Baboe Dalima; or, The Opium Fiend

by M. T. H. Perelaer

The sittings of the court at which the Resident now had to preside, were held, as usual, regularly once a week; but Mr. van Gulpendam found no difficulty, on one pretext or another, in putting off the hearing of the opium cases from week to week.

At length, however, the chief djaksa had informed him that the two Chinamen, Than Khan and Liem King, who had been on watch in the djaga monjet, could nowhere be found. Presently it was found that Awal Boep Said, the captain of the schooner brig, Kiem Ping Hin, on whose testimony Ardjan chiefly relied, had also disappeared without leaving a trace behind him. Then van Gulpendam thought that the proper time had come to bring up the prisoners for trial.

Ardjan had to confess that on the February night in question, he had come ashore in very stormy weather; that the boat of the Matamata had chased him and had fired upon him; but he was quite unable to prove that the opium discovered, not far from the spot where his surf-boat was driven ashore, had not been landed by him. Thus all the evidence was against him. Then he called upon Dalima to prove that she was seated with him in the boat. The president, however, assured the court that the girl had not, on that night, left the grounds of the Residence, and that her testimony, therefore, must be a mere tissue of falsehood and of no value whatever—that it could not in any case invalidate the evidence already produced. The Resident further drew the court’s attention to the fact that Dalima herself was about to be put on trial for a precisely similar offence—a fact which could not but affect the weight of her testimony. The court thus came to the conclusion that it was perfectly useless to call so tainted a witness. Moreover the chief djaksa deposed that Pak Ardjan, the prisoner’s father, had confessed that the smuggled opium which Singomengolo had found in his cabin, had been supplied to him by his son. Thus the guilt of the prisoner was clearly established and Ardjan was, accordingly, found guilty of an attempt at smuggling one and a half pikols of pure opium which was equivalent to about three pikols of raw material. This brought the case under the 23rd clause of the Act, and the court condemned him to three years’ penal servitude, and further to pay a fine of three thousand guilders. In default of payment, he was to have three months’ compulsory labour on the public works for every hundred guilders. Ardjan was, therefore, doomed to what virtually came to eight years’ penal servitude. The poor victim of this gross miscarriage of justice gnashed his teeth with impotent rage when he heard the sentence. Could he have expected more lenient treatment at the hands of the white men? Perhaps he had, poor fellow!

After the son, the father—after Ardjan, Pak Ardjan.

His case was treated in a still more off-hand manner if possible, than his son’s.

The prisoner had confessed that he had smuggled opium in his possession. Entrapped by artful cross-examination; and without having the slightest suspicion how heavily his testimony would weigh against his son Ardjan, he had admitted that the latter used, from time to time, to supply him with the drug. He had further been forced to confess that he had wrenched a sword from one of the oppassers and, in consequence of the fellow’s grossly indecent conduct towards his little daughter, had dealt the wretch a couple of slashing blows with his own weapon. But hardly any notice whatever was taken of these extenuating circumstances—they were, in fact, not inquired into at all. The wretched father was there and then found guilty of having illegally in his possession two katties of opium. As this was his first offence, he could only be sentenced to forfeit the captured wares and to undergo three months’ hard labour. But on the other charge, that namely, of having offered resistance to the police and of having wounded one of the officers in the execution of his duty, he was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.

Thus father and son were both satisfactorily disposed of. The latter, though perfectly innocent, was sent to penal servitude for eight years. The former, for a very simple offence, for which only a trifling penalty could be inflicted, had not the infamous conduct of the searchers driven him to resistance, was sent to penal servitude for ten years. The Chief Justice at Batavia fixed upon Atjeh as the place where the culprits should serve their time; but—before the order could arrive at Santjoemeh—both Ardjan and his father had managed to make their escape.

It was an awful night, dark as pitch, while a terrible thunderstorm had burst over Santjoemeh. The young native soldier who was on sentry-duty inside the outer wall of the prison, had been driven to seek for shelter within his sentry-box, terrified by the flashes of lightning, the deafening claps of thunder, and the torrents of rain; when, suddenly, he felt an iron grip upon his throat. Before he had time to utter a sound, a blow from a heavy piece of wood stretched him senseless on the ground. Meanwhile the thunder kept on rattling and the rain came splashing down with redoubled fury—such rain as is only seen in the tropics. Of these circumstances, so favourable to their flight, the fugitives made the best use. Nimble and strong, as a good sailor must be, Ardjan was able to help his father to gain the top of the wall, then he soon managed to clamber up himself. Once firmly seated, he lowered the old man to the ground on the other side, and, in a twinkling, he was at his side. Not one of the sentries on duty outside the wall was to be seen, they also, in such dreadful weather, had got under cover. The rain still poured down in torrents, and the water was coursing over the plain beyond and dashing down the streets as if all the rivers in the country had broken their bounds. Outside the prison wall all was darkness. One solitary oil-lamp was flickering in a lantern; but it only shed a sickly and feeble light in its immediate neighbourhood, while its wretched little glimmers served but to make more palpable the darkness beyond. Just at the moment when the fugitives had safely reached the foot of the wall, there came a blinding flash of lightning, cleaving its zig-zag way through the clouds. The flash was followed immediately by a stunning clap of thunder with that peculiar crackling sound which tells that the lightning has struck something close by, and then another noise was heard—it was that of a mighty cocoa nut palm which split from top to bottom, came crashing to the ground.

The two Javanese then left the shelter of the wall where they knew that the rounds might at any moment discover them; and, taking advantage of the dense darkness which followed upon the dazzling flash, they darted across the small plain in which the prison stood, and, in a few moments, had reached the edge of the dessa.

Once there, they were perfectly safe, for not one of the inhabitants of the dessa would have thought of betraying the victims of the detested opium tyranny to the vengeance of the white man.