'There is one who would speak with thee, Tûan, but he cannot climb up the ship's side. He is like a dead man—unless one lifts him, how can he move? Will the Tûan, therefore, aid him to ascend into the ship?'
The White Man loosened his pistol in its holster, covertly, that she might not see, and stepped cautiously to the place where the boat appeared to be moored, for he, too, began to fear a trap. What he saw over the side reassured him. The dug-out was of the smallest, and it had only one occupant. He was a man who, even in the dim moonlight, showed the sharp angles of his bones. He had a peculiarly drawn and shrunken look, and the skin was stretched across his hollow cheeks like the goat-hide on a drum-face. The White Man leaped down into the boat, and, aided by the girl, he lifted the man on board. Then, painfully and very slowly, the latter crept aft, going on all fours like some unclean animal, until he had reached the shelter in the stern. The girl and the White Man followed, and they all three squatted down on the creaking bamboo decking. The man sat, all of a heap, moaning at short intervals, as Malays moan when the fever holds them. The girl sat unconcernedly preparing a quid of betel-nut from its four ingredients, and the White Man inhaled his cigarette and waited for them to speak. He was trying to get the hang of the business, and to guess what had caused two people, whom he did not know, to seek an interview with him in this weird place, at such an untimely hour.
The girl, the moonlight told him, was pretty. She had a small, perfectly shaped head, a wide smooth forehead, neat, glossy hair, bright, laughing eyes, with eyebrows arched and well-defined, 'like the artificial spur of a fighting cock,' and the pretty little hands and feet which are so common among all well-born Malay women. The man was hideous. His shrunken and twitching face with its taut skin, and his utterly broken, degraded, and decrepit appearance were indescribably horrible, and the flickering of the moonlight, through the torn mat overhead, only added to the grotesqueness of his figure.
At length the girl looked up at the White Man, and spoke:
'The Tûan knows Âwang Îtam?' she asked. Yes, the White Man knew him well, but had not seen him for some months.
'This is he,' she said, pointing to the abject figure by her side, and her listener felt as though she had struck him across the face. When last he had seen Âwang Îtam, he was one of the best favoured of the King's Youths, a fine, upstanding youngster, dressed in many-coloured silks, and with an amount of side and swagger about him, which would have amply sufficed for a regiment of Her Majesty's Guards. Now he half lay, half sat, on the damp decking, the most pitiful wreck of humanity that the White Man had ever seen. What had befallen him to cause so fearful a change? I will tell you the tale, in my own words, as the White Man learned it from him and Bêdah, as they sat talking during the watches of that long night.
In every Independent Malay State, there is a gang of fighting men, which watches over the person of the King and acts as his bodyguard. It is recruited from the sons of the chiefs, nobles, and men of the well-bred classes; and its members follow at the heels of the King whenever he goes abroad, paddle his boat, join with him in the chase, gamble unceasingly, do much evil in the King's name, slay all who chance to offend him, and flirt lasciviously with the girls within the palace. They are always ready for anything from 'pitch-and-toss to manslaughter,' and no Malay king has to ask twice in their hearing 'Will nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?' Their one aim in life is to gain the favour of their master, and, having won it, to freely abuse their position. As the Malay proverb has it, they carry their master's work upon their heads, and their own under their arms, and woe betide those who are not themselves under the immediate protection of the King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of irregular police force, levying chantage from those whom they detect in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own price. They are known as the Bûdak Râja—or King's Youths—and are greatly feared by the people, for they are as reckless, as unscrupulous, as truculent, and withal as gaily dressed and well born a gang of young ruffians, as one would be like to meet in a long summer's cruise.
Âwang Îtam had served the King for several years as one of the Bûdak Râja, but his immediate chief was Saiyid Üsmân, a youngster who was also one of the King's Youths, and was usually spoken of as Tûan Bângau. Âwang had been born and bred in the house of which Tûan Bângau's father was the head, and, though in accordance with the immutable Malay custom, Âwang always spoke of himself as 'thy servant' when he addressed Tûan Bângau, the relations which subsisted between them more nearly resembled those of brothers, than those which we recognise as being proper to master and servant. They had crawled about the floor of the women's apartments in company, until they were old enough to play in the open air; they had played pôrok and tûju lûbang, and all the games known to Malay children, still in company; they had splashed about in the river together, cooling their little brown bodies in the running water; they had often eaten from the same plate, and had slept side by side on the same mat spread in the verandah. Later, they had been circumcised on the same day, and, having thus entered upon man's estate, they had together begun to participate in the life of dissipation which every court-bred Malay boy regards as his birth-right. Thus they had gone astraying after strange women, gambling and quarelling with the other youths, but still in company, and with their old love for one another unaltered. They had been duly entered as members of the King's Youths, and had proved themselves not to be the least reckless and truculent of those who form that ruffianly gang, but they had chiefly used their position to carry on their love intrigues with greater freedom and daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay around it, who cast loving eyes upon them. Âwang, however, cared little for this, for, by the irony of that Fate which always directs that men should fall in love with the wrong women, and vice versâ, his heart was eaten up with a fiery desire for a girl who was a jâmah-jâmah-an, or casual concubine of the King, and who resolutely declined to have ought to do with him. Nevertheless, the moth still fluttered around the candle, and Âwang never missed an opportunity of catching a passing glimpse of the object of his longing. It was an evil day for both Âwang Îtam and Tûan Bângau, however, when, as they swaggered past the palace-fence, seeking to peep at this girl, they were seen by the King's daughter, Tŭngku Ûteh, and a desire was straightway born in her breast for the young and handsome Saiyid.
In the East, love affairs develop quickly; and that very day Âwang Îtam again saw Iang Mûnah, the girl whom he had loved so long and so hopelessly, and by a flash of an eye-lid was informed that she had that to tell him which it concerned him to know. When both parties desire a secret interview many difficulties may be overcome, and that evening Âwang whispered into the ear of Tûan Bângau that 'the moon was about to fall into his lap.'
'I dreamed not long since,' said Tûan Bângau, 'that I was bitten by a very venomous snake!' And then Âwang knew that his friend was ready for any adventure.