'Behold a sample of what ye also may soon be,' said To’ Gâjah, spurning the dead body of Imâm Bakar as he spoke. 'Mark it well, and then tell me who is your Master and who your Chief!'
Khatib Bûjang and Imâm Prang Sâmah stuttered and stammered, but not because they hesitated about the answer, but rather through over eagerness to speak, and a deadly fear which held them dumb. At last, however, they found words and cried together:
'The Bĕndăhâra is our Master, and our Chief is whomsoever thou mayest be pleased to appoint.'
Thus they saved their lives, and are still living, while To’ Gâjah lies buried in an exile's grave; but many will agree in thinking that such a death as Imâm Bakar's is a better thing for a man to win, than empty years such as his companions have survived to pass in scorn and in dishonour.
But while these things were being done at Pĕkan and at Pâsir Tambang, Wan Lingga, who, as I have related, had remained behind in the upper country when To’ Râja was carried to Pĕkan, was sparing no pains to seduce the faithful natives of the interior from their loyalty to their hereditary Chief. In all his efforts, however, he was uniformly unsuccessful, for, though he had got rid of To’ Râja, there remained in the Lĭpis Valley the aged Chief of the District, the Dâto’ Kâya Stia-wangsa, whom the people both loved and feared. He had been a great warrior in the days of his youth, and a series of lucky chances and hair-breadth escapes had won for him an almost fabulous reputation, such as among a superstitious people easily attaches itself to any striking and successful personality. It was reported that he bore a charmed life, that he was invulnerable alike to lead bullets and to steel blades, and even the silver slugs which his enemies had fashioned for him had hitherto failed to find their billet in his body. From the first this man had thrown in his lot with his kinsman To’ Râja, and, unlike him, he had declined to allow himself to be persuaded to visit the capital when the war came to an end. Thus he continues to live at the curious little village of Pĕnjum, on the Lĭpis river, and, so long as he was present in person to exert his influence upon the people, Wan Lingga found it impossible to make any headway against him.
These things were reported by Wan Lingga to To’ Gâjah, and by the latter to the Bĕndăhâra. The result was an order to Wan Lingga, charging him to attack To’ Kâya Stia-wangsa by night, and to slay him and all his house. With To’ Kâya dead and buried, and To’ Râja a State prisoner at the capital, the game which To’ Gâjah and Wan Lingga had been playing would at least be won. The Lĭpis would fall to the former, and the Jĕlai to the latter as their spoils of war; and the people of these Districts, being left 'like little chicks without the mother hen,' would acquiesce in the arrangement, following their new Chiefs as captives of their bows and spears.
Thus all looked well for the future when Wan Lingga set out, just before sun-down, from his house at Âtok to attack To’ Kâya Stia-wangsa at Pĕnjum. The latter village was at that time inhabited by more Chinese than Malays. It was the nearest point on the river to the gold mines of Jâlis, and at the back of the squalid native shops, that lined the river bank, a well-worn footpath led inland to the Chinese alluvial washings. Almost in the centre of the long line of shops and hovels which formed the village of Pĕnjum, stood the thatched house in which To’ Kâya Stia-wangsa lived, with forty or fifty women, and about a dozen male followers. The house was roofed with thatch. Its walls were fashioned from plaited laths of split bamboo, and it was surrounded by a high fence of the same material. This was the place which was to be Wan Lingga's object of attack.
A band of nearly a hundred men followed Wan Lingga from Âtok. Their way lay through a broad belt of virgin forest, which stretches between Âtok and Pĕnjum, a distance of about half a dozen miles. The tramp of the men moving in a single file through the jungle, along the narrow footpath, worn smooth by the passage of countless naked feet, made sufficient noise to scare all living things from their path. The forests of the Peninsula, even at night, when their denizens are afoot, are not cheerful places. Though a man lie very still, so that the life of the jungle is undisturbed by his presence, the weird night noises, that are borne to his ears, only serve to emphasise the solitude and the gloom. The white moonlight straggles in patches through the thick canopy of leaves overhead, and makes the shadows blacker and more awful by the contrast of light and shade. But a night march through the forest is even more depressing, when the soft pat of bare feet, the snapping of a dry twig, a whispered word of warning or advice, the dull deep note of the night-jar, and the ticking of the tree insects alone break the stillness. Nerves become strung to a pitch of intensity which the circumstances hardly seem to warrant, and all the chances of evil, which in the broad light of day a man would laugh to scorn, assume in one's mind the aspect of inevitable certainties.
I speak by the book; for well I know the depression, and the fearful presentiment of coming evil, which these night marches are apt to occasion; and well can I picture the feelings and thoughts which must have weighed upon Wan Lingga, during that four hours' silent tramp through the forest.
He was playing his last card. If he succeeded in falling upon To’ Kâya unawares, and slaying him on the spot, all that he had longed for and dreamed of, all that he desired for himself and for those whom he held dear, all that he deemed to be of any worth, would be his for all his years. And if he failed?—He dared not think of what his position would then be; and yet it was this very thought that clung to him with such persistence during the slow march. He saw himself hated and abhorred by the people of the interior, who would then no longer have reason to fear him; he saw himself deserted by To’ Gâjah, in whose eyes, he was well aware, he was merely regarded as a tool, to be laid aside when use for it was over; he saw himself in disgrace with the King, whose orders he had failed to carry out; and he saw himself a laughing stock in the land, one who had aspired and had not attained, one who had striven and had failed, with that grim phantom of hereditary madness, of which he was always conscious, stretching out its hand to seize him. All these things he saw and feared, and his soul sank within him.