SIR HUGH 
 CLIFFORD
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 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
 
 Copyright, 1916, 1922, by 
 
 DOUBLKDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of 
 
 translation into foreign language,'!, 
 
 including the Scandinavian 
 
 l-m\ II n IN THK CN1TEI1 hTATKs 
 
 AT 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 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 paa vas ailes. 
 
 Christiansborg Castle 
 Gold Coast, May 10, 1916
 
 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 les 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; 
 and 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 
 me 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 
 impotency 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,
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 I. The Further Side of Silence . . S 
 
 II. The Were-tiger 40 
 
 III. The Experiences of Raja Haji 
 
 Hamid 56 
 
 IV. Droit Du Seigneur ..... 65 
 V. In the Valley of the Tlom . - . .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 Bfji Derja 319 
 
 XVII. A Malayan Actor-manager . . .341 
 
 XVIII. Tukang Burok's Story .... 358 
 
 XIX. In Chains 375 
 
 L'Envoi 406
 
 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 subject- 
 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
 
 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 wdn dis- 
 tinction, by amusing themselves with their pens in 
 the exile of their lonely out-posts, doing the tiling 
 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-Xoi 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 FURTHER 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 
 country. 
 
 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 (which among other things has only 
 three numerals and as many names for colours) con- 
 tained no word even remotely conveying any such 
 
 3
 
 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 mesalliances 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.
 
 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 theii- 
 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.
 
 C 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 the slender neck to the rounded hips, the 
 cleanly shaped limbs and the small, delicate feet,
 
 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 Kria 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 bv a little ripple of laughter. It was the
 
 THE FURTHER SIDE OF SILENCE 
 
 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 
 manreuvred 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 al 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 ah" 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 
 ^till 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 thai 
 Pi-Noi had companions, invisible and inaudible l<> 
 him, in whose presence he knew himself to be dc 
 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 extra v-
 
 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-Nou 
 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 
 in the air. 
 
 He was horribly shocked and outraged; for though 
 n 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 womankind, 
 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. AD 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- 
 /ation 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, basket work 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 x 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 x very cheap say 
 half the price you paid for Pi-Noi, her sister." 
 
 But Kria did not want Jag-ok x , 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 OF 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 pc'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 ha4 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 Riau, 
 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 Riau 
 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 2? 
 
 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 leaves 
 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 proved 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 krai 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 
 
 derily 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 
 closed, 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 
 -eady 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 I 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 Riait 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-Xoi, 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 Riau. 
 
 "And the man," he cried. " What of the man? " 
 
 "He lies yonder," said Kulop Riau, 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 
 
 40
 
 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 Perak. 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 homo 
 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 Ali 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 AH 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 Patimah 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,
 
 46 THE WERE-TIGER 
 
 was so foreshortened that, to the girl, it looked like 
 the body of a man. Patimah 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 
 Patimah 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, Penghiilu 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 selimut, 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 rind- 
 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 Penghiilu 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, 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. Pe'nghulu 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 Idlang 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 All 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 Idlang 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 rarelv 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.
 
 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
 
 58 EXPERIENCES OF RAJA HAJI 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 ko?ig-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 y 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 
 
 *BHdak dpi, 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, Tuan, 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 Pinang 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 Tulian-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, Unyku ! 
 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 te-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 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 Kedondong on the banks of 
 the Pahang River. A single wide blade of Idlang 
 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 
 fluid, 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
 
 GO 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 
 liath recently taken to wife." 
 
 "If there be no sickness, calamity, or impediment
 
 DROIT DU SEIGNEUR 07 
 
 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 painful 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 w r oman 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."
 
 68 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 rrCtng- 
 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 sim- 
 ple villagers the interior of this hut represented 
 us advanced a standard of comfort and civiliza- 
 tion as did the chateau of a noble in pre-revolu- 
 Lionary 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, 
 tin-owing 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, Minah, 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 Minah 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 w r oman made answer, from 
 her place at Mat Drus's elbow.
 
 DKOIT 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 .a 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 vour ears deaf?" cried the Chief. "Come
 
 7 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 dee]) 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 A*m, 
 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 
 smtky blade flew straight as a dart, and the tip ripped 
 open the cheek tmd 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 75 
 
 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. 
 Minah, 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
 
 7t> 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, 
 rhe 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 horriblv bv 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 SI 
 
 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 
 'lie stream; roast in the cleft of a split stick such fish 
 as they have caught; boil their ration of rice; and 
 \vhen full-fed, discuss the results of the day's toil, 
 ore they lie 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 
 ii 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 Misong 
 is crowded with game. The Misong 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 Mfsong, from its point of 
 junction with the Telom, there is ti 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 Misong 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 Misong. 
 
 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 Misong 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 footprint?* 
 of the kanchil, the perfectly formed little antelope, 
 which is not quite as heavy as a rabbit; and tht 
 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 he had 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
 
 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 hi,? 
 two Sakai followers reached the salt lick of Misong. 
 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 TfiLOM 
 
 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 Mie 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 tw r o, 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 TfiLOM 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 TfiLOM 
 
 fore, very much out of temper, he abandoned the 
 idea of persuading his companions to rejoin him that 
 night. 
 
 Meanwhile, much time had been wasted, and 
 already the waters of the Misong 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 
 ckmp on the bare earth at the foot of the monster 
 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 lie 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 TfiLOM 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
 
 04 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TfiLOM 
 
 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 
 rsaid never a word, but they listened intently. Very 
 far away, across the Misong, 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 
 wakef ulness. 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; nd this was repeated many times, and
 
 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TfiLOM 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 Misong, 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 TfiLOM 
 
 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 tht 
 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 TftLOM 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 Misong, 
 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 woidd 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 TfiLOM 
 
 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 TfiLOM 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 conies 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 selddany, the wild buffalo of eastern 
 Asid, which is the largest of all the beasts, save only
 
 100 IN 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 
 xelddang, snorting loudly, stamped with its off fore- 
 foot. The heavy hoof alighted upon Pandak Aria'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 lav still forever.
 
 IN THE VALLEY OF THE TfiLOM 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 
 Misong, 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, Titan," he said to me in after 
 days. "I cut his throat, and T mind me that while 
 doing so, I murmured the word BishmiUah 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 TfiLOM 
 
 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 LTpis, where 
 the river of that name falls into it on its right bank, 
 and on and on and on, you come at last to 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 
 
 KK5
 
 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 
 inexhaustiole 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 rrowd of onlookers 
 whooped and yelled in shrill, far-sounding chorus. 
 This choric shout the .vora/r, 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 
 racket 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
 
 100 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 
 l)e 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 arid 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 yet a or raised sleeping 
 platform -in the dimly lighted inner apartment, 
 there to await the ordeal known to Malav crueltv 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 fiancees 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 
 vanding, 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 
 Lime 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, j^elling, 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 
 i bought 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 nossess 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. 
 "NY ho 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
 
 Ill 
 
 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.
 
 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 011 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 fad 
 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 Lipis, 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, lie 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
 
 110 THE GHOTTL 
 
 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-dnak, 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 
 poJong, 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 polony" 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 
 /cologist, and Heaven knows what besides; and he 
 used to fill his bedroom with all sorts of creeping, 
 crawling things, kept in very indifferent custody, 
 ;md 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 lime. 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 trall'.c 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 but 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 as 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 
 
 *S-noi one of the two main branches into which the Sakai are divided. The 
 other is called Te-mi-au by the Se-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. Juggiius told me next morning that 
 he had had une mat 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 
 
 devils have 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: 
 
 "O 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, w T ho 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 who 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. 
 
 "Well, Juggins and I were left alone, but niy 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 
 o!d Juggins sat up, with his eyes fairly snapping at 
 me through his gig-lamps in his excitement. 
 
 "I 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.' 
 
 'Siladang The gaur or wild buffalo. It is the same as the Indian variety, but ii\ 
 the Malay Peninsula attains to a grease size than in any other part of Asia.
 
 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 
 either 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 tiling 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 i-hc 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 120 
 
 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 w r ere hidden from the hag by a few tufts of rank 
 Idlang 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 
 ine 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 falsetto 
 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 begem 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. 1 1 
 all happened so quickly that I had not had time to 
 lliink 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 io 
 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 bac-k 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 k, 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. 
 
 13.-J
 
 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 dc 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-jar a 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-jar 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 
 iiatural 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 
 loo 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 eves, which blazed \vilh
 
 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 conies 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 lalak 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 vet bound to me, she sent mo
 
 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. Tie could foresee that his 
 failure would be followed by worse punishment. Bui 
 he heeded not. He would breathe the fresh, lui-
 
 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, the merciful and compassionate God. The
 
 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- 
 bour. 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 tho 
 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 Jcdleh. 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 
 c ' 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 ol 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- 
 heaved 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 
 *he 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, rfamar-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 
 oats, 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 upcn 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 TSmbSling 
 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 mengkuang 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 none to attend to their wants 
 or io 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/z-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 mpah-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 gctah- 
 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
 
 156 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-Pudong. 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 fowls jump off their perches, about 5:30 
 A.M.; Before the flies are on the wing, about 6 A.M.; When the heat breaks forth, 
 about 7 A.M.; When the sun is halfway up, about 9 A.M.; When the plough is idle t 
 from 9:30 to about 11 A.M.; When the shadows are circular, noon; When th* day 
 changes, viz., from morning to afternoon, about 1 P.M.; When the buffaloes go down 
 lo water, an hour before sunset, '. .. about 5 KM.; 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 Sidik 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,"| 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 Muharnmadan year of twelve months of thirty days ea<-b
 
 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 we 
 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-Pudong 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. '^ 7 ho 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 aiim, 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-fie\ds, 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 arid 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 a
 
 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 .bove 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 
 denes. 
 
 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 Minah had been 
 wont to sit, when strangers were about, during the
 
 1G2 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 .vora/r, which Che' Semaii 
 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 bore 
 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, Potek, and Abdullah 
 fell before the tiger in quick succession; and Minah, 
 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 Minah, 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. 
 
 163
 
 THE FLIGHT OF CHEP, THE BIRD 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 IP 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. 
 Hints 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 CIIKP, 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 ihejermun, 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 Chep, 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 Chep was 
 the wife of a Sakai named Ku-ish the Porcupine 
 who had not only declined to sell her at even the 
 extravagant price which the Malay had offered f oi- 
 lier, 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 CHEF, 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 Sen tul, 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 Chep 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
 
 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 kerp", 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 17,5 
 
 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
 
 170 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 o'f 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, w r ho 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 r out of the reach 
 of the tribesmen. 
 
 Accordingly Chep and her lover halted at the 
 latter's village, and took up their abode in his house. 
 Of that homecoming I possess no details. SentuFs 
 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 CHRP, 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 twict' 
 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!"t\\ey exclaimed, in the barbarous jargon of 
 the jungle-folk. "Lost !" and then relapsed into silence. 
 "May she be devoured by a tiger!" snarled Ku-ish, 
 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 'orest, 
 heading downstream. 
 
 Two days later, in the cool of the afternoon, Sentul
 
 180 
 
 left Chep, the Bird, in her new house, busying herseli 
 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, i lie little muddy fishes, which the Malays 
 call ruan and xepat, are to be found in them. What 
 is the maniier 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, Sentul 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 blown 
 to atoms. 
 
 At the sight Sentul's son fled screaming along the 
 edge of the pool; but Ku-ish'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-isli, 
 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 u 
 Sakai never quite loses sight of those perennial 
 cravings of appetite which he is doomed never alto-
 
 183 
 
 gether to satisfy. Then, when the darkness had 
 shut down over the land, he crept softly to Chep'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-ish, 
 the Porcupine, and Chep, 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-ish 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 ;i 
 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- 
 
 *Gob Stranger, i. <., any person who is not a S&kai.
 
 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-
 
 ISO 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 
 yctah* and other jungle produce from the tribe to 
 which Ku-ish, 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 incidents 
 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. 
 
 *Getnh 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; 
 <lull 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 village 
 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 MUHAMMAD ANS 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 Minah 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- 
 Jess, 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 ground, 
 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 bv 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, Tiian," 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 
 tiie 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,
 
 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 w T as 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 19., 
 
 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." 
 
 "Tuati!" cried the villagers in a chorus of assent, 
 as my boat pushed out from the bank, and my men 
 sei/ed 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 MUHAMM ADANS 
 
 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 da/ed 
 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 
 <?f the husband has a tenfold force. During all the 
 days of her life a daughter of the Muhammadans 
 lias 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 I he
 
 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 107 
 
 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 clumsv 
 movement to over-set the pot, and the boiling wate-i 
 streamed over the fingers of his right hand. Mtntih 
 g:ive 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 Well, 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 
 gaxing 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, 
 Minah?" 
 
 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 Minah'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/' 
 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 stru^led \villi
 
 00 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 Minah 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 Minah was wont to fill the gourds 
 with water for her house, and he began his tale at 
 once without preface or preparation. 
 
 "Sister, it is 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 lo 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 cind 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 MUHAMMAD ANS 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, cow r ered 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 Minah'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, lie owed 
 it to himself, --md to what tattered remnant of self-
 
 204 DAUGHTER OF THE MUHAMMAD ANS 
 
 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 Minah 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 Minah 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 20.5 
 
 have no care for anyone save for myself? O Maniat, 
 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 m? without you. Come to me, Weh, come to 
 me!" And again she extended her arms toward him. 
 
 For long Mamat resisted, fighting against 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 Minah 
 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 MUHAMM ADANS 
 
 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 Minah, 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 
 Minah 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 thau *hat which he had made to her in the years 
 of his unspoiled manhood. Most Asiatic women of 
 the better sort find the role 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 vvavs, and Minah 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 cost 
 to herself. And thus Minah and her man spent mam 
 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 
 svas 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 cornbativen< ss 
 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. 
 
 Minah 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
 
 210 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 
 wrong; 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 oppose 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 simpk 
 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 2U 
 
 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. O 
 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, 
 Titan, 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
 
 212 DAUGHTER OF THE MIIHAMMADANS 
 
 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 
 iiad 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 u 
 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 tc 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 
 kindlv 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 
 
 "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 KULOP 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 
 lie 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 
 Siimbing 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 S limbing 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
 
 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 Perak 
 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 shouif* 
 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 Perak 
 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 
 Kulop and his Sakai began to drag themselves up 
 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 drum- 
 ming-ground of an argus pheasant. On the crest of 
 nearly ev.ery 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 \vilh a thin litter of dry twigs. 
 Sometimes, if you keep very still, you may hear the 
 rocks 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 
 
 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 Siimbing 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 solitary 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 Kiilop Siimbing 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. 
 
 Kulop 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 Siimbing, 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 Betok 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 filled 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 'n the most distant Malayan villages of 
 the interior was taken into consideration. This, of
 
 THE LONE-HAND RAID fr>3 
 
 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 Siimbing'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-
 
 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- 
 olout of bark cloth, which use had reduced to a mere 
 His thin flanks and buttocks were gray with
 
 THE LONE-HAND RAID 225 
 
 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 
 (he 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 the 
 restless jungle-folk. Up here in the foothills the ah 
 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 s 
 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
 
 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 
 (heir fires, and the frowsy atmosphere within. 
 
 Kiilop alone made his way down to the river bank, 
 and there performed his morning ablutions with 
 scrupulous care, for whatever laws of (Jod 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 s 
 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 Kiilop 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 xen-oi which means a "man" a& 
 opposed to gob, w r hich 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 tlie 
 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 Avithin 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 find
 
 THE LONE-HAND RAID 
 
 walked, each man to his hut, with lagging steps. 
 In a few minutes the great balls of rubber, with a 
 hole pimched in each through which a rattan line 
 was passed, lay heaped upon the ground at Kiilop'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!' 
 lie 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, 
 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 jimgle-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 
 
 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 from 
 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.
 
 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 hi* 
 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, Killop had some 
 particular lady in his mind when he set out upon hi. c 
 quest for wealth, for all the world over, if you tract 
 matters to their source, the best work and the most 
 blackguardly deeds of men are usually to be ascribed 
 10 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 wpstream," replied Kulop 
 Siimbing. 
 
 The Dato' gave vent to an expression of incredu- 
 lous surprise. 
 
 "Your servant returns the way he came, 9 * said 
 Kulop. 
 
 The Dato' burst out into a torrent of excited 
 expostulation. It was death, certain death, he said, 
 for Kalop 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 Date'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 coupic 
 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 Ascend 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 tlie 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 Haoelip 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 m 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 
 xoruk 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 239 
 
 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 Kiilop 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 Kiilop himself. Sleep was the ally of the 
 Sfikai and his most dangerous enemy; but fear
 
 440 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 24S 
 
 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 Kiilop 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 in 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 
 
 r\ 
 
 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 
 
 44
 
 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 w T isp about their loins. Up here in the 
 foothills it was intensely cold, as temperature i^ 
 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 4 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 
 ?,re Gobx 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
 
 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' Stia, the Sakai knew full
 
 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE FOLK 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' Stia 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' Stta 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 OP 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 k-non yeh! E k- 
 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
 
 FLIGHT 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 in any direction for a distance of half
 
 254 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 
 Muda'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 hei 
 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 s 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 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-TT and old Sem-pak, 
 and the three, passing upstream, drew themselves 
 with infinite caution on to its bank without bruising
 
 2,58 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 50 
 
 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 unpit} 7 - 
 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
 
 200 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 201 
 
 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 vordk 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
 
 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 Ma!::" 
 could hope to maintain through virgin forest; bi:t 
 they were leaving behind them a trail that a chi! [ 
 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 wrote had been heard once or twice,
 
 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 2t>:t 
 
 still indistinct and 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 
 even' 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 distract ingly. 
 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
 
 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK <2G5 
 
 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
 
 266 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 
 thr 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 treetop.s, 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' Stia 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.
 
 FLIGHT OF THE JUNGLE-FOLK 09 
 
 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-U 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 ,vith 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 
 Perak 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 thr 
 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 Perak 
 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-I T Running Water a name which set the 
 sad-faced old hag weeping very pitifully when, after 
 tb lapse of so many years, she heard it spoken by 
 my lips together with some broken fragments of he> 
 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 leap;; 
 and bounds, each one less vigorous than the last, 
 until once more the napping 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 the 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 xirih 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 
 'u 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 
 "Vvide 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 
 Dn 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 
 moving 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 
 <iway 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 
 TTmat'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, Se'le'ma, and
 
 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 2y fr 
 
 their children, and dwells upon hearty meals and 
 quiet nights, then in sympathy the punkah moves 
 slowly, sentimentally, and stops. 
 
 "Tdrek! 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 havt 
 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 the beginning of things. 
 
 If you look at Umat's round, splay-featured facQ 
 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
 
 270 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. 
 
 Tin's 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 n 
 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, 
 md 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 
 vxtinct. 
 
 Umat, however, has at his command pluck of 
 quite another stamp the courage which is no mere 
 flash 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 
 <vait. It is no light thing to stare death in the eyes 
 for days and weeks on end, to expect it in some en }, 
 violent form, and yet to possess one's soul in patience, 
 *nd 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 which 
 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 nolh-
 
 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 1113' 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 no I 
 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 TJmat 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 
 vvening, 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 (dx) 
 to shrink into ne r , and kerbau (buffalo) into kuba', 
 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 i; 
 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 
 laud, and the disturbances which I had foretold, but 
 in I lie imminence of which I had failed to persuade 
 anv 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 
 \ve were facing could never have broken out if they 
 had lacked royal approval and inspiration. 
 
 In the spring of 1S92, however, I found myselt 
 back at Kuala Lipis, 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 kriff 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. Mv
 
 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 WHLO 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, aixd 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 
 \iirn 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 sui?" 1 ; 
 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 
 da\- 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 mv heels. His devotion not onlv touched but
 
 ONE WHO HAD EATEN MY RICE 287 
 
 fortified me. He was taking voluntarily risks which 
 [ 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 tlmat'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 w r as, 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 
 Lipis 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 I hem and to convince the Da to' 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 Dfito' 
 would produce such a document, I should have no 
 further word to s;iv. Xo 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-morrow 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 
 <\vesight could never be wholly restored to him. 
 
 But Umat was of a sanguine temperament, and 
 wen when his blindness had continued for years, 
 i ml 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 (mite aloof fron? 
 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 sink 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 bcr-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 I hick, 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 il 
 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 Jacob's 
 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 the air seemed to b?
 
 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 
 \o 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 
 Uie 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, 
 booking down in love and gratitude upon her children, 
 \o 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 
 Vray-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 IJmat had a notion why it was necessary to do 
 these things, but they never dreamed of questioning 
 he 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 TJmat 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 207 
 
 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. I T mat 
 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 shrewdl}' 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 
 slates 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 
 \vatches 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 Aw r ang 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 
 lie 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
 
 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 tiling," 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, 
 tmd 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, 
 Turi.n," she said, "but he cannot climb over the ship's 
 side. He is like one who is dead, unless others lift 
 him, ho'v can he move? Will the Tiian, 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 hollo sv 
 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 k 
 smooth forehead, abundant hair, bright, laughing 
 eyes, with eyebrows arched and well 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 Tiian 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 whiie man, 
 in the hope that thereby a tardy retribution might 
 overtake his oppressors, that he and Bedah had 
 sought this stolen interview. 
 
 Tn every independent Malay state the budak 
 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 s 
 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 pow r er 
 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 thfc 
 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 budak 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 
 l hey 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 
 iind 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 
 
 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 007 
 
 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 \vho 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 Tiian 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 liibang, 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: thev
 
 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 his. 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 her 
 position, was leading for the moment a life of almost 
 aggressive propriety. She was none the less fullv 
 aware of the state of Awang's feelings, and was no\ 
 averse from affording him an occasional glimpse oj 
 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 polonga, 
 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 
 Ihat 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 Miinah 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 Tiian Bangati 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 loo, 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 way 
 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 a'n independent state, 
 could admit of any other opinion. 
 
 And in this affair there were intrigues within hi-
 
 AT A MALAYAN COURT 'Ml 
 
 trigues, lang 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 Itam 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 IJteh'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 Tungku 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, bui 
 Awang Itam was in this matter the princess's most 
 ardent advocate, and a series of taunting message- 
 from her speedily reduced the Saiyid to acquiescence 
 Greater precautions were now necessary, however, 
 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, 
 6'ke 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 then\ 
 from his pillow while he slept, and no persuasions 
 on his part could induce her to restore them to him. 
 \Yhile 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 It am madts 
 their way homeward with anxious hearts, knowing 
 that now, indeed, their hour had come. 
 
 Once inside her own apartments, Tungku Utek
 
 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 bildUs 
 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. Tiian 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 313 
 
 him without involving Tungku Uteh in the scandal. 
 For the moment, therefore, he turned his thoughts 
 to the other culprits. Awang I tarn 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, not 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 had 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
 
 S16 AT A MALAYAN COURT 
 
 prince, there sat in the latter boat Tuan Bangau aud 
 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- 
 covered point. 
 
 When the prince had eaten his fill, he bade Tuan 
 Bangau and one or two other Saiyids who were 
 >imong 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 Tungku Saleb 
 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 tht 
 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 ht 
 rose to his feet, drew his kris, 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 Tuan 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- 
 vess every conceivable violence to her own feelings 
 nnd 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 
 io 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 
 
 he 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 his 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 tang 
 Miinah 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 BlJI DfiRJA 
 
 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, a/?ioA--running was not an 
 event of very frequent, occurrence, even in the law- 
 less and un regenerate 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
 
 MO AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DERJA 
 
 White men, in the East and out of it, have attempted 
 to treat amok-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 atfioA'-riinning, 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 othei 
 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 me 
 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 OF DATO' KAYA BlJT DfiRJA 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 1 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 
 \vas 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 tht 
 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 
 dmo/c-running 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 bv a man against one who is dear to him.
 
 22 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DfiRJA 
 
 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 dmofc-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 amok-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 liitting 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 BlJI DfiRJA 323 
 
 arrogant 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 BlJI 
 
 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 
 Dcrja 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 BlJI DfiRJA 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 
 elemii 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 latf 
 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 DfiRJA 
 
 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 fyis 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 BlJI DfiRJA 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 tho 
 veranda, and set off at a run. The sight of hio 
 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, 
 aicceeded 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 ho\\ 
 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 int.) 
 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 when 1 he collapsed and died.
 
 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DfiRJA 3*9 
 
 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' ek, 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 DfiRJA 
 
 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, Tungku Pa, 
 Tungku 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. Tungku 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 BlJI DERJA ,'ttl 
 
 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, Tungku 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 Tungku 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 Tungku I tarn, 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. 
 
 Tungku Long being disposed of, To' Kaya turned 
 and passed out of the compound, whereupon Che' 
 Mat Tiikang 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 & 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 lias caused this fire?" Ilaji Mill inquired of 
 To' Kaya. 
 
 "God alone knows," replied To' Kaya, and so 
 saying, he stabbed Haji Mill through the shoulder.
 
 332 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DERJA 
 
 "Help! Help!" roared the pilgrim, and his son- 
 in-law, Saleh, and four other men ran out of the house s 
 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 Mill's house came out and began to 
 throw spears at To' Kaya; but though they struck
 
 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DfiRJA 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 Mill'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 Tungku Pa. The latter and a 
 man named 'Semail were seated upon the veranda, 
 and when the alarm was raised that To' Kaya was 
 approaching, Tungku 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. 
 
 Tungku Pa was, of course, a man of royal blood, 
 but To' Kaya addressed him as though he were an 
 equal. 
 
 "O Pa," he cried. "I have waited for you the 
 long night through, though you did not come. I
 
 334 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DfiRJA 
 
 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 
 kris, 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 BtJI DfiRJA 335 
 
 "Is this, tlien, 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 Tiingku 
 Long Pendekar had come by his death. Standing 
 there, he called to Tungku ttam, who was within the 
 house. 
 
 "O Tungku!" he cried. "Be pleased to come forth 
 if you desire to avenge the death of your cousin, 
 Tiingku 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 ttam 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 BlJI 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 Tiinku 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 Tiingku Ngah's 
 compound, took To' Kaya's advice and running to 
 the Sultan's bdlai or hall of state, he cried to Tiingku 
 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 bdhi 
 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 BlJI DERJA 337 
 
 broke. At dawn, however, it was found that all the 
 chiefs, with the exception of Tungku Panglima, 
 Dato' Kaya Duyong, Panglima Dalain, 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 Biji Derja?" 
 
 Tungku Musa turned upon Tungku Panglima. 
 
 "Go you and slay him," he said. 
 
 "Why do you not go yourself or send Pahlawan?" 
 replied Tungku Panglima. 
 
 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?" 
 
 Tiingku 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 7 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 BlJI 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 g3 
 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 Tungku 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 Tungku 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 wjill which surrounds the latter build-
 
 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DERJA IJ.'JO 
 
 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, Tiingku, 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 Dfdam sue-
 
 340 AMOK OF DATO' KAYA BlJI DfiRJA 
 
 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, Tungku 
 Long Pendekar, Ma' Chik, Haji Mill, and 'Semail; 
 and 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 Malav.
 
 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 
 
 AKOTA 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 Tiian 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 tlu's 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
 
 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 <rood 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 daunted, 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 gramlsire, 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 " f Bakar," Ishmail 
 '"Mail," "Patimah," "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 3i9 
 
 of Awang Lotong 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, r 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 Avith half a score of broken 
 hearts in his Avallet ; and soon after his arrival he was 
 appointed to the post of court minstrel and Avarden 
 of the royal dancing girls. For the Kelantan to 
 Avhich he had returned Avas a very different place 
 from the land he had quitted Avhen he started out
 
 352 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER 
 
 for Paliang. 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 3,53 
 
 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 Kota 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 Kota 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, broad-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 (laughter, and three children of 
 lender 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 
 
 *Kajang The name given to mats made from the dried and prepared fronds 
 of the mengkuang 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
 
 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
 
 300 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 
 Tiikang Biirok'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 
 kii muning tree between the toes of his left foot and 
 sat working at its surface with a mass of rough 
 cmpelas 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 Tiikang 
 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 BUROK'S STORY 
 
 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. Fa Allah! It is very evil, Tiian, 
 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? Ainbui! It is very hard 
 to grow old. I, your servant, sit here all the day long, 
 fashioning kris 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.
 
 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 passage-- 
 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 fofk 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 303 
 
 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 ha,d 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 liver 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 coining, 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. 
 
 "Hodoh 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 Hodoh 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 305 
 
 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 ihe face of Pa'Ah-Gap, scarred with 
 blue tattoo-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 "Hin.chit! 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 Hodoh, 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.
 
 3G6 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 .%? 
 
 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 Hodoh 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 
 alonv> 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, pressing 
 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 S!IG 
 able to assuage the pain consuming her, and so they 
 led her on and on. 
 
 "The sun had come to life when at length sh^ 
 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 BtROK'S STORY 369 
 
 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 afl 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,' 1 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-ku! 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 kamun- 
 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 tuas is a very simple and effective torture in considerable favour amon" 
 Malays when more elaborate appliances are not available. The victim K 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, arH the first piece as the fulcrum, great pressure is exerted, in 
 such a m:mn'-r that the thighs of the victim are crushed down toward the ground, 
 while tlv.: buuucks arc iw.iheJ 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 tinles 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' All-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 bo- 
 grimed with the dirt and the wood ashes of the Sakui 
 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.
 
 .17-2 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 kamuning wood, and we used such force that 
 he screamed aloud with pain. She who had been 
 Hodoh 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, anil soon lie 
 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 li so \er ^ody % T as weakened by her life in the jungle, 
 arid 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- 
 
 875
 
 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 rats 
 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 Lipis, for the long stalk - 
 like legs upon which the flooring of my hut rested 
 were canted dangerously river ward. 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 live 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\ 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 overcome. 
 
 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
 
 380 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 off
 
 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!" L 
 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"- 
 skeller, like a flock of sheep following at the heels of &
 
 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 was 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
 
 384 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. Wb 
 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 horn- later per- 
 fectly unharmed. He had seen the bees coining, 
 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 
 night, 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 387 
 
 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 man}- nationalities were 
 busy sluicing for tin; and thence I decided to cut 
 across the forest so as to strike the head waters of u 
 river called the Sempam which at that time had 
 never been visited by an European and was terr i 
 incognita to all save a very few of even the Malays 
 of the district. 
 
 Not without difficulty I succeeded in enlisting th? 
 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 tho 
 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 380 
 
 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*ur 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 w r e 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 \vill during aeons 
 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 awf ulness 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 
 duncing 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 bimch 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 the. 
 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 flflfi 
 
 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 
 ut 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 
 granite, 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 
 Vt hat 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 localitie ;
 
 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 
 veach 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 W7 
 
 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 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 
 their 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 ]
 
 308 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 we 
 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 eur 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 claws 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, 
 and 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, Tiian, 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, 
 Tuaji, 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 
 monster of my memory. It was in chains, a thrall 
 to 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, 
 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. 
 
 40Q
 
 I/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 lie 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 w r as 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. 
 
 Hrcn CLIFFORD. 
 
 'Smlah sampa! hukum" The Order hath come! " A ^falayan euphemism signifying 
 that such-an-onc has died.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Book Slip-35m-9,'62(D2218s4)428(i
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 PR 6005 C609f 1922 
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 II Mill lllli nlii Hill inn IMI mum 
 
 A 001 173 693 1