A groan escaped the girl’s lips as she dropped back among the cushions of her tinsel throne. Noa saw the little tragedy, and for the first time understood its full import. He ground his teeth together, and his hand worked uneasily along the scabbard of his kris.
In another moment the room was empty, and the bride and groom were left side by side on the gaudily bedecked platform, to mix and partake of their first betel-nut together. Mechanically Noa picked the broken fragments of the nut from its brass cup, from another a syrah leaf smeared with lime, added a clove, a cardamom, and a scraping of mace, and handed it to his bride. She took it without raising her eyes, and placed it against her bleeding gums. In a moment a bright red juice oozed from between her lips and ran down the corner of her distorted mouth. Noa extended his hand, and she gave him the half-masticated mass. He raised it to his own mouth, and then for the first time looked the girl full in the face.
There was no love-light in the drooping brown eyes before him. The syrah-stained lips were slightly parted, exposing the feverish gums, and short, black teeth. Her hands hung listlessly by her side, and only for the color that came and went beneath the rouge of her brown cheeks, she might have been dead to this last sacred act of their marriage vows.
“Anak!” he said slowly, drawing closer to her side. “Anak, I will be a true husband to you. You shall be my only wife—”
He paused, expecting some response, but she only gazed stolidly up at the smoke-begrimed attap of the roof.
“Anak—” he repeated, and then a shudder passed through him, and his eyes lit up with a wild, frenzied gleam,
A moment he paused irresolute, and then with a spring he grasped the golden handle of his kris and with one bound was across the floor, and on the sand below among the revellers.
For an instant the snake-like blade of the kris shone dully in the firelight above his head, and then with a yell that echoed far out among the palms, it descended straight into the heart of the nearest Malay.
The hot life-blood spurted out over his hand and naked arm, and dyed the creamy silk of his wedding baju a dark red.
Once more he struck, as he chanted a promise from the Koran, and the shrill, agonized cry of a woman broke upon the ears of the astonished guests.