Baboe Dalima; or, The Opium Fiend

by M. T. H. Perelaer

“Hallo!” cried Than Khan as he roughly tore the veil from the girl’s face, “what have we here? Dalima! the little ‘baboe’ of His Excellency the Resident.”

At these words the maiden cowered down in the most abject terror. The two Chinamen exchanged a few hasty words in whispers in which the name Lim Ho could be distinguished. That name seemed to have an extraordinary effect upon the poor girl. When she heard it her face became the very picture of terror.

This Lim Ho was one of the sons of the great opium farmer at Santjoemeh and the man was madly in love with the poor little Javanese girl. He had offered her large sums of money, he had tempted her with costly gifts, but all in vain. He had addressed himself to her father, a poor peasant in the “dessa” of Kaligaweh close by the principal township, again without success. Then the wretch had sworn that, at any price, the girl should be his, even if to possess her he might have to commit a crime. He was a kind of scoundrel who would stick at nothing.

At the mention of that hateful name the girl recoiled and shrunk together in terror. She knew the man, and now she also knew the two rascals into whose power she had thus been thrown.

The two Chinamen kept on whispering to each other; they spoke in Chinese of which language neither Ardjan nor Dalima knew a single word.

Before, however, the former had time to collect his thoughts or his energies, the scoundrels were upon him. They tied up his hands and feet with a thin rope which Liem King drew out of the capacious pocket of his baggy trousers. Before he had time to defend himself Ardjan found himself helpless, tied up in the shape of a hoop. But even had there been time to resist, the poor fellow could have done nothing. He was quite unarmed, he had not had time even to snatch up his dagger-knife, and the frightful exertion of rowing the “djoekoeng” through the breakers had so completely fagged him out, that, when the men came upon him, he was lying panting for breath on the beach and quite incapable of further exertion. The low moaning sound which had guided the Chinamen to him was the sound of his gasping and panting for breath as he lay on the shore.

Having firmly secured Ardjan, the Chinamen took hold of Dalima and pinioned her also, ordering her to keep perfectly quiet and threatening to kill her should she disobey.

It was a good thing for Dalima that her captors could not see the expression on her face as they uttered their threatening warning. There passed over the girl’s features an expression of contempt which would have given them food for reflection; and might have induced them to make quite sure of their fair prisoner. But of this they saw nothing, and, thinking the girl safe enough, they turned to her companion. His arms were tied behind him and fastened to his feet which had also been tightly bound. Liem King now took up a stout bamboo stick which had formed part of the rigging of the surf boat, and having passed it under Ardjan’s arms they each took hold of one end of the bamboo, and put it on their shoulders, and then, with their living burden thus helplessly dangling between them they ran at a slow trot up the path, along which, a few minutes before, they had groped their way. At every jolt the poor Javanese uttered a cry of anguish. It was torture indeed that they made Ardjan endure. The whole weight of his body, bent in the most constrained attitude, was bearing upon his arms, and the whippy motion of the pliable stick made every movement almost unendurable as the Chinamen jogged slowly along. The bones of the arms upon which, as a sack, the entire body was hanging seemed at every moment about to snap, and the limbs felt as if every jog must wrench them from their sockets.

But neither Liem King nor Than Khan paid the slightest heed to Ardjan’s shrieks, they kept quietly trotting along. In vain did the wretched man entreat them to kill him and so put him out of the misery he was enduring. In vain, seeing his prayers unheeded, did he hurl the most offensive epithets at the heads of his tormentors, hoping thus to provoke them to rage and goad them on to take summary vengeance. To all Ardjan’s entreaties and insults, the Chinamen replied only with derisive laughter, and the “Aso tjina” (Chinese dog) repeated again and again, Than Khan, who had one hand free, repaid with a tremendous blow with his fist, the effect of which was only to increase the agony of the sufferer.

In a few minutes, however, which to Ardjan seemed an age of torture, the “djaga monjet” was reached. The ropes which tied Ardjan’s feet were then untied, leaving his arms only closely pinioned. The Chinamen then ordered him to climb up the rough steps and enforced their command by pricking him with the points of their daggers. The Javanese knew well that the faintest show of resistance might cost him his life, and now that the torture of dangling on the bamboo was no longer felt, he began to take a more cheerful view of life. So he passively did as he was told, and in a few moments he was at the top and inside the hut. There the two brutes once again tied him up securely, and, in order to make even an effort of flight impossible, they fastened his hands tightly on his chest and forced the bamboo cane through the bend of the elbows which were sticking out behind his back. Thus trussed up, as it were, the least movement on the part of Ardjan occasioned the most unbearable pain to his bruised and swollen limbs. Then, they laid him down on his back on the floor of the hut, and to make assurance doubly sure, they lashed him to one of the principal posts of the small building.