“Fly! Fly!” Adinda’s brothers cried, “fly, Saïdjah! there is a tiger!”
And they all unyoked the buffaloes, and throwing themselves on their broad backs, galloped away through sawahs, galangans,[10] mud, brushwood, forest, and allang-allang,[11] along fields and roads, and when they tore panting and dripping with perspiration into the village of Badoer, Saïdjah was not with them.
For when he had freed his buffalo from the yoke, and had mounted him as the others had done to fly, an unexpected jump made him lose his seat and fall to the earth. The tiger was very near.… Saïdjah’s buffalo, driven on by his own speed, jumped a few paces past the spot where his little master awaited death. But through his speed alone, [[325]]and not of his own will, the animal had gone further than Saïdjah, for scarcely had it conquered the momentum which rules all matter even after the cause has ceased, when it returned, and placing its big body, supported by its big feet, like a roof over the child, turned its horned head towards the tiger, which bounded forward … but for the last time. The buffalo caught him on his horns, and only lost some flesh, which the tiger took out of his neck. The tiger lay there with his belly torn open, and Saïdjah was saved. Certainly there had been ‘ontong’ in the ‘oeser-oeseran’ of the buffalo.
When this buffalo had also been taken away from Saïdjah’s father and slaughtered.…
I told you, reader, that my story is monotonous.
When this buffalo was slaughtered, Saïdjah was just twelve, and Adinda was wearing ‘sarongs,’ and making figures on them.[12] She had already learned to express thoughts in melancholy drawings on her tissue, for she had seen Saïdjah very sad. And Saïdjah’s father was also sad, but his mother still more so; for she had cured the wound in the neck of the faithful animal which had brought her child home unhurt, after having thought, by the news of Adinda’s brothers, that it had been taken away by the tiger. As often as she saw this wound, she thought how far the claws of the tiger, which had entered [[326]]so deeply into the coarse flesh of the buffalo, would have penetrated into the tender body of her child; and every time she put fresh dressings on the wound, she caressed the buffalo, and spoke kindly to him, that the good faithful animal might know how grateful a mother is.
Afterwards she hoped that the buffalo understood her, for then he must have understood why she wept when he was taken away to be slaughtered, and he would have known that it was not the mother of Saïdjah who caused him to be slaughtered. Some days afterwards Saïdjah’s father fled out of the country; for he was much afraid of being punished for not paying his land-taxes, and he had not another heirloom to sell, that he might buy a new buffalo, because his parents had always lived in Parang-Koodjang, and had therefore left him but few things. The parents of his wife too lived in the same district. However, he went on for some years after the loss of his last buffalo, by working with hired animals for ploughing; but that is a very ungrateful labour, and moreover, sad for a person who has had buffaloes of his own.
Saïdjah’s mother died of grief, and then it was that his father, in a moment of dejection, fled from Bantam, in order to endeavour to get labour in the Buitenzorg districts.
But he was punished with stripes, because he had left Lebak without a passport, and was brought back by the police to Badoer. There he was put in prison, because [[327]]he was supposed to be mad, which I can readily believe, and because it was feared that he would run amuck[13] in a moment of mata-glap.[14] But he was not long in prison, for he died soon afterwards. What became of the brothers and sisters of Saïdjah I do not know. The house in which they lived at Badoer was empty for some time, and soon fell down; for it was only built of bamboo, and covered with atap.[15] A little dust and dirt covered the place where there had been much suffering. There are many such places in Lebak. Saïdjah was already fifteen years of age, when his father set out for Buitenzorg; and he did not accompany him thither, because he had other plans in view. He had been told that there were at Batavia many gentlemen, who drove in bendies,[16] and that it would be easy for him to get a post as bendie-boy, for which generally a young person is chosen, so as not to disturb the equilibrium of the two-wheeled carriage by too much weight behind. He would, they told him, gain much in that way if he behaved well,—perhaps he would be able to spare in three years money enough to buy two buffaloes. This was a smiling prospect for him. With the proud step of one who has conceived a grand idea, he, [[328]]after his father’s flight, entered Adinda’s house, and communicated to her his plan.
“Think of it,” said he, “when I come back we shall be old enough to marry, and shall possess two buffaloes!”