On the next day a great feast was held; as one of the most important, nay, most vital, of preliminaries, the slaughter of the pigs took place, and the inspection of their livers for favorable or unfavorable omens. The pigs were brought up with their four feet tied together, and laid in a row outside the circle of Chiefs and elders in the veranda. Tama Talip, the Chief of the Lerons as well as an adopted father of Tinggi, whom Juman had slain, begged Dr. Hose to talk to a pig before it was killed, and enjoin it to divulge by its liver whether or not the Government was right in ordering the death of Tinggi. Dr. Hose consented to harangue the swine, but with much shrewdness, warned the assemblage, in advance, that no matter what the victim’s liver might indicate, he had pursued the course that seemed right to him, and would do so again in spite of all the livers of a thousand pigs. He stood forth in the centre of the circle, where the pig was lying, and paused solemnly for all conversation to cease; in spite, however, of the gravity of his bearing, and the sacredness of the occasion, some of the light-headed rabble, outside the circle, kept up a gabbling, whereupon he shouted at them in a voice so loud and stern, that their teeth chattered, and old Jamma’s hair stood up stiffer than before. In the pin-drop silence that followed, he suddenly gave the unsuspecting swine a vigorous kick to enforce attention, whereto, by an aggrieved squeal, the animal responded that it was all ears. His harangue was then addressed, partly to the pig and partly to the Lerons, almost in the following words:—‘Lerons, it is not one of our customs to ask from a pig what is in the hearts of men, but you people of up-river have faith in this custom and believe that a pig knows your feelings, [cries of ‘Betúl! Betúl!’—True! True!] I will on this occasion adopt your custom and talk to this pig. You tell me that this pig understands Malay, so I will talk in that language, that all may understand, Kayans, Kenyahs, Sibops, Berawans, and Lerons. Know then, that it was neither Juman nor Tama Bulan who slew Tinggi and his brother Sidup, but I, the Government, did it, and none other. If you have any fault to find, find it with me. Remember that, you, Tama Talip, there! And now, O sacred pig, tell us who is in the wrong and who is in the right. [Here, the pig receives another and vigorous call upon its attention, and responds befittingly.] If men of the Tinjar kill people, I will order men from the Baram to find the murderers and slay them. If men of the Baram kill people, I will order Tinjar men to find the murderers and slay them. Let this declaration of mine sink into your livers, all you people from both rivers, and never forget it.’ With these concluding words, he stamped his foot so suddenly and so loudly, that the old men, already awed by the silence and the solemnity of the hour, jumped almost from the floor, and Jamma shook his goggles off. Immediately the cry arose,—‘Kill the pig instantly, that he may hear nothing else to influence him!’ The poor beast was then quickly seized and taken to one side, and its neck sawed through with a dull parang, and before its death-struggles were fully over, its warm liver was deposited in a wooden bowl, and passed round the assembly for close inspection. They all tried to look extremely wise and expressed their opinions in a grave undertone to their neighbors; an old man, with one eye and a faded green velvet smoking-cap, winked and blinked at it, and then pensively resumed the mastication of a betel nut. Jamma pawed and fingered the liver all over, but maintained an ominous silence. Tama Talip screwed his mouth up on one side with a foreboding expression, clasped his hands over his knees, and began rocking backward and forward. The atmosphere became charged with perplexity and deep anxiety. Evidently, the fateful liver was only possibly favorable, and certainly dubious. The gall-bladder extended down nearly to the edge of the liver, and the small lobe which lies beside it was thin and long; so far, these features meant long life and prosperity. The chief points, which involved perplexity not unmixed with deep dismay, were that the lobe which represented the Government, was small, hard, and firm, while its inner border was ominously like a cord set into the surrounding substance; and, worst of all, above the attachment of the gall-bladder was an unprecedented, deeply indented scar, as if some of the liver had actually melted away! Consternation began to deepen. It was a hazardous minute for the Government. But Dr. Hose rose to the occasion, and at once proclaimed to all the clear and manifest interpretation of the extraordinary message from the pig. He asserted that the liver most unmistakably revealed to them, by the hardness of its lobe, the strength and unswerving justice of the Government, and that it was most difficult to break, while at the same time, it was as clear as noon-day that the thick, cord-like border showed how firmly the Government was united to the best interests of the people. Then turning to the scar above the gall-bladder, he made their very souls quiver and their flesh creep, by declaring that it unquestionably foretold the speedy and inevitable death of some very important Chief! (A little wholesome terror is a happy solvent in governing these people.) Several of the Chiefs present would have turned pale, if they could, at this frightful, terrifying revelation, but possibly they consoled themselves with the thought, hitherto unacknowledged by their self-conceit, that perhaps they were not so very, very important after all.
No one dared raise a dissenting voice to Dr. Hose’s lucid and manifest interpretation. A good instance, by the way, of one of the sources of his influence over them; he always contrives to turn to the Government’s account their superstitions and fears.
Aban Liah, our host, was the most apprehensive of all present. He well knew that he had once been all-important in his tribe, and that he had been unfaithful and treacherous to the Government; wherefore, the better to conceal his deadly fear, and revive his courage, he had his large jars of arrack brought out, and ostentatiously cut the dusty stiff rattans which bound down the covers. The first drink was tendered to the interminable Jok Orong, the guest from the Rejang, to whom all desired to show friendship and promise protection to his people should they move into the Baram district. He gulped down the drink quickly, but not so quickly that the crowd had not time enough to stamp and shout in the customary manner so mightily that the house most alarmingly trembled, creaked, and swayed, until caution prompted us to secure safe positions over good, strong beams; no accident happened, however, although a tremendous uproar accompanied the quaffing by each Chief. Before the second round of drinks, Dr. Hose insisted that they should deliver their speeches and protestations of peace while their brains were still unclouded, and as a preliminary the officious Jamma killed a fowl over a bowl of water, and then with a brush of wood cut into a tuft of shavings at one end spattered the blood and water over the audience. Then, still holding the blood-smeared brush in his hand, he launched into a vehement harangue, proclaiming this to be the very greatest of all Peace-makings that had ever been known on the banks of the Tinjar, and that the pig’s liver had shown them clearly and truly the strength and benefit of the Government. When he had nearly shaken off his absurd goggles and his jockey cap had assumed a jaunty air on the back of his head, he handed the bloodied brush over to Juman, who at once jumped to his feet, and in the Kayan language began to tell in a truly sensible way how he and Tama Bulan had been commanded by the Government to bring Tinggi to justice. He then deliberately narrated all the details of the killing, (which must have been pleasant to the ears of Tama Talip, the adopted father of Tinggi,) but gradually he worked himself up to a high pitch of excitement, beating the air with his arms, see-sawing backward and forward, and emphasising the close of each sentence by shouting ‘Bahh! Bahh!’ He asserted that he was but the servant of the Government when he killed Tinggi, and so staunch was his loyalty that, should the Government command him to kill his dear friend Tama Usong, he would hold it to be his duty to obey. His excitement soon over-mastered him, and when he began to indulge in bravado, and offer to engage any one member of Tinggi’s family in single combat, we deemed it high time to pull him down into his seat, and then plied him with congratulations, just as though he had fully rounded off his speech and finished all he wanted to say.
LIAN AVIT, A LEPPU ANNAN, WITH TIPANG, HIS WIFE, WHO IS STANDING, AND HER TWO SISTERS.
THE WOODEN FIGURES BEHIND THEM HAVE BEEN PLACED NEAR THE PATHWAY LEADING TO THE HOUSE, TO FRIGHTEN AWAY EVIL SPIRITS. THESE FIGURES ARE NOT WORSHIPPED AS IDOLS, NOR ARE OFFERINGS OR SACRIFICES MADE TO THEM, BUT THEY ARE REGARDED TO A CERTAIN EXTENT WITH REVERENCE. INASMUCH AS TO TOUCH THEM OR TREAT THEM DISRESPECTFULLY ENDANGERS THE OFFENDER TO TERRIBLE DREAMS AT NIGHT AND TO BEING SEIZED BY GHOSTLY HANDS, WHICH WILL LEAVE LASTING SCARS.
While he was on his feet, drinks had been passing around quietly and some of the older men, whose heads were none too strong, began to feel alcoholic effects. Old Aban Anyi, a devoted follower of Tama Usong, and a hero of many battles, who once told me with pride that he had killed many men, any quantity of women, and no end of children, hearing Juman boast that he would kill Tama Usong if he were so ordered by the Government, tried to get on his feet to challenge such braggart talk, but Tama Usong himself grabbed him forcibly by the back of his waist-cloth and thumped him down to his seat again, where he sat mumbling and protesting until soothed and silenced with another drink. The bloody ‘pla,’ or wooden brush, was next passed to Aban Liah, but his speech was weak and very apologetic throughout; he asserted that the Government had treated him badly by degrading him just because he did not tell the whereabouts of the murderers, Tinggi and Sidup; indeed, he never knew who the murderers were. Now the fact was that we knew, and all his hearers knew, that he had lied egregiously and persistently about the murderers, and had even concealed them in his own house. All this had been fully proved after the murderers had been killed. It was the sufficing cause of his loss of the Penghulu-ship.
Tama Usong’s turn came next to declare his good will to the people of the Tinjar, and before he began, a large cup of arrack was thrust upon him. The contents of the jars had become, by this time, nearly exhausted; consequently this cupfull had been dipped up from the dregs, and Tama Usong gulped into his mouth several large pasty lumps of fermented rice. In the embarrassment caused by holding the pla (which seems to be essential to public speaking) he blew the kernels of rice accidentally, but directly in his host’s face. The arrack was painfully present in his rambling and incoherent speech, to which no one paid any attention. At its conclusion all the Chiefs drank in turn from the same cup, and the formal part of the programme of the meeting ended.
Having gathered about him a fresh and untried audience, Jok Orong started in again with his endless, life-long tale of woe, which, we knew, only too well, would last until the arrack was utterly exhausted as well as his hearers; we, therefore, left them incontinently, preferring the peace and quiet of the Leppu Anan house, a short distance up-river, to the fingered feast of stewed fat pork with which Aban Liah was about to regale his guests.
The Leppu Anans are a clan from the Rejang, which not long before had been driven over to the Baram district by a threatened onslaught of the Ibans, who by some underhand means had obtained permission from the Government to attack them with a regularly organized force. Dr. Hose, hearing that this expedition had started, and knowing that the permission had been granted to the Ibans on false pretexts, and inasmuch as in this matter of life and death there was no time to communicate with the Government, instantly sent swift messengers to the homes of the Leppu Anans, telling them to fly for their lives, and promising them protection if they settled on the Tinjar. It was a terrible journey for the poor innocent creatures, loaded down, as they were, with all their household effects and retarded in their haste by the care for the women and children. Many of them, I was told, were so exhausted that they actually crawled and dragged themselves on all fours down the hills which separate the Rejang and Tinjar valleys.