For over and over I muttered—
As I slunk from tree to tree—
“None but the head of a kampong chief
Shall hang at my belt for thee.”
(None but the head of a kampong chief
For you my belt shall grace,
Taken by right in fairest fight—
Full-fronted—face to face.)
And I found a leafy clearing
That lay across his path,
And I stood to wait his coming—
The chieftain in his wrath.
As the moan before the wind-storm
That breaks across the night,
Were the rhythmic, muffled foot falls
Of the war-lord come to fight.
The crack of little branches—
The branches pushed away—
And the Scourge of the Moeroeng Valley
Sprang straight to the waiting fray.
’Twas then I knew the stories true
They told of his fearful fame,
As through my shield a hand’s-length
His hurtling spearhead came.
Stunned I reeled and a moment kneeled
To the shock of the blinding blow,
But I rose again at the stinging pain
And the wet of the warm blood’s flow.
And I staggered straight and I scorned to wait
And I swept my mandauw high—
But ere my stroke descended
He smote me athwart the thigh.
As the lean rattan at the workman’s knife—
As the stricken game in the dell—
As a bird on the wing at the blow-spear’s sting,
To the reddened earth I fell.
And merrily with fiendish glee
He knelt and held me fast;
And I looked on high at the fleecy sky—
And I thought the look was the last.