Tales of the Malayan Coast
From Penang to the Philippines
Baboo’s Good Tiger
A Tale of the Malacca Jungle
Aboo Din’s first-born, Baboo, was only four years old when he had his famous adventure with the tiger he had found sleeping in the hot lallang grass within the distance of a child’s voice from Aboo Din’s bungalow.
For a long time before that hardly a day had passed but Aboo-Din, who was our syce, or groom, and wore the American colors proudly on his right arm, came in from the servants’ quarters with an anxious look on his kindly brown face and asked respectfully for the tuan (lord) or mem (lady).
“What is it, Aboo Din?” the mistress would inquire, as visions of Baboo drowned in the great Shanghai jar, or of Baboo lying crushed by a boa among the yellow bamboos beyond the hedge, passed swiftly through her mind.
“Mem see Baboo?” came the inevitable question.
It was unnecessary to say more. At once Ah Minga, the “boy”; Zim, the cook; the kebuns (gardeners); the tukanayer (water-boy), and even the sleek Hindu dirzee, who sat sewing, dozing, and chewing betel-nut, on the shady side of the veranda, turned out with one accord and commenced a systematic search for the missing Baboo.
Sometimes he was no farther off than the protecting screen of the “compound” hedge, or the cool, green shadows beneath the bungalow. But oftener the government Sikhs had to be appealed to, and Kampong Glam in Singapore searched from the great market to the courtyards of Sultan Ali. It was useless to whip him, for whippings seemed only to make Baboo grow. He would lisp serenely as Aboo Din took down the rattan withe from above the door, “Baboo baniak jahat!” (Baboo very bad!) and there was something so charmingly impersonal in all his mischief, that we came between his own brown body and the rod, time and again. There was nothing distinctive in Baboo’s features or form. To the casual observer he might have been any one of a half-dozen of his playmates. Like them, he went about perfectly naked, his soft, brown skin shining like polished rosewood in the fierce Malayan sun.