“Where is the opium?” asked Singomengolo in threatening tones.
Pak Ardjan returned no answer.
“Well, never mind,” said Singo, “we shall soon find it,” and a horrid smile crossed his lips.
He made a signal to the Chinamen, and to the policemen who were not engaged in watching the door and windows; and then ensued a search, we may call it a hunt, the description of which may well seem incredible to those who do not know that such frightful scenes are not at all of uncommon occurrence.
Under the couch, under the mats which covered the floor, they searched, they rooted up the very floor of the cabin, they poked about under the stove and in the ashes of that very primitive kind of cooking-apparatus; pillows were rent open, and their contents scattered on the floor; the few boxes and baskets were torn open, and the noisome rags they contained were shaken and contemptuously flung aside; the poor miserable furniture, a few pots and pans, the rice-kettle, the tombok-block, the rice-panniers, even the sirih-box were turned over, but nothing—nothing could they find.
Singomengolo was angry. Now he ordered a body-search to be made.
First they seized upon Pak Ardjan and, though he offered some resistance, he was, with sundry kicks and blows, very soon shaken out of the few filthy rags which hung about him, and, in his hideous leanness, he stood there naked before the eyes of his family. The sense of decency, which never leaves even the most utterly degraded, made the poor man cower down moaning to the ground trying to hide his nakedness from the eyes of his children.
Then came the mother’s turn, and the turn of the children—some of them girls from seven to fourteen years of age. Regardless alike of the mother’s feelings or of the innocence of childhood, the inhuman monsters proceeded in their search, and a scene was then enacted so hideous, so disgusting, that over it we must draw a veil.
The children cried, the girls sobbed and wept, the mother shrieked under this base and violent treatment, it was of no avail. But presently, one of the policemen rudely seized upon the eldest daughter, poor little Sarina, a girl of fourteen; she, in her fright, dropped her sarong, and uttered a scream of terror. That cry made Pak Ardjan bound to his feet, madly he flung himself upon the cowardly wretch, with one wrench he dragged the fellow’s sabre from its scabbard, and with its edge he dealt the miscreant two such blows as sent him, sorely wounded and howling with pain, flying from the scene of his dastardly exploit. But the poor father thus goaded to madness and blinded by fury, whose withered arm and wasted frame could not endure any sustained exertion, was at once overpowered and disarmed before he could strike another blow in defence of his outraged household. They bound him most cruelly, they tied his ankles together and forced the rough and prickly gemoetoe-cords between his toes, which at the slightest movement, put the unfortunate man to excruciating torture. Next they proceeded to handcuff him; but, as the manacles were much too wide to confine his shrivelled wrists, they drove in between the arm and the iron, rough pieces of firewood, and this caused such intolerable pain that a lamentable howl came from Pak Ardjan’s lips—a howl most like that of some poor beast in its dying agony.
But now the opium? The opium? Hitherto none had been found.