Then I noticed, for the first time, that there was a leather strap around his body just in front of his back legs, and that a string was attached to it, which ran through the railings and off the veranda. I looked over, and there, squatting on his sandalled feet, was a Malay, with the other end of the string in his hand.
He arose, smiling, touched his forehead with the back of his brown palm, and asked blandly:—
“Tuan, want to buy?”
The calm assurance of the man amused me.
“What, that miserable little monkey?” I said. “Do you take me for a tourist? Look up in those trees and you will see monkeys that know boiled rice from padi.”
The man grinned and showed his brilliantly red teeth and gums.
“Tuan see. This monkey very wise,” and he made a motion with his stick. The little fellow sprang from the railing to his bare head, and sat holding on to his long black hair.
“See, Tuan,” and he made another motion, and the monkey leaped to the ground and commenced to run around his master, hopping first on one foot and then on the other, raising his arms over his head like a ballet dancer. After every revolution he would stop and turn a handspring.
The Malay all the time kept up a droning kind of a song in his native tongue, improvising as he went along.
The tenor of it was that one Hamat, a poor Malay, but a good Mohammedan, who had never been to Mecca, wanted to go to become a Hadji. He had no money but he had a good monkey that was very dear to him. He had found it in a distant jungle, beyond Johore, when a little baby; had brought it up like one of his own children and had taught it to dance and salaam.