in the Sakai country,
and passed several of the jungle-folk's camps, which
were all abandoned at his approach; but though he
halted at one or two of them in order to replenish
his scanty stock of provisions, he considered it more
prudent to pass the night in the jungle.
It was on the evening of the third day that Kulop
became aware of an unpleasant sensation. The
moon was at the full, and he could see for many yards
around him in the 'forest, but though no living thing
was visible, he became painfully conscious of the
fact that he was being watched. Occasionally he
thought that he caught the glint of eyes peeping at
him from the underwood, and every now and again
a dry twig snapped crisply, first on one side of him,
then on the other, in front of him, behind him. He
started to his feet and sounded the sorak — the war-
cry — that pealed in widening echoes through the
forest. A rustle in half a dozen different directions
at once showed him that the watchers had been
numerous, and that they were now taking refuge in
flight.
Kulop of the Haselip sat down again beside his
fire, and a new and strange sensation began to lay
238 THE LONE-HAND RAID
cold fingers about his heart. It was accompanied
by an uneasy feeling in the small of his back, as
though a spearthrust in that particular part of his
person was momentarily to be expected, and a clammy
dampness broke out upon his forehead, while the
skin behind his ears felt unwontedly cold. Danger
that he could see and face had never had any power
to awe him, but his isolation and the invisibility of
his enemies combined to produce in him some curious
phenomena. Perhaps even Kulop of the Harelip
needed no man to tell him that he was experiencing
fear.
He built up his fire, and sat near the blaze, trying
to still the involuntary chattering of his teeth. If
he could get at grips with his foes, fear, he knew,
would leave him; but this eerie, uncanny sensation of
being watched and hounded by crafty enemies whom
he could not see was sawing his nerves to rags. From
time to time he glanced uneasily over his shoulder,
and at last wedged his body in between the barrier
roots of a big tree, so that he might be secure from
assault from behind. As he sat thus, leaning slightly
backward, he chanced to glance up, and in a treetop,
some fifty yards away, he saw the crouching form of
a Sakai outlined blackly against the moonlit sky,
amidst a network of boughs and branches.
In an instant he was on his feet, and again the
sorak rang out, as he flung himself at the underwood,
striving to tear his way through it to the foot of the
tree in which his enemy had been perched. But the
jungle was thick and the shadows were heavy; he
THE LONE-HAND RAID
quickly lost his bearings, and was presently glad to
stumble back to his fire again, torn with brambles
and sweating profusely.
All through that night Kulop of the Harelip strove
to drive away sleep from his heavy eyes. He had
been tramping all day, and his whole being was
clamouring for rest. The hours were incredibly
long, and he feared that the dawn would never come.
During every minute he was engaged in an active
and conscious battle with physical exhaustion. At
one moment he would tell himself that he was wide
awake, and a second later a rustle in the underwood
startled him into a knowledge that he had slept.
His waking nightmare merged itself inextricably
into the nightmare of dreams. Over and over again,
in an access of sudden panic, he leaped to his feet,
and yelled the war-cry, though his dazed brain
hardly knew whether he was defying the Sakai be-
setting him or the spectres which thronged his sleep-
drugged fancy; but each time the patter of feet and
the snapping of twigs told him that those who watched
him were stampeding. While he remained awake
and on guard the Sakai feared him too much to
attack him. His previous escape from the dart
which they had seen pierce his side had originated
in their minds the idea that he was invulnerable, and
proof against the ipoh poison, so they no longer tried
to kill him with their blowpipes. That they dared
not fall upon him unless he slept very soon became
evident to Kulop himself. Sleep was the ally of the
Sakai and his most dangerous enemy; but fear
240 THE LONE-HAND RAID
gripped him anew as he speculated as to what would
happen when he at last was forced to yield to the
weight of weariness that even now was oppressing
him so sorely.
Presently a change began to come over the forest
in which he sat. A whisper of sound from the trees
around told him that the birds were beginning to stir.
Objects, which hitherto had been black and shapeless
masses cast into prominence by the clear moonlight,
gradually assumed more definite shape. Later the
colour of the trunks and leaves and creepers —
still sombre and dull, but none the less colour —
became perceptible, and Kulop of the Harelip
rejoiced exceedingly because the dawn had come
and the horrors of the night were passing away.
Quickly he boiled his rice and devoured a meal;
then, gathering up his belongings, he resumed his
journey. All that day, though physical weariness
pressed heavily upon him, he trudged onward stub-
bornly; but the news had spread among the Sakai
that their enemy was once more among them, and
the number of the jungle-folk who dogged his foot-
steps steadily increased. Kulop could hear their
shrill whoops as they called to one another through
the forest, giving warning of his approach, or signal-
ling the path that he was taking. Once or twice he
fancied that he caught a glimpse of a lithe brown
body, of a pair of glinting eyes, or of a straggling
mop of hair; and forthwith he would charge, shouting
furiously. But the figure — if indeed it had any
existence save in his overwrought imagination —
THE LONE-HAND RAID 241
always vanished as suddenly and as noiselessly as a
shadow, long before he could come within striking
distance. This experience, Kulop found, was far
more trying to the nerves than any stand-up fight
could have been. Violent action and the excitement
of a bloody hand-to-hand encounter would have
supplied him with an anodyne; but the invisibility
of his enemy, and the intangible character of their
pursuit of him added the terrors of a fever dream to
the very imminent danger in which he now knew him-
self to be.
The night which followed that day was a period
of acute agony to the weary man, who dared not
sleep; and about midnight he again resumed his
march, hoping thereby to elude his pursuers.
For an hour he believed himself to have suc-
ceeded in this. Then the shrill yells began once more
to sound from the forest all around him, and at the
first cry Kulop's heart sank. Still he stumbled on,
too tired out to charge at his phantom enemy, too
hoarse at last even to raise his voice in the sorak,
but doggedly determined not to give in. He was
beginning, however, visibly to fail, and as he showed
visible signs of distress, the number and the boldness
of his pursuers increased proportionately. Soon
their yells were resounding on every side, and Kulop,
staggering forward, seemed like some lost soul, wend-
ing his way to the Bottomless Pit, with an escort of
mocking devils chanting their triumphant chorus
around him.
Yet another unspeakable day followed, and when
242 THE LONE-HAND RAID
once more the night shut down, Kulop of the Hare-
lip sank exhausted upon the ground. His battle was
over. He could bear up no longer against the weight
of his weariness and the insistent craving for sleep.
Almost as his head touched the warm litter of dead
leaves, with which the earth in all Malayan jungles
is strewn, his heavy eyelids closed and his breast
rose and fell to the rhythm of his regular breathing.
He was halfway up the mountains now, and almost
within reach of safety, but Kulop of the Harelip —
Kulop, the resolute, the fearless, the strong, and the
enduring — had reached the end of his tether. He
had been beaten, not by the Sakai, but by Nature,
whom no man may long defy; and to her assaults
he surrendered his will and slept.
Presently the underwood was parted by human
hands in half a dozen different places, and the Sakai
crept stealthily out of the jungle into the little patch
of open in which their enemy lay at rest. He moved
uneasily in his sleep — not on account of any noise
made by them, for they came as silently as a cloud
shadow cast across a landscape; and at once the
Sakai halted with lifted feet, ready to plunge back
into cover should their victim awake. But Kulop,
utterly exhausted, was sleeping heavily, wrapped in
the slumber from which he was never again to be
aroused.
The noiseless jungle-folk, armed with heavy clubs
and bamboo spears, stole to within a foot or two of
the unconscious Malay. Then nearly a score of
them raised their weapons, poised them aloft, and
THE LONE-HAND RAID 243
brought them down simultaneously on the head and
body of their enemy. Kulop's limbs stretched them-
selves slowly and stiffly, his jaw fell, and blood flowed
from him in twenty places. No cry escaped him,
but the trembling Sakai looked down upon his dead
face, and knew that at last he had paid his debt to
them in full.
They carried off none of his gear, for they feared
to be haunted by his ghost, and Kulop at the last
had nothing edible with him, such as the jungle-
folk find it hard to leave untouched. Money had
no meaning for the Sakai, so the silver dollars, which
ran in a shining stream from a rent made in his linen
waist pouch by a chance spear thrust, lay glinting in
the moonlight by the side of that still, gray face
rendered ghastly in death by the pallid lip split
upward to the nostrils. Thus the Sakai took their
leave of Kulop Sumbing, as he lay stretched beside
the riches which he had won at so heavy a cost.
If you want some ready money and a good kris and
spear, both of which have done execution in their
day, they are all to be had for the gathering at a
spot hi the forest not very far from the bound-
ary between Pahang and Perak. You must find
the place for yourself, however, for the Sakai
to a man will certainly deny all knowledge of it.
Therefore it is probable that Kulop of the Harelip
will rise up on the Judgment Day with his ill-gotten
property intact.
THE FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
KRETING, the old Sakai slave-woman, first
told me this story, as I sat by her side at
Sayong, on the banks of the Perak River,
watching her deft management of her long fishing-
rod, and listening to her guttural grunts of satisfac-
tion when she contrived to land anything that
weighed more than a couple of ounces. The Malays
called her Kreting — which means woolly-head — in
derision, because her hair was not so sleek and smooth
as that of their own womenfolk, and it was the only
name to which she had answered for well-nigh half a
century. When I knew her she was repulsively ugly,
bent with years and many burdens, lean of body and
limb, with a loose skin that hung in pouches of dirty
wrinkles, and a shock of grizzled hair which, as the
village children were wont to cry after her, resembled
the nest of a squirrel. Even then, after many years
of captivity, she spoke Malay with a strong Sakai
accent, splitting each word up into the individual
syllables of which it was composed; and though the
story of her life's tragedy moved her deeply, her
telling of it was far from being fluent or eloquent.
By dint of making her repeat it to me over and over
again, by asking countless questions, and by fitting
what she said and what she hinted on to my own
£41
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 245
knowledge of her fellow-tribesmen and their environ-
ment, I contrived to piece her narrative together
into something like a connected whole. For the
rest, the Sakai people of the upper Plus, into whose
country duty often took me in those days, gave me
their version of the facts, not once but many times,
as is the manner of natives. Therefore, I think it is
probable that in what follows I have not strayed far
from the truth.
The Sakai camp was pitched far up among the little
straying spurs of hill which wander off from the main
range of the Malay Peninsula, on its western slope,
and straggle out into the valleys. In front of the
camp a nameless stream tumbled its hustling waters
down a gorge to the plain below. Across this slender
rivulet, and on every side as far as the straitened eye
could carry, there rose forest, nothing but forest,
crowding groups of giant trees, underwood twenty feet
in height, and a tangled network of vines and creepers,
the whole as impenetrable as a quickset hedge.
It had been raining heavily earlier in the day, and
now that evening was closing in, each branch and leaf
and twig dripped slow drops of moisture persistently
with a melancholy sound as of nature furtively
weeping. The fires of the camp, smouldering sul-
lenly above the damp fuel, crackled and hissed their
discontent, sending wreaths of thick, blue smoke
curling upward into the still, moisture-laden air
in such dense volumes that the flames were hardly
visible even in the gloom of the gathering night. In
246 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
the heavens, seen overhead through the interlacing
branches, the sunlight still lingered, but the sky looked
wan and woebegone.
There were a score and a half of squallid creatures
occupying the little camp, men and women and
children of various ages, all members of the down-
trodden aboriginal tribes of the Peninsula, beings
melancholy and miserable, thoroughly in keeping
with the sodden, dreary gloom around them, and
with their comfortless resting-place. All the chil-
dren and some of the younger women were stark
naked, and the other occupants of the camp wore no
garment save a narrow strip of bark cloth twisted
in a dirty wisp about their loins. Up here in the
foothills it was intensely cold, as temperature ib
reckoned in the tropics, for the rain had chilled the
forest land to a dank rawness. The Sakai huts con
sisted of rude, lean-to shelters of palm leaves, sup-
ported by wooden props, and under them the jungle-
folk had huddled together while the pitiless sky
emptied its waters upon them. No real protection
from the weather had thereby been afforded to
them, however, and everything in the camp was
drenched and clammy.
The Sakai squatted upon their heels, pressing
closely against one another, with their toes in the
warm ashes, as they edged in nearer and nearer to
the smoky fires. Every now and again the teeth of
one or another of them would start chattering nois-
ily, and several of the children whimpered and whined
unceasingly. The women were silent for the most
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 247
part, but the men kept up a constant flow of dis-
jointed talk in queer, jerky monosyllables. Most of
the Sakai were covered from head to foot with a
leprous-looking skin disease, bred by damp jungles
and poor diet; and since the wet had caused this to
itch excruciatingly, they from time to time tore
at their hides with relentless fingernails, like apes.
The men smoked a green, shredded tobacco, soft
and fragrant, rolled into rude cigarettes with fresh
leaves for their outer casing. A few wild yams and
other jungle roots were baking themselves black in
the embers of the fires, and one or two fish, stuck
in the cleft of a split stick, were roasting in the centre
of the clouds of smoke.
Of a sudden the stealthy tones of the men ceased
abruptly, and the women fell a-quieting the com-
plaining children with hurried maternal skill. All
the folk in the camp were straining their ears to listen.
Any one whose senses were less acute than those of
the wild Sakai would have heard no sound of any
kind save only the tinkling babble of the little
stream and the melancholy drip of the wet branches
in the forest; but after a moment's silence one of the
elder men spoke.
"It is a man," he grunted, and a look of relief
flitted over the sad, timorous faces of his companions.
Even the Sakai, whose place is very near the lowest
rung in the scale of humanity, has his own notions of
self-esteem, and he only dignifies those of his own
race by the title of. "men." All other human beings
are Gobs — strangers.
248 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
Presently a shrill cry, half scream, half hoot, such
as you might imagine to be the war-whoop of a Red
Indian, sounded from the forest a quarter of a mile
downstream. Even an European could have heard
this, so clear and penetrating was the sound; and he
would have added that it was the cry of an argus
pheasant. A Malay, well though he knows his
jungles, would have given to the sound a similar
interpretation; but the Sakai knew better. Their
acute perceptions could detect without difficulty the
indefinable difference between the real cry of the bird
and this ingenious imitation, precisely similar though
they would have seemed to less sharpened senses;
and a moment later an argus pheasant sent back an
answering challenge from the heart of the fire over
which the old man who had spoken sat crouching.
The whoop was immediately replied to from a hilltop
a few hundred yards upstream, and the old fellow
made a clicking noise in his throat, like the sound of a
demoralized clockspring. It was his way of express-
ing amusement, for a wild bird had answered his yell.
It had failed to detect the deception which the Sakai
could recognize so easily.
In about a quarter of an hour two young Sakai,
with long blowpipes over their shoulders, rattan
knapsacks on their backs, and bamboo spears in their
hands, passed into the camp in single file. They
emerged from the forest like shadows cast upon a
wall, flitting swiftly on noiseless feet, and squatted
down by the central fire without a word. Each
rolled a cigarette, lighted it from a flaming firebrand,
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 249
and fell to smoking it in silence. At the end of a
minute or so the old man who had answered their
signal jerked out a question at them in the disjointed
jargon of the jungle-people. The elder of the two
newcomers grunted a response, with his eyes still
fixed upon the smoky fire.
"The Gobs are at Legap — three and three and
three — many Gobs," he said.
The Sakai's knowledge of notation does not lend
itself to arithmetical expression.
"May they be devoured by a tiger!" snarled the
old man; and at the word all his kinsmen shuddered
and glanced uneasily over their shoulders. He had
uttered the worst curse known to the jungle-folk,
who fears his housemate the tiger with all his soul,
and very rarely takes his name in vain.
"They are hunting," the youngster continued;
"hunting men, and To' Pangku Muda and To' Stia
are with them."
He split up these Malayan titles into monosylla-
bles, suiting the sounds to the disjointed articulation
of his people. '
The listening Sakai grunted in chorus, in token of
their dissatisfaction at the presence of these men
among their enemies.
To' Pangku Muda was the Malay chief of the
village of Lasak, the last of the civilized settlements
on the banks of the Plus River. His title in Malay
means literally "the Junior Lap," and it was con-
ferred upon the headman of Lasak because he was
supposed to be in charge of the Sakai tribes, and the
250 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
childlike jungle-people were euphemistically said to
repose upon his knees, as an infant lies in the lap of
its mother. Malays have a fondness for picturesque
notions of this kind, though their attitude toward
the Sakai has never been of a kind to justify this par-
ticular simile. Although To' Pangku was a Muham-
madan, he had, like most of the Malays of the Plus
Valley, a strong strain of Sakai in his blood, and
his inherited and acquired woodcraft rendered him
formidable in the jungles when he led the annual
slave-raiding party in person. Moreover, he was
greatly feared by Malays and Sakai alike for the
knowledge of magic and the occult powers which
were attributed to him.
To' Stia, on the other hand, was a Sakai born and
bred, but he was the headman of one of the tamer
tribes who, in order to save themselves and their
womenkind and children from suffering worse things
than usual, were accustomed to throw in their lot
with the Malays, and to aid them in their periodical
slaving expeditions. His title, given to him by
the Malays, means "the Faithful Grandfather,"
but his fidelity was to his masters and to his own
tribal interests, not to the race to which he be-
longed.
The presence of these two men with the party now
upon the hunting-path boded ill for the cowering
creatures in the camp, for the Sakai's only chance of
escape on such occasions lay in his sensitive hearing
and in his superior knowledge of forest lore. But
To' Pangku Muda and To' Stta, the Sakai knew full
PLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-POLK 251
well, could fight the jungle-people with their own
weapons.
The old headman, Ka', the Fish, who had taken
the lead in the conversation since the arrival of the
scouts, presently spoke again, still keeping his tired
old eyes fixed upon the smouldering embers.
"By what sign did you learn that To' Pangku and
To' Stla were with the Gobs?" he inquired.
It was evident from his tones that he was seeking
comfort for himself and his fellows in the hope that
the young scouts might perhaps have been mistaken.
Laish, the Ant, the youth who until now had sat by
the fire in silence, answered him promptly.
"We saw the track of the foot of To' Stia on the
little sandbank below Legap, and knew it by the
twisted toe," he said. "Also, as we turned to leave
the place, wading upstream, seeking you others, the
Familiar of To' Pangku called from out the jungle
thrice. He was, as it might be, yonder," and he
indicated the direction by pointing with his out-
stretched chin, as is the manner of his people.
The poor cowering wretches around the fires
shuddered in unison, like a group of treetops when a
puff of wind sets the branches swaying.
"The Grandfather of many Stripes," snarled Ka'
in an awed whisper under his breath.
He spoke of him with deep respect, as of a chief of
high repute, for every man and woman present knew
of the Familiar Spirit which in the form of a tiger
followed its master, To' Pangku, whithersoever he
went, and even the little children had learned to
252 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
whimper miserably when their elders spoke of the
Grandfather of many Stripes.
An old crone, shivering in her unlovely nakedness,
beat her long, pendulous breasts with palsied hands,
and whimpered plaintively, "E kS-non yeh! E kS-
non yeh!" — O my child! O my child! — which in
almost every vernacular of the East is the woman's
cry of lamentation; and a young girl who squatted
near her pressed softly against her, seeking to bring
her comfort. The hard tears of old age oozed with
difficulty from the eyes of the hag as she rocked her
body restlessly to and fro; but the girl did not weep,
only her gaze sought the face of Laish, the Ant.
She was a pretty girl, in spite of the dirt and squalor
that disfigured her. Her figure was slim and lithe,
and though her face was too thin, it had the freshness
and beauty of youth, and was crowned by an abun-
dance of glossy hair with a natural wave in it. Her
dark eyes were lustrous and almost too large, but
instead of the gayety which should have belonged to
her age, they wore the hunted, harassed expression
which was to be marked in all the inhabitants of this
unhappy camp.
Laish seemed to swallow something hard in his
throat before he turned to Ka' and said, "What shall
we do, O Grandfather?"
"Wait till dawn," the old chief grunted in reply.
"Then shift camp upstream, always upstream."
The Sakai pressed in more closely than ever around
the fires, and the two scouts emptied the contents of
their rattan knapsacks onto a couple of large banana
iFLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 253
leaves. Roots of many kinds were there, some sour
jungle fruits and berries, and a miscellaneous col-
lection of nastinesses, including the altogether too
human corpse of a small monkey with its pink flesh
showing in places beneath its wet fur. This was
quickly skinned and gutted and set to roast in the
cleft of a split stick, while Ka' divided the rest of
the trash among those present with extreme nicety
and care. Food is so important to the wild Sakai,
who never within human memory have had sufficient
to eat, that the right of every member of the tribe
to have a proportionate share of his fellows' gleanings
is recognized by all. No man dreams of devouring
his own find until it has been cast into the common
stock; and in time of stress and scarcity, if a single
cob of maize has to be shared by a dozen Sakai, the
starving creatures will eat the grain row by row,
passing it from one to the other so that each may
have his portion.
As the night wore on the Sakai settled themselves
to sleep in the warm, gray ashes of the fires, waking at
intervals to tend the blaze, to talk disjointedly, and
then to stretch themselves to rest once more. The
younger men took it in turn to watch in the treetops
on the downriver side of the camp; but no attempt
to disturb them was made by the raiders, and at
dawn they broke camp and resumed their weary
flight.
The Malay Peninsula is one of the most lavishly
watered lands in all the earth. In the interior it is
not easy to go jn any direction for a distance of half
25i FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
a mile without encountering running water, and up
among the foothills of the main range, when naviga-
ble rivers have been left behind, travelling through
the forest resolves itself into a trudge up the valleys
of successive streams, varied by occasional scrambles
over ridges of hill or spurs of mountain which divide
one river system from another. Often the bed of the
river itself is the only available path, but as wading
is a very fatiguing business, if unduly prolonged, the
banks are resorted to wherever a game-track or the
thinning out of the underwood renders progress along
them practicable.
The Sakai fugitives, however, did not dare to set
foot upon the land when once they had quitted their
camp, for their solitary chance of throwing pursuers
off their track lay in leaving no trace behind them
of the direction which they had followed. Accord-
ingly they began by walking up the bed of the little
brawling torrent, swollen and muddy from the rains
of the previous afternoon, and when presently its
point of junction with a tributary stream was
reached, they waded up the latter because of the two
it seemed to be the less likely to be selected. It was
miserable work, for the water was icy cold, and the
rivulet's course was strewn with ragged rocks and
hampered by fallen timber; but the Sakai seemed to
melt through all obstructions, so swift and noiseless
was their going. They crept through incredibly nar-
row places; they scrambled over piles of rotten tim-
ber without disturbing a twig or apparently leaving
a trace; and they kept strictly to the bed of the
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 255
stream, scrupulously avoiding even the brushwood
on the banks and the overhanging branches, lest a
broken leaf should betray them to their pursuers.
The men carried their weapons and most of their
few and poor possessions; and the women toiled
along, their backs bowed beneath the burden of
their rattan knapsacks, in which babies and carved
receptacles made of lengths of bamboo jostled rude
cooking-pots of the same material and scraps of evil-
looking food. Children of more than two years
fended for themselves, following deftly in the foot-
steps of their elders, many of them even helping to
carry the property of the tribe. The oldest woman
in the camp, Sem-pak — the Duri-an fruit — who, the
night before had cried out in terror when To' Pangku
Miida's Familiar was mentioned by the scouts,
tottered along with shaking knees and palsied limbs,
her lips mumbling, her head in constant motion, her
eyes restless and wild. She alone carried no burden
for it was all that she could do to keep up with hex
fellows unhampered by a load; but Te-U — Running
Water — her granddaughter, bore upon her strong
young shoulders a pack heavy enough for them both,
and on the march her hand was ever ready to assist
the feeble steps of the older woman.
Te-U, had times been better, was to have been
married to Laish, the Ant, a few days earlier; but
the camp had been broken up hurriedly before the
simple wedding ceremonies could be completed, for
the news of the impending raid had driven all thought
of anything less urgent than the saving of life and
256 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
liberty from the minds of the harassed jungle-folk.
In their own primitive way these two wild creatures
loved one another with something more than mere
animal passion. Laish was more fearful on the girl's
account than even on his own, and she looked to him
for protection and felt certain that he would fight in
her defence. For the moment, however, the girl's
heart was really more occupied with her old grand-
mother than with her lover; and it never occurred to
Laish to relieve her of any part of her burden, nor did
she expect such service from him.
The long procession wound its way in single file up
the bed of the tributary stream until the midday sun
showed clearly over their heads through the network
of vegetation. The Sakai all walked in precisely
the same manner, each foot being placed exactly in
front of its fellow, and each individual treading as
nearly as possible in the footsteps of the man in
front of him. Experience must, in some remote and
forgotten past, have taught the forest-dwellers that
this is the best and quickest way of threading a path
through dense jungle, and in the course of time ex-
perience has become crystalized into an instinct, so
that to-day, even when walking along a broad high-
way, the Sakai still adopt this peculiar gait. You
may mark a similar trick of successively placing the
feet one exactly in front of the other in many wild
animals whose lives have been passed in heavy forest.
At last old Ka', who was leading, halted, and his
followers stood still in their tracks while he grunted
out his orders. A steep hill, some five hundred feet
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 257
high, rose abruptly on their right. It was covered
with jungle through which the eye could not pene-
trate in any place for more than a few yards; but all
the Sakai knew that its crest was a long spur or hogs-
back, which if followed for a matter of half a mile
would enable them to pass down into N the valley of a
stream that belonged to a wholly different river
system. By making their way up its bed they in
time would win to the mountains separating Perak
from Pahang; and when the raiders, if they succeeded
in picking up the carefully veiled trail, found that
the fugitives had gone so far, it was possible that
they might be discouraged from further pursuit,
and might turn their attentions to some more acces-
sible band of wandering Sakai. The first thing,
however, was to conceal all traces of the route which
Ka"s party had taken, and he therefore bade his
people disperse, breaking up into little knots of two
or three, so that no definite, well-defined trail might
be left as a guide to the pursuers. Later the tribe
would reassemble at a spot appointed by him. The
Sakai were well versed in all such tricks, and very
few words and no explanations were needed to convey
to them an understanding of their leader's plan.
In the space of a few seconds the little band of abori-
gines had broken up and vanished into the forest as
swiftly and as silently as a bank of mist is dispersed
by a gust of morning wind.
Laish attached himself to Te-U and old Sem-pak,
and the three, passing upstream, drew themselves
with infinite caution on to its bank without bruising
258 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
a twig, and presently began to scale the steep side of
the hill. The earth was black, sodden, and slippery;
the jungle was dense, and set with the cruel thorn
thickets which cover the slopes of the interior; the
gradient was like that of a thatched roof; and the
climb made even Laish and Te-U pant with labour-
ing breath, while old Sem-pak's lungs pumped pain-
fully, emitting a noise like the roaring of a broken-
winded horse. Up and up they scrambled, leaving
hardly any trace of their ascent, and with that extraor-
dinary absence of avoidable sound to which only
the beasts of the forest, and their fellows, the wild
Sakai, can attain. They never halted to take breath,
but attacked the hill passionately, as though it were
an enemy whom they were bent upon vanquishing;
and at last the summit showed clearly through the
tree trunks and underwood ahead of them.
Then Laish, who was leading, stopped dead in his
tracks, gazing in front of him with the rigidity of a
pointer at work; and the next moment, uttering an
indescribable cry, half yell, half scream, he was
tumbling down the slope, bearing the two women
with him, rolling, falling, scrambling, heedless of the
rending thorns and of the rude blows of branches,
until they once more found themselves in the bed of
the stream from which they had started to make the
ascent. Old Sem-pak fell prone upon the ground,
her chest heaving as though it imprisoned some wild
thing that was seeking to effect its escape. Her
eyes and those of her companions were wild with
terror.
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 259
At that moment the long-drawn, moaning howl of
a tiger broke the deep stillness of the forest, the sound
apparently coming from some spot almost vertically
above their heads; and the three Sakai listened,
shuddering, while their teeth chattered. Laish had
caught a glimpse of the great striped body gliding
with stealthy speed through the sparse jungle near
the summit of the hill, and this had sufficed to send
him floundering down the slope in precipitate flight.
The three Sakai were silent, straining their ears to
listen above the noise of Sem-pak's agonized sobs for
breath. A moment later the howl broke out once
more, a little farther to the left this time, and it was
quickly followed by a scream such as only a human
being could utter. Then again there was silence —
silence desolate and miserable — during which the
tapping of a woodpecker could be distinctly heard.
Then in an instant the whole jungle seemed to have
been invaded by all the devils in hell. Every mem-
ber of the little band of fugitives was sounding the
danger yell — a shrill, far-carrying cry in which the
despair of the miserable jungle-folk becomes vocal,
calling to the unresponsive heavens and to unpity-
ing man and beast the tale of their helplessness
and of their wrongs. Te-U and Laish joined in the
cry, but above the tumult could be heard the bestial
growlings of the unseen tiger worrying its prey.
Presently the Sakai, still screaming as though in
noise they sought comfort and protection from the
dangers besetting them, forced their way, singly or
in groups, out of the underwood, and gathered in a
2G0 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
shuddering group in the bed of the stream. One of
their number — Pie, the Fruit — and the two small
children whom she had been carrying in the knapsack
slung upon her back, were missing, and the man who
had been her husband, staring at nothing with eyes
that protruded horribly, was making strange clicking
noises in his throat, which is the way in which the
male Sakai gives expression to deep emotion. Grad-
ually, however, the band was stilled into silence, and
huddled together listening as though spellbound to
the growlings of the tiger. Then Ka' spoke.
"It is the accursed one," he said. "It is he that
followeth ever at the heels of To' Pangku. I beheld
his navel, yellow and round and swollen. It is
situated at the back of his neck. Because I saw it,
he dared not touch me, and passing by me, took Pie
and the little ones, her children. Come, my brothers,
let us cry aloud informing him that we have seen his
navel, and he, being overcome with shame, will seek
speedily to hide himself."
Taking their time from Ka', all the men raised a
shout in chorus, imparting the strange, anatomical
information in question to the growling monster on
the ridge. They made so goodly a noise that for a
moment the snarling of the beast was drowned by it;
but when they paused to listen, it was heard as dis-
tinctly as before.
"It is the accursed beast of magic, without doubt,"
said Ka' despondently. "Otherwise, a great shame
would have overcome him, and he would surely have
fled."
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 2G1
The unabashed tiger continued to snarl and growl
over its victims, high above the Sakai's heads on the
brow of the hogsback.
"Come, let us cry to him once more," said Ka'
to his fellows; and again they raised a shrill shout
that carried far and wide through the forest, repeat-
ing that they had beheld the beast's navel, and that
they knew it to be situated at the back of its neck.
Malays and Sakai alike believe the tiger to be very
sensitive upon this subject, and that he will fly before
the face of any man who possesses the necessary
knowledge of his anatomy. The native theory in-
clines to the opinion that the tiger's navel is located
in his neck, and you may examine the dead body of
one of these animals minutely without finding any-
thing to disprove, or indeed to prove, this notion.
A third time the Sakai raised their shout, and when
they relapsed into silence the tiger had ceased his
growlings; but another sound, faint and far, came
from the direction of the lower reaches of the stream
up which the tribe had been toiling all the morning.
It was like the roar of a rapid, but was broader,
coarser, gruffer, and when they heard it the Sakai
were conscious of a painful tightening of their heart-
strings, for it recalled them suddenly to recollection
of the danger from human pursuers which for the
moment had well-nigh passed out of their conscious-
ness. It was the soralc — the war-cry of the Malays.
The raiders were hot upon their trail, and were
pressing up the banks of the little stream in pursuit.
The yells which the fugitives had been uttering
262 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
would serve to guide them, and they would thus be
saved the slow tracking and uncertainty which de-
lays the hunter and gives the quarry his best chance
of escape. In their flight from the Familiar of To'
Pangku — for such they firmly believed the tiger to be
— the Sakai had trampled the thorn-thickets and
the underwood recklessly, and even an European
would have found little difficulty in reading the tale
which their hasty footmarks told so plainly.
Ka', bidding his people follow him, turned his back
upon the ascent — for none dared again face the fury
of the Familiar — and plunged into the jungle, worm-
ing a way through the packed tree trunks and the
dense scrub with wonderful deftness and speed.
Ka', bent almost double, went at a kind of jog-trot,
steady, swift, but careful and unhurried; and his
people, young and old, streamed along at his heels
adopting the same nimble gait. They were covering
the ground now at a far faster rate than any Malay
could hope to maintain through virgin forest; bv.t
they were leaving behind them a trail that a chill
could follow without difficulty, and in their passage
they were partially clearing a path for the use of their
enemies.
All day they kept on steadily, only halting now and
again for a brief breathing space when old Sem-pak,
overweighted by her load of seventy years, could no
longer keep up with her fellows. The adults were
from time to time carrying some of the smaller
children who had begun the day on foot. At first
the sound of the sorak had been heard once or twice,
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 2tri
still indistinct an,d very distant, but after the first
half hour it had ceased to be audible, and nothing
was to be heard save the tinkle of running water, the
occasional note of a bird, or the faint stir of animal
life in the forest around. The fugitives had thrown
away most of their loads when the tiger stampeded
them, and they now were travelling burdened by little
save their babies and their weapons. When life
itself is in jeopardy, property ceases to possess a
value. For the time being it ceases to exist.
The same expression — tense, fearful, strained —
was to be marked on the faces of all the Sakai, and
their eyes were wild, savage, hunted, and filled to the
brim with a great fear. Even their movements were
eloquent of apprehension, and the light touch of their
feet upon the ground betokened that their muscles
were braced for instant flight at the first sign of danger.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon the heavens
opened and emptied themselves on to the forest in
sheets of tropical rain. At the end of a few minutes
every branch and leaf overhead had become a separate
conduit and was spouting water like a gargoyle; but
still the Sakai continued their march, pressing for-
ward with the energy bred of despair into jungle-
depths which even to them were untrodden lands.
They had no objective in sight now; their one idea
was to get away — it mattered not whither — away
from the Malays, from captivity and death.
As the dusk began to gather the rain ceased, and
Ka' cried to his fellows that they must halt for the
night. The moon was well past the full, and the
264 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
darkness in the forest would be too absolute for even
the Sakai to force a way through the thickets during
the earlier hours of the night. Also the fugitives
were almost worn out by their prolonged exertions.
Not daring to kindle a fire, lest its light should serve
as a guide to their pursuers, they squatted in a drag-
gled woebegone group, seeking warmth and comfort
by close physical contact with one another. They
were chilled by the rain and miserably cold; they had
eaten nothing since the dawn, and they had but a few
blackened yams and roots between them with which
to assuage their hunger; their straggly mops of hair
were drenched, and the skin diseases with which they
were covered caused their bodies to itch distractingly.
But all material discomforts were forgotten in the
agony of terror which wrung their hearts.
Shortly after midnight they all awoke, suddenly
and simultaneously. They had been sleeping in
sitting attitudes, with their knees drawn up to their
chins, and their heads nodding above them. They
spoke no word, but they listened breathlessly. The
yowling moan of a tiger was sounding about half a
mile away to the south. The brute drew nearer and
nearer, moaning and howling from time to time,
and prolonging each complaining note with a wanton
delight in its own unmusical song. It was the call of
a full-fed tiger which cared not how rudely he dis-
turbed the forest silence and warned the jungle of his
presence. The Sakai, beset at once by material and
superstitious fears, cowered miserably and drew nearer
still to one another. Thus for more than half an
PLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK ZQ5
hour they sat in utter silence, quaking, while the
tiger approached slowly and deliberately, till pres-
ently it seemed to be calling from the jungle within a
few yards of the shivering wretches. Now it ap-
peared to make a complete circle of the camp, yowl-
ing savagely, and then fell to prowling about and
about the little group of terror-stricken creatures, as
though it were herding them. And all the time
they could see nothing through the intense darkness,
and the complete loss of the sense of sight served to
quicken and torture even their rudimentary imagina-
tions. For an hour this lasted, and then the tiger
seemed to draw off, whereupon the jungle-folk, who
had been too occupied by their terror of the beast
to spare a thought to any other danger, became
aware that human beings were in their vicinity. How
they knew this it would be impossible to explain: the
instinct of the wild tribes is as unerring as that of
many animals, and they felt, rather than heard or
perceived through any of their ordinary senses, the
proximity of their pursuers.
Noiselessly then the Sakai, men and women alike,
fell to drawing clear of the underwood the long lines
of green rattan which grow in such profusion in all
the jungles of the interior of the Peninsula. These
they twisted into great coils the size of large cart-
wheels, and the young men of the tribe, some seven
or eight in number, with Laish among them,- began
swarming into the nearest trees. They had gathered
and prepared the rattan in darkness almost absolute,
guided only by their sense of touch, and the men now
2G6 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
climbed unseeing into the impenetrable blackness of
the night. Their instinct had told the forest people
not only that their enemies were at hand, but also
that the camp had been surrounded by them. They
felt pretty certain that the Malays and the tamer
Sakai who were with them would not attack until
just before the dawn; therefore it was their object
to effect their escape, if they could do so, before day-
light returned to the earth.
The wild Sakai, who have never lost the arboureal
habits of primitive man, can walk up the bare trunk
of a tree with as much ease as you ascend the door-
steps of your house, and when once fairly among the
branches they are thoroughly at home. The young
men, accordingly, had no difficulty in climbing into
thp treetops, whence, swinging themselves lightly
from bough to bough, they began to bridge the more
difficult places with lines of rattan, making them fast
at each end. In this manner before three-quarters
of an hour had elapsed they had constructed a path
of slack-ropes some eighty yards in length, and had
passed over the heads of the Malays who lay en-
camped all around. They then made their way back
to their fellows and gave the word for the start.
Old Ka' leading, the long string of jungle-folk
climbed slowly into the treetops, all treading lightly
without making a sound, the anxious mothers striving
to still the babies which they bore strung about their
necks. Deftly they picked their way through the
pitchy darkness, feeling for their foothold upon
bending bough and branch, and treading with ex-
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 267
traordinary precision upon the slender lines of rattan,
and for some thirty or forty yards all went well with
them. Then one of the babies whimpered, and at
the sound the jungle in front and below them broke
into a tumult of familiar yells, which told them that
those of the slave-raiders who belonged to their own
race had discovered their attempt to escape, and were
doing their best to head the fugitives off and to warn
the sleepy Malays.
Presently old Ka' saw the mop heads of half a
dozen tame Sakai spring into prominence against
the dim sky. His enemies had swarmed up into a
treetop not twenty feet away from him, and were in
possession of the other end of the rattan line along
which he was tightroping. A voice, which he recog-
nized as that of To' Stla of the twisted toe, cried
hurriedly in the Sakai dialect "Oki-odz" — give me
a knife! — and some one unseen in the darkness,
grunted "Kod"— Take it.
At this Ka', screaming a warning to his fellows,
turned sharply about in midair, and headed back
for the tree from which he had set out. Involuntarily
he looked down into the abyss of impenetrable dark-
ness beneath his feet, into the fathomless obscurity
on either hand, but even his eyes, gifted with the
marvellous sight of the jungle-folk, could see nothing.
A man and two women, the latter bearing little
children against their bosoms, had turned to fly
when Ka' uttered his warning cry; but they were
feeling their way along the rattan line unaided by any
sense save that of touch, and even in their panic their
268 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
movements were slow and cautious. All this hap-
pened in the space of a few seconds, and then the
rattan jerked sickeningly under the blow of a heavy
woodknife. Another blow, and the brawny creeper
groaned like a sentient thing in pain; a third, and it
parted with an awful suddenness, and Ka' and the
two women were precipitated from a height of nearly
eighty feet into the invisible forest below. The man
immediately in front of them had just sufficient time
to save himself by clutching the branches of the tree
to which the near end of the rattan was made fast.
Old Ka' gave vent to an appalling yell, into which
was compressed all the passionate despair of his long
lifetime and of his downtrodden and unhappy race.
Each of the women, as she felt her foothold give way
beneath her, screamed shrilly — sudden, abrupt cries
which ceased with a jerk, as of the breath caught
sharply. For the space of a second there was silence,
and then the crashing sound of heavy bodies falling
headlong through leaves and branches, and three
thudding concussions — distinct, but almost simul-
taneous — were succeeded by a few low groans far
below in the darkness. The tame Sakai yelled their
triumph, passing the news of their success on to the
Malays, who answered with the sorak, and thereafter
there^was much laughter. Ka"s people, sick with the
horror of what they had heard and trembling with
fear, made their way back to the spot where they had
sat encamped all night, and huddling up against
one another in quaking misery, waited in dumb
despair for the dawn and for death.
PLIGHT OP THE JUNGLE-POLK 269
As soon as the slow daylight began to make itself
felt in the obscurity of the forest, investing the
watchers, as it seemed, with a new and wonderful
gift of sight, the raiders began to close in around their
quarry. One or two of the younger Malays, who
carried muskets, fired a few shots into the thick of
their victims, with the object of frightening the last
atom of fight out of them, and old Sem_-pak rolled
over on her back, with her knees drawn up against
her breast, jerking spasmodically. With a cry of
pain and despair, Te-TJ threw herself prone across the
old woman's body, calling to her frantically by name,
and vainly seeking to pet and coax her back into life
by tender words and caresses. Then the raiders
rushed the camp, and for a moment or two all was
noise and confusion. The Sakai broke like a herd of
stampeded deer, leaving several of their number
dead or wounded on the ground. A good many of
the more active males made good their escape, but
Laish was killed with his spear in his hand as he
fought to defend Te-U, who saw him fling away his
life in a vain effort to rescue her, and felt the cup of
her misery to be filled to overflowing.
In all, the raiders captured Te-U and four other
young women, half a dozen children, and two young
men. There were also several older women who
were not regarded as worth taking. It was, as such
things were reckoned, a highly successful expedition,
and the hunting-party returned to Lasak in great
spirits, for the labour and risks of slave chasing was
not much to their taste, and with so goodly a crowd of
270 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK
captives in hand they would not find it necessary to
undertake another raid for a couple of years or so.
To' Pangku Muda's oath of fealty to the Sultan of
P6rak bound him in those days — and indeed until
the British Government took in hand the administra-
tion of the country in the middle seventies of the
nineteenth century — to bring a large raft downriver
once a year, loaded with jungle produce. One of the
items composing this annual tribute was a Sakai
man and woman, or failing them, two elephant tusks
of approved weight. The latter were not always easy
to procure, so it was usually found more convenient
to sacrifice instead the lifelong happiness of a couple
of human beings.
Te-U and a youth named Gaur, the Pig, were
selected for the first year's offering, and accordingly
they presently found themselves lying on the great
raft, bound hand and foot, floating slowly into a land
of the existence of which they had not dreamed, in
company with stores of gutta, rattan, and other
jungle produce, and the supplies of rice and other
foodstuffs which had won for the Plus Valley the
title of "the Rice-pot of the King."
The remainder of their days were passed in cap-
tivity among the people of an alien race, who despised
them heartily and held them as little better than the
beasts of the field; but perhaps the fullest measure
of their sufferings was their inability to satisfy the
longing for the jungle and for the free life of the
forest which is like a ceaseless ache in the heart of
the jungle-folk.
FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 271
Such was the story that Kreting, the old Sakai
slave woman, told me that afternoon long ago, as she
sat angling for little fish on the banks of the P6rak
River. Her kinsfolk of the Sakai country were still
able, in some instances, to recall the incidents con-
nected with her capture, and they spoke to me of her
as Te-U — Running Water — a name which set the
sad-faced old hag weeping very pitifully when, after
the lapse of so many years, she heard it spoken by
my lips together with some broken fragments of hei
mother-tongue .
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
THE punkah swings freely for a space, then
gradually shortens its stride; hovers for a
moment, oscillating gently, in answer to the
feeble jerking of the cord; almost stops and then is
galvanized into a series of violent, spasmodic leaps
and bounds, each one less vigorous than the last,
until once more the flapping canvas fringe is almost
still. It is by signs such as these that you may
know that Umat, the punkah-puller, is sleeping the
sleep of the just.
If you look behind the high screen which guards
the doorway, you will see him; and without moving,
if tbe afternoon is very warm and still, you may oc-
casionally hear his soft, regular breathing, and the
gentle murmur with which his nose is wont to mark
the rhythm of his slumber. An old cotton handker-
chief is bound about his head in such a manner that
the top of his scalp is exposed, the short bristles of
hair upon it standing erect in a circular enclosure,
like the trainers in a garden of young sirih vines. On
his back he wears an old, old coat of discoloured
khaki, once the property of a dead policeman. The
Government buttons have been taken away from
him by a relentless inspector of police, and Umat has
supplied their place with thorns, cunningly contrived
272
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 273
pieces of stick, and one or two wooden studs. The
shoulder-straps flap loosely, and their use and inten-
tion are problems that present a constant puzzle to
Umat. A cotton sarong — not always of the cleanest
— is round his waist, and falling to his knees, supplies
the place of all other nether garments. For Umat
is at once comfort-loving and economical, and Pahang
by this time had become a free land in which a man
might go clad pretty well as he liked, without some
ill thing befalling him therefor. Less than ten
years earlier, a man who went abroad without his
trousers ran a good chance of never returning home
again, for Pahang Malays were apt to regard any one
so clad as a person who was no lover of battle
Among Malays — who are the most physically modest
people in the world — it is well known that no man
can fight with a whole heart and with undivided
attention, when at any moment a mishap may expose
his nakedness; and those who by the inappropriate-
ness of their costume gave proof of their unprepared-
ness, simply invited the warlike persecutions of the
gilded youth of the place, who were always ready to
display prowess by mangling one from whom little
resistance was to be expected. But in Kelantan,
where Umat was born and bred, few men possess
trousers, and no one who loves his comfort ever wears
such things if he can help it.
Below sarong, goodly lengths of bare and hairy leg
are visible, ending in broad splay feet, with soles that
seem shod with horn; for Umat could dance barefoot
'd a thorn thicket with as much comfort as upon a
274 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
velvet carpet. He half sits, half lies, huddled up in a
wicker-work armchair, his head canted stiffly over
his right shoulder, his eyes tight shut, and his mouth
wide open. Two rows of blackened tusks are ex-
posed to view, and a fair expanse of gums and tongue
stained a dull scarlet with areca nut. His feet are
on the seat of the chair — one doubled snugly under
him, the other supporting the knee upon which his
chin may find a resting-place as occasion requires.
The pull cord of the punkah is made fast about his
right wrist, and his left hand holds it limply, his arms
vnoving forward and backward mechanically in his
sleep. It often looks as though the punkah were
pulling Umat, not Umat the punkah, so completely
a part of the thing does he appear, and so invisible is
the effort which he puts into his work.
At his feet, humming contentedly to himself, sits a
Very small boy, dressed chastely in a large cap and a
soiled pocket-handkerchief; and thus Umat dreams
away many hours of his life. If his sleeping memory
takes him back to the days when he followed me upon
the warpath, to one of the dirty nights when we went
fishing together, or to hours spent in floundering
through the rice-swamps or trudging over the grazing
grounds and through the rhododendron scrub when
snipe were plentiful and the bag a big one, the pun-
kah leaps to and fro vigorously, taking an active
part in the scenes of which he dreams. But when
Umat's mind turns home again to the extraordinarily
ill-kept hut in the corner of my compound, which he
shares with his soft-eyed, gentle wife, Selema, and
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 8rtr
their children, and dwells upon hearty meals and
quiet nights^ then in sympathy the punkah moves
slowly, sentimentally, and stops.
"Torek! Pull!" cries a voice from the inner room,
and Umat, awakening with a start, bursts into voluble
reproaches, addressed to himself in the guttural
speech of the Kelantan people. Then he very
calmly relapses into slumber.
If you sail up the east coast of the Malay Penin'
sula, past the long sandy beaches, backed by a fringe
of casuarina trees, which are the shores of Pahang and
Trengganu, you at last reach the spot where the
bulk of the waters of the Kelantan River used once
upon a time to empty themselves into the China
Sea. The principal mouth is now a mile or two
farther up the coast, but the groves of palm trees
show that the people have been less fickle than the
river, and that the villages have continued to thrive
in spite of the fact that the highways of traffic have
deserted them. It is here that Umat was born and
bred, one of a family of fisher folk, successive genera-
tions of whom have dwelt at Kuala Kelantan evei
since Ihe beginning of things.
If you look at Umat's round, splay-featured fac«
and observe it carefully, you may read therein much
that bears upon the history of his people. The pre-
vailing expression is one of profound, calm patience,
not the look of conscious waiting and of the pain of
hope long deferred, which is the restless European
substitute therefor, but the contented endurance of
276 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
one whose lot is unchanging, whose desires are few,
and who is satisfied to be as he is. It is a negative
expression, without sadness, without pain, and yet
sufficiently far removed from dullness or stupidity.
It speaks of the long years during which Umat's
forebears have laboured stolidly, have been as driven
cattle before prince or chief, and yet have accepted
their lot as they found it, without resistance or com-
plaint, finding therein a fair measure of happiness,
since the knowledge of better things has been merci-
fully withheld from them. A divine discontent may
be the beginning of all improvement, but beyond all
gainsaying it sounds the knell to placid happiness
and content.
This is what one reads in Umat's face when it is
in repose, but it is subject to the changes wrought by
many emotions. Suddenly his features break up
into a thousand creases, the brown skin puckering in
numberless divergent lines, like the surface of a
muddy puddle into which a stone has been cast.
A noise like the crowing of a cock combined with the
roaring of a bull accompanies this phenomenon, and
you may then know that Umat's sense of humour has
been tickled. It does not take much to amuse him,
for, like most Malays, he is very light-hearted ; and
all Umat's world laughs with and at him. Almost
every Kelantan fishing-boat that puts to sea carries
its dlan-dlan, or jester, with it, for toil is lightened if
men be merry, and in days gone by Umat was one
of the most popular and successful men of this class
on the coast. A quaint phrase, a happy repartee,
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 277
not always expressed in the most decorous language,
the rude mimicry of some personal eccentricity, a
play upon words, or a story with almost too much
point in it — such are Umat's stock in trade, and the
dexterous use of them has caused him to be well
beloved by his fellows.
But, on occasion, he can be serious enough. As
my raft whirls down a rapid, a clumsy punt sends it
reeling to what looks like certain destruction.
Umat's ugly old nut of a face sets hard. His teeth
are clenched, his lips compressed tightly. His bare
feet grapple the slippery bamboos with clinging grip,
and his twenty-foot punting pole describes a circle
above his head. Its point alights with marvellous
rapidity and unerring aim upon the only projecting
ridge of rock within immediate reach, and all Umat's
weight is put into the thrust, while his imprisoned
breath breaks loose in an excited howl. The raft
cants violently, wallowing knee deep, but the danger
of instant demolition is averted, and we tear through
the fifty yards of roaring, rock-beset water, which
divides us from the foot of the rapid, without further
mishap. Then Umat's face relaxes, his queer laugh
resounds, and he chaffs the man whose clumsiness
has nearly been our undoing with unmerciful dis-
regard for his feelings or for the more approved pro-
prieties.
His promptness to grasp the nature of the emer-
gency, and the quick, decisive action with which he
meets it and averts catastrophe, have little to do with
Umat himself. He owes them to his forebears the
278 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
fisher-folk who, for many unrecorded centuries, have
been accustomed to risk their lives on the dangerous
river bars and the treacherous waters of the China
Sea. If ready presence of mind in the face of peril,
und a quick appreciation of the surest means of
escape had not become for them an inherited in-
stinct, the breed would long ere now have become
Mxtinct.
Umat, however, has at his command pluck of
quite another stamp — the courage which is no mere
Sash in the pan, born of excitement and an instinct
of self-preservation, but is long enduring when beset
by a danger before which a man must sit down and
wait. It is no light thing to stare death in the eyes
for days and weeks on end, to expect it in some crv },
Holent form, and yet to possess one's soul in patience,
and to keep a heart in one's body that does not sink
and quail. Yet Umat has successfully withstood
this test, and though the limitations of his imagina-
tion doubtless made the situation easier for him than
it would be for a white man, cursed with the restless
brain of his kind, he fully grasped the risks to whicb
he was exposing himself. All his light-heartedness
vanished, for unlike my friend Raja Haji Hamid,
whose eyes never danced so happily as when danger
was afoot, Umat came of a class to whom a gamble
with death is a hated thing. For once the look of
calm patience had deserted him, for he was enduring
consciously, and by a hundred tokens it was evident
that his nerves were strung like a bow. In a word,
he detested the whole position; but though noth-
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 279
ing bound him to it except a sentimental con-
ception of loyalty, he never attempted to bridge
from it.
But Umat's face is capable of yet another change.
When his brown eyes blaze, when his features are
distorted with excitement, and a torrent of hardly
articulate words burst headlong from his lips, you
may know that Umat is angry. A tumult of wrath-
ful sound at the back of the bungalow, where the
servants congregate in the covered way which joins
the kitchen to the main building, begins the uproar,
and if you fail to interfere, some Chinese heads will
infallibly be broken in several places. On inquiry
it will prove that the cook has accused Umat of
adulterating the milk, or that the water coolie, whose
business it also is to make the kerosene lamps smell
and smoke, has charged him with purloining the
kerosene. No words can describe Umat's fury and
indignation, if he be indeed guiltless, which is
very rarely the case. If, on the other hand, the
counts brought against him be true, he is a bad liar
and his manner speedily betrays him, while his wrath
fails to convince. Presently he will produce the
bottle of lamp oil from the folds of his sarong, and
laughing sheepishly, will claim that praise should be
his portion, since it is only half full. He will hang
his head, assuming an attitude of exaggerated humil-
ity, while he listens to my biting comments upon his
grossly immoral conduct, ejaculating from time to
time the question: "Where should the lice feed, if
not upon the head?" and five minutes later the com^
280 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
pound will be ringing with the songs he loves to
bellow. It'is not possible to abash Umat.
I first met him in 1890 when, after a year spent in
Europe, I returned to Pahang for a second tour of
service at the ripe age of twenty -four, and took charge
of the districts which form the interior of that
country. I was very lonely. I had served for a
long time as political agent at the Sultan's court
before the British Government assumed a more ac-
tive part in the administration of the state, but at
that time I had had with me some thirty Malays who
had come from the other side of the Peninsula to
share my fortunes and to keep me company. These
were now scattered to the winds, and I had none but
strangers around me. There were a few mining-
camps spattered about the district, but of the Euro-
peans who lived in them I saw little, except when I
visited them. The Pahang Malays eyed us with
suspicion, and stood aloof, for their chiefs did not
encourage a friendly attitude toward a set of intruders
in whose presence they saw a menace to their power
and privileges, while the peasantry had still to learn
that we were able to deliver them from the oppression
to which custom had almost reconciled them. For a
space, therefore, I was in a position of quite extraor-
dinary isolation, and I found the experience suffi-
ciently dreary.
Pahang had had an ill name on the east coast of the
Peninsula any time during the past three hundred
years, and until the white men "protected" the
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 281
country in 1889, few strangers cared to set foot in a
land where life and property were held on so insecure
a tenure. Soon, however, the whisper spread through
the villages of Kelantan and Trengganu that work
found a high price in Pahang under the Europeans,
and a stream of large-limbed Malays, very different
in appearance from the slender, cleanly built natives
of the country, began to trickle over the borders.
On this stream Umat was borne to me, and so long
as my connection with Malaya remained unsevered
he remained with me "inseparable as the nail and the
quick," to use his own expression.
Umat, in the beginning, was just one of my boat-
men, the folk in whose company I explored all the
rivers in the interior of Pahang. No map of the
country existed in those days, and I had a notion —
the soundness of which was subsequently demon-
strated — that the time would come when a thorough
knowledge of the local geography would be of great
importance and military value, and that at such a
season native guides would be unprocurable. I
spent about eight months, therefore, in punting up
and paddling down the streams, which in those days
formed the principal highways in the interior, and in
trudging through the jungle from watershed to water-
shed. Most of the Malay villages, of course, were
situated on the banks of these rivers, but there were a
certain number of inland settlements, and a network
of narrow footpaths linked each set of habitations to
its fellows. A thorough examination of these neces-
sitated a great deal of travelling and camping, and as
282 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
the local Malays were not greatly interested in my
doings, I got together a pack of men, mostly natives
of Kelantan, to work my boat on the river, and to
carry my baggage when I tramped.
I think Umat divined that I was lonely, and he
may even have dimly realized that I was an object
of pity, for he used to creep into my hut in the
■evening, and seating himself upon the floor, would
tell me tales of his own country and people until the
night was far advanced. His dialect was strange
to me at that time, and the manner in which he
eluded some of his vowels and most of his consonants
Was at first a trifle bewildering. It took a little time
to master the phonetic law which caused anam ( r ix)
to shrink into ne', and kerbau (buffalo) into Jcuba',
and his vocabulary was rich in local words; but I
let him talk , and in the end learned not only to
understand, but actually to talk this new and bar-
barous brand of Malay to which he was the first to
introduce me.
Thus Umat and I became friends, and life was a
thought less dreary because he was at hand. He
taught me a number of things which I did not know
before, and his folklore and his dialect furnished
an interesting study that served to enliven hours
of solitude that at times were almost overwhelm-
ing.
Then came a period when trouble darkened the
land, and the disturbances which I had foretold, but
in the imminence of which I had failed to persuade
any one to believe, broke out in earnest. The war-
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 283
path was to me a wholly new experience, but I had
no alternative but to go upon it, and Umat elected
to trudge along at my heels while most of his fellows
made tracks for Kelantan, bearing with them the
tidings that Pahang was once more living up to its
ancient reputation. The dreary business dragged on
for months and threatened to be endless, but Umat
stuck to me through bad and good fortune alike with
dogged perseverance. The official theory, to which
T was never able personally to subscribe, was that
certain bands of evilly disposed people were rebelling
against the Sultan, whose country we had "pro-
tected" for very sufficient reasons, but very mucl.
against his will. But in Pahang, until the white
men came, for thirty long years no dog had barked
save with its ruler's leave, and to me, who had lived
in the country in its pristine condition under native
rule, it was patent that disturbances of the magnitude
we were facing could never have broken out if they
had lacked royal approval and inspiration.
In the spring of 1892, however, I found myselt
back at Kuala Ltpis, my old headquarters in the far^
interior, surrounded by a very restless and excited
population, and with written instructions "to treat
all the chiefs as friendly, until by some overt sign
they prove themselves to be hostile." These pre-
cious words, to which, as most public servants will
recognize, there clings the genuine Secretariat odour,
are enshrined in my memory, but at the moment the
humour of them was wasted upon me. A thrust
between the ribs with a hris was the sort of "overt
284 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
sign" which our neighbours were likely to give us.
For this we sat down and waited.
I had two white men with me — a doctor and an
inspector of police, both full of pluck and of the
greatest assistance to me; about twenty Sikhs —
overgrown Casabiancas every one of them, who
would have stood upon the burning deck till they
were reduced to cinders any day if the order to quit,
it had failed to reach them; and half a dozen panic-
stricken Malays, recruited in the. Colony to serve as
constables, and about as much good as the proverbial
sick headache. We had at our disposal a big, un-
wieldy stockade, built to surround certain govern-
ment buildings, badly situated, and much too large
for efficient defence. The force at my command was
quite inadequate to "hold it in any circumstances,
but our only chance of making a stiff fight of it lay
in guarding against a surprise.
The chiefs from all the surrounding districts, ac-
companied by great gatherings of their armed fol-
lowers, swarmed into the little town, and presently
began to build stockades in all the positions which
commanded our defences. This was done, they said,
in order to prevent the rebels from occupying these
points of vantage, but the statement was unconvinc-
ing. Numbers of them visited me daily, trying to
obtain money and supplies, posing as our allies with
a contempt for my understanding which they barely
troubled themselves to conceal, and showing me by
a hundred subtle indications that they believed them-
selves to hold me in the hollow of their hand. My
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 285
principal preoccupation was to keep them and their
armed parties out of my stockade, and to this end I
lived in my own bungalow, which was distant from
it a matter of a couple of hundred yards. My Chi-
nese servants had come to me, a day or two after the
arrival of the chiefs, and had mentioned that they
understood that there was to be a battle that after-
noon. After lunch, therefore, their spokesman re-
marked, they proposed, with my leave, to run away
and hide themselves in the jungle. That would have
meant that each one of them would have had his
throat cut; but as they were frightened out of their
wits, though not out of their good manners, and I
feared that they would try the experiment, I put
them into a boat which happened to be going down-
river, and so shipped them into safety. Thus I was
left alone in my bungalow, save only for Umat, and
he and I kept watch, turn and turn about, for a
matter of several weeks. He cooked my rice for me,
and squatted on the mat beside me while I slept,
and whenever a chief and his truculent crew over-
flowed into the bungalow, Umat sat by fondling his
weapons.
At last there came a day when the greatest of all
the chiefs had arrived, and presently a message
reached me from him saying that he was too ill to
come up the hill to see me, and inviting me to visit
him in the town. The position was not pleasant.
A refusal was out of the question, for having regard
to the characters of the men with whom we were
dealing, any sign of timidity would, I knew, precipi-
286 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
tate a conflict. An ostentatious display of fearless-
ness is, on such occasions, the only safe card to play
with a Malay, and I knew that though the war party
among the younger chiefs was daily gaining strength,
the biggest man of the lot was hesitating, and, as I
thought, capable of being talked round.
Accordingly, I sent word that I would come; issued
written instructions to the white men in the stockade
on no account to quit the defences in order to attempt
a rescue if things went ill with me, since that would
mean the destruction of all; armed myself carefully,
and prepared to set out. A. minor chief with a few
followers came, according to custom, to escort me to
the town, and just as I was starting, Umat,, armed
with kris and spear, and with a set look of resolve
upon his face, fell in behind me. I stopped and took
Tiim aside.
"It is not necessary for you, to come," I said. "If
all goes well, there will be no need of you. If aught
goes amiss, what profits it that two should sufH:
instead of one?"
Umat grunted, but he did not turn back.
"Return," I ordered. "I have no need of you."
But Umat showed no sign of obeying me.
"Tuan," he said, "for how long a time have I
eaten your rice when you were in prosperity and at
ease? Is it then fitting that I should quit you in a
day of trouble? Tuan, where you go, there I go
also. Where you lead I follow."
I said no more, but went upon my way with Umat
at my heels. His devotion not only touched but
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 287
fortified me. He was taking voluntarily risks which
f was running because circumstances left me no
alternative. Moreover, he, I knew, believed himself
to be going to certain death, whereas I was backing
my own conception of the psychology of the men
with whom I was dealing, and saw in the action I was
taking the one chance afforded to me of saving my-
self and those under my charge from a violent and
unpleasant end.
The interview with the chiefs was a long one, and
throughout it the knowledge that Umat's great,
fleshy body was wedged in securely between my
enemies and the small of my back gave me an added
confidence which was worth many points in my
favour. The decision, whether it was to be peace or
war, lay with the Dato' Maharaja Perba Jelai —
the great territorial baron whom I had come to see —
who was, under the Sultan, the practical ruler of the
whole of the interior of Pahang. This man, before
British influence had been extended to the country,
had been the object of the Sultan's jealousy and had
seen encroachments upon his authority by more than
one royal favourite attempted and encouraged.
Several of these upstart chiefs were among the
leaders of the present revolt, and the son of one of
them was now heading the local war party at Kuala
Lipi$ and was being warmly seconded by the Dato's
own promising heir. That these youngsters had the
Sultan's influence at their back was also obvious;
but my chances of success lay in my ability to dis-
credit them and to convince the Dato' that he was
288 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
being made a cat's-paw of by his old enemies and
their astute master.
Hardly had the interview opened before Mat
Kilau, the youthful leader of the war party, cut
abruptly into the conversation. Assuming an air
of incredulous astonishment, I ignored him and
turned to the Dato'.
"I came hither," I said, "to see you, to discuss
matters with those possessed of knowledge and
understanding, not to bandy words with babes. Is
it fitting, then, and is it approved by ancient custom,
that one who has but recently been weaned, one
whose age is that of a season of maize, should disturb
with his babble the grave conferences of his elders?"
I was laying myself open to an obvious retort, but I
question whether this occurred to my audience, and
the appeal to custom, which is the great Malayan
fetish, was a sure card. Mat Kilau was promptly
suppressed, and with him the war party was silenced
at the outset.
This point gained, I next addressed myself to a
statement of the case as it presented itself, I averred,
to the eye of common sense.
Behold a war had broken out, and certain evilly
disposed persons were fighting the British Govern-
ment. Either this was being done by the Sultan's
orders, or it was not. If it were, doubtless the Sultan
had issued his mandate under his seal, thus assuming
responsibility for all that might befall. If the Dato'
would produce such a document, I should have no
further word to say. No written order, I was told,
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 289
had been received; and this I was prepared to be-
lieve, for the Sultan was far too astute a person to
commit himself in such a fashion.
"Then," said I, "suffer me, as an old friend, to give
you this much counsel. Turn a deaf ear to any
alleged verbal command, for if you act against the
British now, and have no formal mandate from the
Sultan for your action, you, and you alone, will be
held responsible. At this moment I and the men
with me are few and weak; we are a tempting morsel
for. the youthful, the warlike, and the unwise — like
the bait that killed the shark. You can kill me
now." (The Dato' politely hastened to disavow any
such desire.) "You can kill me now, you can kilV
the men in my stockade to-moi'row or in a day or two;
but that will be only the beginning. If we fall, in a
little space more white men than you have ever seen
or heard of will come pouring over the hills. They
will burn your villages, fell your cocoanut groves, kill
your cattle, and they will never rest until they have
hanged you by the neck until you are dead, for the
war will be your war, and in the absence of a mandate
from the Sultan nothing will clear you of guilt.
Even were the Sultan openly at your back, you would,
at the best, be banished to some distant island, as is
the white man's way. It would indeed be sad," I
concluded, "if such calamities should befall because
the advice of hot-headed youngsters had been suffered
to prevail over the wise deliberations of their elders."
This was the gist of my argument, but Malay
fashion, we talked about and about it for hours. In
290 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
the end, however, words prevailed, and Umat and 1
won through. The Dato' dispersed his followers,
while Mat Kilau and the bulk of the war party re-
tired to a village some twenty miles distant, where
they placed themselves astride my lines of com-
munication. From this place, a couple of months
later, I had the satisfaction of dislodging them with
a portion of the force sent across the mountains to
the relief of my stockade. For the moment, how-
ever, all immediate danger of an attack on Kuala
Lipis was averted, and that night Umat made dark-
ness hideous by the discordant snatches of song with
which he celebrated our diplomatic victory, betoken-
ing the reaction occasioned by the unstringing of his
tense nerves.
Later I became resident of Pahang, and Umat
came with me to the capital, and lived there for some
years in a house in my compound, with Selema, the
Pahang girl, who made him so gentle and faithful
a wife. It was soon after his marriage that his
trouble fell upon Umat, and swept much of the sun-
shine from his life. He contracted a form of ophthal-
mia, and for a time was totally blind. Native medi-
cine-men doctored him, and drew sheafs of needles
and bunches of thorns from his eyes, which they
declared were the cause of his affliction. These and
other miscellaneous odds and ends, similarly ex-
tracted, used to be brought to me for inspection at
breakfast-time, floating most unappetizingly in a cup
half full of oily water; and Umat went abroad with
eye sockets stained crimson, or yellow, or black,
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 291
according to the fancy of the native physician. The
aid of an English doctor was called in, but Umat was
too thoroughly a Malay to place much trust in the
simple and untheatrical prescriptions provided for
him, and though his blindness was relieved, and he
became able to walk without the aid of a staff, his
eyesight could never be wholly restored to him.
But Umat was of a sanguine temperament, and
even when his blindness had continued for years,
and each new remedy had proved to be merely one
more disappointment, he clung unshakenly to the
belief that in time the light would return to him.
Meanwhile, his life held much enjoyment. All
through the day his laugh used to ring out, and at
night-time the compound would resound to the songs
he loved to improvise which had for their theme the
marvellous doings of "Umat, the blind man, whose
eyes cannot see." His patience had come to the
rescue, and the sorrow of his blindness, accompanied
as it was with a sufficient wage and no great measure
of physical exertion, was a chastened grief which he
bore with little complaining. He had aged some-
what, for the loss of sight made his face look graver,
heavier, duller than of old, but his heart remained as
young as ever.
And good things have not held quite aloof from
him. One day, as I sat writing, Umat erupted into
the room, and presently the whole house resounded
with the news that he expected shortly to become a
father. The expression of his face was a queer
medley of delight, excitement, and pride, blent with
292 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
some anxiety for Selema; and when he spoke of the
child, whose advent he prophesied so noisily, he be-
came almost sentimental.
He rushed off to the most famous midwife in the
place, and presented her with the retaining fee
prescribed by Malay custom — a small brass dish
filled with leaves of the sirih vine, and six pence of
our money. The recipient of these treasures is
thereafter held pledged to attend the patient when-
ever she may be called upon to do so, and after the
child is born she can claim further payments for the
services rendered. These are not extravagantly high,
according to European notions, two depreciated
Mexican dollars being the charge for a first confine-
ment, a dollar or a dollar and a half on the next
occasion, and twenty-five or at the most fifty cents
being deemed an adequate payment for each subse-
quent event.
When Umat had "placed the sirih leaves," he had
done all that was immediately possible for Selema,
and he sat down to endure the anxieties of the next
few months with the patience of which he had so
much at his command. The pantang ber-anak, or
birth-taboos, hem a Malayan husband in almost as
rigidly as they fence his wife, and Umat went in
constant dread of unwittingly transgressing any of the
laws upon the nice observance of which the welfare
of Selema and the future of their child depended.
He ceased to shave his head, foregoing the cool com-
fort of a naked scalp. He dared not even cut his
hair, and a thick, black shock presently stood five
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 293
inches high upon his head, and tumbled raggedly
about his neck and ears. Selema was about to be-
come the mother of his first-born, and for Umat to
cut his hair in such circumstances would have been
to invite disaster. He would not kill the fowls for
the cook now, nor would he even drive a stray dog
from the compound with violence, lest he should
chance to do it a hurt; for he must shed no blood
and do no injury to any living thing during his wife's
pregnancy. One day he was sent on an errand up-
river, and did not return for two nights. On inquiry
it appeared that he camped in a friend's house and
learned next day that his host's wife was also expect-
ing shortly to give birth to a child. Therefore he
had had to spend at least two nights in the house.
Why? Because, if he had failed to do so, he might
have brought death to Selema. Why should this be
the result? Allah alone knoweth, but such is the
teaching of the men of old, the very wise ones who
lived aforetime.
But Umat's chief privation was that he was for-
bidden to sit in the doorway of his house. This, to
a Malay, was serious, for the seat in the doorway,
at the head of the stair-ladder which leads to the
ground, is to him much what the chimney corner is to
an English peasant. It is here that he sits and looks
out patiently at life, as the European stares into the
heart of a fire; it is here that his neighbours come to
gossip with him, and it is in the doorway of his own
or his friends' houses that the rumours that fill his
narrow world are borne to him. To obstruct a door-
294 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
way at such a time, however, would have been fat: J
to Selema's prospects, and almost certain death to
her and to her child; so though the restriction robbed
his life of much of its comfort, Umat submitted to it
with meekness.
His wife, meanwhile, had to be no less circumspect.
She bridled her woman's tongue rigorously, and no
word of disparagement of man or beast was allowed
to pass her lips. Had she miscalled or depreciated
any living thing the consequences, as was well
known, would have been that her child would have
reproduced the defects upon which she had com-
mented. This, it will be noted, represent Jacobs
wands driven hilt-deep into the ground. She was
often dropping with fatigue, and faint and ill before
her hour came, but she dared not lie down upon her
mat during the hours of daylight lest she should fall
asleep, in which case evil spirits would almost cer
tainly have entered into her unborn child. There
fore, she struggled on till dusk, and Umat did his
clumsy best to comfort her and to lighten her suf-
ferings by constant tenderness and care.
One night, when the moon was nearly at the full,
the town suddenly broke out into a tumult of dis-
cordant sound. The large brass gongs, in which the
Chinese devils delight, clanged and clashed and
brayed; the Malay drums throbbed and thudded;
and a tremendous clamour was raised by thousands
of human voices lifted in shrill and strenuous outcry.
The jungle on the distant bank across the river echoed
and reechoed the noise, till tbs air seemed to be
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 295
quivering with its vibrations. The moon, which is
beloved by all dwellers in the tropics, and is especially
dear to Oriental lovers, was suddenly seen to be in
dire peril, for before the eyes of all men the jaws of
vhat infamous monster, the Gerhdna, could be seen
to have fastened themselves upon her, and were
swallowing her inch by inch. Even the Chinese,
who are astronomers and had learned how to foretell
eclipses while our forebears were still very rudimen-
tary folk, firmly believe in this legendary causation of
the phenomenon, and all men are enjoined to aid the
moon on such occasions by raising a tumult that will
frighten her assailant away. So now all the people
shouted, while the gongs clanged and the drums were
beaten, until the terrified dragon withdrew, and the
moon was seen sailing unharmed across the sky,
looking down in love and gratitude upon her children,
to whose aid she owed her deliverance.
But during the period that her fate had hung in the
balance Selema had been thrust into the empty fire-
place and had sat there, under the shadow of the
tray-like shelf depending from the low rafters, trem-
bling with fear of the unknown. The little basket
Work stand, upon which the hot rice pot is wont to
rest, was put on her head as a cap, and in her girdle
the long wooden rice spoon was stuck daggerwise.
Thus equipped she remained motionless and silent
during the whole period of the eclipse. Neither she
nor Umat had a notion why it was necessary to do
these things, but they never dreamed of questioning
the custom that prescribed them. The men of
296 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
olden days have decreed that women with child
should behave in this manner when the moon is in
trouble, and the consequences of neglect are far too
serious to be risked; so Selema and Umat acted ac-
cordingly to their simple faith.
Later came a day when Selema nearly lost her life
by reason of the barbarities which Malayan science
holds to be necessary if a woman is to live through
her confinement without mishap. Great bands of
linen were passed around her body, and the ends were
pulled at, tug-of-war fashion, by rival knots of aged
crones. She was roasted over a charcoal brazier
till her skin was blistered and she was well-nigh
suffocated. She was made the victim of other in-
describable horrors, and tortured in divers ways.
Umat's brown face was gray with fear and anxiety,
and drawn and aged with pain. He paced rest-
lessly between his hut and my study, retailing to me
realistic details of the enormities being perpetrated
by the midwife and her assistants, and he poured the
tale of his suspense into my ears, and wet the floor
mats with his great beady tears. Hours passed,
and at last a feeble cry came from Umat's house,
a thin wailing which brought with it such relief that
I, too, found the apple lumping in my throat. Umat,
beside himself with delight and almost delirious with
joy at Selema's trial being over, rushed to me with the
news that a man-child had been born to him, and that
his wife was doing well. He was like a mad thing, laugh-
ing through his tears and sobbing in his laughter, the
most triumphant parent that I have ever seen.
ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 297
Thereafter, nightly, for many weeks, the cries of
Awang — as the boy was named — broke the peace
of my compound during the midnight hour. Ma-
layan custom was still busy with him, and the poor
little wretch was being bathed ruthlessly in cold
water, after being dragged out of his sleep for the
purpose, and then was dried by being held face
downward over a charcoal brazier. The pungent
smoke choked his breath and pained his eyes, but he
contrived to survive this and other drastic expe-
riences, though he bawled his protests and disapproval
with a pair of sturdy lungs. Only a percentage of
Malayan children live through the attentions of
their mothers, but Awang was among the survivals,
and as soon as he was old enough to be allowed out
of the house, he became Umat's constant friend
and companion. Long before he could speak he and
his father appeared to have established a complete
understanding, and later you could hear them hold-
ing long conversations together, on the matting out-
side my study door, for hours at a time.
As Awang grew big enough to use his legs, he used
to patter nimbly round Umat with an air which had
in it something of protection. He was generally
mother-naked, save that now and again a cap was
set rakishly upon one side of his little bullet head,
and when I spoke to him he used to wriggle in a most
ingratiating fashion, and thrust his small hand half-
way down his throat in his embarrassment. Umat
delighted in him, and his eyes followed him con-
stantly, and though they were very dim, I used to
298 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE
fancy that he saw Awang more clearly than anything
else on earth.
In the fullness of time I was transferred from
Malaya to another part of the Empire, distant from
it a matter of some nine thousand miles, and shortly
afterward Umat elected to return to his own country,
taking his Pahang wife and his several children with
him. He had saved a little money — some of it
come by none too honestly, I shrewdly suspect —
and in Kelantan he entered into possession of cer-
tain ancestral lands. I still hear tidings of him
occasionally, and I learn that he has blossomed out
into a sort of minor headman, his authority being
mainly based upon his intimate knowledge of the
curious ways of white men. It is hardly likely that
he and I will ever meet again, but I shall always
recall with tenderness and gratitude the man who,
having eaten my rice when I was in prosperity and
at ease, held that it was "not fitting" to quit me in
time of trouble.
AT A MALAYAN COURT
WHERE and when these things happened does
not signify at all. The east coast of the
Malay Peninsula is a long one; several native
states occupy its seaboard; and until quite - recently
the manners of the rajas who ruled over them had not
suffered any material change for centuries. Thus,
both in the matter of time and of space, a wide range
of choice is afforded to the imagination. The facts,
anyway, are true, and they were related, in the
watches of the night, to a*white man (whose name does
not matter) by two people with whose identity you
also have no concern. One of the latter was a man,
whom I will call Awang Itam, and the other was a
woman whose name was Bedah, or something like
it. The place which they chose for the telling of
their story was an empty sailing-boat, which lay
beached upon a sand bank in the centre of a Malayan
river; and as soon as the white man had scrambled
up the side, the dug-out which had brought him
sheered off and left him.
He had come to this place by appointment, but .
he knew nothing beyond that single fact, for the
assignation had been made in the furtive native
fashion which is as unlike the invitation card of
Europe as are most things in the East if compared
209
300 AT A MALAYAN COURT
with white men's methods. Twice that day his
attention had been very pointedly called to this
deserted sailing-boat, once by an old crone who was
selling sweet stuff from door to door, and once by a
young chief who had stopped to speak to him while
passing up the street of the native town. By both a
reference had been made to the moonrise and to a
"precious thing," visible only to one who dared to go
in search of it unattended; and though these hints
had been dropped, as it were, by accident, they
sufficed to show the white man that something was to
be learned, seen, or experienced by one who chose to
visit the sailing-boat at the hour of the moon's rising.
The Malays who were with him feared a trap,
and implored him not to go alone; but the white man
felt certain that if any of his people accompanied him,
his trouble would be in vain. Moreover, he had an
appetite for adventure and could in no case afford
to let his friends or his enemies think that he was
afraid. The man who, dwelling alone among Malays
in an unsettled country, shows the slightest trace of
fear, is apt thereby to sign his own death warrant,
while one who is believed by them to be "spoiling
for a fight" is usually the last to be attacked; for
no people are more susceptible to bluff, and given a
truculent demeanour and a sufficiency of bravado,
a coward may pass for a brave man in many a
Malayan state.
The decks of the boat were wet with dew and
drizzle, and she smelt abominably of the ancient
fish cargoes which she had carried before she was
AT A MALAYAN COURT 301
beached. A light rain was falling, and the white
man crept along the side until he reached the stern,
which was covered by a roofing of rotten palm-leaf
mats. Then he squatted down, rolled a cigarette,
and awaited developments.
Presently the soft splash, whisp — splash, whisp of a
single paddle came to his ear, and a moment later he
heard the sound of a canoe bumping gently against
the side of the sailing-boat. Next a girl's figure ap-
peared, standing erect on the vessel's low bulwarks.
She called softly, inquiring whether any one was on
board, and the white man answered her with equal
caution. She then turned and whispered to some
unseen person in a boat moored alongside, and after
some seconds she came toward the white man.
"There is one yonder who would speak with thee,
Tuan," she said, "but he cannot climb over the ship's
side. He is like one who is dead, unless others lift
him, how can he move? Will the Tuan, therefore,
aid him to ascend into the ship?"
The white man loosened his revolver in its holster,
covertly, that the girl might not see, and stepped
cautiously to the spot where the boat appeared to
be moored, for now he, too, began to fear a trap.
What he saw over the side reassured him. The dug-
out was of the smallest, and it had only one occupant,
a man who, even in the dim moonlight, showed the
sharp angles of his bones. The white man let him-
self down into the canoe, and aided by the girl, he
lifted her companion on board. He was in the last
stages of emaciation, shrunken and drawn beyond
302 AT A MALAYAN COURT
belief, and the skin was stretched across his hollow
cheeks like the goat hide on a drum face.
Painfully and very slowly he crept aft, going on
all fours like some crippled animal, until he had
reached the shelter in the stern. The girl and the
white man followed, and they all three squatted down
on the creaking bamboo decking. The man sat all
of a heap, moaning at short intervals, as Malays
moan when the fever holds them. The girl sat
unconcernedly preparing a quid of betel nut, and the
white man inhaled his cigarette and waited for them
to speak. He was trying to get the hang of the
business, and to guess what had caused two people,
whom he did not know, to seek an interview with
him with so much secrecy and precaution in this
weird place and at such an untimely hour.
The girl, the moonlight showed him, was pretty,
She had a small, perfectly shaped head, a wide,
smooth forehead, abundant hair, bright, laughing
eyes, with eyebrows arched and weh 1 defined — "like
the artificial spur of a game-cock," as the Malay
simile has it — and the dainty hands and feet which
are so common among well-born Malayan women.
The man, on the contrary, was a revolting object.
His shrunken and misshappen body, his features
distorted by perpetual twitchings, his taut and pallid
skin, and his air of abject degradation were violently
repellent. Looking at him, the white man was moved
by the feeling which is pity driven to desperation —
the instinctive impulse to hustle the creature out of
sight, or to put it out of its misery once for all — so
AT A MALAYAN COURT 303
abominable was the humiliation of its broken man-
hood.
Presently the girl glanced up at the white man.
"The Tuan knows Awang Itam?" she inquired.
Yes, the white man knew him well by sight, and had
spoken with him on many occasions. He had not,
however, seen him for many months.
"This is he," said the girl, indicating the crippled
wretch who sat rocking and moaning by her side; and
her words administered as sharp a shock to the white
man as though she had smitten him across the face.
Awang Itam, when he had last seen him, had been
one of the smartest and best favoured of the "King's
Youths," a fine, clean-limbed, upstanding young-
ster, dressed wonderfully in an extravagantly peaked
kerchief and brilliant garments of many-coloured
silks, and armed to the teeth with Malayan weapons
of beautiful workmanship. Among the crowd of lads
who strutted like peacocks, and looked upon life as a
splendid game in which love affairs were the cards
and danger the counters, he had been preeminent
for his swagger, his daring, and his successes. What
had befallen him to work in him so appalling a trans-
formation in the space of a few months? It was for
the purpose of revealing this secret to the white man,
in the hope that thereby a tardy retribution might
overtake his oppressors, that he and B§dah had
sought this stolen interview.
In every independent Malay state the btidak
raja, or "King's Youths," are an established insti-
304 AT A MALAYAN COURT
tution. They are a band of vainglorious youn fe
fighting men, recruited from the sons of nobles,
chiefs, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and
men belonging to the more well-to-do families. It
is their business to watch over the person of the Sul-
tan, to follow at his heels when he goes abroad, to
paddle his boat, to join with him in the chase, to kill
all who may chance to offend him, and incidentally
to do a mort of evil in his name. Their principal
aim in life is to win the fickle favour of their master,
and having once gained it, freely to abuse the power
thus secured. As the Malay proverb has it, "they
carry their lord's work upon their heads, and their
own under their arms"; and woe betide those, who
are not themselves under the immediate protection
of the king, with whom chance brings them in con-
tact. At times they act as a sort of irregular police
force, levying chantage from people detected in the
commission of an offence; and when crime is scarce,
it is their amiable practice to exact blackmail from
wholly innocent individuals by threatening to accuse
them of some ill deed unless their good will be pur-
chased at their own price. There is, of course, no
abomination which their master can require of them
that they are not willing, nay, eager, to commit in
his service; and no Malayan raja, in the old days, ever
needed to ask twice in their hearing: "Will no man
rid me of this turbulent priest?"
During the long, long hours which the Sultan
spends among his women, the bvddk raja have to be in
attendance in the courtyards of the palace or at the
AT A MALAYAN COURT 305
gate of the royal enclosure. This affords them the
abundant leisure which Malays so dearly love, and
"Jiey while away the time by loafing and gossiping,
by playing games of chance, by betting on the spin-
ning of tops, on the number of seeds in a mangosteen,
or on the power of resistance possessed by rival nuts of
the kind called buah kras; they sing a little, sleep a good
deal, conceal their own, and speculate luridly upon
their neighbours' private intimacies, and for the rest,
are quite idle, dissolute, and happy. It is unneces-
sary to add that they are greatly feared by the peas-
ants and immensely admired by the generality of
the female population, for they are as reckless, as
unscrupulous, as immoral, and withal as gayly dressed
Wid as well born a gang of young truculents as ever
preyed upon a defenceless people, or made open love
to their wives and daughters.
More or less insecurely imprisoned within the
palace precincts there abides also yet another set of
budak raja — "a monstrous regiment of women" —
some of whom are the concubines, permanent or oc-
casional, of the king, while the remainder are the
companions, attendants, and serving-girls of the more
directly favoured ladies. All of them, however,
without distinction, are vowed to the royal service,
and are supposed to lead a celibate existence. Now,
according to the vernacular proverb, the desires of
Malay women are as disproportionate as those of the
sandfly, the minute insect which is said to have a
standing wager that he will swallow a man whole;
and, as yet another Malayan proverb has it, "the
306 AT A MALAYAN COURT
cat and the roast, the tinder and the spark, and a boy
and a girl are ill to keep asunder." Given, then, as
the main components of a Malay court, a band of
lusty young roisterers, , separated from a hundred or
more of equally idle young women by nothing more
substantial than a few bamboo fences, and such like
frail obstructions, and the resulting happenings can
be more decorously left to the imagination than in-
dicated in even the broadest outline. The question
of marriage rarely arises, for it is only very infre-
quently that a raja can bring himself to dispose in
this fashion of any of the female inmates of his
numerous households. Therefore, all love affairs,
have to be conducted with the utmost stealth and
secrecy; the atmosphere of the court is pungent with
perennial immorality and intrigue; and the sordidness
of it all is only redeemed by the fact that errant man
and maid alike go from day to day in imminent
danger of torture and death. These are the penal-
ties of discovery.
Nevertheless, the majority of the intrigues carried
on by the palace women with the men of the court
become sooner or later more or less notorious. The
inordinate vanity of the women largely contributes
to this, for they pride themselves upon the number
and upon the recklessness of their lovers. When
torn by jealousy or spite, or by a desire to be avenged
upon a faithless wooer, a girl is often enough moved
to betray the secret she shares with him, regardless
of the consequences to herself. Moreover, it is a
point of honour with the palace women to exact
AT A MALAYAN COURT 307
love tokens from their admirers, and thereafter to
display them to their envious companions; and even
the men are frequently guilty of similar indiscretions.
Usually the Sultan himself is the last person to learn
what is going forward, for though there are many
people at a Malayan court who are eager to curry
favour with him by telling tales of their neighbours,
the man who does so must himself be without sin or
damaging secret of his own, and such innocents are
passing rare.
Awang Itam had served the Sultan for several
years as one of the btidak raja, but his immediate
chief was Saiyid Usman, a youngster who was also
one of the King's Youths, and was usually spoken of
as Tuan Bangau. Awang had been born and bred
in the household of which Tuan Bangau's father was
the head; and, though in accordance with the im-
mutable Malayan custom, he always addressed him
as "Your Highness," and used the term "your ser-
vant" in lieu of the personal pronoun, when alluding
to himself, the relations subsisting between him and
his chief more nearly resembled those of two brothers
than any which we regard as customary between mas-
ter and man. They had been born within a week
or two of one another; had crawled about the floor
of the women's apartments in company until they
were old enough to run wild in the open air; they had
learned to play porok and tuju lubang, and all the
games known to Malay childhood, still in company;
they had splashed about in the river together, cooling
their little brown bodies in the running water; they
308 AT A MALAYAN COURT
had often eaten from the same plate, and slept side
by side upon the same mat spread in the veranda.
Later, they had been circumcised upon the same day,
and having thus entered upon ' man's estate, they
had together begun to participate in the life of dis-
sipation which every boy, bred in the neighbourhood
of a Malayan court, regards as his birthright.
Both had been duly entered as members of the
Sultan's bodyguard, and they had quickly proved
themselves to be not the least reckless or truculent
of that redoubtable crew. They were an uncom-
monly good-looking pair of boys, and many were the
girls in the palace, and in the town that lay around
it, who cast inviting glances in their direction.
Tuan Bangau availed himself to the full of lm op-
portunities, but Awang had no taste for casual love-
affairs, for he had conceived an overwhelming pas-
sion for a girl who chanced to be a jdmah-jdmah-an,
or occasional concubine, of the Sultan, and who,
being somewhat puffed up by the majesty of hex
position, was leading for the moment a life of almost
aggressive propriety. She was none the less fully
aware of the state of Awang's feelings, and was nol
averse from affording him an occasional glimpse o}
the charms which had reduced him to so abject a
condition. On his part, he was forever trying to
have sight of her, and Tuan Bangau did his best to
help him, but it was a tantalizing and unsatisfying
business at the best. It was an evil day for both,
however, when as they swaggered past the palace
fence, intent upon stealing a peep at the girl, they
AT A MALAYAN COURT 309
were seen by Tungku Uteh, the Sultan's only daughter
by a royal mother, to whose household the jdmah-
jdmah-an belonged. There was a saying current at
the court, that Tungku Uteh resembled a polong — a
familiar spirit — not physically, for she was fairly
well favoured, but in her capacity to devour and ruin.
Her father guarded her jealously, for she had been
recently married to the ruler of a neighbouring state,
and his honour was involved; but public report said
that her ingenuity was more than a match for his
vigilence, and from time to time some prominent
person in the community would precipitately fly the
country, and presently the whisper would spread
that he had been added to the tale of the princess's
victims. Such a disappearance had very recently taken
place, wherefore, for the moment, her affections were
disengaged, and so it chanced that she looked with the
eyes of desire at the young and handsome Saiyid.
In the East, love affairs develop quickly; and that
very day Awang Itam again saw lang Munah — the
girl whom he had loved so long and so hopelessly —
and by the flash of an eyelid was apprized that she
had that to tell him which it concerned him to hear.
When two people are set upon securing a secret
interview, many difficulties may be overcome; and
that evening Awang whispered to Tuan Bangau that
"the moon was about to fall into his lap."
The Saiyid laughed.
"I dreamed not long since," he said, "that I was
bitten by a very venomous snake," and Awang
laughed too, for he knew that his friend was ripe for
310 AT A MALAYAN COURT
any adventure, and upon that his own chances of
happiness now depended.
To dream of a snake bite, among any of the people
of the Far East, is held to signify that ere long the
dreamer will receive lavish favours from some lady
of exalted rank or surpassing beauty. The more
venomous the snake, the brighter, it is believed, will
be the qualities with which the dreamer's future mis-
tress is endowed. Tuan Bangau had probably not
failed to note the love glances bestowed upon him by
the princess, and these, coupled with his dream,
supplied him with a key to the situation.
His position in the matter was rather curious.
He did not desire Tungku Uteh for herself; she was
his monarch's daughter, and the wife of a royal hus-
band; and his duty and his interest alike forbade him
to accept her advances. He knew that if his in-
trigue were to be discovered, he would be a ruined,
if not a dead man; and he was, moreover, at this
time very genuinely in love with another girl, whom
he had recently married. In spite of all these con-
siderations, however, the princess's overtures were,
in his eyes, a challenge to his manhood which his
code of honour made it impossible for him to refuse.
The extreme danger of the business was, in a fashion,
its supreme attraction. To evade it, upon no matter
what pretext, was to play the poltroon; and on this
point no self-respecting Malay, brought up in the
poisonous moral atmosphere of an independent state,
could admit of any other opinion.
And in this affair there were intrigues within h>
AT A MALAYAN COURT 311
trigues, Iang Munah, who was acting as go-between
for her mistress with the Saiyid, was to have her love
passages with Awang Itam in comfort and security,
without incurring any penalties therefor, and was
moreover to have the princess's support in her
candidature to become a permanent, and not a
merely casual concubine of that young lady's father.
Awang ttam would accompany his friend on his
nocturnal visits to the palace, and while Tuan
Bangau wooed the princess, her handmaiden would
give herself to him, and thus the desire of his heart
would at length be fulfilled. Eagerly he wooed his
friend on Tungku Uteh's behalf, and of the twain it
was he who was the impassioned lover when to-
gether the two young men stole into the palace at
the noon of the night.
They effected their entrance by a way known
to few, the secret of which had been conveyed to
them from the princess, through lang Munah; and
they left by the same means before the breaking
of the dawn, passing by a circuitous route to their
quarters in the guardhouse, while all the town still
slumbered.
For more than a month they paid their secret
visits unobserved by any save those whom they
sought, and by an old crone, who unbarred the door
for them to enter; but one night, toward the end of
that time, they narrowly escaped detection. The
Sultan, like many Malay rajas, kept curious hours.
The distinction between night and day had for him
light or darkness, exactly when the fancy took him;
312 AT A MALAYAN COURT
and occasionally, when having gone to rest at noon,
he awoke at midnight, he would go for a solitary prowl
round the palace precincts, pouncing upon ill-doers
like a roaming beast of prey. It thus chanced that
he lighted upon Tuan Bangau and Awang Itam, just
as they were quitting the princess's compound; but
they fled so swiftly through the darkness that he
failed to discover their identity, and was equally
unable to determine that of the women whom they
had risked their lives to visit. It was a hair-erecting
experience for all concerned, however, and for a
space the meetings ceased.
But Tiingku Uteh was finding in the intrigue a
delightful relief to the general dullness of palace life,
and she was not prepared to let it have so tame an
ending. Tuan Bangau, on the other hand, would
very willingly have broken off the connection, bul
Awang Itam was in this matter the princess's mosl
ardent advocate, and a series of taunting messages
from her speedily reduced the Saiyid to acquiescence,
Greater precautions were now necessary, however v
and the meetings no longer took place in the palace.
Instead, the lovers passed the night in a shed, within
the fence of the royal enclosure, which was ordinarily
used for storing firewood.
Things had gone on in this way for some time, when
Tungku Uteh began to weary of the lack of excite-
ment attending the intrigue. Her secret had been
kept so well that there was not a breath of scandal
to titillate her vanity. She regarded Tuan Bangau as
a lover to be proud of, and she itched to show her
AT A MALAYAN COURT 313
entourage, the court world in general, and .Tuan
Bangau's wife in particular, that he had fallen a
victim to her charms. To possess him in secret
afforded her now only a pale satisfaction, and it
never even occurred to her to consider his interests
rather than her own whims. She knew, of course,
that discovery would spell disaster, more or less
complete, for him, and incidentally would deprive
her of her lover; but for one of her adventuresome
spirit, that was a loss which, in a Malay court, could
be replaced without much difficulty, and since the
intrigue must have an end, sooner or later, it was just
as well, from her point of view, that it should conclude
with a resounding explosion.
One morning, when the faint yellow of the dawn
was beginning to show through the grayness low
down in the east, and the thin smokelike clouds were
hurrying across the sky from the direction of the sea,
dke great night birds winging their homeward way,
Tuan Bangau awoke from sleep to find Tungku
Uteh sitting beside him on their sleeping-mat, with
his kris and girdle in her hands. She had taken them
from his pillow while he slept, and no persuasions
on his part could induce her to restore them to him.
While he yet sought to coax her to return his property
she leaped to her feet, and with a saucy laugh,
disappeared in the palace. Pursuit was, of course,
impossible; and Tuan Bangau and Awang Itam mada
their way homeward with anxious hearts, knowing
that now, indeed, their hour had come.
Once inside her own apartments, Tungku Uteh
314 AT A MALAYAN COURT
placed the kris ostentatiously upon the tall erection of
ornamental pillows that adorned the head of her
sleeping-mat, and then composed herself calmly to
enjoy the tranquil slumber which in the west is
erroneously supposed to be the peculiar privilege of
the just. The dagger was famous throughout the
country, and the identity of its owner was not, of
course, for a moment in doubt. Tungku Uteh could
not have proclaimed the intrigue more resoundingly
if she had shouted its every detail from the Midi's
minaret of the central mosque.
The Sultan's anger knew no bounds when he
learned what had occurred, and physical violence
was, of course, the only means of its expression, and
of covering the shame which had been put upon him,
that presented itself to his primitive and unoriginal
mind. He found himself, however, in a position
of considerable difficulty. He was anxious to avoid
prejudicing his daughter's future with her kingly
husband, who had already evinced a marked dis-
inclination to transport her from her father's to his
own palace. As regards her, therefore, his hands
were fettered; and her acute enjoyment of the situa-
tion, and the shameless levity with which she re-
ceived his reproofs, combined to make his impotence
well-nigh unendurably humiliating. Tuan Bangau,
moreover, was a member of a very powerful clan.
He was also a Saiyid, and the Sultan feared that the
religious fanaticism of his people would be aroused
if he openly punished with death a descendant of the
Prophet. Besides, it was not easy to proceed against
AT A MALAYAN COURT 315
him without involving Tiingku Uteh in the scandal.
For the moment, therefore, he turned his thoughts
to the other culprits. Awang Itam was overpowered
that evening, on his way to the guardhouse, by a
bevy of the King's Youths, was dragged into the
palace, and thereafter all trace of him was lost for
some months. The girl lang Munah, all her bright
dreams of permanent concubinehood scattered to
the winds, was suspended by her thumbs from a roof
beam, and was soused with water whenever she had
the impudence to faint. The Sultan would not suf-
fer any graver injury to be done to her, in spite of
the gentle entreaties of his wife, Tungku Uteh's
mother, as that farseeing potentate judged it to be
possible that his casual fancy for her might, at some
later period, revive.
To Tuan Bangau, however, noj; a word was said;
and never by sign or gesture was he allowed to guess
that his crime against his master's honour was known
to the Sultan.
Nearly a year later, when the whole incident had
become a piece of ancient court history, the Sultan
chanced to go ahunting, and took his way up a small
stream, the banks of which happened to be totally
uninhabited. Tuan Bangau was of the party, and
the other budak raja who were on duty that day were
all men who bad been selected on account of their
discretion and their unwavering loyalty to the Sul-
tan. The hunt was accommodated in boats, of
which there were two, the Sultan travelling in one,
and his son, Tungku Saleh in the other. Besides the
316 AT A MALAYAN COURT
prince, there sat in the latter boat Tuan Bangau and
about a dozen of the King's Youths. Arrived at a
certain place, Tiingku Saleh ordered his men to make
the boat fast in midstream while he ate some sweet-
meats which his women had prepared and packed for
his use. The Sultan's boat meanwhile went on
upriver, and presently disappeared round a jungle-
Qovered point.
When the prince had eaten his fill, he bade Tuan
Bangau and one or two other Saiyids who were
among his followers, fall to on the remainder; and i(
was while Tuan Bangau was washing his mouth ovc:
the side of the boat after eating, that Tiingku Saleh.
gave the signal which heralded his death. A man
who was behind him, leaped suddenly to his feet and
stabbed him with a spear, and a second thrust, de-
livered almost simultaneously by another of the
party, knocked him into the river. Tuan Bangau
dived and came presently to the surface in the shal
low water near the bank of the stream. Here h«i
rose to his feet, drew his Icris, and called to the men
in the boat to come and fight him, one at a time, it
they dared. The only answer was a spear which
struck him in the neck, and a bullet fired from the
prince's express rifle by one of his men, which pene-
trated to his heart. He collapsed where he stood,
and a moment later all that remained of Ttian Ban-
gau was a huddled form lying motionless in the shal-
low water, with the eddies playing in and out of the
brilliant silk garments, which had made him so brave
a sight in life.
AT A MALAYAN COURT 317
Those who had killed him buried him in the jungle
near the place where he had fallen, the secret of the
exact spot being shared by three individuals only.
The report that he had strayed from the hunting
party and had been lost was diligently spread, and to
lend colour to it search was made for him for some
days in a part of the forest situated at a discreet dis-
tance from his grave. The account of his disap-
pearance was very generally disbelieved, but it was
found to be impossible of disproof. But Bedah,
his wife,' who had loved him, had not rested here.
Deliberately she had set herself to work to worm the
truth out of one of his murderers doing in the pro-
cess every conceivable violence to her own feelings
and inclinations; and she now told all to the white
man, hoping that, through him, vengeance might
perhaps overtake the Sultan who had planned, and
his servants who had carried out the assassination.
She was quite indifferent to the fact that she thereby
risked the life which Tuan Bangau's death had tem-
porarily rendered desolate.
All things considered, however, the relatives of the
young Saiyid had not much of which to complain.
He had got into mischief with the Sultan's daughter,
and could not expect to escape the penalty of such
ill doing. Though he was murdered in cold blood
in circumstances which made it impossible for him
to offer any resistance, he met his end, at any rate,
by a quick death and a clean one. Worse things
may befall, as Awang Itam had experienced. After
that youngster vanished behind the palace gates,
318 AT A MALAYAN COURT
lie became the victim of nameless tortures. As he
told the tale of the things that he had suffered on the
night of his arrest — of the appalling mutilations
which had been inflicted upon him, and of the
diabolical ingenuity which had been used, amid
laughter and brutal jests, to wreck bis manhood, and
to reduce him to the pitiful ruin he had since become —
the white man sat writhing in sympathetic agony,
and was assailed by a feeling of horror so violent
that it turned him sick and faint.
"Ya Allah!" he cried. "It were better far to die
than to endure such excruciating pains, and there-
after to live the life which is no life."
The cripple looked up at him with interest. He
had evidently been more accustomed to mockery than
to pity.
"That is true," he said. "It is true." Then, a
light that was almost insane in its intensity awaking
suddenly in his dulled eyes, he added, with some-
thing like triumph in his tone, "But for a space lang
Munah was mine, my woman to me, and willingly
would I endure anew the worst that men can do if for
a little I could be what of old I was, and the desire
in my heart could once more be satisfied."
The spark of energy and spirit died out of him as
quickly as it had been kindled. He seemed to col-
lapse upon himself, and said in a hoarse whisper:
"But now she has again become a jdmah-jdmah-an
— a casual concubine- of the Sultan — and in that
knowledge lurks the keenest of all my agonies."
the Amok of dAto' kAya bIji derja
THE average stay-at-home European knows
little about the Malay and cares less. Any
fragmentary ideas that he may have con-
cerning him are obtained, for the most part, from
light literature of the kind which caters for the latent
barbarism of the young, with the amiable object of
awakening in them a spirit of adventure which the
circumstances of later life will render it impossible
for the vast majority in any degree to satisfy. Books
of this class, which are apt to be more sensational
that accurate, ordinarily depict the Malay either
as a peculiarly "treacherous" person, much as wild
beasts that stand up for themselves are denounced
as "vicious" by big game shooters; or else as a wild-
eyed, long-haired, blood-smeared, howling, naked
savage, armed with what Tennyson calls "the cursed
Malayan crease," who spends all his spare time
running "amuck."
As a matter of fact, dmo&-running was not an
event of very frequent occurrence, even in the law-
less and unregenerate days of which I chiefly write;
but mistaken notions concerning it, and more es-
pecially with regard to the reasons that impel Malays
to indulge in it, are not confined to those Europeans
who know nothing of the natives of the Peninsula.
319
320 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DERJA
White men, in the East and out of it, have attempted
to treat dmofc-running from a purely pathological
standpoint — to attempt to ascribe it to a morbid
condition of the brain cells peculiar to the Malays —
and to ignore the psychological causation which is
usually responsible for these homicidal frenzies.
Some amok, no doubt, are the result of insanity pur
et simple; but outbreaks of this kind are common to
madmen of all races and are largely a question of
opportunity. Given a lunatic who has arms always
within reach, and physical injury to his neighbours
at once becomes a highly likely occurrence; and as in
an independent Malay state all men invariably went
armed, the scope of the homicidal maniac was there-
by sensibly enlarged. Such dmoA;-running, however,
was in no sense typical, nor did it present any of the
characteristic features which differentiate a Malayan
amok from similar acts committed by men of other
nationalities.
By far the greater number of Malayan amok are the
result, not of a diseased brain, but of a condition of
mind which is described in the vernacular by Ihe
term sdkit hdti — sickness of liver — that organ, and
not the heart, being regarded as the centre of sensi-
bility. The states of feeling which are denoted by
this phrase are numerous, complex, and differ widely
in degree, but they all imply some measure of griev-
ance, anger, excitement, and mental irritation. In
acute cases they attain to something very like
despair. A Malay loses something that he values;
be has a bad night in the gambling houses; his
Amok op dAto' kAya bIji d£rja 321
father dies, or his mistress proves unfaithful. Any
one of these things causes him "sickness of liver."
In the year 1888 I spent two nights awake by. the
side of Raja Haji Hamid, who was on the verge of
such a nervous outbreak; and it was only by bringing
to bear every atom of such moral influence as I had
over him, that I was able to restrain him from run-
ning amok in the streets of Pekan, the capital of
Pahang, because his father had died a natural death
on the other side of the Peninsula, and because the
then Sultan of Selangor had behaved with character-
istic parsimony in the matter of his funeral. He had
no quarrel with the people of Pahang, but his liver
was sick, and the weariness of life which this condi-
tion of mind engendered impelled him to kill all and
sundry, until he himself should, in his turn, be killed
I might multiply instances all pointing to thfc
same conclusion — namely, that most amok are caused
by a mental condition which may be the result of
serious or of comparatively trivial troubles that
makes a Malay, for the time being, unwilling to live.
In similar circumstances, a white man sometimes
commits suicide, which is much more convenient
for his neighbours; but I know of no authenticated
case of a male Malay resorting to self-murder, and
the horror with which such an act is regarded by the
people of this race supplies the real reason why
dmok-rajxmag is practised in its stead. Oftei
enough something quite trivial furnishes the original
provocation, and in the heat of the moment a blow
is struck by a man against one who is dear to him.
322 AMOK OF DATO' kAya bIji dErja
Forthwith the self-hatred that results makes him
desire death and drives him to seek in it the only
way which readily occurs to a Malay — by running
amok. The dmo&-runner, moreover, almost always
kills his wife, if the opportunity occurs. Being
anxious to die himself, he sees no good reason why
any woman in whom he is interested should be suf-
fered to survive him, and thereafter, in a little space,
to become the property of some other man. He also
frequently destroys his more valued possessions for a
similar reason. In all this there is a considerable
amount of method; and though the euphemism of
"temporary insanity," commonly employed by cor-
oner's juries when returning verdicts in cases of
suicide, may be applied to the d?reo&-runner with pre-
cisely the same degree of inaccuracy, it is absurd to
treat the latter as though he were the irresponsible
victim of disease.
The following story, for the truth of which I can
vouch in every particular, is only worth telling be-
cause it affords a typical example of a Malayan
amok conducted upon a really handsome scale.
There is a proverbial saying current among the
Malays which is by way of hitting off the principal
characteristics of the natives of some of the leading
states in the Peninsula and Sumatra. "Wheedlers
are the sons of Malacca," it declares. "Buck-sticks
the men of Menangkabau; cheats the men of Ram-
bau; liars the men of Trengganu; cowards the men of
Singapore; sneak-thieves the men of Kelantan; and
Amok of dAto' kAya bLti dErja 323
ari-ogant are the men of Pahang." By far the most
salient qualities of the people of Trengganu, however,
are their profound love of peace, their devotion to
their religion and to study, and their skill both as
artisans and as traders. On the lawless East Coast
thirty years ago men who did not love fighting for
fighting's sake were regarded by their neighbours as
an anomaly, as something almost monstrous; and
the mild temperament of the natives of Trengganu,
coupled with their extraordinary business aptitude,
brought them in those days, contempt and wealth
in more or less equal measure. Their religious fer-
vour is in part due to the existence among them of an
hereditary line of saints — the Saiyids of Paloh — who
have succeeded one another from father to son for
several generations, and have attained to an extraor-
dinary reputation for piety by an ostentatious
display of virtue, by public preachings, and by the
occasional performance of minor miracles. For the
rest, the people of Trengganu excel as craftsmen, and
they are accustomed to flood the native markets
with all manner of spurious imitations of goods of
high repute. The dyes which they use are never
fast. The gold-threaded turban cloths, which their
pilgrims carry to Mecca and dispose of there as
articles of genuine Arab manufacture, wear out with
surprising rapidity; and the unabashed eloquence
with which a Trengganu trader will discourse con-
cerning the antiquity of some object which he has
fashioned with his own hands, and the calm with
which he regards detection, have won for his people
324 Amok of dato' kAya Bin derja
the reputation for lying which rightly belongs to
them. Here, however, alone among the Malayan
states, a great name was to be won, not by prowess
as a warrior, but by renown as a saint, a sage, or a
successful man of business. Every man bore arms,
as a matter of course, for that was the Malayan
custom; but very few ever found occasion to use
them, and one and all had a natural horror of battle
in any shape or form. It is necessary to realize this,
for it is probable that in no other state in the Penin-
sula could the amok which the Dato' Kaya Biji
Derja ran in the streets of Kuala Trengganu have
met with such inefficient opposition.
When Baginda Umar, who conquered the country
early one morning after landing at the head of some
fifty warriors, ruled in Trengganu, there was a chief
named Dato' Bentara Haji, who was one of the king's
adopted sons, and early in the reign of the present
Sultan the title of Dato' Kaya Biji Derja was con-
ferred upon this man's eldest son. The public mind
' was much exercised at this, for the title was not one
which it was usual to bestow upon a commoner, and
Jusup, the youth now selected to bear it, was un-
proven and was possessed of little personality. Ho
was of no particular birth, his father having been
merely a king's favourite; he had little reputation
as a scholar, such as the Trengganu people revere;
and he was not even skilled in the warriors' lore
which of old was so dear to the ruder natives of
Pahang,
Amok of dato' kaya bIji d£rja 323
The new Dato' Kaya was miserably conscious of
his own unfitness for his exalted office, though there
was attached to it no duty save that of looking the
part, and he accordingly set to work to acquire the
elemu hulubdlang, or occult sciences, which it behooves
a fighting man to possess. In peaceful Trengganu
there weie few warriors capable of instructing him
in the arts he desired to learn, though for a time he
apprenticed himself to Tiingku Long Pendekar, who
was a skillful fencer. He took, therefore, to haunt-
ing graveyards by night, hoping that the ghosts of
the fighting men of ancient times would appear to
him and impart to him the lore which had perished
with them. But the Dato' had a wife who was of a
jealous disposition, and she persisted in misunder-
standing the purity of the motives which caused her
husband to absent himself so frequently at night-
time. Violent disputes followed, and at last, for the.
sake of peace, the Dato' abandoned his nocturnal
prowlings among the graves and settled down to lead
the obscure domestic existence for which nature had
intended him.
One day his father, Dato' Bentara Haji, fell sick
and was removed to the house of one Che' Ali, who
was a medicine-man of some repute. To' Kaya was
a dutiful son, and he paid many visits to his father
during his illness, tending him assiduously, and in
consequence returned to his own home at a late
hour on more than one occasion. This was an old
cause of offence, and angry recriminations between
him and his wife ensued. Their disagreement was
326 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DERJA
made more bitter by To' Kaya discovering a stringy
thread of egg in one of the sweetmeats prepared for
him by his wife, and mistaking it for a human hair.
To European ears this does not sound very important,
but To' Kaya, in common with most Malays, be-
lieved that the presence of hair in his food betokened
that his wife was either trying to poison him or else
to put upon him some spell. He accused her roundly
of both crimes, and a row royal followed.
Next evening To' Kaya was again in attendance
upon his father until a late hour, and when he at
length returned home, his wife greeted him through
the closed door with loud reproaches for his supposed
infidelity to her. He cried to her to unbar the door,
and when she at last did so, railing virulently the
while, he shouted angrily that he would have to stab
her in order to teach her better manners if she did
not make haste to mend them.
At this she was seized by a perfect transport of
rage, and making a gesture which is the grossest insult
that a Malay woman can put upon a man, she yelled
at him, "Hai! Stab, then! Stab — if you are able:"
It was now To' Kaya's turn completely to lose his
head and his temper. He drew his kris clear of its
scabbard, and she took the point in her breast, their
baby, who was on her arm, being also slightly
wounded.
Dropping the child, with unerring maternal in-
stinct, she rushed past her husband, leaped to the
ground, and took refuge in the house of a neighbour
named Che' Long.
Amok of dAto' kAya bIji dErja 327
To' Kaya pursued her, and cried to those within
the house to unbar the door which his wife had shut
in his face. Che' Long's daughter, a girl named
Esah ran to comply with his bidding; but before she
could do so, To' Kaya, who had crept under the
raised floor of the house, stabbed at her savagely
through the interstices of the bamboo flooring,
wounding her in the hip.
The girl's father, hearing the noise, flung the door
open and ran out of the house. To' Kaya greeted
him with a spear thrust in the stomach, which proved
his death blow. To' Kaya's wife, profiting by this
interlude, leaped from the house and rushed back to
her own home; but her husband followed her, over-
took her on the veranda, and stabbed her again in
the breast, this time killing her on the spot.
He then entered his house, which was still tenanted
by his mother-in-law, the baby, and his son, a boy
of about twelve years of age, and set fire to the bed
curtains with a box of lucifer matches. Now the
people of Trengganu greatly dread a fire, for their
houses, which are built of very inflammable material,
jostle one another on every available foot of ground,
and here on the seashore a steady wind blows both
by day and by night. When, therefore, a Trengganu
man deliberately sets fire to his house, he has reached
the last stage of desperation and is preparing to make
an end of himself and all things.
At the sight of the flames To Kaya's little son
made a rush at the curtains, pulled them down, and
stamped the fire out. To' Kaya's mother-in-law,
328 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DfiRJA
meanwhile, rushed out of the door, seized the baby
who still lay squalling where it had fallen on the 1
veranda, and set off at a run. The sight of hL
mother-in-law in full flight spurred To' Kaya to
instant pursuit, and he speedily overtook her and
stabbed her through the shoulder. She, however,
;ucceeded in eluding him, and made good her escape,
carrying the baby with her. To' Kaya then returned
to his house, whence his son had also fled, and set
it afire once more, and this time it blazed up
bravely.
As he stood looking at the flames a Kelantan man
named Abdul Rahman came up and asked him how
the conflagration had originated.
"I do not know," said To' Kaya.
"Then let us try to save some of the property,"
said Abdul Rahman; for as is the case with many
Kelantan men, he chanced to be a thief by trade and
knew that a fire gave him a good opportunity for the
successful practice of his profession.
"Good," said To' Kaya. "Do you mount into
the house and lift down the boxes while I wait here
below to receive them."
Nothing loth, Abdul Rahman climbed into the
house and presently reappeared with a large box in
his arms. As he leaned over the veranda in the act
of handing it down to To' Kaya, the latter stabbed
him shrewdly in the vitals and box and man came to
the ground with a crash. Abdul Rahman picked
himself up and ran as far as the open space before
the big stone mosque where he collapsed and died.
Amok of dAto' kAya bIji dkrja 3m
To' Kaya did not pursue him, but continued to stand
gazing at the leaping flames.
The next person to arrive on the scene was a
Trengganu man named Pa' Pek, who with his wife,
Ma' Pek, had tended To' Kaya when he was little.
"Wo'," he said, for he addressed To' Kaya as
though the latter were his son, "Wo', what caused
this fire?"
"I do not know," said To' Kaya.
"Where are the children?" inquired Pa' Pek.
"They are still within the house," replied To'
Kaya.
"Then suffer me. to save them," said Pa' Pek.
"Do so, Pa' Pek," said To' Kaya; and as the old
man began to climb into the house he stabbed him
in the ribs.
Pa' Pek fell, gathered himself together, and ran
away in the direction of the mosque till he tripped
over the body of Abdul Rahman tumbled in a heap,
and eventually died where he lay.
Presently Ma' Pek came to look for her husband
and finding To' Kaya standing near the burning
house, asked him about the fire and inquired aftei
the safety of his children.
"They are still in the house," said To' Kaya, "but
I cannot be at the pains of getting them out."
"Then suffer me to fetch them," said the old
woman.
"Do so, by all means," said To' Kaya; and as she
began to scramble up the stair-ladder, he stabbed her
just as he had stabbed her husband and she running
330 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DfiRJx\.
away fell over the two other bodies near the mosque
and there gave up the ghost.
Next a Trengganu lad named Jusup came up,
armed with a spear, and To' Kaya at once attacked
him, but he took shelter behind a tree. To' Kaya
thereupon emptied his revolver at him missing him
with all six chambers; and then, throwing away his
pistol, he stabbed at him with his spear. Jusup
dodged the blow which in the darkness struck the
tree. Immediately To' Kaya, believing the tree to
be Jusup's body, was seized with panic.
"You are invulnerable!" he cried in horror and
promptly turned and fled. Jusup, meanwhile, made
off in the opposite direction as fast as his legs would
carry him.
Finding that he was not pursued, To' Kaya pres-
ently retraced his footsteps and made his way to
the house of Tiingku Long Pendekar, under whom
he had formerly studied fencing and other arts of
war. At the alarm of fire all the men in the house
had set to work to remove their effects to a place of
safety, and when To' Kaya arrived, Tiingku Long
himself was standing without, watching their opera-
tions while the others — Tiingku Itam, Tiingku Pa,
Tiingku Chik, and Che' Mat Tukang — were busying
themselves within doors. With the exception of
Che' Mat Tukang, who was a commoner, all the
others were men of royal stock. Tiingku Long was
armed with a rattan-work shield and an ancient and
very pliable native sword. As he stood gazing up-
ward quite unaware that any trouble other than that
Amok of dAto' kAya bIji derja 331
occasioned by the fire was at hand, To' Kaya sud-
denly flung himself upon him out of the darkness and
stabbed him in the ribs. Thereafter, for a space,
they fought, Tiingku Long lashing his assailant again
and again with his sword, but inflicting upon him
nothing more serious than a number of bruises. At
length To' Kaya was wounded in the left hand and
at the same moment he struck Tiingku Long's shield
with such force that its owner fell. To' Kaya at
once trampled upon him and stabbing downward,
as one spears a fish, pinned him through the neck.
At this Tiingku Itam, who had been watching the
struggle without taking any part in it, much as
though it were a mere cock fight, showed the great-
est presence of mind by taking to his heels.
Tiingku Long being disposed of, To' Kaya turned
and passed out of the compound, whereupon Che'
Mat Tukang ran out of the house, climbed the fence^
and threw a spear at him, striking him in the back.
This done, Che' Mat also most prudently ran away.
To' Kaya, passing up the path, met a woman
named Ma' Chik — an aged, bent, and feeble crone —
and her he stabbed in the breast, killing her on the
spot. Thence he went to the compound of a pilgrim
named Haji Mih, who also was busy getting his
property out of his house, fearing that the fire might
spread.
"What has caused this fire?" Haji Mih inquired of
To' Kaya.
"God alone knows," replied To' Kaya, and so
saying, he stabbed Haji Mih through the' shoulder.
332 Amok of dAto' kAya bIji dErja
"Help! Help!" roared the pilgrim, and his son-
in-law, Saleh, and four other men ran out of the house v
threw themselves upon To' Kaya, and engaged him
so hotly that in stepping backward he tripped and
fell. As he lay on his back, however, he stabbed up-
ward, striking Saleh in the elbow and deep into his
chest; whereupon all his assailants incontinently fled.
To' Kaya then picked himself up. He had not
been hurt in the struggle, for Saleh and his people
had not stayed to unbind their spears which were
fastened into bundles, and save for the slight wounds
which he had received in his left hand and in his
back, he was so far little the worse for his adventures.
He now withdrew to the Makam Lebai Salam —
the grave of an ancient saint of high repute — and
here he bathed in a well hard by, dressed himself, and
ate half a tin of Messrs. Huntly & Palmer's "gem" bis-
cuits, which he had brought with him from his
house.
His toilet and his meal completed, he returned to
the house of Haji Mih and shouted in a loud voice:
"Where are those men, my enemies, who engaged
me in fight a little while agone?"
It was now 3 a. m., but the men were awake and
heard him.
"Come quickly," he cried. "Come quickly and
let us finish this little business with no unnecessary
delay."
At this challenge no less than ten men who had
gathered in Haji Mih's house came out and began to
throw spears at To' Kaya; but though they struck
Amok of dAto' kAya bIji dErja 333
him more than once they did not succeed in wound-
ing him. He retreated before their onslaught, keep-
ing his face turned toward them and so chanced to
trip over a root near a clump of bamboos, lost his
footing, and fell. His assailants fancied that they
had killed him and at once fear seized them, for he
was a chief, and they had no warrant from the Sul-
tan. They, therefore, fled and To' Kaya gathered
himself together and went back to Lebai Salam's
grave where he finished eating the tin of "gem"
biscuits.
At dawn he came once more to Haji Mih's house,
and halted there to bandage his wounds with some
cotton rags which had been bound about a roll of
mats and pillows that Haji Mih had removed from
his house at the alarm of fire. Again he shouted to
the men in the house to come forth and fight with
him anew, but no one replied, so he laughed aloud
and went down the path till he came to the compound
which belonged to Tiingku Pa. The latter and a
man named 'Semail were seated upon the veranda,
and when the alarm was raised that To' Kaya was
approaching, Tiingku Pa's wife, acting on a fine
instinct of self-preservation, slammed to the door
and bolted it on the inside while her husband danced
without, clamouring to be let in.
Tiingku Pa was, of course, a man of royal blood,
but To' Kaya addressed him as though he were an
equal.
"0 Pa," he cried. "I have waited for you the
long night through, though you did not come. I
334 Amok of dAto' kAya bIji d£rja
have greatly desired to fight with a man of rank. At
last we have met and now I shall have my wish."
'Semail at once made a bolt of it, but To' Kaya was
too quick for him, and as he leaped down the stair-
ladder, the spear took him through the body and he
died.
Tungku Pa, still standing on the veranda, stabbed
downward at To' Kaya with a spear and struck him
in the groin, the blade becoming bent in the muscles
so that it could not be withdrawn. This was
Tungku Pa's opportunity; but instead of seizing it
and rushing in upon his enemy to finish him with his
/cm, he let go the handle of his spear, and ran to a
large water jar on the veranda, behind which he
sought shelter. To' Kaya tugged at the spear and at
length succeeded in wrenching it free. Seeing this,
Tungku Pa broke cover from behind the water jar and
took to his heels. To' Kaya was too lame to attempt
to overtake him, but he shouted after him in derision :
"He, Pa! Did the men of old bid you to fly from
your enemies?"
Tungku Pa halted at a safe distance and turned
round.
"I am only armed with a kris and have no spear as
you have," he said.
"This house is yours," returned To' Kaya. "If
you want weapons, enter it and fetch as many as you
can carry while I await your return."
But Tungku Pa had had enough, and turning,
continued his flight pursued by the laughter and the
jeers of To' Kaya.
Amok of dAto' kAya Bin d£rja 335
"Is this, then, the manner in which the men of the
rising generation do battle with their enemies?" he
shouted.
Finding that arguments and taunts were alike
powerless to persuade Tungku Pa to put up a fight,
To' Kaya went on down the path past the spot where
Ma' Chik's body still lay until he came to the pool
of blood which marked the place where Tungku
Long Pendekar had come by his death. Standing
there, he called to Tungku Itam, who was within the
house.
"O Tungku !" he cried. "Be pleased to come forth
if you desire to avenge the death of your cousin,
Tungku Long. Now is the appropriate time, for your
servant hath still some little life left in him. Later
you will not be able to wreak vengeance upon your
servant for he will be dead. Condescend, therefore,
to come forth and do battle with your servant."
But Tungku Itam remained in hiding and main-
tained a prudent silence, and To' Kaya, finding that
his challenge was ignored, cried once more:
"If you will not take vengeance for the death of
your cousin, the fault is none of your servant's,"
and so saying he passed upon his way.
The dawn was breaking wanly and the cool land
breeze was making a little stir in the fronds of the
palm trees as To' Kaya passed up the lane and
through the deserted compounds the owners of which
had fled in fear. Presently he came out on to the
open space before the mosque, and here some four
hundred men fully armed with spears and daggers
336 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BtJI DfiRJA
had assembled. It was light enough for To' Kaya
to be able to mark the terror in their eyes. He
grinned at them evilly, smacking his lips. Men who
are bent upon keeping alive, if possible, are always at
an enormous disadvantage in the presence of one
who is resolutely seeking death.
"This is indeed good," shouted To' Kaya. "Now
at last shall I have my fill of stabbing and fighting,"
and thereupon he made a shambling, limping charge
at the crowd, which wavered, broke, and fled in every
direction, the majority of the fugitives pouring helter-
skelter into Tunku Ngah's compound and closing the
gate in the high bamboo fence behind them.
One of the hindermost was a man named Genih,
and to him To' Kaya shouted:
"O Genih! It profits the raja little that he gives
you and such as you food both morning and evening.
You are indeed bitter cowards. If you all fear me so
greatly, go and seek some guns so that you may be
able to kill me from afar off."
Genih, who had failed to get into Tungku Ngah's
compound, took To' Kaya's advice and running to
the Sultan's bdlai or hall of state, he cried to Tungku
Musa, who was at once the uncle and principal ad-
viser of the king, "Your servant, To' Kaya, bids us
bring guns wherewith to slay him."
Now, at this moment, all was not well in the bdlai
of the Sultan. When first the news of the amok
had been noised abroad all the rajas and chiefs had
assembled at the palace, and it had been unanimously
decided that no action could be taken until the day
Amok of dAto' kAya bIji dErja 337
broke. At dawn, however, it was found that all the
chiefs, with the exception of Tungku Pangllma,
Dato' Kaya Duyong, Pangllma Dalam, Imam Prang
Losong, and Pahlawan had sneaked away under cover
of the darkness. Tungku Musa was there to act as
the mouthpiece of the Sultan, but he was quite as
unhappy as any of his colleagues.
At last the Sultan said:
"Well, the day has dawned. Why does no man go
forth to kill the Dato' Kaya Btji Derja?"
Tungku Musa turned upon Tungku Pangllma.
"Go you and slay him," he said.
"Why do you not go yourself or send Pahlawan?"
replied Tungku Pangllma.
Pahlawan protested.
"Your servant is not the only chief in Trengganu,"
he said. "Many eat the king's mutton in the king's
bdlai. Why, then, should your servant alone be
called upon to do this thing?"
Tungku Musa said to Imam Prang Losong, who was
by way of being the professional leader of the Sultan's
warriors :
"Go you, then, and slay the Dato' Kaya."
"I cannot go," said the Imam Prang, "for I am
not suitably attired. I am not clad in trousers, and
lacking that garment, in the activity of combat my
clothes may become deranged and a great shame be
thereby put upon your servant."
"I will lend you some trousers," said Tungku
Musa, who was a man of resource.
"But even then I cannot go," said the warrior,
338 Amok of dAto' kAya bIji derja
"for my mother is sick and I must needs return to
tend her."
Then the Sultan stood upon his feet and stamped.
"What manner of warrior is this?" he cried in-
dignantly, pointing at Tiingku Panglima. "He is a
warrior fashioned from offal!"
Thus publicly admonished, Tiingku Panglima de-
tailed about a hundred of his followers to go and kill
To' Kaya; but after they had gone some fifty yards
in the direction of the mosque they returned to him
on some trivial pretext and though he bade them go
many times, they repeated this performance again and
again.
Suddenly old Tiingku Dalam came hurrying into
the palace yard, very much out of breath, for he was
of a full habit of body, binding on his kris as he ran.
"What is this that men are saying concerning To'
Kaya Biji Derja running amok in the palace? Where
is he?" he cried.
"At the mosque," twenty voices replied.
" Ya Allah!" exclaimed Tiingku Dalam in a tone of
relief, mopping the sweat from his forehead. "Men
said he was in the palace. Well, what steps are you
taking to slay him?"
The assembled chiefs maintained a shamed silence
and old Tiingku Dalam cursing them roundly,
selected forty men with guns, and leading them him-
self, passed out at the back of the royal enclosure
to the house of Tiingku Chik Paya, which is situated
close to the mosque.
On the low wall which surrounds the latter build-
Amok of dato' kAya bIji dErja 339
ing To' Kaya was seated, and when he saw Tungku
Dalam approaching he cried out joyously :
"Welcome! Welcome! Your servant has de-
sired the long night through to fight with one who is
of noble birth. Come, therefore, and let us see
which of us twain is the more skillful with his wea-
pons."
At this Mat, one of Tungku Dalam's men, leaped
forward and said, "Suffer your servant to engage him
in fight. It is not fitting, Tungku, that you should
take part in such a business."
But Tungku Dalam restrained him.
"Have patience," he said. "He is a dead man.
Why should we, who are alive, risk death or hurt at
his hands?"
Then he ordered a volley to be fired, but when the
smoke cleared away, To' Kaya was seen to be still
sitting unharmed upon the low wall surrounding the
mosque.
A second volley was fired with a like result, and
then To' Kaya cast away the spear he was holding
in his hand, crying, "Perchance this spear is a charm
against bullets. Try once more and I pray you end
this business, for it has already taken over long in the
settling."
A third volley was then fired, and one bullet struck
To' Kaya but did not break the skin. He clapped
his hand upon the place and leaped to his feet crying,
''' Hai, but that hurts me ! I will repay you for that ! "
and as he rushed forward, the crowd surged back
before him With difficulty Tungku Dalam sue-
340 AMOK OP DATO' KAYA BiJI DERJA
ceeded in rallying his people and inducing them to
fire a fourth volley. This time, however, one bullet
took effect, passing in under one armpit and out under
the other. To' Kaya staggered back to the wall and
sank upon it, rocking his body to and fro. A fifth
and final volley rang out and a bullet passing through
his head, To' Kaya fell prone upon his face.
The cowardly crowd pressed forward, but fell back
again in confusion for the whisper spread among
them that To' Kaya was feigning death in order to
get at close quarters with his assailants. At length,
however, a lad named Samat, who was related to the
deceased Ma' Chik, summoned up enough courage to
run in and transfix the body with his spear, but To'
Kaya was already dead.
He had killed his wife, Che' long, the Kelantan
man Abdul Rahman, Pa' Pek, Ma' Pek, Tiingku
Long Pendekar, Ma' Chik, Haji Mih, and 'Semail;
aud he had wounded his baby child, his mother-in-
law, Che' Long's daughter Esah, and Saleh — in all
nine killed and four wounded. This is a respectable
butcher's bill for any single individual, and he had
done all this because having had words with his wife
and having stabbed her in the heat of the moment he
had felt that it would be an unclean thing for him to
continue to live on the surface of a comparatively
clean planet. In similar circumstances a white man
might possibly have committed suicide, which would
have occasioned considerably less trouble; but that
is one of the many respects in which a white man
differs from a Malay.
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
AT KOTA BHARU, the capital of Kelantan,
/-\ some thirty years ago, the Powers of Wicked-
-^- ■*>■ ness in the High Places were at considerable
pains to preserve a kind of cock-eyed, limping, knock-
kneed, shambling morality which kept more or less
even step with their conception of the eternal fitness
of things. To this end, Yam Tuan Mulut Merah,
the "Red Mouthed King," so called on account of
his insatiable thirst for blood, did his best to dis-
courage theft; and in pursuance of this laudable
desire killed during his reign sufficient men and wo-
men to have repeopled a new country half the size of
his own kingdom. Old Nek 'Soh, the Dato' Sri
Paduka, who stood by and witnessed most of the
killing, used openly to lament in my time that all
the thieves and robbers were not made over to him
instead of being wasted in the shambles. It was
his opinion that, with so considerable a following, he
might have set up a new dynasty in the Peninsula
and still have had enough men and women at his
disposal to make it possible for him to sell a batch of
them now and then if ready money were needed.
Nek 'Soh was a wise old man, and he was probably
sure of his facts; but though his influence with his
master, the Red Mouthed King, was great in most
341
342 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
things, he was never able to induce him to forego
his killings or to try the experiment. So the king
continued to slay robbers, thieves, and pilferers,
never pausing to discriminate very closely between
those who were convicted and those who were merely
accused, and occasionally extending the punishment
to their relations and friends. Nek 'Soh silently
bewailed the wholesale waste of good material on
utilitarian rather than upon humanitarian grounds,
and the bulk of the population thieved and robbed
and pilfered as persistently and gayly as ever, for
that was the custom of the country.
It must be confessed that the Red Mouthed King's
attempts to effect a reform in the habits of his people
were attended by no very encouraging result, and
this perhaps is why he confined his attention to an
effort designed to eradicate a single vice and in other
directions was content to let the morality of Kelan-
tan take care of itself. After many years, however,
old Mulut Merah died, and his son and later his
grandson, ruled in his stead. Nek 'Soh, now a very
old man, continued to have a hand in the government
of the country, but he no longer occupied the position
of king's principal adviser. This post was held by
a person upon whom had been conferred the title of
Maha Mentri, which means "Great Minister"; and
as he was young and energetic, and was, to all intents
and purposes, the real ruler of the land, he presently
launched out into a scheme of reform which was des-
tined, as he forecast it, to work a revolution in the
manners and customs of the grood people of Kelantan.
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 343
Undeterred by the knowledge that mutilation, vio-
lent death, and an ingenious system of tortures, had
proved quite powerless to cure the Kelantan folks'
innate propensity to misappropriate" one another's
property, Maha Mentri conceived the bold idea of
converting the entire population, on a sudden, into
fervent and fanatical Muhammadans. Now, judged
as an exponent of Islam, your average Malayan peas-
ant is wofully slack and casual, but the people of
Kelantan are the dullest and least fervent Malays in
the Peninsula. No more unpromising material for
a religious revival could be found in any part of Asia,
and any attempt to make such folk scrupulous ob-
servers of the Prophet's law, by the local equivalent
of an Act of Parliament, was foredoomed to failure
from the outset. Nothing dauntedj however, Maha
Mentri insisted upon all men attending at the mosque
on Fridays, for the recital of congregational prayer,
and inculcated the breaking of the heads of recal-
citrant church-goers; he observed, and personally
superintended the observance of fasts; he did his
best to prevent the use of silk garments by any save
women, and this, be it remembered, in a country
which is famous for its silk fabrics; he set his face
against cock-fighting, bull-matches, ram-butting,
human prize-fights, hunting, and the keeping of
dogs, all the sports of the well-to-do, in fact; and
while he pried into the home of every family in the
capital, with the laudable object of ascertaining
whether its inmates prayed regularly at each of the
five hours of appointed prayer, he dealt an even more
344 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
severe blow to the happiness of the bulk of the popu-
lation by forbidding the performance of the ma'iong.
The ma'iong are heroic plays which are acted
throughout the length and breadth of the Peninsula
by troupes of strolling players, and they are specially
dear to the natives of Kelantan. They are bastard
off -shoots of the magnificent spectacular plays which,
to this day, are performed in the palace of the king
of Kambodia at Pnom Phen. These in their turn
had their origin in the traditional and ceremonial
dances enacted at Angkor, when that city of gigantic
ruins was still the capital of a great Hindu empire,
which extended over most of Burma, Siam, and Indo-
China, and was established and ruled for several
centuries by Brahmans who migrated from across
the Ganges. Since the enslaved population rose
in revolt against the twice-born tyrants, utterly
destroying them and reducing their city to ruins,
the plays have undergone many changes, and in our
time the clown, who plays the part of low comedian,
is called Bram in Kambodia. In the Malayan
ma'iong he reappears as Pran; and this butt of the
other actors, and object of the derision of the specta-
tors, derives his title of infamy from the proudest
caste on earth, who long ago at Angkor exacted the
worship of the people, and by their oppression of them
earned a hatred of which this grotesque piece of spite
is the last surviving manifestation.
The Malay renderings of these plays are of the
most primitive character. They are performed in-
side a small square paddock, enclosed by a low bam-
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 345
boo railing, but otherwise open on all four sides, so
as to afford the spectators an unobstructed view of
all that goes forward within the enclosure. A palm-
leaf roof protects the players from the sun by day
and from the heavy dews by night; and whenever a
panggong is erected upon a new site, the pdwang, or
medicine-man, who is also the actor-manager of the
troupe, performs certain magic rites with cheap in-
cense and other unsavoury offering to the spirits.
This he does in order to enlist' the assistant of the
demons of the earth and air, and of all local deities,
whom he entreats to watch over his people and to
guard them from harm. The incantations of which
he makes use are very ancient, and it is possible to
trace in some of them a strong Hindu influence, but
for the rest, the whole business is pure devil worship.
First he calls upon Black Awang, King of the Earth
and Air, he who is wont to wander through the veins
of the ground and to take his rest at the portals of
the world. Awang, of course, is one of the common-
est of Malayan proper names, and here it is obviously
used as an euphemism substituted for a word which
it is not lawful for men to utter. Next the pdwang
calls upon the Holy Ones, the local demons of the
place, and finally upon his grandsire, Petera Guru,
the Teacher who is from the Beginning, who is
incarnate from his birth, who dwells as a hermit
in the recesses of the moon, and practises his magic
arts in the womb of the sun; the Teacher whose coat
is wrought of green beads, whose blood is white, who
hath but a single bone, the hairs of whose body stand
346 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
erect, the pores of whose skin are adamant, whose
neck is black, whose tongue is fluent, whose spittle
is brine. All these he prays to guard his people, and
he then cries to them to fling wide the gates of lust
and passion together with the gates of desire and
credulity, and the portals of longing— "the longing
which endureth from dawn unto dawn, which causeth
food to cease to satisfy, which maketh sleep uneasy,
which remembering maketh memory eternal, which
causeth hearing to hear and sight to see."
Such shameless trafficking with spirits, which
should find no place in the demonology of any good
Muhammadan, was quite properly regarded as an
abomination by the straitlaced Maha Mentri; and
not content with prohibiting the performances of
the ma'iong, he contrived to make life so singularly
unattractive to the actors and actresses that many
of them quitted Kelantan and trooped across the
jungle-clad mountains which divide that state from
Pahang.
Now, no matter what other faults are to be at-
tributed to the people of Pahang, they cannot justly
be accused of bigotry or religious fanaticism, so the
players were welcomed with open arms, and from
end to end of the land the throbbing beat of the
ma'iong drums, the clanging of the gongs, the scrap-
ings of the ungainly Malay fiddles, the demented
shrieks and wailings of the serunai, which sounds
like bagpipes in distress, the nasal chantings of the
prima donna, and the roars of laughter which greet
each one of the clown's threadbare jests, made merry
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 347
discord in the villages. The gates of all the least
desirable passions were flung unwontedly wide on
this occasion, for hitherto the coming of a ma'iong
had been a very unusual event in the interior, and a
series of deplorable incidents were presently reported
to me from many localities in the wide Pahang Valley.
While the ma'iong was playing, and it played morn-
ing, afternoon, and evening, no one had any care
for the crops; the women left their babies and their
cooking-pots, and the elders of the people were as
stage-struck as the boys and maidens. When the
strolling players broke up their panggong and moved
forward upon their way, having squeezed a village
dry of its last copper coins, many of the peasants
followed in their train, cadging for food and lodging
from the people at the next halting-place, enduring
every sort of discomfort, but unable to tear them-
selves away from the fascination of the players and
the contemplation of the actresses. Many lawful
wives found themselves deserted by their men, and
the husbands and fathers in the villages had to keep
a sharp eye upon the doings of their wives and
daughters while the ma'iong folk were in the neighbour-
hood; for when once the drab monotony of their
lives is accidentally disturbed, the morality of the
Malay villagers, which ordinarily is far better than
that of the townsfolk, goes incontinently to pieces
like a stranded ship in the trough of an angry sea.
Of all the actor-managers who were then roaming
up and down Pahang, none was so successful both
with the playgoers and with the women, as Saleh or
348 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
'Leh, as he was usually called, Malay energy rarely be-
ing equal to the effort of articulating more than a frag-
ment of any given proper name. In their mouths the
dignified Muhammad becomes the plebeian "Mat";
Sulehman — our old friend Solomon— is reduced to
plain " 'Man "; Abubakar becomes " r Bakar," Ishmail
'"Mail," "Patfmah," "Tunah," or even '"Mali,"
and so on with all the sonorous nomenclature of the
Bible and the "Arabian Nights." This is worth not-
ing, because it is typical of the Malay's propensity to
scamp every bit of labour, no matter how light its
character, that falls to the lot of man in this work-a-
day world.
Leh was a man of many accomplishments. He
played the fiddle in excruciating wise to the huge
delight of all the Malays who heard him; he had a
happy knack of imitating the notes of birds and the
cries of wild and domestic animals, and as the pran
in the ma'iong he was genuinely funny. In order
to act this part, he used to put on the grotesque mask
which is assigned to it by tradition, a thing of a vio-
lent red colour with a piece of dirty sheepskin for the
hair, and prominent forehead, bulging eyes, and
foolish, inflated cheeks, which together give to the
uncovered, lower part of its wearer the appearance
of an impossibly receding chin; and thus arrayed he
interwove with his appointed dialogue a succession
of pungent and frequently unprintable topical jokes,
which he improvised with an astounding facility.
Above all he was a skilled rhapsodist, and with that
mellow voice of his would sing the wonderful story
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 349
of Awang L6tong — the Monkey Prince which is a
bastard, local version of the Ramayana — until the
cocks were crowing to a yellow dawn. He travelled
with me on one occasion for a fortnight and I had
the whole of this folktale written down from his
dictation. When completed it covered sixty pages
of foolscap of fine Arabic manuscript, which com-
presses a great many words into a surprising small
space; yet Leh, who could neither read nor write,
knew every line of it by heart and could be turned
on at any point, invariably continuing the story in
precisely the same words. He had learned it from
an old man in Kelantan, who in his day was reputed
to be the last surviving bard to whom the whole
of the tale was known. It was one of the most plain-
spoken pieces of literature ever committed to writing,
abounded with archaic phraseology, and the corrupt
Hinduism to be traced in it lent it a very special
interest. In due course, I sent the manuscript with
a translation and elaborate notes to the Straits
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society by which learned
body the whole thing was presently lost with the
usual promptitude and despatch.
It was always a marvel to me that Leh escaped
having some angry man's knife driven, into his body
during his wanderings through Pahang, for the Malays
of that state were accustomed to discourage too suc-
cessful lovers by little attentions of the kind, and
Leh was adored by the women both high and low,
throughout the length and breadth of the country.
Whether he owed his survival to cunning or to sheer
350 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
luck, I do not know; but he certainly lived to return
to Kelantan after an absence of about a couple of
years.
This was rendered possible for the ma'iong people
by the sudden and violent death of the Maha Mentri.
That great and good man — the self-appointed cham-
pion of Muhammadanism in its strictest forms, the
enforcer of public and private prayer, the orderer of
fasts for the mortification of the erring flesh — had one
little weakness that marred the purity and the con-
sistency of his character. He was so scrupulous that
he would not suffer himself to be photographed when
a view of Kota Bharu, in which several hundreds of
people figured, was being taken, since he held that
the making of pictures was contrary to the Prophet's
ordinances. In the name of religion, he had con-
trived to make his neighbours' lives as little worth
living as possible; but all the while he was aggres-
sively attentive to an increasingly large number of
the said neighbours' wives. Meticulous regard for
the letter of the law, combined with an ostentatious
disregard for its spirit, is only to be found in its full
perfection in Asiatic lands, but the Maha Mentri
dovetailed the incompatabilities together with an un-
precedented persistence and shamelessness.
The mild folk of Kelantan bore with him and with
his amiable peculiarities for a considerable time, and
they might perhaps have endured them even longer
had it not been that his zeal for religion was pushed, in
directions that were not distasteful to him person-
ally, to extremes which rendered life a very weari-
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 351
some ordeal. Upon a certain evening, therefore,
it befell that the Maha Mentri was shot through the
flooring while he lay abed in another man's house by
the aggrieved owner thereof ably and actively as-
sisted by two other injured husbands, who were
quite convinced that there was not room enough for
the Maha Mentri and themselves upon the surface
of the same planet.
Everybody knew the identity of the Maha Men-
tri's executioners, and the king, who was fond of his
minister, would dearly have liked to punish them
with a lingering death. They chanced, however,
to be under the protection of a young prince with
whom, for political reasons, the king could not
afford to precipitate a quarrel; so he and his advisers
professed to be lost in speculations as to who could
have been so unmannerly as to shoot the pious Maha
Mentri in three several places and at that the matter
rested in spite of the clamorous protests of the dead
man's relatives.
Very soon the glad tidings of the Maha Mentri's
death reached Pahang, and the ma'iong people
packed their gear and started back for their own
country, leaving many men and women lamenting,
and a set of utterly demoralized villages behind them.
Leh went back by sea with half a score of broken
hearts in his wallet; and soon after his arrival he was
appointed to the post of court minstrel and warden
of the royal dancing girls. For the Kelantan to
which he had returned was a very different place
from the land he had quitted when he started out
352 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
for Pahang. As soon as the worthy Maha Mentri
had been laid in his grave, the reaction which always
follows a paroxysm of religiosity set in with full
force, and Kelantan became forthwith a pleasant
land for unregenerate folk to live in. The five hours
of appointed prayer were suffered to slip by unre-
garded of the people; no man troubled himself to
fast more than his stomach thought fitting; and the
music of the ma'iong broke out anew, flinging wide
the gates of all the unmentionable passions.
In this new and joyful Kelantan, Leh found him-
self very much in his element. His wit and his
many accomplishments caused the old pillar dollars,
which in those days were the standard currency of
the country, to come rolling in, and he was thus
able to go forth among his fellows lavishly clad from
the waist downward in a profusion of gaudy silk
sarongs and sashes, such as the Kelantan folk affect.
From the belt upward he went naked, of course; for
unlike most Malays the people of this state never
wore coats, though these exotic garments were oc-
casionally used by the rajas and nobles at court
functions when strangers chanced to be present.
It was never Leh's habit to keep all his good for-
tune to himself, and not only a select few of the king's
dancing girls, but a goodly troop of other dames and
maidens — who should rightly have been occupied
exclusively with their lawful lords and masters —
came in for a share of the spoil. Given a well-set-up
figure, a handsome face, gay apparel, a witty tongue
and a superfluity of ready money, and a far less
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 353
clever and engaging fellow than Leh, the strolling
player might confidently reckon upon a brilliant
series of successes at the court of a Malayan king.
He came upon the scene, moreover, at a time when
the soul of the Kelantan people was stretching itself
luxuriously after its release from the moral bonds
with which the Maha Mentri had fettered it, and it
was not long before the best favoured half of the
female population of K6ta Bharu, a town famous for
the beauty of its women, were, to use the Malay
phrase, "mad" for Leh. The natives of the Penin-
sula, who are philosophers in their own way, recog-
nize that love, when it wins a fair grip upon man or
woman, is as much a disease of the mind as any other
form of insanity; and as it is more common than most
other forms of mania, they speak of it as "the mad-
ness" par excellence.
Such a state of things, however, caused much dis-
satisfaction to the rest of the male community, and
the number of the malcontents received constant
recruits as the madness spread among the women.
The latter, as time went on, became more and more
shameless and reckless, and threw off all disguise, for
they were too numerous for any unorganized system
of wife and daughter beating effectively to cope with
the trouble. When they were not occupied in way-
laying Leh in sending him notes or presents, in making
assignations with him, or in ogling him as he swag-
gered past their dwellings, cocking a conquering eye
through the doorways, the ladies of Kdta Bharu were
now frequently engaged in shrill and hard-fought
354 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
battle one with another. Each woman was wildly
jealous of all her fellows, mother suspecting daughter,
and daughter accusing mother of receiving more than
her fair share of Leh's generous and widely scat-
tered attentions. Many were the scratches scored on
nose and countenance, long and thick the tussocks
of hair reft from one another by the combatants,
terrible and extravagant the damage done to one an-
other's rival wardrobes by the infuriated ladies; while
the men beholding these impossible goings-on with
horror and dismay, said among themselves that Leh,
the warden of the king's dancing girls must die.
He was a hefty fellow and known to be a good man
of his hands, wherefore, badly as they all felt about
him, no one saw his way to engage him in single
combat, though there were half a hundred very angry
husbands and lovers who were anxious to take an
active part in assassinating him. At last a commit-
tee of three specially aggrieved citizens was appointed
by general consent to act for the rest, and they lay in
wait for Leh during several successive evenings, hoping
to catch him returning alone from the ma'iong shed.
It was on the third night of their vigil that their
chance came. The moon was near the full, and the
heavy shadows cast by the palm fronds lay across
the ground like solid objects. The footpath, which
leads from the main thoroughfare into the villages
around Kota Bharu, branches off some twenty
yards from the spot where the watchers lay concealed.
The committee of three sat huddled up just within
the clustering compounds, hidden from sight by the
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 355
patch of shadow cast upon the bare earth by a neigh-
bouring house, and the vivid moonlight revealed
every detail of the scene around them — -the yellow,
sun-baked soil, the green of the smooth banana
leaves, even the red of a cluster of rambut-an fruit
on a tree near at hand.
Presently the sound of voices talking and laughing
light-heartedly came to the ears of the listening
men, and as the speakers drew nearer the committee
of three were able to distinguish Leh's mellow tones.
At the parting of the ways he turned off by himself
along the footpath, his companions keeping on to the
main road. Leh took leave of them with a farewell
jest or two, which sent the others laughing upon
their way, and then he strolled slowly along the foot-
path humming the catch of a song under his breath.
The three in the shadow of the house could see
the colour of the gaudy cloths wound about their
enemy's waist, the fantastic peak into which his
handkerchief was twisted, the glint of the polished
kemuning wood and the gold settings of his dagger
hilt, and the long, br.oad-bladed spear that he carried
in his right hand. They watched him drawing
nearer to them, still humming a song, and with a half
smile upon his face. They allowed him to come
abreast of them, to stroll past them, still unsuspicious
of danger; but no pity for him moved them. All had
been injured in too deadly a fashion by this callous,
light-hearted libertine, who now went to the death he
knew not of with a smile on his face and the stave of a
song upon his lips.
356 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER
As soon as he had passed them the committee of
three stepped noiselessly out of the shadow, poised
their spears aloft, and plunged them into Leh's
naked brown back. As they struck they rent the
silence of the night with their sorak, a war-cry into
which they compressed all the pent-up hatred of
their victim which had been devouring their hearts
for months. Leh, giving vent to a thick, choking
cough, fell upon his face, and a few more vigorous
spear thrusts at his prostrate body completed the
work which the committee of three had been ap-
pointed to perform.
They left the body of Leh, the strolling player,
lying where it had fallen, face downward in the dust
of the footpath; and though the king did all that lay
in his power to secure the detection of the murderers,
and though his efforts were seconded by half the
women in the town, the men who had planned the
deed kept their secret well, so no punishment could
be inflicted upon those who had actually effected the
assassination of the warden of the king's dancing
girls.
In the eyes of Malayan justice, however, if you are
unable to punish the guilty, it is better to come down
heavily upon the innocent than to let everybody get
off scot free. The house near which the body of Leh
had been found happened to be tenanted by an old
crone, her widowed daughter, and three children of
tender age. That they were not concerned in the
murder was obvious; but none the less their abode
was taken as the centre of a circle of one hundred
A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 357
fathom' radius and all whose houses chanced to lie
within its circumference, whether men or women
young or old, whole or bedridden, mothers great with
child or babies at the breast, were indifferently fined
the sum of three dollars each, a large sum for a
Malayan villager of those days to be called upon to
pay, and producing, from the king's point of view, a
refreshingly big total, when all heads had been
counted, for in the neighbourhood of Kota Bharu the
people herd together as closely as kine in a byre.
This system of wholesale mulcting was recognized
in Kelantan as having several advantages attaching
to it. In the first place, it did something to enhance
the revenues of the king, which was a matter of mo-
ment; and for the humbler folk, if a man chanced to
have a quarrel with a neighbour, with whom he was
otherwise unable to get even, he could punish him
by the simple process of leaving a corpse at his front
door. In a land where human life was as cheap as it
used to be in Kelantan, this was not a difficult matter
to arrange, and if the corpse chanced to be that of
yet another enemy, two birds, so to speak, could be
killed with a single stone. Which is economical.
TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
OLD Tukang Burok, the fashioner of wooden
dagger hilts and sheaths, sat cross-legged on
the narrow veranda of his hut, which, perched
upon the high bank, overlooked the Parit River.
I squatted, smoking, at his side, watching him at
his work, and luring him on to talk of the days of
long ago.
Forty feet below us the red, peat-stained waters of
the Parit, banked back by the tide now flowing up
the Pahang River from the sea, crawled lazily toward
their source. The thatched roofs of more than a
score of rafts lay under our feet, so that anything
falling off the Tukang's veranda would drop plump
upon the nearest of them. Nuzzling one another,
and rubbing sides with a constant creaking, twice
as many large native boats were moored. Each of
them was furnished with a substantial deck-house,
high enough to accommodate a seated man, walled
with wood and protected by a strong roof of kdjang*
which rose in a graceful curve toward the stern and
supported the mdgun, or steersman's perch, which
*KSjang — The name given to mats made from the dried and prepared fronds
of the mingkuang palm, sown together with rattan. They are yellow in colour,
and have a glazed surface which renders them water-proof. They are used for
roofing boats and temporary shelters, and serve in the Peninsula many of the
purposes to which in Europe tarpaulin is put
*58
TUKANG BUROK'S STORY 359
was similarly roofed. The punting platforms, which
occupied rather more than a third of the available
deck space, were also covered in with temporary
kdjang roofs, and from boats and rafts alike a thin
smoke was slowly rising, for numbers of Malays of
both sexes and all ages were living more or less per-
manently aboard them. The red waters of the
Parit possessed some property inimical to the borers
which destroyed the bottoms of craft left to ride at
anchor in the lower reaches of the Pahang; wherefore
this narrow stream formed the most popular mooring-
place in the vicinity of the capital.
A narrow fairway opened between the boats and
rafts, and up and down this there passed two broken
threads of traffic, composed of tiny dug-outs, shoot-
ing swiftly in and out amid the numerous obstruc-
tions.
The bright colours of the Malay's garments made
little splashes of red or green or yellow against the
tawny waters of the river, and the dusty mat roof-
ings of rafts and boats. The flickering fronds of the
cocoanut, sugar, betel, and sago palms, and the
spreading boughs of fruit trees of many varieties —
dividing among them almost every conceivable
shade of green — stretched forth from either bank
friendly hands that nearly met above the ruddy
waters of the stream, upon which they cast a sun-
flecked, shifting shadow, infinitely refreshing to the
eye. Above, seen through the mass of fronds and
boughs and foliage, the cloudless Malayan sky arched
over us; and below us the browns and yellows of the
360 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
palm-leaf roofings of boats and rafts relieved the even
redness of the river.
A gentle breeze, which had sped upstream from the
sea, playing catch as catch can with the flowing tide,
sighed dreamily in our ears, and the heavy silence was
broken only by the monotonous thud of a paddle
handle against a boat's wooden side, the faint bleat of
a goat, the whisper of an occasional stronger gust
among the palm fronds, and the purring sound of old
Tukang Burok's polishing tools.
" Tuan, the girl was very fair, and the madness
came upon me, and I loved her."
He held a beautiful piece of the buttress root of the
ktimuning tree between the toes of his left foot and
sat working at its surface with a mass of . rough
empelas leaves held in both hands. Even in its raw
state the wonderful, bold markings of the wood, the
great curves and patches of black against their yellow
background, were plainly to be discerned, an earnest
of the magnificence that would be revealed when
finally worked up and varnished, and the old Tukang
handled it lovingly.
"Your servant was a youth in those so long ago
days, and when it comes to the young, the madness
is very hot and burning so that the eyes will not
sleep and the belly hath no desire for rice, and the
liver is like a live ember in the breast. And, in
truth, old age changes a man but little. Behold the
lusts of him are as great as of yore, only his bones are
stiff and his limbs have turned traitor, and rage
assails his liver as he watches the maidens playing the
TUKANG BTJROK'S STORY 381
game of eye play with the children who deem them-
selves men, shooting their love-darts before his very
face, without modesty or shame, and never so much
as casting a glance his way, unless they would seek
his help to aid them in their intrigues and their
stolen meetings. Ya Allah! It is very evil, Tuan,
to grow old, and age cometh apace. One day a man
is young; on the morrow — or so it seems — youth has
fled; a little more and the eyes wax dim, the ears are
heavy of hearing, and only the liver within him is
unchanged in the fury of unsatisfied desire. To each
one of us age is a surprise — so quickly have the years
slipped by, so short the time that has sped, so gradual
the decay of the body, yet so much swifter is it than
the change wrought in the soul. Some there be who
turn their thoughts to money when the maidens
will have nought of them; but what music is there in
the clink-a-clunk of silver pieces compared with the
love words whispered in the darkness by the lips of a
girl, and what beauty abides in the moon face of a
coin by the side of the pale face and laughing eyes
of a maiden ripe for love? Ambui! It is very hard
to grow old. I, your servant, sit here all the day long,
fashioning Icris hilts and dagger sheaths for the
youths, that they may make a brave show in the eyes
of their lights o' love, and the young folk pass hither
and thither in my sight, and I mark the glint in their
eyes as they look the one upon the other, till tears
of envy well up in these old eyes of mine, for well I
know that never again will a girl have unbought love
to offer me.
•%2 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
"Therefore, Tuan, I sit here musing over the days
of long ago, and at times tears gather in my eyes,
so that I can barely see the wood to fashion it.
In my time, after the way of men, I have loved
and been loved by many women ; but now that I am
old, ever my thoughts and my longings play around
the girl whom I held dearer and more desirable than
any, she who in an evil hour was lost to me ere yet I
had known her for my wife. In truth, Tuan, my
lot hath been cheldka, accursed of Fate.
"Be pleased to listen to my story, Tuan, for it is
very -strange. Moreover, though my affliction was
great, men made a mock of me and of my grief, and
derided me by reason of the nature of my calamity.
"It was very long ago, when the old Bendahara
reigned in Pahang, and he who to-day is Sultan was
a fugitive from his wrath; and these things happened
far away in the ulu — the upper reaches of the river —
in those distant places where, the streams being
slender, men regard a gallon of water as a deep pool,
as the saying goes. I was wandering through the
country, trading, for I had incurred guilt owing to a
trouble that arose concerning certain love passages
between myself and a maiden of the Bendahara's
household. For a while, therefore, my father
deemed it prudent that I should quit the capital,
where the king was very wroth, and hide for a space
among the villages on the banks of the shallow,
bustling streams, where the folk are peaceful and
foolish, and ready to do aught that they are bidden
by a man belonging to the Bendahara's court, since
TUKANG BUROK'S STORY 363
they hold such people in awe. It was here that I
beheld the maiden, and forthwith the madness came
upon me and I loved her.
"I was astonished that such beauty should be
found in so remote and so barbarous a place; for this
girl was a daughter of the village folk, and their
women are commonly coarse and big and ill-
favoured, with their hands roughened by hard
labour, and their faces tanned black as the bottom
of a cooking-pot by exposure to the sun, since they
do much work in the rice-fields. But this girl, Tuan,
was slender and delicate, and her face was light in
colour, and had the effulgence of the moon when it
is at the full — in truth I cannot tell to you the wonder
of her beauty. Even now, when I am old, as I then
was young, my fiver waxes hot at the thought of her
loveliness. For every man in the world there is al-
ways one woman. Allah knoweth that our loves are
many — so many that no man may retain in his mind
the memory of all of them; but the others are as
shadows while one is the reality. So it hath been
with me. I was a son of the king's city, born to
mate with one bred gently in the precincts of the
court; yet at the sight of this village maiden, my
liver was crumbled to atoms, and I knew that life
held nought of worth to me until I could have her
for my own. Therefore, I sent the marriage portion
to her parents, who were much elated that my
father's son should desire to wed their daughter.
"A day was set apart for the feast of the Becom-
ing One; and while I awaited its coming, I was de-
364 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
voured by impatience and by desire, so that the
days were like a heavy burden strapped upon my
back; but when evening fell, I used to creep softly
under her parents' house, and peep at the maiden
through the interstices of the floor or of the walls
of wattled bamboo, feasting upon her loveliness,
until the lights were extinguished, and I went away
through the darkness sadly to my sleeping-mat. I
was filled with a madness of desire, but also I was
happy, since I knew that in a little space the girl
would be mine.
"Now it was upon a day, about a Friday-span
from that which had been fixed for the Becoming
One, that calamity came upon me, utterly destroy-
ing me, as the blight withers the ripening crop,
making the ears empty things and vain. It was in
this wise. Listen, Tuan, and then say was ever
trouble like unto mine, shame comparable to the
disgrace that was put upon me, or sorrow akin to
that whereby I was afflicted.
"Hddoh was her name. Yes, as you say, she was
ill-named, for in truth she was beautiful, not ugly,
as the word implies — but it was thus that her folk
had called her when she was little, and in my ears
it hath lost its meaning and is ever the dearest of all
names.
"It chanced that H6doh was alone in the house,
all her people having gone forth to work in the crops,
leaving her because the hour of her wedding was so
near at hand. Thus no one was near when a Sakai
man, one Pa' Ah-Gap, the Rhinoceros, came to the
TUKANG BUROK'S STORY 365
house out of the jungle, praying for rice and for
tobacco.
"Now these Sakai, as you know, Tuan, are sorry
animals, and our people do not suffer them to enter
our houses, for they are of an evil odour, indescrib-
ably dirty, and are, moreover, afflicted with skin
diseases, so that from afar off they appear to be as
white as a fair woman. The villagers of the interior
bear little love to the Sakai, though they do much
trade with them; and the womenfolk hold them
in special loathing and contempt, and cannot by
any means abide their proximity. When, therefore,
Hodoh beheld the face of Pa'Ah-Gap, scarred with
blue trfttoo-marks, with hair in locks like the top of
the ragged sago-palm yonder, and his body, naked
save for a loin-clout, gray with the warm wood ashes
in which he had slept, and with skin flaky with
lupus, she was at once angered and afraid. Ac-
cordingly, seizing a parang, she threatened him with
it. and cried aloud bidding him be gone, cursing
him for a filthy, misbegotten, mite-eaten Sakai.
Also she shouted "Hinchit! Hinchit!" after the man-
ner of men who drive away a dog.
"Pa' Ah-Gap stood gazing at her in silence, rub-
bing his left calf slowly against his right shin bone,
and scratching his scalp with one clawlike hand
hidden in his mop of hair; and he gazed insolently
at H6doh, who abated not her railing and heaped
shame upon him with many injurious words. Then,
when she paused breathless, he lifted up his voice and
spoke.
366 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
'"Daughter of the Gobs,' he said. 'Why do
you thus miscall your lover? Behold, in a little
while, you shall seek me in the forests, imploring me
to have mercy upon you, and to take you for my
own, and in that day, if I have a mind to pleasure
you, you shall be to me my light of love.'
"At this, Hodoh, overcome with rage and shame,
fled into the house, shutting the door and barring
it, shrieking abuse and threats at Pa'Ah-Gap, who
stood without, laughing harshly, as the frogs croak
when the monsoon is upon us.
"Then, when Hodoh had retreated into the house,
Pa' Ah-Gap began to patter a charm in the Sakai
tongue, for these folk are greatly skilled in* magic,
the gods of the ancient days, whom we have aban-
doned' for Allah and his Prophet, abiding with them,
as of old they abode with us, and these gods are the
children of Iblis. Also, very slowly, he picked his
bark loin-clout into little flecks and shreds with his
fingers, standing mother-naked in the open space
before the house; for these people are shameless,
like animals. Then he cast seven pieces toward the
north and toward the south, and toward the place
where the sun cometh to life, and toward the place
where daily the sun dieth. Next he shouted three
times in a very bestial fashion, so that the people
in the rice-fields heard him and fell a wondering what
creature it was that was crying from the jungle.
Lastly he danced silently and alone, making a com-
plete circuit of the house. All these doings Hodoh
observed, as she peeped at him through the chinks
TUKANG BUROK'S STORY 36?
of the bamboo walls; and when all had been ac-
complished, Pa' Ah-Gap slipped into the forest, mak-
ing no sound in his going, as is the manner of the
jungle people. But, as he went, at each step he let
fall little pieces of his unravelled loin-clout, leaving
behind him a trail such as a man makes who chews
sugarcane as he walks.
"At the hour when the kine go down to water,
the parents and brethren of H6doh returned from the
rice-field, and she made complaint to them concern-
ing the evil behaviour of Pa' Ah-Gap, the Sakai;
and her father was very angry, swearing that he
would punish the animal, and that with no sparing
hand, for thus molesting his women kind. There
was much talk in the house that night, and I, hiding
beneath the flooring, heard all that passed; and I, too,
vowed that I would belabour that Sakai for daring
thus to insult the woman who was to be mine.
"Now it chanced that, shortly after sleep had
come to all within the house, save only to Hodoh,
who lay wide-eyed upon her mat, that a mighty
burning came upon her, consuming her body as it
were with fire, assailing her from her head even to
her feet, and making of her heart and her liver
and her spleen and her lungs so many red-hot embers,
scorching their way through her flesh; and at the
same time, speech was wholly reft from her, so that
she could by no means cry out or summon any one
to her aid. Forthwith, moreover, a sudden knowl-
edge came to her that the cool, dark jungles could
alone abate the agony she was enduring; wherefore,
368 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
she arose softly, and making no sound, stole out of
the house.
"The moon was at the full, very bright and vivid,
so that the girl found it an easy matter to pick her
way out of the village and into the forest; and though
our people, men and women alike, love not to journey
into the forest alone, even during the daytime, H6-
doh was this night wholly devoid of fear. Also she
was impelled by something within her to gather
up the shreds of Pa' Ah-Gap's loin-clout, pressirg
them to her lips and nose, for the contact with the
rough bark cloth seemed to cool a little the burning
pain within her. Thus she followed in the path
which Pa' Ah-Gap, the Sakai, had trodden, travelling
on and on alone till the moonlight was wrestling
with the yellow of the dawn. The shreds of loin-
clout grew fewer and fewer, each piece at a greater
distance than the last; but only by their aid was sh&
able to assuage the pain consuming her, and so they
led her on and on.
"The sun had come to life when at length sha.
came out of the jungle on to a big clearing, in which
the Sakai had planted a catch-crop, and in the
centre of it were the rude huts in which the forest
dwellers herd. At the foot of the low ladder lead-
ing to the first of these, and facing the track by
which she had come, sat Pa' Ah-Gap, waiting for
her.
"He sat quite still, looking at her with eyes that
mocked; and of a sudden she knew that only the
embrace of this man would extinguish the magic
TUKANG BftROK'S STORY 3(59
fires that were eating out her life. Also, shame,
which is as an eternal fetter clamped about the
ankles of women, fell from her, and she was aware
of a mighty passion for this aged and depraved crea-
ture springing up hot and masterful in her breast.
Therefore, she ran to him, casting herself at his feet
and across his knees, entreating him, with cries and
pleadings, to have his will of her. Thus was ac-
complished all that he had foretold.
"What say you, Tuan? Was not the magic of
this accursed Sakai very powerful and marvellous?
Even among our own folk, Muhammadan with
Muhammadan, no maiden willingly throws herself
into the arms of her lover, love she never so dearly;
for Allah, in his wisdom, have so fashioned women
that they feel shame pressing upon them like an over-
whelming burden, which so crushes them and the
desire within them that they may not move hand or
foot. This hath been prudently ordered, for were
there no modesty among women, great trouble would
ensue, seeing that their passions are greater than the
passions of men; and even now, though shame still
lingers in the land, there is trouble and to spare of
women's making. But, behold, it now befell that
Hodoh, a Muhammadan and a virgin, my betrothed,
my love, the core of my heart's core, one who was
.rendered by her beauty the most desirable among
women, yielded herself with entreaties to this infidel,
this wild man of the woods — a Sakai, filthy and
diseased — praying for his love, and caressing his
soot-begrimed hide. Was ever madness or magic
370 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
like unto this? Ya Allah! Ya Tuhan-kul I can-
not bear to think of that which befell."
Old Tukang Burok paused in his narrative, and
spat disgustedly and with emphasis into the stream
below. His lined and wrinkled face was working
queerly. He had let his tools fall from his grasp,
and his hands were trembling. Even after the lapse
of many years, the memory of his balked desire, and
the thought of his love surrendering herself to a
despised jungle man, aroused in him fierce passions
of rage and jealousy.
For a minute or two he was silent; then selecting
a chisel with care, he set to work to bevel the JcamHin-
ing wood with great delicacy and finish. Presently,
after again expectorating emphatically, he resumed
his story.
"She dwelt three full days and nights with this
accursed Sakai — may Allah blight him utterly!—
ere ever we learned from some of his own folk that
she was among the jungle people. Then Che' Mat,
her father, and her brethren and her relatives —
men knowing the use of weapons — went, and I with
them, making great speed, to the Sakai camp. But,
alas, Pa' Ah-Gap had fled, and Hodoh had gone with
him. Some men, however, remained in the camp,
and these, by means of the tuas* we persuaded to
*The l&as is a very simple and effective torture in considerable favour amon"»
Malays when more elaborate appliances are not available. The victim is placed
upon the ground in a sitting position, with his legs extended before him. A stout
piece of wood is then placed across his thighs, and a second piece is then passed
over the first, and inserted under his buttocks. Next, using the second piece of
wood as a lever, and the first piece as the fulcrum, great pressure is exerted, in
such a manner that the thighs of the victim are crushed down toward the ground,
while the buttocks are pushed violently upward, causing acute pain.
TUKANG BUROK'S STORY 371
show us the path which the fugutives had taken.
Thereafter, during many weary days, we followed on
his trail — at times close on his heels, at others losing
all trace of him; but though Hodoh went with him
willingly, she had no woodcraft and could not con-
ceal her tracks, and also she went slowly, and so
aided our pursuit. On that so terrible journey I ate
no rice, though I drank deeply at the springs, for my
throat was parched; and at night sleep did not visit
me, till I was like one demented. Moreover, the
madness of love was upon me, and my rage was like
a red-hot goad urging me onward.
"For how many days and nights we journeyed thus
I cannot tell, but Che' Mat and all his people were
wearying of the quest, which I would not suffer them
to abandon,, when in the fullness of the appointed
hour we found Pa' Ah-Gap asleep, with Hodoh,
clad only in a loin-clout, by his side in the warm
ashes of their camp fire. The Sakai dog had tattooed
her face, as is the wont of these so animal-like people,
and she was moreover very thin and worn, and much
aged by her sojourn in the forest, and she was be-
grimed with the dirt and the wood ashes of the Sakai
lairs. We caught him alive, for he slept heavily,
being wearied by his long marches; and I and one
other, Hodoh's brother crept very cautiously upon
him. Also, I think, Allah whom he had offended,
for he was an infidel, while the woman was of the
Faith, gave him that day into our hands, for mostly
the jungle-folk sleep with one ear cocked and one eye
agape.
372 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
"We bound him hand and foot with cords of rat-
tan, which ate into his flesh as this chisel eats into
the kdmuning wood, and we used such force that
he screamed aloud with pain. She who had been
H6doh fought and bit at us, like a wildcat newly
caught in the woods, so we were obliged to bind her
also, but gently, with the cloth of our sarongs, doing
her no hurt. Thus we bore them back to the village
whence Hodoh had fled upon that fatal night; and
thereafter we put Pa' Ah-Gap to the torture of the
bamboo."
"What is that?" I asked.
Tukang Burok smiled grimly, his old eyes lighting
up with a thrill of pleasurable recollection.
"It is not fitting, Tuan, that I should describe it
with particularity," he said. "There be certain
methods, none the less, whereby the quick-growing
shoot of the small bamboo can be taught to grow into
the vitals of a man, causing him such slow agony as
even the Shetans in Jehannam have scarce dreamed
of.
"When first we bound him to the seat whereon he
was to die, he glared upon us with the eyes of a wild
beast, giving vent to no sound; and I was grieved
that he did not pray for mercy, that I, with mockery,
might refuse it to him. But later, when the bam-
boo began to grow, he prayed to be spared till I,
who sat beside him, keeping a ceaseless vigil and
gloating over his pain, even I was nearly satisfied.
His agony was very lingering and keen, and soon he
entreated us to kill him, suing for death, as a lover
TUKANG BUROK'S STORY 373
importunes his mistress. Often, irked by his clam-
our, I smote him on the lips — those lips which had
done her dishonour. Then for a space he became
mad, flinging his body this way and that, and raving
night and day; and this made me sad, for while the
insanity was upon him he could no longer feel, as I
had a mind that this man should feel even to the
brink of the hour in which death snatched him from
us. And at last, when he was dead, my rage was
still unsated, and I besought Allah, the Merciful
and Compassionate, that his agony might endure for-
ever.
"In the hour when he died, Hodoh came back to
us out of the enchantment which had held her cap-
tive, for the spell laid upon her was broken. But her
memory held the recollection of all that had befallen
her, so that she was well-nigh distraught with shame.
A^o her V.4y -^as weakened by her life in the jungle,
and she was racked by fever and many aches and
pains. Moreover, the burning of her skin, she said,
was that which Pa' Ah-Gap had inflicted upon her
by his magic on the evening of the day when she
miscalled him.
"She had no desire to live, and very soon she
returned to the mercy of Allah, and I was left alive
to mourn during all my days for the fairest maiden
ever born of woman, who had lighted in my breast
fires of desire than the years have never quenched.
And how bitter is the thought that such a thing of
beauty was wasted upon a dog of a Sakai — the vilest
374 TUKANG BUROK'S STORY
of our kind. It is that memory which is my per-
petual pain; wherefore, Tuan, when as occasion re-
quires, you pray unto your Christian God, bid Him
join with Allah in the utter blighting and destruc-
tion of the soul of Pa' Ah-Gap, the Sakai."
IN CHAINS
IT WAS rather more than five and twenty
years ago that I returned from leave of
absence in Europe, and took charge of the
district which forms the interior of the native state of
Pahang, and is the exact core and-centre of the Malay
Peninsula. It was a big tract of country, over three
thousand square miles in extent, and in those days
was reckoned the wildest part of the protected Ma-
layan states. It did not boast a mile of made road
or bridle path in all its vast expanse; it was smothered
in deep, damp forest, threaded across and across by
a network of streams and rivers, the latter the best,
of our highways; and a sparse sprinkling of Malay
villages was strewn over its surface — a dozen or two
of thatched roofs in shady palm and fruit groves
adjoining wide, flat stretches of rice-field and grazing
grounds studded with rhododendron scrub. Besides
the Malay population there were a few camps filled
with Chinese miners engaged in fossicking for gold;
a band or two of sulky Australian prospectors, sorely
discontented with the results which they were ob-
taining; and an odd thousand or so of squalid abori-
gines, living in dirt and wretchedness up in the
mountains. For the rest the inhabitants of my
district were native chiefs, the overlords and op-
375
376 IN CHAINS
pressors, and Malayan villagers, the serfs and the
oppressed. The power of the former (which was
usually exerted for evil) had not yet been broken or
fettered; the spirit of independence which to-day
animates the latter class had not at that time been
awakened, and the world into which I was suddenly
precipitated — an influence shot straight out of the
civilized nineteeth century into a living past — was
one as primitive as any which existed in Europe in
the early Middle Ages.
I had a hut on the banks of the Lipis River, a single
room staggering upon six crazy piles some fifteen
feet in height, which was at once my dwelling, my
office, my treasury, and my courthouse. The ceiling
was formed by the browny-yellow thatch running
up into a cone, supported upon an irregular arrange-
ment of beams and rafters in which by day the big,
black, flying beetles bored their holes, covering me
with fine wood dust, while at night-time the ra'„3
chased one another along them, squeaking dismally.
When I looked out of my window, a little lopsided
oblong of sunlight sawn unevenly out of the ragged
bamboo wattle, my sight dropped fifty feet sheer into
the olive-green waters of the Ltpis, for the long stalk-
like legs upon which the flooring of my hut rested
were canted dangerously riverward. From under
their feet the bank fell away in a headlong pitch, so
that I lived in the expectation of seeing my habita-
tion take a leap into the cool waters of the stream;
and when the wind came down in the heavy gusts
which, in the spring, heralded the daily afternoon
IN CHAINS 377
downpour, I could feel the whole thing bracing itself
for the jump, with a creaking of timbers and a noisy
whining of the strained wattling.
It was not much of a hut, it must be confessed, and
I speedily got myself into much better quarters; but
in those days I stood in no great need of a dwelling-
place of my own. The district under my charge
was extensive and it seemed to be cut off from the
rest of the world almost as effectually as would have
been the case if it had been located on the surface
of some alien planet. I had been set apart from
my fellow civil servants to learn all that was possible
concerning it, to win the shy confidence of a people
to whom white men were a new and suspect breed,
to make myself a factor in their everyday life, and
thereby to establish a personal influence among them,
the which, in a new land, is the first, surest founda-
tion of British rule. All this meant that it was my
lot to rival the restlessness of the Wandering Jew;
to sleep rarely more than a single night in the same
casual resting-place; to five on what I could get,
which often enough did not amount to much; and
little by little so to familiarize the natives with my
ubiquity that they should come to regard me and my
visits as among the commonest incidents in the ex-
perience of every village scattered up and down a wide
countryside.
It would not be easy to conceive a life more delight-
ful for a healthy youngster blessed with a keen in-
terest in the much which he was learning and in the
little that he was slowly and cautiously teaching.
378 IN CHAINS
A hurried meal soon after the dawn had broken; a
long tramp from village to village while daylight
lasted; a swim in the river; a huge plate of rice and
curry, cooked by the womenfolk of the place and
eaten with a hunter's appetite; a smoke and a yarn
with the elders of the place, picturesque figures
grouped around one in a semicircle, chewing betel
nut, as the placid cattle masticate the cud; a dis-
pute or two, perhaps, settled between smoke and
smoke, without any magisterial formalities; a shred
or two of information picked up here and there upon
matters which would some day be of importance;
and then sound, soul-satisfying sleep, and early
waking, and another long day of labour and of life.
By boat and raft on rivers small or great; tramping
through the gloomy depths of forests hitherto un-
explored by white men or across rice-swamps sizzling
i.i the midday heat; camping at night in my boat on
the river, in a headman's house under the peaked roof
of a little village mosque, or in some crop watcher's
hut; sleeping out on a sandbank, or on the ground in
the dead jungle, with my mat spread upon a bed of
boughs and with a green palm-leaf shelter to ward off
the worst of the drenching dews; shooting rapids,
paddling down or poling up the rivers; skimming the
cream of inviolate snipe grounds, or watching for
game on the edge of a salt-lick — however I travelled,
wherever I stayed or halted, no matter who the
strange folk with whom I daily consorted, I tasted
to the full the joys of a complete independence, the
delights of fresh, open air and hard exercise, and
IN CHAINS 379
enough work to keep the mind as fit and supple as the
limbs. I had been jerked out of the age in which I
had been born, out of the scurry and bustle of Euro-
pean life, out of touch with the mechanical contriv-
ances which restrict a man's freedom of action and
judgment and cause his love of responsibility to
atrophy into a world of unfettered freedom among a
semi-civilized people, where nature still had her own
way unchecked by the intrusions of applied science,
and where men and things were primitive and ele-
mental.
I had had plenty of experience as a jungle-dweller
long before I took charge of the interior district of
Pahang; and since a knowledge of how to travel and
how to live in a Malayan forest land is more than
half the battle, I escaped, for the most part, the
heavy troubles of which so many newcomers are
able to tell such moving tales. None the less, the
jungles played their pranks with me more than once,
and the first trip which I took after my return to
duty was packed as closely with small adventures
as is' the average boy's book with hair-breadth es-
capes and perils miraculously overqome.
I left my hut early one morning with half a dozen
of my Malay followers trailing behind me in single
file. A Gladstone bag, a japanned despatch box,
and a large basket carried knapsackwise, and filled
to the brim with cooking-pots, plates, dishes, and
miscellaneous kitchen utensils, were the three princi-
pal loads. A fourth man carried my bed. I remem-
ber thinking, when I was a small boy, that the facility
.180 IN CHAINS
with which the man sick of the palsy complied with
the divine command, "Take up thy bed, and go unto
thine house," was the major part of the miracle',
and this impression was confirmed by a picture in the
old family Bible, in which the whilom invalid was
represented staggering away under the weight of a
vast four-poster. It was not until I came to the
East that I realized how simple a matter is the sleep-
ing gear of the average Oriental. My "bed" con-
sisted of a native mat of plaited mengkuang palm
leaves, a narrow flock mattress, half an inch in thick-
ness, and a couple of European pillows. The whole
thing did not weigh more than twenty pounds, unless it
was saturated with rain water, when it tipped the scale
at about double that figure. It had the additional
advantage of possessing no sharp corners of projec-
tions calculated to gall the bearer's back, and con-
sequently it was the most popular piece of my bag-
gage, and was usually annexed by the strongest and
most violent-tempered of my men. The unyielding
despatch box generally fell to the lot of the man
among my followers who was least capable of stick-
ing up for his rights and who was accordingly the
least fit to bear the burden.
It was a bright, cool morning when we started with
a little ribbon of cloudlike mist showing above the
treetops as one looked up the valley of the Lipis,
marking faithfully the windings of the river. The
birds were noisy and a few gayly feathered paroquets
fluttered from bush to bush as we made our way
through the low scrub jungle near the bank of the
IN CHAINS 381
stream. The spiders had been busy all night, and
their slimy webs stretched across the footpath we
were following glued themselves so unpleasantly to
my face that, contrary to my wont, I bade Akob, one
of my men, walk in front of me to keep the way
clear of these frail barriers. In this manner we had
trudged along steadily for a couple of hours and the
heat of the tropical day was already beginning to
make itself felt, stilling the noisy life of the jungle
and drying up the dewdrops, when suddenly Akob
halted abruptly and pointed, in evident excitement,
at something ahead of him. We were standing on
the brink of a narrow creek on either side of which a
steeply cleft bank rose at a sharp angle from the
water's edge. Leaning forward to look over Akob's
shoulder, I saw half a dozen yards away, upon the
surface of the opposite bank, a curious patch, ir-
regular in shape, and discoloured a peculiarly blended
black and yellow. It had a strange furry appearance,
but shimmered with a suggestion of restless life.
All this I noted in an instant, not realizing in the
least the nature of the object at which I was gazing;
and then, without any warning, the patch rose at us,
rose like a cheap black and yellow railway rug tossed
upward by the wind. A humming,, purring sound
accompanied its flight, and a second later it had
resolved itself into its elements, and had precipitated
itself upon us— a swarm of bees, mad with rage and
thirsting for blood and vengeance.
Akob, hiding his head in his arms, slewed round
sharply and charged away, nearly knocking me gff
382, IN CHAINS
my legs. I followed headlong, broke through my
bewildered followers, tore out of the little belt of
jungle -which we had just entered and sprinted for
my life across a patch of short grass beyond. For a
moment I believed myself to have given the enemy
the slip, and I turned to watch my people, their
burdens thrown to the winds, tumbling out of cover,
yelling like madmen, and beating the air with their
wildly whirling arms. Another instant and I was
again put to ignominious flight. I pulled my huge
felt hat from my head and flogged with it the cloudlike
squadrons of my foes. All the while I ran as fast
as my legs would carry me, but the bees were not to
be outpaced. They plunged their stings deep into
my flannel shirt and into the tough Cananore cloth
of my rough jungle trousers; they stung my bare
arms, and hands and neck mercilessly, and I had the
greatest difficulty in warding them off my face and
eyes. I was panting for breath, sweating at every
pore and was beginning to feel most uncommonly
done and to experience something akin to real fear,
when suddenly I caught sight of the waters of the
Rengai, a little river which flows through these forests
to the Lipis.
"Take to the water! Take to the water!" i
shouted to my howling men, and only waiting to slip
my pistol belt with its pouches for watch, compass,
money, tobacco, etc., a delay for which I had to pay
a heavy price in stings, I plunged neck and crop into
the shallow water. My Malays came after me helter-
skelter, like a flock of sheep following at the heels of 8
IN CHAINS 383
bell-wether; but with us all came the army of bees,
stinging, stinging, stinging, for the life.
I was thoroughly winded by the time I took to the
water, and it was impossible to keep under for more
than a few seconds; yet when I rose to the surface
the bees were still there more angry than ever, and
I was driven under again, while my lungs pumped and
sobbed painfully. Again I rose, again was set upon,
again was driven under water. My heart was leap-
ing about in my body like some wild thing seeking to
escape; I was so distressed for breath that my senses
were reeling; I Avas rapidly becoming desperate. It
flashed across my mind that to be drowned or stung
to death in a puddle by a swarm of insignificant in-
sects was about as ridiculous and as ignominious
a way of making one's exit from life as could well
be conceived; yet, at the moment, it seemed almost
certain that this was the preposterous lot which a
capricious fate had assigned to me.
As I came sobbing to the surface to meet yet another
furious assault, I heard Saleh, my head boatman, cry
aloud :
"Throw a bough for them to alight upon!"
The words were in my ears as I was again driven
to dive, and in a flash their meaning was made clear
to me. I struggled toward the bank, tugged off a
branch from an overhanging tree, threw it on the
surface of the stream, and dived once more. One
or two of my men followed suit, and when, having
remained under water as long as I could, I rose once
more in a state of pitiful exhaustion, I saw half a
.')84 IN CHAINS
dozen branches floating gayly downstream covered
three deep by clusters of struggling and stinging bees.
I rose to my feet, waded to the bank, and for a
good quarter of an hour sat there panting and
hawking and fighting to regain my breath. Then
we fell to counting our losses and to estimating the
damage done. One of my men, a Sumatran Malay
named Dolman, was in a fainting condition. He
had been stung in nearly two hundred places; his
face was reduced to a shapeless mass in which no
feature was any longer distinguishable; and he
vomited so violently that I feared for his life. We,
put him into a boat and the neighbouring villagers of
Dolut undertook to send him back to my hut at
Penjum. Then the rest of us limped across grazing
grounds to the village and lay down upon the clean
mats spread for us on the veranda of the headman's
house, where we endured the fever that was burning
in our blood. Our hands were like great boxing
gloves, our heads and faces were swollen, and puffy,
and we had to abandon all idea of proceeding far-
ther upon our journey that day.
We were profoundly sorry for ourselves, and we
were less relieved than disgusted when one of our
number, who had been missing and whom we had
reckoned as dead, came in half an hour later per-
fectly unharmed. He had seen the bees coming,
he told us, and had squatted down and remained
quite still to await their assault. They had covered
him from head to foot; but as a bee is aware that
using his sting usually results in his own death,
IN CHAINS 385
he never strikes unless he has persuaded himself
that the last sacrifice is demanded of him on behalf
of the hive. Accordingly the clouds of insects had
settled all over my Malay, had investigated him
closely, and then had passed on leaving him unhurt.
It was exasperating to realize that we had had our
frantic stampede, our fight, our suffocation under
water, and the pains we were then enduring for
nothing, and that all might have been avoided by
the exercise of presence of mind coupled with a
sufficiency of cool nerve. The latter, of course, was
the really vital possession and fresh from my recent
encounter, I questioned whether I had enough of
courage in me to enable me to sit calmly under a
load of investigating bees, knowing that a single
voluntary movement would entail a peculiarly pain-
ful and ugly death. Therefore, I sat in silence,
listening to my follower's account of his proceedings,
while he picked six and thirty stings out of my felt
hat and more than a hundred out of my flannel
shirt.
The bees, he said, were irascible and unreasonable
creatures. Their nest had, on this occasion, been
swooped down upon by a kite, which had borne off
a portion of the nursery before the fighting part of
the population had become aware of the danger.
Then the standing army had been called out, and
since we chanced to be the next living thing to come
their way, they had mistaken us for the thieves and
had promptly declared war upon us. Therefore we
had been made to bear the punishment due for the
386 IN CHAINS
sins of a kite, and had run ourselves dizzy and had
half drowned ourselves in the river when we should
have done better to sit still. The situation was
sufficiently humiliating.
Next day we continued our interrupted march,
and nothing worth detailed record happened for a
week or so. At one village a stealthy visit was paid
to me by three young nobles, whose father had
recently had a difference of opinion with the rulers
of the land, which had resulted for him in a violent
death. His sons who had had no share in their
father's misdeeds, had promptly taken to the jungle,
and as they were fighting men of some repute, all
manner of wild rumours as to the trouble they were
meditating were afloat in the district on my arrival
in it. I had known them intimately before I left
Pahang on leave, and as soon as they learned that I
was once again in their neighbourhood, they sought
me out for the purpose of talking matters over and,
if possible, of making their peace with the Govern-
ment. They crept into my camp in the dead of
rlight, armed to the teeth, very apprehensive, and
ready for all eventualities. At first they were like
hunted jungle creatures that feared a trap, but they
ended by spreading their sleeping mats alongside
mine and snoring contentedly until the daybreak
woke us.
Another night I passed in a mining camp, where a
crowd of depressed Australians were squatting in a
couple of makeshift huts beside a pool filled to the
brim with dirty water, green with arsenic and duck-
IN CHAINS 38?
weed. This was all that at that time represented
the Raub Mine, which later became a rather notori-
ous centre of speculation, and was at one time ex-
pected to prove one of the great gold producers of
the East.
From Raub I tramped on to the foot of the main
range, where people of many nationalities were
busy sluicing for tin; and thence I decided to cut
across the forest so as to strike the head waters of a
river called the Sempam which at that time had
never been visited by an European and was tern
incognita to all save a very few of even the Malays
of the district.
Not without difficulty I succeeded in enlisting thj
services of an aboriginal tribesman — a Sakai — who
undertook to guide me to the banks of the Sempam,
but stoutly declined to have anything to do with my
proposed attempt to descend that rock-beset river.
He moved along in front of my party, with the
noiseless, catlike gait which distinguishes the jungle-
folk, and once he complained bitterly that the "klap-
klip-klap" of my canvas shoes on the ground behind
him was so bewildering that he feared that "the
doors of the jungle would thereby be closed to him,"
which was his way of suggesting that he thought
it likely that he would lose his way. In common
with the rest of his race, he possessed no power of
instituting a comparison between one thing and
another, and when we were within a couple of hun-
dred yards of our destination he still obstinately
maintained that it was as far ahead of us as our orig-
388 IN CHAINS
inal starting-place was behind us. When, a few
minutes later, this assertion was disproved, he re-
mained quite unabashed. The difference between
the two distances — a matter of some seven miles —
was to him, he declared, imperceptible. They were
both "a long way,' ' and viewed from this standpoint,
they were to the limitations of his intellect indis-
tinguishably alike.
At the point where we struck the Sempam River,
its banks were covered by dense clumps of bamboos
of the kind the Malays call buloh padi, graceful,
drooping stems, tapering to slender shoots five and
twenty feet from the ground, all rising, plumelike,
from a common centre, and set with innumerable
delicate branches and feathery foliage. The river,
at this point about a dozen yards in width, ran
swiftly and silently, an olive-green flood, flecked here
and there by little splashes of sunlight. The forest
around us was intensely still, for the hot hours of the
day were upon us, and a sense of the wildness of
the place and of its utter remoteness from mankind,
filled me with a sort of awe. It was with a feeling akin
to shame that I gave the word which was to disturb
the profound peace and to set man's defacing thumb
mark upon all this inviolate beauty.
As soon as they had stacked their loads, however,
my men drew their woodknives and set to work
felling bamboos from which to fashion our rafts.
The ringing notes of their blades smiting the hollow
stems carried far and wide, awaking the forest echoes,
and the bamboos creaked and groaned like things in
IN CHAINS 389
pain, as one by one they slowly collapsed, toppling
into the river, whence they were towed into the shal-
lows to be trimmed of their branches and cut to the
requisite length. A couple of hours' hard work saw
fo*iir stout rafts floating high out of the water, the
river fretting and fuming about their slippery green
sides, the newly cut rattans exuding a milky sap as
my men bound the bamboos together by means
of strong cross-pieces fore and aft and amidships.
Small raised platforms were. erected in the centre
of each raft, and on three of these we stowed our
baggage. The fourth raft was reserved for me; and
when I. had rewarded the Sakai for his pains with a
wedge of coarse tobacco and a palm-leaf bag filled
with black rock-salt, I took my seat upon the plat-
form prepared for my accommodation and bade my
men push out into the stream.
"In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compas-
sionate!" they cried; and my raft slid across the
glassy surface into the tug of the current, the three
others following us in single file.
Until you have had the good fortune to taste of it,
the peculiar fascination of exploring a belt of coun-
try in which no white man and very few human be-
ings of any kind have hitherto set foot cannot easily
be realized. To find one's self penetrating, the first
of all one's kind, into one of Nature's secret fast-
nesses, where free from the encroachments of man-
kind she has worked her mighty will during feons
upon seons of unrecorded time, is extraordinarily
stimulating to the imagination. One looks round
390 IN CHAINS
upon a world in the fashioning of which the hand
of man has had no part. Age has succeeded age;
race has swept forward, has surged up and has
obliterated race; history has been made and unmade
a thousand times by myriads of puny men; but all
the while in this hidden cranny of the globe the
great Mother has been working her gradual miracles.
It - is old, old, old; older than record; older than
speech; older than man; and yet for you it is newer
than aught else, a secret kept faithfully through all
the ages to be revealed at last to you. You look
around you with a keen delight, with eager eyes that
find a fresh interest in all they light upon, with a
heart chastened by the solemnity, the mystery of
this unfrequented wilderness. The awfulness of your
surroundings, the aloofness from your fellows, the
sense of your exclusive privilege, impart to you a
feeling akin to that by which the newly initiated
priest may be inspired when, for the first time, he
lifts the veil that cloaks the inner temple of his wor-
ship; but here there is no grinning idol to dispel
illusion, but rather a little glimpse vouchsafed to
unworthy man of the vision of the true God.
For nearly an hour we glided downstream through
long, calm reaches, where the sunlight flecked the
dancing waters between banks thickly set by bam-
boo thickets backed by impenetrable forest, and
each bend in the winding river revealed yet another
perfect picture of the beauty and the splendour of
this jungle paradise. We were heading for the un-
known, passing thither through untrodden ways, and
IN CHAINS 391
at every turn we looked for some surprise, some
difficulty to be encountered and overcome, some wild
prank that this untamed river might try to play
upon us. It lent a fresh zest to our journeying, put
an additional throb of excitement into the scanning
of each reach of running water, as the frequent twist-
ings of our course displayed them to us one by one.
On either hand low hills ran steeply upward from
the water's edge, smothered in vast clumps of bam-
boos, the stems resembling some gigantic, irregular
palisade crowned by bunch above bunch of feathery
plumes, the highest making a broken, undulating
line of fretwork against the colourless afternoon sky.
Near the river brink huge ngeram trees leaned out-
ward, clasping friendly hands above our heads,
throwing a grateful shade, and staining the waters to
a deeper olive tint with their sombre reflections.
From root to branch tip they were festooned with
innumerable parasites, great tree ferns, smooth or
shaggy, with their roots in deep, rich mosses; orchids
of many kinds with here and there a little point of
colour marking where a rare blossom nestled; creepers
and trailing vines, some eating into the marrow of
the boughs to which they clung, some hanging from
the branches like fine drapery, some twined about
and about in an inextricable network, others drop-
ping sheer to the stream below and swaying con-
stantly as the current played with their tassels.
It was a fairyland of forest through which the river
was bearing us, and I lay back upon my raft, feast-
ing lazy eyes upon the constantly shifting scene,
392 IN CHAINS
and fully conscious of my own supreme well-being.
How fair was my lot, I thought, compared with
that of the average young civil servant who rarely
got much beyond a pile of dusty files on an over-
loaded office table.
The stream ran rapidly with a merry purring sound
and the rafts, kept end on to the current by polers
at bow and stern, slid forward at an even pace.
Suddenly we whisked round a sharp bend, and be-
fore we knew what awaited us we were caught in the
jaws of a formidable rapid. I was aware of a waste,
of angry water, white with foam, stretching away
in front of us; of a host of rugged granite blocks,,
black with spray, poking their sharp noses out of tht
river, which boiled and leaped around them; of an
instant acceleration of pace, and then I found my-,
self standing in the bows of the raft, punting pole in
hand, helping my forward boatman to fight the evil-
tempered thing which a moment earlier had been
the placid, smiling river. We were travelling at a
headlong pace now and the raft reeled and wallowed
and canted with such violence that, even bareshod
as we were, it was no easy matter to keep our footing
on the slippery, rounded surfaces of the bamboos.
Of the length, extent and difficulties of the rapid
into which we had been so suddenly tossed we, of
course? knew nothing. Of prospective dangers,
however, we had no leisure to think, for we were
wholly preoccupied by those which we were already
beset, and every instant decisive action had to be
taken to meet crowding emergencies, grasped, met
IN CHAINS sm
and dealt with all in a breath. At the end of a
hundred yards of running fight we reached a point
where the stream was split in twain by a great out-
crop of granite, and in a flash we had to make our
selection between the alternative routes offered.
Instinctively we chose the left-hand channel, which
looked the more likely of the two, and on we whirled
at a perilous pace. The battling waters broke above
my knees; the uproar of the stream deafened me; the
furious pace set every nerve in my body tingling
gloriously; the excitement of each new danger
averted or overcome filled me and my Malays with a
perfect intoxication of delight. On we whirled,
yelling and shouting like maniacs, plying our clash-
ing poles, leaping down fall after fall, our raft sub-
merged, our souls soaring aloft in a veritable delirium
of excitement! It lasted for only a few moments
and then the end came — came in a jarring crash upon
a rock which we had failed to avoid, a violent thrust-
ing upward of one side of the raft till it ran almost
on, edge, a, sudden immersion in the wildly agitated
water,, and three sharp yells, stifled ere they were
fully uttered. Presently I and my two Malays
found ourselves clinging to an outlying projection
of the rock which had wrecked us, though none of
us clearly knew how we had got there; and to our
surprise, except for a few cuts and bruises, we were
entirely, unhurt. The raft, bent double like a piece
of folded paper, lay broadside on across a wedge of
granijte, one side lifted clear of the stream, the other
under water, the two ends nearly meeting on the far
394 IN CHAINS
side of the obstruction. Such of my gear as had
been placed upon my sitting platform had been
whirled incontinently downstream, and I could see
portions of it bobbing and ducking on the tumble of
waters thirty yards below me. Then, one by one,
these bits of flotsam dropped suddenly below the line
of sight, disappearing at a point where an upleaping
line of foam seemed to cut the stream at right angles
from bank to bank.
Looking upriver, we saw the second of our rafts
plunging down toward us, the two Malays at its
bow and stern trying vainly to check its wild career;
and even as we watched, the catastrophe befell and
they were left clinging to a rock in the same plight
as ourselves. Their raft, breaking away, darted
down toward us, scraped past us by a miracle, and
disappeared in a shattered condition in the wake of
my lost baggage. My men on the two remaining
rafts had become aware of the danger in time, and
we could see them making fast to the bank a couple
of hundred yards upstream.
Sitting stranded upon a rock in the middle of the
river with the boiling waters of the rapid leaping up
at me like a pack of hounds when its kill is held
aloft, we shrieked suggestions to one another as to
what should be our next move. The only thing was
to swim for it, and cautiously I let my body down into
the torrent and pushed out vigorously for the shore.
The current fought me like a live thing, but the
river was narrow, and after a rather desperate strug-
gle I drew myself out of the water on the left bank
IN CHAINS 395
and sat there panting and gasping. I had come into
violent collision with more than one rock during my
short swim and I was bruised and cut in many places,
but it seemed to me then that I had escaped almost
scot free, and I and my fellows screamed congratula-
tions to one another at the top of our voices above
the roar of the rapids. Then we rose to our feet
and picked our way along the bank, through the
thick jungle, to rejoin our companions farther up-
stream.
Here a blow awaited us. The raft which had been
following mine proved to have" contained, among
other things, our cooking utensils and our store of
rice, and its loss meant that our prospects of having
anything to eat that night was unpleasantly remote.
We knew that there existed a few Malay villages on
the banks of the lower reaches of the Sempam; but
what might be the distance that separated us from
these havens of refuge we could not tell. This was a
problem that could only be solved by personal in-
vestigation, which for hungry men might well prove
a lengthy and therefore painful process.
The first thing to be done, however, was to find
out the nature of the river below the rapid which had
wrought our undoing, as we still hoped that it might
be possible to lower our two uninjured rafts down the
falls by means of rattan painters/ Those who have
never seen a Malayan forest will find it difficult to
realize the difficulty which "getting out and walk-
ing" presents to the wayfarer in an unfrequented
portion of the country. The rivers in such localities
396 IN CHAINS ,
are practically the only highways, and the jungle
upon their banks is so dense, so thorny, so filled with
urgently detaining hands, that progress is not only
very slow, but speedily saws your nerves and temper
into shreds. I bade Saleh, my head boatman, follow
me, and the other Malays stay where they were until
we returned to them. Then I climbed back along
'.he steeply shelving bank to the foot of the rapid in
which the remains of my raft still flapped feebly,
and thence scrambled through the dense forest and
underwood to a point whence a view of the next
reach of the river could be attained. It took us the
best part of half an hour to gain this point of van-
tage; but at last, clinging with one hand to a stout
sapling, I swung out to the very edge of the forest-
clad hill and looked about me.
Then my heart stood still in my body, for there
suddenly was revealed to me the appalling danger
which we had escaped by providentially coming to
grief at the point where the rapid had defeated us.
Certain destruction had awaited us only some thirty
yards lower downstream.
From where I clung to the hillside I could look
upriver to the point where the flotsam from the raft
had dropped below the line of sight, and their abrupt
disappearance was now explained. The Sempam ran
here through a narrow gorge, enclosed by steep hills
smothered in jungle; but at the top of the reach the
river fell in a shaggy white curtain down the face of a
precipice, which was walled on either side by black
dikes of granite, clean-cut as though hewn by a single
IN CHAINS W
stroke of some giant's axe. With an intolerable
roar, the whole body of the river leaped in a sheet
of foam into the black abyss seventy feet below,
throwing great jets of spray aloft that hung like a
mist in the still air, drenching rocks and trees for
many yards around till they dripped with moisture,
and churning up the waters of the pool into which it
fell, so that their surface was a boiling, heaving
mass that looked as white and almost as solid as
cotton wool. A little lower downstream the pools
widened out somewhat, and here the waters were
so deep a green that they were nearly black, circling
slowly round and round in innumerable, sullen-
looking eddies, ere they shot forward again upon their
course to plunge down fall after fall in never-ending
strife. Even under the brilliant afternoon sunlight
the place was steeped in a profound, mysterious
gloom! ""
From where I was perched I could see for near a
quarter of a mile along the river's length — a most
unusually extended view in the heart of a Malayan
jungle — 1 and at every yard of the way Death was
written in unmistakable characters for any living
thing that the falls might succeed in sucking into
£heir grip. Had We taken the channel on the right,
instead of that which we had chanced to select
nothing could have saved us; had our raft not come
to wreck exactly where it did, a moment later
matchwood would have been made of it and of us:
for once within the clutch of the upper fall, nothing
could have saved us from a dreadful death. As 1
398 IN CHAINS
gazed at the masses of water plunging sheer down
the face of the rock, I realized with a shock how
closely I and my fellows had looked into the eyes of
death so short a while before, and how unthinkingly,
how light-heartedly we had scampered to the very
brink of destruction while half intoxicated by the
fierce joy of living.
I sent Saleh back for my fellows, and sat down
where I was to await their coming. I wanted a ciga-
rette to aid my meditations upon man's precarious
tenure of life; but the river had rendered tobacco
and matches alike useless.
The insistent roar of the rapids filled my hearing;
the wild beauty of the scene held me spellbound;
but most of all was I impressed by the insolent free-
dom, the vigour, the complete, unrestrained savagery
of the river. Here was a stream which for countless
ages had leaped and thundered down this granite-
bound pass, had slain innumerable living things in
its day with the callous cruelty of the mighty, and
had never known an instant's restraint, a moment's
check, a second's curbing or binding. As the stream
below me tossed its white mane of spray restlessly
to and fro, it seemed to me to be in truth some wild
monster escaped from a primeval world, charging
down this rock-pent defile, instinct with life and
liberty. The very roaring of those resistless waters
seemed to me a shout of triumph wherewith they
boasted of their freedom; their furious commotion
mocked aloud at the restraints of nature and of man.
It was the embodiment of unfettered power, this
IN CHAINS 399
river — it was free, free, free — and the noise of its
falls set my nerves quivering with a sympathetic
excitement.
When my men had rejoined me we pushed on
through the thick jungle and by dark we had suc-
ceeded in passing out of hearing of the resonant
thunder of the falls. But there were other rapids
all along the river, and the music of the troubled
waters was constantly in our ears. We camped
on a sand bank by the river's side, and we went to
bed supperless. We had paid tribute to the river
of our last grain of rice, and Saleh, my head boatman,
who had been selected for that post because he com-
bined in a remarkable degree a short temper and a
long vocabulary, expressed himself on the subject
of fate and of our situation with refreshing lati-
tude.
The dawn broke grayly through a dense and drench-
ing mist, and it found us very hungry and unhappy.
We made an early start and scrambled and swarmed
along the shelving river bank, through the bamboo
brakes, the thorn thickets, and the tangled under-
Wood of that unspeakable forest, hour after hour,
to an ever-increasing accompaniment of famine and
fatigue. It was not until the afternoon sun was
beginning to creep down the sky that we at length
reached a place where it seemed < possible again to
make use of rafts with some prospect of success.
We set to work in sullen silence, and an hour later
we set off downstream, looking eagerly for a village
as each bend was rounded, and accepting the recur-
400 IN CHAINS
rent disappointments with such philosophy as wc
could muster.
The night shut down upon us once more, but we
did not call a halt. We had no knowledge concern-
ing the distance that still separated us from the
nearest human habitation and we were running a
race against hunger — an opponent that never grants
an armistice. We were already so spent that we
dared not rest lest we should lack the force and
courage to renew our efforts, and the pangs we were
suffering — for none of us had now tasted food for
five and thirty hours — were goads that pricked us
onward. Therefore, we fumbled and groped ®ur way
down the Sempam with the dogged, spiritless per-
sistency of the desperate. Our discomfort was com-
pleted by the fact that we had got ourselves smoth-
ered in jungle ticks, crablike monsters that fix
their rlaws into selected nerve centres, whence
they can only be withdrawn at the cost of acute
pain.
At about half-past eight we saw a point of light
ahead of us and a few minutes later we were eagerly
devouring all the available cooked rice in the little
village of Cherok.
"The falls of this river are very difficult, Tuan,"
said a village elder to me, as I sat smoking and talk-
ing to the people of the place, after I had crammed
myself with fat, new rice. "They are very difficult,
find no man may pass up or down those which are
of the largest size. Moreover, even we, who are
children of the river, may not approach the lesser
IN CHAINS 401
rapids until fitting offerings have been made by us
to the spirits which have in them their abiding
place. Strangers who, being smitten by madness,
make free of this river thrust their heads into a noose
whence it is not easy to draw back.
"The great fall, which is full twelve fathoms in
height, is named the Fall of the Kine-cleft Bank,
for it is a narrow pass such as giant kine might make
at the spot where they were wont to go down to
water. The next fall is named the Fall of Dew, for
by reason of its spray the rocks and trees around it
are perpetually drenched as it were by dew; and the
last of all is the Fish Trap, for from out of its grip
not even a fish can escape.
"Ah, Tuan, it is not well thus to tempt the Spirits
of the Sempam, for they are very vengeful, and if
they had killed you a great shame would have been
put upon our people. Our Spirits are orang merd-
heka — free folk — who care not at all for raja or
overlord, and have no respect even for white men,
Tuan, before whom the rajas themselves must give
way, if all that men tell us be true. And this, too,
Tuan, the Sempam hath taught you in hunger and
in travail, it will bear no chains!"
And the old fellow chuckled, well pleased by his
jest and proud of the prowess of his native stream.
Fresh from my view of the falls and still aching from
the rough handling which I had received at the
hands of the river, my thought echoed the old man's
vaunt. The wild freedom of the Sempam was what
impressed me — the freedom of some savage creature,
402 IN CHAINS
instinct with unrestrained vitality and a fierce, splen-
did liberty.
Nine years later, by which time unregenerate
Pahang had become a solid portion of the British
Protectorate, and I, as resident, had been appointed
to preside over its affairs, I visited the Sempam
Falls again.
I was driven to them from the foot of the moun-
tains in a smart dog cart by the manager of a mine,
and I spent the night in a well-appointed bungalow
after dining at a table which fairly groaned under the
good viands that it bore.
From end to end of the falls a made road skirted
the right bank of the river for a distance of about a
mile. In the valley, below the bungalow, stood a
square power station with a hideous roof of cor-
rugated iron. From it, running upward upon a sort
of staircase of wooden sleepers, a line of black pipes
three feet in diameter climbed a succession of steep
hillsides to the skyline half a mile away. This line
of pipes communicated with a solid concrete reser-
voir, which in its turn was fed by a large, square,
wooden flume, which burrowed through the hills like
a tar-smeared snake, and rose upon a gentle incline to
the head of the Fall of the Kine-cleft Bank. Here
the Sempam had been dammed across from bank to
bank by a solid wall of concrete. Such of its waters
as were not for the moment needed by the tyrannous
white men were suffered to flow down the old chan-
nel; but the rest of the river was cribbed and confined
IN CHAINS 403
by the wooden walls of the flume, was stalled like a
tame ox within the four walls of the reservoir, was
forced, protesting but obedient, into the unsightly
piping, and at the power station, three hundred feet
below, was compelled to yield up its angry strength
to the service of man, its master, in order to work
and light the gold mines at Raub, seven miles away.
I listened as the engineer in charge told me, with
the air of a lecturer upon anatomy, how many gal-
lons of water per minute went to the pulsing of that
once free river; how much of its strength was taken
for the electrical works, how much left to the dimin-
ished waters of the torrent.
The scene, as I stood looking down at it, was won-
derfully little changed from what it had been that day
long ago when I, first of all my kind, had gazed in
fascination at those boisterous falls. On the left
bank, where I had clung, the jungle still ran riot to
the skyline. An outcrop of white limestone, which
I remembered having noted, stood out prominently
as of old, a glaring landmark, bare of vegetation on
the flank of one of the higher hills at the foot of the .
falls. Through the deeply cleft walls of granite the
river still danced and leaped wildly, though with
sadly diminished volume, and with a voice that was
like a mere whisper compared with the roar and
thunder of other days. Except when my eyes rested
upon the works of man upon the right bank, all was
as beautiful as in the past. But the supreme free-
dom of the river, the quality which for me had had so
overmastering, so compelling a fascination, — had van-
404 IN CHAINS
ished utterly. The valley was no longer one of
nature's inviolate and secret places, and the river
was no more the strong, unfettered, vainglorious
"nonster of my memory. It was in chains, a thrall
co man, and to me it seemed to bear its gyves with a
subdued and chastened sadness at once bitter and
heartbroken.
The next morning I left the Falls of the Kine-cleft
Bank and rode fifty miles to the residency of Kuala
Lipis. My way took me through country which had
once been wild, where now the great trunk road
strung village to village, like onions on a string, and
the whole line of my ride was marked by newly oc-
cupied plantations, and by signs of the commercial
progress and material development which white
men and their civilization bring in their train. Then
as I neared my home and turned my thoughts to the
piles of official correspondence which I knew must be
awaiting my return; caught sight of the hurrying
telegraph peons, and remembered how at the end of
that infernal wire there sat men whose business it
was to impede me with instructions concerning
matters which they imperfectly comprehended; as
I heard the pat, pat of the tennis balls on the court
within the dismantled stockade and saw the golfers
driving off from a neighbouring tee — suddenly the
thought came to me of what my life in that district
had wont to be less than a decade earlier. And
then, though all the changes around me had been
things for which I had worked and striven with all
my heart and soul, somehow it seemed to me for the
IN CHAINS 405
moment that it was not only the river that had lost
its vitality and its freedom. Together we had
shared the wild life which we had known and loved
in the past; together in the present we went soberly 5
working in chains.
L'ENVOI
To My Brethren in Malaya '
The grim Recording Angel turns the pages of the Book,
And the days are thrust behind us past recall —
All the sorrows that we tasted, all the pleasure that
we took
In that life we shared together, Brothers all !
But to-day the forest whispers and to-day the ungkas
whoop,
Where the big, slow river lumbers down to meet
the sun-lit sea,
And the village drones and drowses while the palm-
fronds lift or droop,
For the old life glideth onward still — with ne'er a
place for me.
In the hut and in the palace, in the sun-fleck'd forest
glade,
Where the vast trees crowding stagger 'neath their
load of fern and vine,
In that world of untouched Nature, 'mid the marvels
God hath made,
You are living on in listlessness the life that once
was mine.
Hark! I catch the thud of tom-toms, and the drone
of old-world song,
The sleepy hum of insects, and the rush of startled
beast—
And I lack the words to tell you, O my Brothers, how
I long
For the glory and the glamour and the wonder of
the East.
406
L'ENVOI 407
You be far — too far — my Brothers, gnarled brown
faces that I know,
Men who dealt with me aforetime, friend with
friend and heart with heart —
Our paths he worlds asunder, since the Fates would
have it so,
For behold "the Order reached me,"* and to-day,
old Friends, we part.
Yet you will not quite forget me, O my Brothers
over sea —
Let me keep that fond illusion: it will help me on
my way —
And I pray you tell the little ones, who gather round
your knee,
Of those days we saw together in the land of the
Malay.
And my thanks are yours, my Brothers, for a thou-
sand acts of grace,
For the trust wherewith you trusted, for the love
wherewith you loved.
For your honest, open greetings, lifted hand and
friendly face,
For the kindness that you dealt me when through
all your land I roved.
It was mine to toil and struggle, it was mine to war
with wrong,
It was mine to labour for you, aye, to sorrow, hope,
and yearn;
But I'll shout it from the house-tops from Barbados
to Hong-Kong —
If to you I rendered service, I from you had most to
learn.
Hugh Clifford.
'Sudah sampai huium—" The Order hath come! " A Malayan euphemism signifying
that such-an-one has died.
