As for the seventh case, it contained the whole of our supplies, and its disappearance left us with nothing but the impressions of our journey to breakfast on.
That evening, while clearing the thickets quite six kilometres from our camp, our coolies came upon the missing case. It was almost intact. Only one box had been opened and it bore upon its label a sketch of the sucking-pig it contained. As swine's flesh is abhorred by the Cham I can only conclude that we owed the recovery of our portable larder to that happy chance.
Two years later a second attempt of the same kind and not less audacious was perpetrated upon me. I was at Hanoi, residing in a house situated in a narrow avenue and next to the barracks. It was at the beginning of the rainy season and a violent storm was raging. I was sleeping on the first floor, and one of my Tonkinese orderlies, a hardy young bachelor, stationed himself at the bottom of the stairs to guard me. I had allowed another to bring his family into the house and the family, including its real members, friends and acquaintances, turned out to comprise eleven persons. In return for this concession they arranged to mount guard in turn. It will be acknowledged that I was thus not alone in the desert!
It must have been about midnight and I was dozing lightly (being prevented from sleeping by feverishness), when I suddenly noticed that my reading-lamp outside the mosquito-net was lit. It occurred to me that I could not have been so foolish as to leave it lit and I distinctly remembered putting out the light when I got into bed. I sat up to rouse my senses and heard a slight noise in the next room. I was out of bed in a moment just in time to catch a parcel of clothing which was evidently thrown at me to trip me up. By the light from the reading-lamp I distinctly saw a man perfectly naked, his body shining as if he had just had a bath in oil. I remembered in a flash that the Annamite robber always take this precaution to make capture more difficult. Before I could snatch my revolver the burglar had displayed his ape-like agility by leaping through the window and vanishing in the darkness.
I called up my men, but they only told me they had heard nothing. I confess with shame I lost my temper. Suspecting those whom I had so imprudently harboured of complicity in the plot I hunted from the house all except my usual staff. I enjoyed such consolation as was afforded by the sight of the silhouettes of the defaulting watchmen cowering in the pelting rain. Any remorse I experienced quickly vanished when I made inquiries later!
CHAPTER II
SOCIAL AND FAMILY LIFE
Traces of the matriarchal system in the conception of the family—The "Karoh"—Circumcision—Precautions against seduction—Rites incidental to betrothal, marriage, birth and infancy.
It is well known that the ancient matriarchal system of government and ownership still flourishes among certain peoples who inhabit the peninsula of the Ganges and some groups of Malayo-Polynesian origin. In this system man belongs to an inferior order of creation. All political and social authority is exercised by woman and she alone can possess and inherit. This veritable triumph of feminism might have been expected to produce results far more disastrous than has been the case. Proof that life under such circumstances can be both possible and tolerable is furnished by the history of the Malays of the Negri Sambilan (British Malaysia), which is little more than a monotonous record of good fortune and prosperity.
The system is frequently accompanied by the institution of polyandry in which the husbands cohabit in turn with the common wife who has herself selected them.