“Let go!—You won’t!—Well then, die like a dog!—” shrieked the wretched father, goaded to madness. And—with lightning speed, before the miserable Chinaman had time to cower down behind the little girl whom he still held before him—Setrosmito drew the well-tempered blade across the fellow’s throat.
“Alas, I am dead!” yelled the Chinaman, his eyes wildly rolling in his head. They were the last words he uttered. With convulsive clutch he tried to close the gaping wound in his neck; but it was no use, the blood violently came spurting in fine jets through his fingers, a dreadful fit of coughing seized him, and the torrent of blood which rushed from his mouth covered poor little Kembang from head to foot. Tottering like a drunken man, and still grasping the girl, the wretch, for a few moments, tried to steady himself, but then reeled and fell heavily to the ground in the agony of death.
“Amokh, Amokh!” was still the cry all round the hut.
“Amokh, Amokh!” still harshly roared the gongs.
For three or four seconds Setrosmito, after his dreadful deed, stood gazing about him like a man utterly dazed or in a dream. He at length brought his left hand to his eyes and then slowly he seemed to recover his reason; then he began to realize his position. At his feet there lay the Chinese bandoelan still convulsively twitching in the throes of death; but soon all was over.
All this had passed in an incredibly short space of time, almost with the swiftness of thought; but the room in which the father stood over the victim of his momentary frenzy was already quite deserted; for, with his men, Singomengolo had also taken to his heels. Even the two little boys, who at first had stared at the spectacle hardly knowing what was taking place, had taken to flight in alarm at their father’s threatening kris, and the wife had snatched up her little daughter and she also had rushed from the house.
“Amokh, Amokh!” that shout outside sounded in the ears of the unhappy man as his death-knell. He knew but too well of what terrible significance was the fatal word. He knew well that wherever that word is heard, the entire population rushes at once to arms, and that, without stopping to make any inquiry, without even knowing who the man-slayer is, it cuts him down without the smallest mercy, though perhaps he may in reality be guilty of nothing worse than merely defending his own life or protecting the honour of wife or children.
Already a few armed men came charging into the hut with their lance-points levelled at his breast.
“Stand back!” shouted Setrosmito whose rage had not yet had time to cool down. “Stand back! whoever comes nearer I will serve as I have served that wretch!”
The man was evidently in deadly earnest and the kris was waved in so threatening a manner at the words that his assailants turned and fled in alarm and formed up in a close ring around the hut. In that circle there was a great deal of talking, of consulting, of screaming and gesticulating; but there seemed not to be a single man who felt the smallest desire of again crossing the threshold.