Since Baboo had become a hero and earned the appellation of the Harimau-Anak, his vanity directed his footsteps toward Kampong Glam, the Malay quarter of Singapore. Here he was generally to be found, seated on a richly hued Indian rug, with his feet drawn up under him, amid a circle of admiring shopkeepers, syces, kebuns, and fishermen, narrating for the hundredth time how he had been caught at Changhi by a tiger, carried through the jungle on its back until he came to a great banian tree, into which he had crawled while the tiger slept, how a sladang (wild bull) came out of the lagoon and killed the tiger, and how Tuan Consul and Aboo Din, the father, had found him and kissed him many times.
Often he enlarged on the well-known story and repeated long conversations that he had carried on with the tiger while they were journeying through the jungle.
A brass lamp hung above his head in which the cocoanut oil sputtered and burned and cast a fitful half-light about the box-like stall.
Only the eager faces of the listeners stood out clear and distinct against the shadowy background of tapestries from Madras and Bokhara, soft rich rugs from Afghanistan and Persia, curiously wrought finger bowls of brass and copper from Delhi and Siam, and piles of cunningly painted sarongs from Java.
Close against a naked fisherman sat the owner of the bazaar in tall, conical silk-plaited hat and flowing robes, ministering to the wants of the little actor, as the soft, monotonous voice paused for a brief instant for the tiny cups of black coffee.
I never had the heart to interrupt him in the midst of one of these dramatic recitals, but would stand respectfully without the circle of light until he had finished the last sentence.
He was not frightened when I thrust the squatting natives right and left, and he did not forget to arise and touch the back of his open palm to his forehead, with a calm and reverent, “Tabek, Tuan” (Greeting, my lord).
So Baboo went with us to fight pirates.
He unrolled his mat out on the bow where every dash of warm salt water wet his brown skin, and where he could watch the flying fish dash across our way.