"Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
To run a muck, and tilt at all I meet."
Pope, Im. of Horace, B. ii. Sat. i. 69.
1768-71.—"These acts of indiscriminate murder are called by us mucks, because the perpetrators of them, during their frenzy, continually cry out amok, amok, which signifies kill, kill...."—Stavorinus, i. 291.
1783.—At Bencoolen in this year (1760)—"the Count (d'Estaing) afraid of an insurrection among the Buggesses ... invited several to the Fort, and when these had entered the Wicket was shut upon them; in attempting to disarm them, they mangamoed, that is ran a muck; they drew their cresses, killed one or two Frenchmen, wounded others, and at last suffered themselves, for supporting this point of honour."—Forrest's Voyage to Mergui, 77.
1784.—"It is not to be controverted that these desperate acts of indiscriminate murder, called by us mucks, and by the natives mongamo, do actually take place, and frequently too, in some parts of the east (in Java in particular)."—Marsden, H. of Sumatra, 239.
1788.—"We are determined to run a muck rather than suffer ourselves to be forced away by these Hollanders."—Mem. of a Malayan Family, 66.
1798.—"At Batavia, if an officer take one of these amoks, or mohawks, as they have been called by an easy corruption, his reward is very considerable; but if he kill them, nothing is added to his usual pay...."—Translator of Stavorinus, i. 294.
1803.—"We cannot help thinking, that one day or another, when they are more full of opium than usual, they (the Malays) will run a muck from Cape Comorin to the Caspian."—Sydney Smith, Works, 3rd ed., iii. 6.
1846.—"On the 8th July, 1846, Sunan, a respectable Malay house-builder in Penang, ran amok ... killed an old Hindu woman, a Kling, a Chinese boy, and a Kling girl about three years old ... and wounded two Hindus, three Klings, and two Chinese, of whom only two survived.... On the trial Sunan declared he did not know what he was about, and persisted in this at the place of execution.... The amok took place on the 8th, the trial on the 13th, and the execution on the 15th July,—all within 8 days."—J. Ind. Arch., vol. iii. 460-61.