“Biak (good)! Gold and silver we have plenty. Your English companies are taking it out of the land by the pikul In the old days, before the Portuguese came, the handle of every warrior’s kris was of ivory. Now our elephants are dying before the rifle of the sportsman. Soon our jungles will know them no more. Apes—” and he pointed at the top of a giant marbow, where a troop of silver wah-wahs were swinging from limb to limb. “The glorious argus pheasant you have seen.”
“Boyah, Tuan!” the man at the wheel sung out.
I grasped my Winchester Express. Just ahead, half hidden by a black labyrinth of scaffold-like mangrove roots, lay the huge, mud-covered form of a crocodile.
The Tuan Hakim raised his hand, and the launch slowed down and ran in under the bank.
“Now!” he whispered, and our rifles exploded in unison.
A great splash of slimy red mud fell full on the front of my spotless white jacket, another struck in the water close by the side of the boat. The wounded crocodile had sprung into the air from his tail up, and dropped back into his wallow with a resounding thud. In another instant he was off the slippery bank and within the security of the mud-colored water.
I saw that my companion had more to tell me, possibly a native tradition of the fabled riches that were concealed within the heart of the historic mountain that was for the moment framed in a setting of green, directly ahead. I put a fresh cartridge into the barrel, and leaned back in my deck chair.
The Chief Justice extracted a manila from his case and handed it to me.
“In the days when Tunku Ali III. ruled over Maur, from Malacca to the confines of Johore, the Portuguese came, and Albuquerque with his ships of war and soldiers in iron armor sought to wrest from our people their cities and their riches. My ancestor was a dato,—our laksamana, high admiral, of his Highness’s fleet. His galley was built of burnished teak, the lining of its cabin was of sandalwood,—algum wood your Koran calls it,—and the turret in its stern was covered with plates of solid gold. You will find record of it to this day in the state papers of Acheen.
“For fully a hundred and forty years did the Emperor of Johore and his valiant allies, the King of Acheen and the Sultan of Maur, seek to retake Malacca from the Portuguese. The Dato Mamat was the last laksamana of the fleet. With him died the war and the secret of Mount Ophir.”