In Court and Kampong / Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula

by Sir Hugh Charles Clifford

So Wan Bong set off on a triumphal progress up river to Bûkit Bĕtong, disbanding his army as he went. But scarcely had he reached his home, than he learned, to his dismay, that Che’ Wan Âhman and Che’ Wan Da, with a large force, were only a few miles behind him at Bâtu Nĕring. Pănglîma Râja Sĭbîdi, with all his people, had made common cause with the enemy, whose ranks were further swelled by the very men who had so lately been disbanded by Wan Bong on his journey up river. The Pĕkan Râjas had carefully collected them man by man as they followed in the wake of the dispersing army, and Wan Bong thus found himself deprived, in an instant, not only of all that he had believed himself to have won, but even of such poor following as had been his in the days before his ambitious schemes were hatched.

But before the royal forces began their invasion of the upper country, it became evident to them that Che’ Jahya, the Chief who had been left in charge of the Tĕmbĕling River by Wan Bong, must be disposed of. This man had followed Wan Bong's fortunes from the first, and it was known in the royal camp that no attempt to buy his loyalty would be likely to prove successful. Wan Bong had started up the Jĕlai on his triumphal progress, and it was important that no news should reach him, that might cause him to stay the dispersal of his men. So Che’ Jahya's fate was sealed. About the second day after Wan Bong's departure for Bûkit Bĕtong, Che’ Jahya was seated in the cool interior of his house at Kuâla Âtok, on the Tĕmbĕling River. The sun was hot overhead, and the squeaking low of a cow-buffalo, calling to its calf, came to his ears. The fowls clucked and scratched about the ground beneath the flooring, and the women-folk in the cook-house chattered happily. All spoke of peace. The war was over, and Che’ Jahya sat dreaming of the good things which would be his in the days that were coming. He had stood by Wan Bong when bullets were flying, and had camped on the bare earth when his armies had taken the field. His aid and his counsel had had no small share in his chief's success. Che’ Jahya's heart was filled with peace, and the gladness of one whose toils are over, and who sees his rewards well within his grasp. Already, in imagination, he was acting as the new Bĕndăhâras deputy, having power over men, a harem full of fair women, and wealth to gild his ease. And yet, as he sat there dreaming, his death was ever drawing nearer to him, unfeared and unsuspected.

Shortly before sunset, at the hour when the kine go down to water, a party of Râwa men came to Che’ Jahya's house. These people are a race of Sumatran Malays, and members of their tribe have been mercenaries and hired bravos in the Peninsula, beyond the memory of man. They came to Che’ Jahya, they said, to offer their services to him; and, in their coming, he saw the first evidence of that authority over men and things, of which he had sat dreaming through the hot hours of the day. He received them courteously, and had rice and spiced viands placed before them, inviting them to eat, and, in doing so, he almost unconsciously assumed the tone and manners of a great chief. All partook of the meal in heartiness and good fellowship, for the Râwa people have no fine feelings about abusing hospitality, and a meal, come by it how you may, is a meal, and as such is welcome. When the food had been disposed of, and quids of betel nut and cigarettes were being discussed, the talk naturally turned upon the war, which had so recently closed. Che’ Jahya, still living in his Fool's Paradise, and intoxicated by his new honours and importance, was blind to any suspicions of treachery, which, at another time, might have presented themselves to him. He spoke condescendingly to his guests, still aping the manners of a great chief. He dropped a passing hint or two of his own prowess in the war, and when Băginda Sutan, the Headman of the Râwa gang, craved leave to examine the beauties of his kris, he handed his weapon to him, without hesitation, and with the air of one who confers a favour upon his subordinate.

This was the psychological moment for which his guests had been waiting. So long as Che’ Jahya was armed, it was possible that he might be able to do one of them a hurt, which was opposed to the principles upon which the Râwa men were accustomed to work; but as soon as he had parted with his kris, all the necessary conditions had been complied with. At a sign from their Chief, three of the Râwa men snatched up their guns, and a moment later Che’ Jahya rolled over dead, with three gaping holes drilled through his body. There he lay, motionless, in an ever-widening pool of blood, on the very spot where, so few hours before, he had dreamed those dreams of power and greatness—dreams that had then soared so high, and now lay as low as he, crushed and obliterated from the living world, as though they had never been.

Sutan Băginda hacked off Che’ Jahya's head, salted it, for obvious reasons, stained it a ghastly yellow with turmeric, as a further act of dishonour, and, when the house and village had been looted, carried his ghastly trophy with him down river to the camp of Che’ Wan Âhman. Then it was fastened to a boat pole, fixed upright in the sand of Pâsir Tambang, at the mouth of the Tĕmbĕling River, where it dangled with all the horror of set teeth, and staring eyeballs—the fixity of the face of one who has died a violent death—until, in the fulness of time, the waters rose and swept pole and head away with them. Thus was a plain lesson taught, by Che’ Wan Âhman to the people of Pahang, as a warning to dreamers of dreams.

But to return to Wan Bong, whose high hopes had all been shattered as completely, and almost as rudely, as those of poor Che’ Jahya. When the evil news of the approach of Che’ Wan Âhman and his people reached him, Wan Bong's scant following dwindled rapidly, and, at length, he was forced to seek refuge in the jungles of the Jĕlai, with only three or four of his closest adherents still following his fallen fortunes. As he lay on his bed of boughs, under a hastily improvised shelter of plaited palm leaves, with the fear of imminent death staring him in the eyes; when through the long day every snapping twig and every falling fruit, in those still forests, must have sounded to his ears like the footfall of his pursuers, Wan Bong must have had ample time to contrast his past position with that in which he then found himself. A few days before, he had returned to Jĕlai, a conqueror flushed with triumph. All Pahang, he had then imagined, lay at his feet, and he alone, of all the nobles of the Peninsula, had in a few months upset an old-world dynasty, and placed himself upon a royal throne. Then, in an instant of time, the vision had been shattered to fragments, and here he lay, like a hunted beast in the jungles, quaking at every sound that broke the stillness, an outlaw, a ruined man, with a price set upon his head.

The jungles, for a fugitive from his enemies, are not a pleasant refuge. The constant dampness, which clings to anything in the dark recesses of the forest, breeds boils and skin irritation of all sorts on the bodies of those who dare not come out into the open places. Faces, on which the sunlight never falls, become strangely pallid, and the constant agony of mind scores deep lines on cheek and forehead. The food, too, is bad. Rice the fugitive must have, or the loathsome dropsical swellings, called bâsal, soon cripple the strongest limbs; but a Malay cannot live on rice alone, and the sour jungle fruits, and other vegetable growths, with which he ekes out his scanty meals, wring his weakened stomach with constant pangs and aches. All these things Wan Bong now experienced, as he daily shifted his camp, from one miserable halting-place to another; but a greater pain than all the rest was soon to be added to his cup of bitterness. He was an opium smoker, and his hoarded store of the precious drug began to run very low. At last the day came on which it was exhausted, and Wan Bong was driven to desperation. For some twenty-four hours he strove against the overpowering longing for that subtle drug that leads the strongest will captive, but the struggle was all in vain. When, at length, the physical pain had become so intense that Wan Bong could neither stand, nor sit, nor lie down for more than a minute at a time, nor yet could still the moans which the restless torture drew from him, he despatched one of his boys to seek for the supply of opium, which alone could assuage his sufferings.

The boy left him, and his two other companions, in a patch of the high grass, which the Malays call rĕsam, that chanced to grow at the edge of the forest near Bâtu Nĕring. He promised to return to him as soon as the opium should have been procured. But Che’ Wan Âhman's people had anticipated that Wan Bong would, sooner or later, be forced to purchase opium, and no sooner had the messenger presented himself at the shop of the Chinese trader, who sold the drug, than he found himself bound hand and foot. He was carried before Che’ Wan Âhman's representative, and interrogated. He denied all knowledge of Wan Bong's hiding-place; but Malays have methods of making people speak the truth on occasion. They are grim, ghastly, blood-curdling methods, that need not be here described in detail; suffice it to say that the boy spoke.

That evening, as the short twilight was going out in the sky, and the flakes of scarlet-dyed clouds were paling overhead, a body of men crept, with noiseless feet, through the clump of long grass in which Wan Bong was hiding. They saw him sitting on the earth, bent double over his folded arms, rocking his body to and fro, in the agony of the opium smoker, when the unsatisfied craving for the drug is strong upon him. There was a rustle in the grass behind him, the sharp fierce clang of a rifle rang out through the forest, and a bullet through Wan Bong's back ended his pains for ever. The Headman of the pursuing band was Che’ Bûrok of Pûlau Tâwar, but he was a prudent person who kept well in the rear until the deed had been done. Then he came forward rapidly, and unstringing the purse-belt from around his waist, he gave it to the man who had fired the shot, in exchange for a promise that not he, but Che’ Bûrok, should have the credit which is due to one who has slain the enemies of the King. Thus it was that Che’ Bûrok was credited, for a time, with the deed, and reaped fair rewards from the Bĕndăhâra and his sons. But murder will out, and Che’ Bûrok died some years later, a discredited liar, in disgrace with his former masters, and shorn of all his honours and possessions.

Wan Bong's head was sawn off at the neck, and was carried into camp, by that splendid shock of luxuriant black hair, which had been his pride when he was alive. It was clotted with blood now, and matted with the dirt from the lairs where he had slept in the jungle, but it served well enough as a handle by which to hold his dissevered head, and there was no need, therefore, to make a puncture under his chin, whence to pass a rattan cord through to his mouth, as is the custom when there is no natural handle by which such trophies can be carried.