IN COURT AND KAMPONG

IN
COURT & KAMPONG

BEING
TALES & SKETCHES OF NATIVE LIFE
IN THE MALAY PENINSULA

BY
HUGH CLIFFORD

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
48 LEICESTER SQUARE

First printed April 1897
Reprinted September 1903

To My Wife

H. C.

PREFACE

The nineteen tales and sketches, which are enclosed within the covers of this Book, relate to certain brown men and obscure things in a distant and very little known corner of the Earth. The Malay Peninsula—that slender tongue of land which projects into the tepid seas at the extreme south of the Asiatic Continent—is but little more than a name to most dwellers in Europe. But, even in the Peninsula itself, and to the majority of those white men whose whole lives have been passed in the Straits of Malacca, the East Coast and the remote interior, of which I chiefly write, are almost as completely unknown.

It has been my endeavour, in writing this book, to give some idea of the lives lived in these lands by Europeans whose lot has led them away from the beaten track; by the aboriginal tribes of Sâkai and Sĕmang; but, above all, by those Malays who, being yet untouched by contact with white men, are still in a state of original sin. My stories deal with natives of all classes; dwellers in the Courts of Kings; peasants in their kampongs, or villages, by the rivers and the rice-fields; and with the fisher-folk on the seashore. I have tried to describe these things as they appear when viewed from the inside, as I have myself seen them during the many dreary years that I have spent in the wilder parts of the Malay Peninsula. It will be found that the pictures thus drawn are not always attractive—what man's life, when viewed from the inside, ever is pretty to look at? But I have told my tales of these curious companions of my exile, nothing extenuating, but setting down nought in malice.

The conditions of life of which I write, more especially in those sketches and tales which deal with native society in an Independent Malay State, are rapidly passing away. Nor can this furnish matter for regret to any one who knew them as they were and still are in some of the wilder and more remote regions of the Peninsula. One may, perhaps, feel some measure of sentimental sorrow that the natural should here, as elsewhere, be replaced by the artificial; one may recognise with sufficient clearness that the Malay in his natural unregenerate state is more attractive an individual than he is apt to become under the influence of European civilisation; but no one who has seen the horrors of native rule, and the misery to which the people living under it are ofttimes reduced, can find room to doubt that, its many drawbacks notwithstanding, the only salvation for the Malays lies in the increase of British influence in the Peninsula, and in the consequent spread of modern ideas, progress, and civilisation.

I feel this so strongly that, in common with many of my countrymen, I am content to devote the best years of my life to an attempt to bring about some of those revolutions in facts and in ideas which we hold to be for the ultimate good of the race. None the less, however, this book has been written in a spirit of the deepest sympathy with all classes of Malays, and I have striven throughout to appreciate the native point of view, and to judge the people and their actions by their own standards, rather than by those of a White Man living in their midst.

With regard to the tales themselves, many of them have been told to me by natives, and all are more or less founded on fact. Some of the incidents related have come under my personal observation, and for the truth of these I can vouch. For the accuracy of the remaining stories others are responsible, and I can only be held answerable for the framing of the pictures.

HUGH CLIFFORD.

British Residency,
Pahang, Malay Peninsula,
November 7, 1896.

CONTENTS

The City of Dreadful Night.

THE EAST COAST

The Lotos-Eaters.

In these days, the boot of the ubiquitous white man leaves its marks on all the fair places of the Earth, and scores thereon an even more gigantic track than that which affrighted Robinson Crusoe in his solitude. It crushes down the forests, beats out roads, strides across the rivers, kicks down native institutions, and generally tramples on the growths of nature, and the works of primitive man, reducing all things to that dead level of conventionality, which we call civilisation. Incidentally, it stamps out much of what is best in the customs and characteristics of the native races against which it brushes; and, though it relieves them of many things which hurt and oppressed them ere it came, it injures them morally almost as much as it benefits them materially. We, who are white men, admire our work not a little—which is natural—and many are found willing to wear out their souls in efforts to clothe in the stiff garments of European conventionalities, the naked, brown limbs of Orientalism. The natives, who, for the most part, are frank Vandals, also admire efforts of which they are aware that they are themselves incapable, and even the laudator temporis acti has his mouth stopped by the cheap and often tawdry luxury, which the coming of the Europeans has placed within his reach. So effectually has the heel of the white man been ground into the face of Pêrak and Sĕlângor, that these Native States are now only nominally what their name implies. The alien population far out-numbers the people of the land in most of the principal districts, and it is possible for a European to spend weeks in either of these States without coming into contact with any Asiatics save those who wait at table, wash his shirts, or drive his cab. It is also possible, I am told, for a European to spend years on the West Coast of the Peninsula without acquiring any very profound knowledge of the natives of the country, or of the language which is their speech-medium. This being so, most of the white men who live in the Protected Native States are somewhat apt to disregard the effect which their actions have upon the natives, and labour under the common European inability to view matters from the native standpoint. Moreover, we have become accustomed to existing conditions, and thus it is that few, perhaps, realise the precise nature of the work which the British in the Peninsula have set themselves to accomplish. What we are really attempting, however, is nothing less than to crush into twenty years the revolutions in facts and in ideas which, even in energetic Europe, six long centuries have been needed to accomplish. No one will, of course, be found to dispute that the strides made in our knowledge of the art of government, since the Thirteenth Century, are prodigious and vast, nor that the general condition of the people of Europe has been immensely improved since that day; but, nevertheless, one cannot but sympathise with the Malays, who are suddenly and violently translated from the point to which they had attained in the natural development of their race, and are required to live up to the standards of a people who are six centuries in advance of them in national progress. If a plant is made to blossom or bear fruit three months before its time, it is regarded as a triumph of the gardener's art; but what, then, are we to say of this huge moral-forcing system which we call 'Protection'? Forced plants, we know, suffer in the process; and the Malay, whose proper place is amidst the conditions of the Thirteenth Century, is apt to become morally week and seedy, and to lose something of his robust self-respect, when he is forced to bear Nineteenth-Century fruit.

Until the British Government interfered in the administration of the Malay States in 1874, the people of the Peninsula were, to all intents and purposes, living in the Middle Ages. Each State was ruled by its own Sultân or Râja under a complete Feudal System, which presents a curiously close parallel to that which was in force in Mediæval Europe. The Râja was, of course, the paramount authority, and all power emanated from him. Technically, the whole country was his property, and all its inhabitants his slaves; but each State was divided into districts which were held in fief by the Ôrang Bĕsar, or Great Chiefs. The conditions on which these fiefs were held, were homage, and military and other service. The Officers were hereditary, but succession was subject to the sanction of the Râja, who personally invested and ennobled each Chief, and gave him, as an ostensible sign of authority, a warrant and a State spear, both of which were returned to the Râja on the death of the holder. As in Europe, high treason (dĕrhâka) was the only offence which warranted the Râja in forfeiting a fief. Each of the districts was sub-divided into minor baronies, which were held, on a similar tenure, from the District Chief by a Dâto’ Mûda; and the village communes, of which these baronies were composed, were held in a like manner, and on similar conditions, by the Headmen from the Dâto’ Mûda. When war or any other public work was toward, the Râja summoned the Great Chiefs, who transmitted the order to their Dâto’ Mûda. By the latter, the village Headmen and their able-bodied räayat[1] were called together, the free-holders in each village being bound to the local Pĕnghûlu[2] by ties similar to those which bound him to his immediate Chief. In the same way, the Râja made his demands for money-grants to the Great Chiefs, and the räayat supplied the necessary contributions, while their superiors gained the credit attaching to those who fulfil the desires of the King. Under this system, the räayat of course, possessed no rights, either of person or property. He was entirely in the hands of the Chiefs, was forced to labour unremittingly that others might profit by his toil; and neither his life, his land, his cattle, nor the very persons of his women-folk, could properly be said to belong to him, since all were at the mercy of any one who desired to take them from him, and was strong enough to do so. This, of course, is the weak point in the Feudal System, and was probably not confined to the peoples of Asia. The chroniclers of Mediæval Europe tell only of Princes and Nobles, and Knights and Dames—and merry tales they are—but we are left to guess what was the condition of the bulk of the lower classes in Thirteenth-Century England. If we knew all, however, it is probable that their lot would prove to have been but little more fortunate than is that of the Malay räayat of to-day, whose hardships and grievances, under native rule, move our modern souls to indignation and compassion. Therefore, we should be cautious how we apply our fin de siècle standards to a people whose ideas of the fitness of things are much the same as those which prevailed in Europe some six centuries agone.

Those who love to indulge in that pleasing but singularly useless pastime of imagining what might have been under certain impossible circumstances, will find occupation in speculating as to whether the Malays, had they remained free from all extraneous influence for another thousand years, would ever have succeeded in evolving a system of Government in any way resembling our own, out of a Feudal System which presents so curious a parallel to that from which our modern institutions have sprung. Would the Great Chiefs have ever combined to wrest a Magna Charta from an unwilling King, and the räayat have succeeded in beating down the tyranny of their Chiefs? No answer can be given; but those who know the Malays best will find reason to doubt whether the energy of the race would ever, under any circumstances, have been sufficient to grapple with these great questions. The räayat would have been content, I fancy, to plod on through the centuries 'without hope of change'; and, so far as the past history of a people can be taken as giving an indication of its future, it would seem that, in Malay countries, the growing tendencies made rather for an absolute than for a limited monarchy. The genius of the Malay is in most things mimetic rather than original, and, where he has no other model at hand to copy, he falls back upon the past. An observer of Malay political tendencies in an Independent Native State finds himself placed in the position of Inspector Bucket—there is no move on the board which would surprise him, provided that it is in the wrong direction.

Such changes have been wrought in the condition of the Malay on the West Coast, during the past twenty years of British Protection, that there one can no longer see him in his natural and unregenerate state. He has become sadly dull, limp, and civilised. The gossip of the Court, and the tales of ill things done daringly, which delighted his fathers, can scarcely quicken his slackened pulses. His wooings have lost their spice of danger, and, with it, more than half their romance. He is as frankly profligate as his thin blood permits, but the dissipation in which he indulges only makes him a disreputable member of society, and calls for none of the manly virtues which make the Malay attractive to those who know and love him in his truculent untamed state. On the East Coast, things are different, and the Malay States are still what they profess to be—States in which the native element predominates, where the people still think boldly from right to left, and lead much the same lives as those their forbears led before them. Here are still to be found some of the few remaining places, on this over-handled Earth, which have as yet been but little disturbed by extraneous influences, and here the lover of things as they are, and ought not to be, may find a dwelling among an unregenerate and more or less uncivilised people, whose customs are still unsullied by European vulgarity, and the surface of whose lives is but little ruffled by the fever-heated breath of European progress.

As you crush your way out of the crowded roadstead of Singapore, and skirting the red cliffs of Tânah Mêrah, slip round the heel of the Peninsula, you turn your back for a space on the seas in which ships jostle one another, and betake yourself to a corner of the globe where the world is very old, and where conditions of life have seen but little change during the last thousand years. The only modern innovation is an occasional 'caster,' or sea tramp, plying its way up the coast to pick up a precarious profit for its owners by carrying cargoes of evil-smelling trade from the fishing villages along the shore. Save for this, there is nothing to show that white men ever visit these seas, and, sailing up the coast in a native craft, you may almost fancy yourself one of the early explorers skirting the lovely shores of some undiscovered country. As you sprawl on the bamboo decking under the shadow of the immense palm leaf sail—which is so ingeniously rigged that, if taken aback, the boat must turn turtle, unless, by the blessing of the gods, the mast parts asunder—you look out through half-closed eyelids at a very beautiful coast. The waves dance, and glimmer, and shine in the sunlight, the long stretch of sand is yellow as a buttercup, and the fringes of graceful casuarina trees quiver like aspens in the breeze, and shimmer in the heat haze. The wash of the waves against the boat's side, and the ripple of the bow make music in your drowsy ears, and, as you glide through cluster after cluster of thickly-wooded islands, you lie in that delightful comatose state in which you have all the pleasure of existence with none of the labour of living. The monsoon threshes across these seas for four months in the year, and keeps them fresh, and free from the dingy mangrove clumps, and hideous banks of mud, which breed fever and mosquitoes in the Straits of Malacca. In the interior, too, patches of open country abound, such as are but rarely met with on the West Coast, but here, as elsewhere in the Peninsula, the jungles, which shut down around them, are impenetrable to anything less persuasive than an axe.

These forests are among the wonderful things of the Earth. They are immense in extent, and the trees which form them grow so close together that they tread on one another's toes. All are lashed, and bound, and relashed, into one huge magnificent tangled net, by the thickest underwood, and the most marvellous parasitic growths that nature has ever devised. No human being can force his way through this maze of trees, and shrubs, and thorns, and plants, and creepers; and even the great beasts which dwell in the jungle find their strength unequal to the task, and have to follow game paths, beaten out by the passage of innumerable animals, through the thickest and deepest parts of the forest. The branches cross and recross, and are bound together by countless parasitic creepers, forming a green canopy overhead, through which the fierce sunlight only forces a partial passage, the struggling rays flecking the trees on which they fall with little splashes of light and colour. The air 'hangs heavy as remembered sin,' and the gloom of a great cathedral is on every side. Everything is damp, and moist, and oppressive. The soil, and the cool dead leaves under foot are dank with decay, and sodden to the touch. Enormous fungous growths flourish luxuriantly; and over all, during the long hot hours of the day, hangs a silence as of the grave. Though these jungles teem with life, no living thing is to be seen, save the busy ants, a few brilliantly-coloured butterflies and insects, and an occasional nest of bees high up in the tree-tops. A little stream ripples its way over the pebbles of its bed, and makes a humming murmur in the distance; a faint breeze sweeping over the forest gently sways the upper branches of a few of the tallest trees; but, for the rest, all is melancholy, silent, and motionless. As the hour of sunset approaches, the tree beetles and cicada join in their strident chorus, which tells of the dying day; the thrushes join in the song with rich trills and grace-notes; the jungle fowls crow to one another; the monkeys whoop and give tongue like a pack of foxhounds; the gaudy parrots scream and flash as they hunt for flies;

Then, as you lie listening through the long watches of the night, sounds are borne to you which tell that the jungle is afoot. The argus pheasants yell to one another as the hours creep by; the far-away trumpet of an elephant breaks the stillness; and the frightened barking cry of a deer comes to you from across the river. The insects are awake all night, and the little workman bird sits on a tree close by you and drives coffin nails without number. With the dawn, the tree beetles again raise their chorus; the birds sing and trill more sweetly than in the evening; the monkeys bark afresh as they leap through the branches; and the leaves of the forest glisten in the undried dew. Then, as the sun mounts, and the dew dries, the sounds of the jungle die down one by one, until the silence of the forest is once more unbroken for the long hot day.

Through these jungles innumerable streams and rivers flow seawards; for so marvellously is this country watered that, from end to end of the Peninsula, no two hills are found, but there is a stream of some sort in the gut which divides them. Far up-country, the rivers run riot through long successions of falls and rapids, but as they near the coast, they settle down into broad imposing looking streams, miles wide in places, but for the most part uniformly shallow, the surfaces of which are studded with green islands and yellow sandbanks. These rivers, on the East Coast, form the principal, and often the only highways, many of them being navigated for nearly three hundred miles of their course. When they become too much obstructed by falls to be navigable even for a dug-out, they still serve the Malays of the interior as highways. Where they are very shallow indeed they are used as tracks, men wading up them for miles and miles. A river-bed is a path ready cleared through the forests, and, to the Sĕmang,[3] Sâkai,[4] and jungle-bred Malay, it is Nature's macadamized road. More often the unnavigable streams serve as guides to the traveller in the dense jungles, the tracks running up their banks, crossing and recrossing them at frequent intervals. One of these paths, which leads from Trĕnggânu to Kĕlantan, crosses the same river no less than thirty times in about six miles, and, in most places, the fords are well above a tall man's knee. The stream is followed until a ka-naik—or taking-off place—is reached, and, leaving it, the traveller crosses a low range of hills, and presently strikes the banks of a stream, which belongs to another river basin. A path, similar to the one which he has just left, leads down this stream, and by following it he will eventually reach inhabited country. No man need ever lose himself in a Malay jungle. He can never have any difficulty in finding running water, and this, if followed down, means a river, and a river presupposes a village sooner or later. In the same way, a knowledge of the localities in which the rivers of a country rise, and a rough idea of the directions in which they flow, are all the geographical data which are required in order to enable you to find your way, unaided, into any portion of that, or the adjoining States which you may desire to visit. This is the secret of travelling through Malay jungles, in places where the white man's roads are still far to seek, and where the natives are content to move slowly, as their fathers did before them.

The Malay States on the East of the Peninsula are Sĕnggôra, Pĕtâni, Jambe, Jâring, Râman, Lĕgeh, Kĕlantan, Trĕnggânu, Pahang, and Johor.

Sĕnggôra possesses the doubtful privilege of being ruled by a Siamese Official, who is appointed from Bangkok, as the phrase goes, to kin—or eat—the surrounding district.

The next four States are usually spoken of collectively as Pĕtâni, by Europeans, though the territory which really bears that name is of insignificant importance and area, the jurisdiction of its Râja only extending up the Pĕtâni river as far as Jambe. It is said that when the Râja of Pĕtâni and the ruler of the latter State had a difference of opinion, the former was obliged to send to Kĕlantan for his drinking water, since he could not trust his neighbour to refrain from poisoning the supply, which flows from Jambe through his kingdom. Uneasy indeed must lie the head which wears the crown of Pĕtâni!

All the States, as far down the coast as Lĕgeh, are under the protection of the Siamese Government. Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu still claim to be independent, though they send the bûnga ămas—or golden flower—to Bangkok once in three years. Pahang was placed under British Protection in 1888, and Johor is still independent, though its relations with the Government of Great Britain are very much the same as those which subsist between Siam and the Malay States of Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu.

The bûnga ămas, to which reference has been made above, consists of two ornamental plants, with leaves and flowers, fashioned from gold and silver, and their value is estimated at about $5000. The sum necessary to defray the cost of these gifts is raised by means of a banchi or poll-tax, to which every adult male contributes; and the return presents, sent from Bangkok, are of precisely the same value, and are, of course, a perquisite of the Râja. The exact significance of these gifts is a question of which very different views are taken by the parties concerned. The Siamese maintain that the bûnga ămas is a direct admission of suzerainty on the part of the Râja who sends it, while the Malay Sultâns and their Chiefs entirely deny this, and hold that it is merely tanda s’pakat dan bĕr-sĕhâbat—a token of alliance and friendship. It is not, perhaps, generally known that, as late as 1826, Pêrak was in the habit of sending a similar gift to Siam, and that the British Government bound itself not to restrain the Sultân of Pĕrak from continuing this practice if he had a mind to do so. From this it would seem that there is some grounds for the contention of Trĕnggânu and Kĕlantan that the bûnga ămas is a purely voluntary gift, sent as a token of friendship to a more powerful State, with which the sender desires to be on terms of amity. Be this how it may, it is certain that Sultân Mansûr of Trĕnggânu, who first sent the bûnga ămas to Siam in 1776, did so, not in compliance with any demand made by the Siamese Government, but because he deemed it wise to be on friendly terms with the only race in his vicinity which was capable, in his opinion, of doing him a hurt.

Direct interference in the Government of Kĕlantan and Trĕnggânu has been more than once attempted by the Siamese, during the last few years, strenuous efforts having been made to increase their influence on the East Coast of the Peninsula, since the visit of the King of Siam to the Malay States in 1890. In Trĕnggânu, all these endeavours have been of no avail, and the Siamese have abandoned several projects which were devised in order to give them a hold over this State. In Kĕlantan, internal troubles have aided Siamese intrigues, the present Râja and his late brother both having so insecure a seat upon their thrones that they readily made concessions to the Siamese in order to purchase their support. Thus, at the present time, the flag of the White Elephant floats at the mouth of the Kĕlantan river on State occasions, though the administration of the country is still entirely in the hands of the Râja and his Chiefs.

The methods of Malay rulers, when they are unchecked by extraneous influences, are very curious; and those who desire to see the Malay Râja and the Malay räayat in their natural condition, must nowadays study life on the East Coast. Nowhere else has the Malay been so little changed by the advancing years, and those who are only acquainted with the West Coast and its people, as they are to-day, will find much to learn when they visit the Eastern sea-board.

Until British interference changed the conditions which existed in Pahang, that country was the best type of an independent Malay State in the Peninsula, and much that was to be seen and learned in Pahang, in the days before the appointment of a British Resident, cannot now be experienced in quite the same measure anywhere else. Both Trĕnggânu and Kĕlantan have produced their strong rulers—for instance, Băginda Ümar of Trĕnggânu, and the 'Red-mouthed Sultân' of Kĕlantan—but neither of the present Râjas can boast anything resembling the same personality and force of character, or are possessed of the same power and influence, as distinguished Sultân Âhmad Maätham Shah of Pahang, in the brave days before the coming of the white men.

In subsequent articles, I hope, by sketching a few events which have occurred in some of the States on the East Coast; by relating some characteristic incidents, many of which have come within my experience; and by descriptions of the conditions of life among the natives, as I have known them; to give my European readers some idea of a state of Society, wholly unlike anything to which they are accustomed, and which must inevitably be altered out of all recognition by the rapidly increasing influence of foreigners in the Malay Peninsula.

Footnotes:

[1] Räayat = Peasants, villagers.

[2] Pĕnghûlu = Headman.

[3] Sĕmang = Aboriginal natives of the Peninsula, belonging to the Negrit family.

[4] Sâkai = Aboriginal natives of the Peninsula, belonging to the Mon-Annam family.

THE PEOPLE OF THE EAST COAST

Kipling (adapted).

Although the States on the East Coast lie in very close proximity one with another, the people who inhabit them differ widely among themselves, not only in appearance, in costume, and in the dialects which they speak, but also in manners, customs, and character. The Pahang Malay, in his unregenerate state, thinks chiefly of deeds of arms, illicit love intrigues, and the sports which his religion holds to be sinful. He is a cock-fighter, a gambler, and a brawler; he has an overweening opinion of himself, his country, and his race; he is at once ignorant, irreligious, and unintellectual; and his arrogance has passed into a proverb.[5] He has many good qualities also, and is, above all things, manly and reckless,—as those who know him well, and love him, can bear witness,—but his faults are very much on the surface, and he is at no pains to hide them, being proud rather than ashamed of the reputation which they cause him to bear. He is more gracefully built than are most other natives on the East Coast, he dresses within an inch of his life, and often carries the best part of his property on his back and about his person,—for, like all gamblers, he is hopelessly improvident. He is a sportsman as soon as he can walk upon his feet without the aid of the supporting âdan;[6] he is in love as a permanent arrangement, and will go to any length, and run any risk, in order to satisfy his desires; and, as he is exceedingly touchy, and quick to take offence, he frequently seems to be in the condition which is known as 'spoiling for a fight.' He is apt to 'buck' about the brave deeds of himself and his countrymen, in an untamed way which would discredit the Colonel of a Regiment—who is privileged to 'buck' because his officers cannot attempt to check him. He knows many strange tales of 'lamentable things done long ago and ill done'; he is extraordinarily loyal to his Râjas and Chiefs, who have not always acted in a way to inspire devotion; he is capable of the most disinterested affection; he loves his wives and his little ones dearly; and, if once he trusts a man, will do anything in the wide world at that man's bidding. He is clean in his habits; nice about his food and his surroundings; is generally cheery; and is blest with a saving sense of humour, provided that the joke is at the expense of neither himself nor his relations. Like many people who love field sports, he hates books almost as much as he hates work. He can never be induced to study his Scriptures, and he only prays under compulsion, and attends the mosque on Friday because he wishes to avoid a fine. He never works if he can help it, and often will not suffer himself to be induced or tempted into doing so by offers of the most extravagant wages. If, when promises and persuasion have failed, however, the magic word krah is whispered in his ears, he will come without a murmur, and work really hard for no pay, bringing with him his own supply of food. Krah, as everybody knows, is the system of forced labour which is a State perquisite in unprotected Malay countries, and an ancestral instinct, inherited from his fathers, seems to prompt him to comply cheerfully with this custom, when on no other terms whatsoever would he permit himself to do a stroke of work. When so engaged, he will labour as no other man will do. I have had Pahang Malays working continuously for sixty hours at a stretch, and all on a handful of boiled rice; but they will only do this for one they know, whom they regard as their Chief, and in whose sight they would be ashamed to murmur at the severity of the work, or to give in when all are sharing the strain in equal measure.

The natives of Trĕnggânu are of a very different type. First and foremost, they are men of peace. Their sole interest in life is the trade or occupation which they ply, and they have none of that pride of race and country, which is so marked in the Pahang Malay. All they ask is to be allowed to make money, to study, or to earn a livelihood unmolested; and they have none of that 'loyal passion' for their intemperate Kings, which is such a curious feature in the character of the people of Pahang, who have had to suffer many things at the hands of their râjas. When Băginda Ümar conquered Trĕnggânu in 1837, the people submitted to him without a struggle, and, if a stronger than he had tried to wrest the country from him, the bulk of the people would most certainly have acquiesced once more with equal calmness.

Study, trade, the skill of the artisan, 'and fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace,' these are the things in which all the interests of the Trĕnggânu Malay are centred. From his earliest infancy he grows up in an atmosphere of books, and money and trade, and manufactures, and bargainings, and hagglings. He knows how to praise the goods he is selling, and how to depreciate the wares he is buying, almost as soon as he can speak; and the unblushing manner in which he will hold forth concerning the antiquity of some article which he has made with his own hands, and the entire absence of all mauvaise honte which he displays when detected in the fraud, have earned for him the reputation he proverbially bears of being the best liar in the Peninsula. The Pahang boy grows up amid talk of war and rumours of war, which makes him long to be a man that he may use his weapons, almost before he has learned to stand upon his feet. Not so the young idea of Trĕnggânu. Men go about armed, of course, for such is the custom in all Independent Malay States, but they have little skill with spear or knife, and, since a proficiency as a scholar, an artisan, or as a shrewd man of business wins more credit than does a reputation for valour, the people of Trĕnggânu generally grow up cowards, and are not very much ashamed of standing so confessed. In his own line, however, the Trĕnggânu Malay is far in advance of any other natives on the East Coast, or indeed in the Peninsula. He has generally read his Kurân through, from end to end, before he has reached his teens, and, as the Malay character differs but slightly from the Arabic, he thereafter often acquires a knowledge of how to read and write his own language.

But a study of the Muhammadan Scriptures is apt to breed religious animosity, in the crude oriental mind, and the race of local saints, who have succeeded one another at Pâloh for several generations, have been instrumental in fomenting this feeling. Ungku Saiyid of Pâloh—the 'local holy man' for the time being—like his prototype in the Naulahka, has done much to agitate the minds of the people, and to create a 'commotion of popular bigotry.' He is a man of an extraordinary personality. His features are those of the pure Arab caste, and they show the ultra-refinement of one who is pinched with long fasts and other ascetic practices. Moreover, he has the unbounded vanity and self-conceit which is born of long years of adulation, and is infected by that touch of madness which breeds 'Cranks' in modern Europe, and 'Saints' in modern Asia. He preaches to crowded congregations thrice weekly, and the men of Trĕnggânu flock from all parts of the country to sit at his feet. The Sultân, too, like his father, and his great-uncle, Băginda Ümar, has been at some pains to ensure the performance of religious rites by all his people, and, as far as outward observances go, he appears to have been successful. Moreover, the natives of Trĕnggânu love religious and learned discussions of all kinds, and most of them:

though, like poor Omar, they never seem to arrive at any conclusions which have not previously been used by them as a starting-point. All this makes for fanaticism,—which, however, with so cowardly a people, is more likely to be noisy than violent,—and all such sinful sports as cock-fighting, bull fights, gambling, and the like, are forbidden by law to the people of Trĕnggânu. In spite of all this, however, the natives of this State do not really lead lives in any degree more clean than is customary among other Malays. Their morals are, for the most part, those of the streets of London after eleven o'clock on a Saturday night.

It is as an artisan, however, that the Trĕnggânu Malay really excels. The best products of their looms, the brass and nickel utensils, some of the weapons, and most of the woodwork fashioned in Trĕnggânu, are the best native made wares, of their kind, in the Peninsula, and the extreme ingenuity with which they imitate the products of other States, or Islands of the Archipelago, is quite unrivalled in this part of the world. Silk sârongs, in close imitation of those woven in Pahang and Kĕlantan, are made cheap, and sold as the genuine articles. Bales of the white turban cloths, flecked with gold thread, which are so much worn by men who have returned from the Haj, are annually exported to Mecca, where they are sold, as articles of real Arabic manufacture, to the confiding pilgrims. All these silks and cloths fade and wear out with inconceivable rapidity, but, until this occurs, the purchaser is but rarely able to detect the fraud of which he has been a victim. Weapons, too, are made in exact imitation of those produced by the natives of Celebes or Java, and it is often not until the silver watering on the blades begins to crack and peel—like paint on a plank near a furnace—that their real origin becomes known. At the present time, the artisans of Trĕnggânu are largely engaged in making exact imitations of the local currency, to the exceeding dolor of the Sultân, and with no small profit to themselves.

In appearance, the Trĕnggânu Malay is somewhat larger boned, broader featured, and more clumsily put together than is the typical Pahang Malay. He also dresses somewhat differently, and it is easy to detect the nationality of a Trĕnggânu man, even before he opens his mouth in speech. The difference in appearance is subtle, and to one who is not used to Malays, the natives of Pahang, Kĕlantan, and Trĕnggânu have nothing to distinguish them one from another, whereas, after a year or two on the East Coast, what at first are almost imperceptible differences, are soon recognised as being widely distinguishing marks.

The Kĕlantan man is, to the native of Pahang, what the water-buffalo is to a short-horn. To begin with, to the uninitiated he is wholly unintelligible. He grunts at one like the fatted pig at the Agricultural Shows, and expects one to understand the meaning which he attaches to these grunts. This proves him to be sanguine but unintelligent. He cannot understand any dialect but his own,—which is convincing evidence to non-Kĕlantan Malays that he is a born fool,—and he is apt to complain bitterly of the accents of strangers, whereas, to all but his own countrymen, it is his accent which appears to be the real grievance. He is plain of face, fat, ugly, and ungainly of body, huge as to the hands and feet, not scrupulously clean in his person and habits, and, like most very fleshy people, he is blessed with an exceedingly even temper, and is excessively happy, good-natured, and stolid. He can break open a door by butting it with his head, and the door is the only sufferer. [Âwang Kĕpâla Kras—Âwang of the Hard Head—who is a Kĕlantan Malay, backs himself to butt a trained fighting ram out of time!] He can lift great weights, walk long distances, pole or paddle a boat for many hours at a stretch, and can, and does, work more than any other Malay.

This huge mass of fleshy brown humanity is reared on a pound or two of boiled rice, and a few shreds of fish. To see him eat is to be attacked with a lasting loathing for food. He takes in his rice as though stoking a steamboat. The coal shovel is his ponderous fist, and the extent to which his cheeks are capable of stretching alone regulates the size of his mouthfuls. He is, in every way, coarser-grained than any other Malay. He has much less self-respect; is rarely touchy and sensitive, as are other natives of the Peninsula; and when he is brave, it is with the courage of the blind, who know not the extent of the danger which they are facing. An utter want of imagination goes to the making of more heroes than it is pleasant to think about, since people who cannot picture consequences, and forecast risks, deserve but little credit for the courage which they display, but are unable to appreciate.

To his neighbours on the East Coast, however, all the other remarkable characteristics of the Kĕlantan Malay are lost sight of, or rather, are completely overshadowed, by his reputation as a thief among thieves. In vain have successive generations of Kĕlantan râjas cut off the hands, feet, and heads of detected or suspected burglars and robbers; in vain have all sorts of stratagems been adopted by travellers as precautions against thieves; and in vain have the families of convicted men been punished for the deeds of their relations. Nothing, apparently, can stamp out the instinct which prompts high and low, rich and poor, to take possession of any property belonging to someone else whenever the opportunity offers. Men with flocks and herds, and pâdi swamps, and fruit orchards, steal if they get the chance just as much as does the indigent peasant who has sold his last child into slavery for three dollars in cash. Most of the great chiefs of the country do not steal in person, but they keep bands of paid ruffians who do that work for them, in return for their protection, and a share of the takings. The skill with which some Kĕlantan Malays pick a pocket, and the ingenuity displayed in their burglaries, would not discredit a pupil of Fagin the Jew; and robbery with violence is almost equally common. Their favourite weapon is an uncanny looking instrument called pârang jĕngok—or the 'peeping' knife—which is armed with a sharp peak at the tip, standing out almost at right angles to the rest of the blade. Armed with this, on a dark night, the robber walks down a street, and just as he passes a man, he strikes back over his left shoulder, so that the peak catches his victim in the back of the head, and knocks him endways. He can then be robbed with ease and comfort, and, whether he recovers from the blow or dies from its effects is his own affair, and concerns the thief not at all. It is not very long ago since two men were found lying senseless in the streets of Kôta Bharu, each having put the other hors de combat with a pârang jĕngok, striking at the same moment, in the same way, and with the same amiable intention. To save further trouble they each had their hands cut off, as soon as they came round, by the Sultân's order. This, when you come to think of it, was a sound course for the Sultân to pursue.

The women of Kĕlantan are, many of them, well favoured enough. They are, for the most part, fine upstanding wenches, somewhat more largely built than most Malay women, and they appear more in public than is usual in the Peninsula. At Kôta Bharu, women, both young and old, crowd the markets at all hours of the day, and do most of the selling and buying. They converse freely with strangers, go about unveiled, and shew no signs of that affected bashfulness, which cloaks the very indifferent morals of the average Malay woman, but which it is a point of honour with her to assume when in the presence of men.

In Kĕlantan, both men and women dress differently from Malays in other States. The men wear neither coats nor trousers, but they bind a sârong and three or four sashes about their waists. The sârong generally comes down to the knee, and, when seated, the knee-caps are often exposed, even in the King's Bâlai,—a practice that would not be tolerated in any other part of the Peninsula. The women also dispense with an upper garment, and make up the deficiency by a lavish use of sârong and scarves. The shoulders and upper portion of the chest, however, are left bare. These and other practices, cause the Kĕlantan Malays to be much despised by the peoples of other Native States, who regard them as unmannerly and uncouth. Indeed, prior to 1888, few Kĕlantan men dared to set foot in Pahang, for, as an old Chief once said in my presence, the only use a Pahang native had for a Kĕlantan Malay, before the coming of the white men, was 'as a thing wherewith to sharpen the blade of his dagger,' and this, be it remembered, is not a mere façon de parler.

After straining my jaws, doing violence to my tongue, and racking my throat, I have acquired a working knowledge of the Kĕlantan patois, and can now understand and speak it almost as easily as I do the more refined dialects. This has helped me to, in some degree, understand the people, and, though they have many bad qualities, I like them. In a rude, rough way, and without the swagger of the Pahang Malay, they are sportsmen. I shot over one of them for four years, and, until he went blind, he was as good a retriever as one would desire to possess. At Kôta Bharu bull fights, matches between rams, cocks, quails, and human prize fighters, are the chief amusement of the people. The latter sport is peculiar to Kĕlantan. The fights begin with the ungainly posturing, and aimless gesticulation, with which all who have witnessed a Malay sword-dance are familiar, but when the fencers come to close quarters the interest begins. They strike, kick, pinch, bite, scratch, and even spit, until one or the other is unable to move. No time is called, catch as catch can, and strike as best, and where best you may, are the simple rules of these contests, and the sight is a somewhat degrading and unpleasant one, though it excites the spectators to ecstasies of delight and laughter. Most big Chiefs in Kĕlantan keep trained men to take part in these prize fights, and heavy bets are made on the result.

And the life of these people? Whether in Pahang, Trĕnggânu, or Kĕlantan it is much the same. Up country the natives live more chastely than do the people of the capital; they work harder, age sooner, lie less softly, experience less change, and are chiefly occupied in supporting themselves and their families. They rise early, work or idle through the day, and go to bed very soon after dark. Their lives are entirely monotonous, dull, and uneventful, but the knowledge of other and better things is not for them, and they live contentedly the only life of which they have any experience. They can rarely afford to support more than one wife, and, as they love their little ones dearly, they often live with the same woman all the days of her life, since divorce entails some degree of separation from the children.

Down country things are different. The gossip of the Court, the tales of brave deeds, the learned discussions, or the rough sports add an interest to life, which is not to be experienced by the dwellers in the far interior. The number of unmarried women within the palace causes the youths of the town to plunge wildly into intrigues, for which they often have to pay a heavy price, but which always instil an element of romance into their lives. This, of course, is the merest sketch, for no real study of the people can be attempted in a work written on such unscientific lines as the present, and the reader—supposing such a problematical person to exist—must form his own picture of my Malay friends from the stories which I shall have to tell in future pages. It is only too probable that I shall fail to give any real idea of the people of whom I write, to any save those who are already able to fill in the omissions for themselves, and who, therefore, know as much about Malays as is good for any man; but, if I fail, it will be because I lack the skill to depict with vividness the lives of those whom I know intimately, and whom, in spite of all their faults, and foibles, and ignorance, and queer ways, I love exceedingly.

Footnotes:

[5] Kêchek ânak Mălâka; bûal ânak Mĕnangkâbau; tîpu ânak Rămbau; bidaäh ânak Trĕnggânu; pĕn-âkut ânak Singapŭra; pĕnjĕlok ânak Kĕlantan; sômbong ânak Pahang.

Wheedlers are the men of Malacca; boasters the men of Mĕnangkâbau; cheats the men of Rămbau; liars the men of Trĕnggânu; cowards the men of Singapore; thieves the men of Kĕlantan; and arrogant are the men of Pahang.

[6] Adan = A hand-rail by means of which Malay children are taught to stand and walk.

THE EXPERIENCES OF RÂJA HAJI HAMID

These things were told me by Râja Haji Hamid, as he and I lay smoking on our mats during the cool, still hours before the dawn. He was a Sĕlângor man who had accompanied me to the East Coast, as chief of my followers, a band of ruffians, who at that time were engaged in helping me to act as 'the bait at the tip of the fish-hook,' in an Independent Malay State—to use the phrase then current among my people.

We had passed the evening in the King's Bâlai watching the Chinamen raking in their gains, while the Malays gambled and cursed their luck, with much slapping of thighs, and frequent references to God and his Prophet,—according to whose teaching gaming is an unclean thing. The sight of the play, and of the fierce passions which it aroused, had awakened memories in Râja Haji's mind, and it was evidently not without a pang that he remembered that the turban round his head,—which his increasing years, and his manifold sins, had driven him to Mecca to seek,—forbade him to partake publicly in the unholy sport. Like most of those who have outgrown their pleasant vices, he had a hearty admiration for his old, prodigal, unregenerate self; and, as I lay listening, he spoke lovingly of the old days at Sĕlângor, before the coming of the white men.

'Allah Tûan! I loved those old times exceedingly! When the Company had not yet come to Sĕlângor, when all were shy of Si-Hamid, and none dared face his kris, the "Chinese Axe." I never felt the grip of poverty in those times, for my supplies were ever at the tip of my dagger, and they were few who dared withhold aught which I desired or coveted!'

'Did I ever tell thee, Tûan, the tale of how the gamblers of Klang yielded up the money of their banks to me without resistance; or the turn of a dice box? No? Ah, that was a pleasant tale, and a deed which was famous throughout Sĕlângor, and gave me a very great name.

'It was in this wise. I was in a sorry case, for the boats had ceased to ply on the river through fear of me, and my followers were few, so that I could not rush a town or a Chinese kongsi house. As for the village people, they were as poor as I, and, save for their women-folk, I never harassed them. Now, one day, my wives and people came to me asking for rice, or for money wherewith to purchase it, and I had nothing to give them, only one little dollar remaining to me. It is very bad when the little ones want food, and my liver grew hot at the thought. None of the woman-folk dared to say any word, when they saw that my eyes waxed red; but the little children cried, and I heard them, and was sad. Moreover, I, too, was hungry, for my belly was empty. Then I looked upon my only dollar, and, calling one of my men, I bade him go to a Chinese store, and buy me a bottle of the white man's perfume. Now, when one of my wives, the mother of my son, heard this order she cried out in anger: "Art thou mad, Father of Che’ Bûjang? Art thou mad, that thou throwest away thy last dollar on perfumes for thy lights of love, while Che’ Bûjang and his brethren cry for rice?" But I slapped her on the mouth, and said "Be still!"—for it is not well for a man to suffer a woman to question the doings of men.

'That evening, when the night had fallen, I put on my fighting jacket, and my Celebes drawers, and bound my kris, the "Chinese Axe," about my waist, and took my sword, the "Rising Sun," in my hand. Three or four of my boys followed at my back, and I did not forget to take with me the bottle of the white man's perfume. I made straight for the great Klang gambling house, and when I reached the door, I halted for the space of an eye-flick, and spilled the scent over my hand and arm as far as the elbow. Then I rushed in among the gamblers, suddenly and without warning, stepping like a fencer in the sword-dance and crying "Amok! Amok!" till the coins danced upon the gaming tables. All the gamblers stayed their hands from the staking, and some seized their dagger hilts. Then I cried aloud three times, "I am Si-Hamid, the Tiger Unbound!"—for by that name did men then call me—"Get ye to your dwellings speedily, and leave your money where it is, or I will slay you!"

'Many were affrighted, some laughed, some hesitated, but none did as I bade them. "Dogs and pigs!" I cried, "Are your ears deaf that ye obey me not, or are ye sated with life, and desire that your shrouds should be prepared? Obey me, or I will slay ye all, as a kite swoops upon little chickens! What is your power, and what are your stratagems, and how can ye prevail against me? I who am invulnerable, I whom even the fire burns but cannot devour!"

'With that I thrust my right hand into the flame of a gaming lamp, and it, being saturated with the white man's perfume, blazed up bravely even to my elbow, doing me no hurt, as I waved my arm above my head. Verily, the white men are very clever, who so cunningly devise the medicine of these perfumes.

'Now, when all the people in the gambling house saw that my arm and hand burned with fire, but were not consumed, a great fear fell upon them, and they fled shrieking, and no man stayed to gather up his silver. This I presently put into sacks, and my men removed it to my house, and my fame waxed very great in Klang. Men said that henceforth Si-Hamid should be named the Fiery Rhinoceros,[7] and not the Unbound Tiger, as they had hitherto called me. It was long ere the trick became known, and even then no man, among those who were within the gaming house that night, dared ask me for the money which I had borrowed from him and his fellows. Ya Allah, Tûan, but those days were exceeding good days! I cannot think upon them, for it makes me sad. It is true what is said in the pantun of the men of Kĕdah:

'Ya Allah! Ya Tûhan-ku! Verily, I cannot think upon it!'

He tossed about uneasily on his mat for some time, and I let him be, for the memory of the old, free days to a Malay râja, whose claws have been cut by the Europeans, is like new wine when it comes back suddenly upon him, and it is best, I think, to let a man fight out such troubles alone and in silence. 'Can words make foul things fair?'—and, however much I might sympathise with my friend, there was no blinking the fact, that he and I were then engaged in trying to do for another set of Malay râjas, all that Râja Haji Hamid so bitterly regretted that the white men had done for him, and for Sĕlângor.

After a space he became calmer, for though the thought of his troubles is often present to the mind of a Malay râja, the paroxysms, which the memory occasions, are not usually of long duration. Presently he began chuckling to himself, and then spoke again:

'I remember once, when I was for the moment rich with the spoils of war, I gambled all the evening in that same house at Klang, and lost four thousand dollars. It mattered not at all on which quarter of the mat I staked, nor whether I staked ko-o, li-am, or tang; I pursued the red half of the dice as one chases a dog, but never once did I catch it. At last, when my four thousand dollars were finished, I arose and departed, and my liver was hot in my chest. As I came out of the Farm, a Chinaman, whom I knew, and who loved me, followed after me, and said, "Hai-yah, Ungku, you have lost much to-night. That man with whom you gambled was cheating you, for he has a trick whereby he can make the red part of the dice turn to whichever side of the mat he wills." "Is this true?" I asked, and he said, "It is indeed true."'

'Then I loosened the "Chinese Axe" in its scabbard, and turned back into the Farm. First I seized the Chinaman by the pig-tail, and my followers gathered up all the money in the bank, near seven thousand dollars, so that it needed six men to carry it, and I then departed to my house, none daring to bar my passage.'

'When we had entered the house, I bade the Chinaman be seated, and told him that I would kill him, even then, if he did not show me the trick whereby he had cheated me. This he presently did, and for near two hours I sat watching him, and practising, for I had a mind to learn the manner of his art, thinking that hereafter I might profit by it. Then, when the dawn was breaking, I led the Chinaman down to the river by the hand,—for I was loth to make a mess within my house,—and when I had cut his throat, and sent his body floating down-stream, I washed myself, performed my ablutions before prayer, prayed, and went to my bed, for my eyes were heavy with sleep.'

'Kasîh-an Chîna!' I said, 'I am sorry for the Chinaman!'

'Why are you sorry for him?' asked Râja Haji, 'He had cheated me and it was not fitting that he should live; besides, he was a Chinaman, and we counted not their lives as being of any worth. In Kinta, before Mr. Birch went to Pêrak, they had a game called Main China, each man betting on the number of the coins which a passing Chinaman carried in his pouch, and whether they were odd or even. Thereafter, when the bets had been made, they would kill the Chinaman and count the coins.'

'They might have done that without killing the Chinaman,' I said.

'It is true,' rejoined Râja Haji, 'but it was a more certain way, and, moreover, it increased their pleasure. But Tûan, the night is very far advanced. Let us sleep.'

Verily, life in an Independent Malay State, like adversity, makes one acquainted with strange bed-fellows.

Footnotes:

[7] Fiery Rhinoceros = Bâdak âpi, a fabulous monster of Malay tradition.

THE BATTLE OF THE WOMEN

Locksley Hall.

This is a true story. Also, unlike most of the tales which I have to tell concerning my Malay friends, it is garnished with a moral; and one, moreover, which the Women's Rights Committees would do well to note. I should dearly like to print it as a tract, for distribution to these excellent and loud-talking institutions, but, failing that, I publish it here, among its unworthy companions.

To those who live in and around a Malay Court, two things only take rank as the serious matters of life. These are the love intrigues, in which all are more or less engaged at peril of their lives, and the deeds of daring and violence,—long past or newly done,—of discussing which men and women alike never weary. People talk, think, and dream of little else, not only in the places where men congregate, but also in the dimly lit inner apartments, where the women are gathered together. In the conduct of their love intrigues, men and women alike take a very active part, for the ladies of the Peninsula are as often as not the wooers of the men, and a Malay girl does not hesitate to make the necessary advances if the swain is slow to take the initiative, or fails to perceive the desire which she has conceived for him. In the matter of fighting, however, the women—who are as often as not the cause—act usually as mere spectators, taking no active part themselves, though they join in a shrill chorus of applause when a shrewd blow is given, and delight greatly in the brave doings of their men. Nevertheless, the warlike atmosphere, with which she is surrounded all the days of her life, sometimes infects a young Malay Princess, and urges her to do some daring deed which shall emulate the exploits of her brothers, and shall show her admirers how dashing a spirit, and how great a courage are hers.

It was during the hot, aching months, which, in Merry England, go to make up the Spring of the year; and the King and his favourite concubines had betaken themselves up-river to snare turtle-doves, and to drowse away the hours in the cool flowering fruit groves, and under the shade of the lilac-coloured bûngor trees. Therefore the youths and maidens in the palace were having a good time, and were gaily engaged in sowing the whirlwind, with a sublime disregard for the storm, which it would be theirs to reap, when the King returned to punish. As the vernacular proverb has it, the cat and the roast, the tinder and the spark, and a boy and a girl are ill to keep asunder; and consequently my friends about the palace were often in trouble, by reason of their love affairs, even when the King was at hand; and on his return, after he had been absent for a day or two, there was generally the very devil to pay. Perhaps, on this occasion, the extreme heat had something to do with it, and made hot blood surge through young veins with unwonted fury, for things went even worse than usual, and, after a week of flagrant and extraordinary ill-doing, Tŭngku Indut, one of the King's sons, put the finishing touch to it all, by eloping with no less than four of his father's choicest dancing girls!

Now, these girls were as the apple of her eye to Tŭngku Indut's half-sister, Tŭngku Aminâh. They belonged to her mother's household, and had been trained to dance from earliest infancy, with infinite care and pains. Nor had they attained their present degree of efficiency, without the twisting back of tortured fingers, and sundry other gentle punishments, dear to Malay ladies, being frequently resorted to, in order to quicken their intelligence. That her brother should now carry off these girls, after all the trouble which had been expended upon their education, was a sore offence to Tŭngku Aminâh; and that the girls themselves were very willing captives, and had found a princely lover, while she remained unwedded, did not tend to soothe her gentle woman's breast. Her mother was also very wroth, and sent threatening messages to Tŭngku Indut, presaging blood and thunder, and other grievous trouble when the King returned. Tŭngku Indut, however, resolutely declined to give the girls up. He knew that he had gone so far that no tardy amends could now cover his ill-deeds, and, as he had a fancy for the girls, he decided to enjoy the goods the gods had sent him until his father came back, and the day of reckoning arrived. His stepmother, therefore, resigned herself to await the King's return; but Tŭngku Aminâh could not brook delay, and she resolved to attack Tŭngku Indut in his house, and to wrest the girls from him by force of arms.

Circumstances favoured her, as her mother, who was the only person capable of thwarting her project, was ill with fever, and had retired early to her bed and her opium pipe. Tŭngku Aminâh was thus left at liberty to do whatsoever she wished; and accordingly, at about eleven o'clock that night, she sallied forth, from within the stone wall which surrounded her mother's palace, at the head of her army.

It was at this moment that word was brought to me that strange things were toward, and I, and the Malays who were with me, ran out to our compound fence, and witnessed all that ensued with our eyes glued to the chinks in the plaited bamboos.

Presently the army came pouring down the street in the pale moonlight, and halted in front of my compound, which chanced to face the house at that time occupied by Tŭngku Indut, the door of which abutted on the main thoroughfare. Tŭngku Aminâh led the van, strutting along with an arrogant and truculent swagger most laughable to see. She was dressed for the occasion after the fashion of the Malay warrior. Her body was encased in a short-sleeved, tight-fitting fighting jacket, which only served to emphasise the femininity of her bust. She wore striped silk breeches reaching to the middle of her shins; a silk sârong was folded short about her waist; and her thick hair was tucked away beneath a head handkerchief twisted into a peak in the manner called tanjak. At her belt she carried a kris, and also, a smaller dagger, called a 'pepper-crusher' in the vernacular, and in her hand she held a drawn sword, which she brandished as she walked. At her back came some three hundred women, moving down the street with that queer half-tripping, half-running gait, which Malay women always affect when they go abroad in a crowd at the heel of their Princess. The way in which they run into and press against one another, on such occasions, together with the little quick short steps they take, always reminds me of young chickens trying to seek shelter under their mother's wing. The army was wonderfully and fearfully armed. Some of the more fortunate had spears and daggers; one or two carried old swords; but the majority were armed with weapons borrowed from the cook-house. The axes and choppers, used for breaking up firewood, were the best of these arms, but the number of these was limited, most of Tŭngku Aminâh's gallant three hundred being provided with no better weapons than the kandar sticks, on which water pails are carried; spits made of wood hardened in the fire; cocoa-nut scrapers lashed to sticks; and a few old pocket-knives and fish-spears. What they lacked in equipment, however, they made up in noise, one and all combining to raise an indescribable and deafening babel.

As they halted before Tŭngku Indut's house, the shrill screams of defiance from three hundred dainty throats pierced my ear-drums like a steam siren, and they were all so marvellously noisy, brave, and defiant, that, in spite of an occasional girlish giggle from one or another of them, I began to fear there would be bad trouble before the dawn. So wild was their excitement, and so maddening was the din they made, that, though Tŭngku Aminâh shrieked louder than any one of them, she could not make herself heard above the tumult; and it was not until she had scratched the faces of those nearest to her, and smitten others with the flat of her sword, that she succeeded in reducing her followers to even a partial silence. Then she beat upon the barred door of Tŭngku Indut's house with her naked weapon, and cried shrilly to her brother:—

'Come forth, Indut! Come forth, if thou art in truth the son of the same father as myself! Come forth!'

'Come forth!' echoed the army, and the deafening din of defiance broke out once more, and was again with difficulty repressed by Tŭngku Aminâh.

'Come forth!' she shrilled once more, 'come forth that I may rip thy belly, and cause thy entrails to gush out upon the ground!'

'Come forth, thou accursed and ill-omened one!' echoed the army, with the unanimity of Pickwick's thirty boarders.

Indut, however, did not show any signs of coming forth; but when the women had screamed themselves hoarse and out of breath, his gruff voice sounded from within the house, like the growl of a wild beast, after all that shrill feminine yelping.

'Go hence, Iang!' he shouted, 'get thee to thy bed, thou foolish one; disturb not one who desires to slumber, and waken not the fowls with thy unmaidenly shouting.'

Now, when Tŭngku Aminâh heard these words she dropped her sword, and beat upon the door with her little bare hands, weeping and screaming in a perfect ecstasy of rage, and showering curses and imprecations on her brother. The army joined in the torrent of abuse, and a very pretty set of phrases were sent spinning through the clean night air. At length, Tŭngku Aminâh, finding that she only bruised her hands, again took up her sword, and, as soon as she could make herself heard, renewed her challenge to her brother to come forth.

When this scene had continued for about twenty minutes, and I was beginning to fear that the Devil would prompt Tŭngku Aminâh to fire her brother's house, and that I should get burned out also,—suffering, as the Malays says, like the woodpecker in the falling tree,—a sudden and unexpected turn was given to affairs, which speedily brought things to an abrupt conclusion.

During one of the pauses for breath, indulged in by the clamouring women, Tŭngku Indut was heard to arise from his couch with great noise and deliberation. A hushed silence immediately fell upon the assembled women, and, in the stillness, Tŭngku Indut's words were distinctly heard by all of us.

'Âwang!' he said, naming one of his followers, 'Âwang! Bring me my sword!'

That was all, but it was enough and to spare. A shrill shriek was raised by the listening women,—a shriek, this time, of fear and not of defiance,—and in a moment the army of three hundred ladies was in full flight. Never was there such a rout. They tumbled over, and trampled upon one another in their frantic desire to escape, and maimed one another, as they fought their way up the narrow roadway, in their panic. All respect for persons, rank, or position, was completely lost sight of, commoners pushing past râjas in their deadly fear of being the hindermost, who is the proverbial prey of the pursuing devil. Too breathless to scream, and sweating with fear and exertion, they scuffled up the street, to the sound of rending garments and pattering feet, nor did they rest until the palace was regained, and the doors securely barred.

On the King's return, the dancing girls were, of course, surrendered; and I do not like to think what was the measure of bodily pain and suffering, that these dainty creatures were called upon to pay as the price of their escapade. It was a sore subject with Tŭngku Indut, too, and he and his father were not on speaking terms, on this account, for near a twelvemonth after.

As for Tŭngku Aminâh, she is as truculent as ever, and bears a great reputation for courage among her fellow country-women. It is not every girl, they say, who would so boldly have attacked; and of the retreat, which only a few of us witnessed, no mention is ever made.

One has heard of the Women's Rights Meeting in Boston, which was broken up in confusion by the untimely appearance of three little mice; and of that other meeting, in which the aid of the Chairwoman's husband and brothers had to be sought, in order to eject a solitary derisive man, who successfully defied the assembled emancipated females to move him from his position; but neither of these stories seems to me to illustrate the inherent feebleness of women, when unaided by the ruder sex, quite as forcibly as does the pleasant story of Tŭngku Aminâh and her brother, Tŭngku Indut.

IN COCK-PIT AND BULL-RING

Taking them by and large the Malays have no bowels. Physical pain, even if endured by human beings, excites in them but little sympathy or compassion, and to the beasts that perish they are often almost as wantonly cruel as an English drayman. The theory that men owe any duties to the lower animals, is one which the Malays cannot be readily made to understand; and the idea of cruelty to a beast can only be expressed in their language by a long and roundabout sentence. The Malays can hardly be blamed for this perhaps, seeing that, even among our immaculate selves, a consideration for animals is of comparatively modern origin, and the people of the Peninsula, as I have been at some pains to show, are in their ideas on many subjects, much what our ancestors were some hundreds of years ago. A few animals, however, are hedged about and protected by some ancient superstition, the origin of which is now totally forgotten, but even these do not escape scot free. Thus, it is a common belief among Malays, that, if a cat is killed, he who takes its life, will in the next world, be called upon to carry and pile logs of wood, as big as cocoa-nut trees, to the number of the hairs on the beast's body. Therefore cats are not killed; but, if they become too daring in their raids on the hen-coop, or the food rack, they are tied to a raft and sent floating down-stream, to perish miserably of hunger. The people of the villages, by which they pass, make haste to push the raft out again into mid-stream, should it in its passage adhere to bank or bathing hut, and on no account is the animal suffered to land. To any one who thinks about it, this long and lingering death is infinitely more cruel than one caused by a blow from an axe, but the Malays do not trouble to consider such a detail, and would care little if they did.

In spite of the stupid callousness with regard to pain inflicted on animals, of which this is an instance, the Malays are not as a race cruel in the sports wherein animals take a part, and, on the East Coast especially, little objection can be raised, save by the most strait-laced and sentimental, to the manner in which both cock and bull-fights are conducted. Many, of course, hold that it is morally wrong to cause any animals to do battle one with another, and this is also the teaching of the Muhammadan religion. The Malays, however, have not yet learned to breathe the rarefied atmosphere, which can only be inhaled in comfort, by the frequenters of Exeter Hall, and, seeing that Allah has implanted an instinct of combat in many animals, the Malays take no shame in deriving amusement from the fact.

In the Archipelago, and on the West Coast of the Peninsula, cock-fights are conducted in the manner known to the Malays as bĕr-tâji, the birds being armed with long artificial spurs, sharp as razors, and curved like a Malay woman's eyebrow. These weapons make cruel wounds, and cause the death of one or another of the combatants, almost before the sport has well begun. To the Malay of the East Coast, this form of cock-fighting is regarded as stupid and unsportsmanlike, an opinion which I fully share. It is the marvellous pluck and endurance of the birds, that lend an interest to a cock-fight,—qualities which are in no way required, if the birds are armed with weapons, other than those with which they are furnished by nature.

A cock-fight between two well-known birds is a serious affair in Pahang. The rival qualities of the combatants have furnished food for endless discussion for weeks, or even months before, and every one of standing has visited and examined the cocks, and has made a book upon the event. On the day fixed for the fight, a crowd collects before the palace, and some of the King's youths set up the cock-pit, which is a ring, about three feet in diameter, enclosed by canvas walls, supported on stakes driven into the ground. Presently the Juâra, or cock-fighters, appear, each carrying his bird under his left arm. They enter the cock-pit, squat down, and begin pulling at, and shampooing the legs and wings of their birds, in the manner which Malays believe loosen the muscles, and get the reefs out of the cocks' limbs. Then the word is given to start the fight, and the birds, released, fly straight at one another, striking with their spurs, and sending feathers flying in all directions. This lasts for perhaps three minutes, when the cocks begin to lose their wind, and the fight is carried on as much with their beaks as with their spurs. Each bird tries to get its head under its opponent's wing, running forward to strike at the back of its antagonist's head, as soon as its own emerges from under its temporary shelter. This is varied by an occasional blow with the spurs, and the Malays herald each stroke with loud cries of approval. Bâsah! Bâsah! Thou hast wetted him! Thou has drawn blood! Ah itu dia! That is it! That is a good one! Ah sâkit-lah itu! Ah, that was a nasty one! And the birds are exhorted to make fresh efforts, amid occasional bursts of the shrill chorus of yells, called sôrak, their backers cheering them on, and crying to them by name.

Presently time is called, the watch being a small section of cocoa-nut in which a hole has been bored, that is set floating on the surface of a jar of water, until it gradually becomes filled and sinks. At the word, each cock-fighter seizes his bird, drenches it with water, cleans out with a feather the phlegm which has collected in its throat, and shampoos its legs and body. Then, at the given word, the birds are again released, and they fly at one another with renewed energy. They loose their wind more speedily this time, and thereafter they pursue the tactics already described, until time is again called. When some ten rounds have been fought, and both the birds are beginning to show signs of distress, the interest of the contest reaches its height, for the fight is at an end if either bird raises its back feathers, in a peculiar manner, by which cocks declare themselves to be vanquished. Early in the tenth round the right eye-ball of one cock is broken, and, shortly after, the left eye is bunged up, so that for the time it is blind. Nevertheless, it refuses to throw up the sponge, and fights on gallantly to the end of the round, taking terrible punishment, and doing but little harm to its opponent. One cannot but be full of pity and admiration for the brave bird, which thus gives so marvellous an example of its pluck and endurance. At last time is called, and the cock-fighter, who is in charge of the blinded bird, after examining it carefully, asks for a needle and thread, and the swollen lower lid of the still uninjured eye-ball is sewn to the piece of membrane on the bird's cheek, and its sight is thus once more partially restored. Again time is called, and the birds resume their contest, the cock with the injured eye repaying its adversary so handsomely for the punishment which it had received in the previous round, that, before the cocoa-nut shell is half full of water, its opponent has surrendered, and has immediately been snatched up by the keeper in charge of it. The victorious bird, draggled and woebegone, with great patches of red flesh showing through its wet plumage, with the membrane of its face, and its short gills and comb swollen and bloody, with one eye put out, and the other only kept open by the thread attached to its eyelid, yet makes shift to strut, with staggering gait, across the cock-pit, and to notify its victory, by giving vent to a lamentable ghost of a crow. Then it is carried off followed by an admiring, gesticulating, vociferous crowd, to be elaborately tended and nursed, as befits so gallant a bird. The beauty of the sport is that either bird can stop fighting at any moment. They are never forced to continue the conflict if once they have declared themselves defeated, and the only real element of cruelty is thus removed. The birds in fighting, follow the instinct which nature has implanted in them, and their marvellous courage and endurance surpass anything to be found in any other animals, human or otherwise, with which I am acquainted. Most birds fight more or less; from the little fierce quail, to the sucking doves which ignorant Europeans, before their illusions have been dispelled by a sojourn in the East, are accustomed to regard as the emblems of peace and purity; but no bird, or beast, or fish, or human being fights so well, or takes such pleasure in the fierce joy of battle, as does a plucky, lanky, ugly, hard-bit old fighting-cock.

The Malays regard these birds with immense respect, and value their fighting-cocks next to their children. A few years ago, a boy, who was in charge of a cock which belonged to a Râja of my acquaintance, accidentally pulled some feathers from the bird's tail. 'What did you do that for? Devil!' cried the Râja.

'It was not done on purpose Ungku!' said the boy.

'Thou art marvellous clever at repartee!' quoth the Prince, and, so saying, he lifted a billet of wood, which chanced to be lying near at hand, and smote the boy on the head so that he died.

'That will teach my people to have a care how they use my fighting-cocks!' said the Râja; and that was his servant's epitaph.

'It is a mere boyish prank,' said the father of the young Râja, when the matter was reported to him, 'and moreover it is well that he should slay one or two with his own hand, else how should men learn to fear him?' And there the matter ended; but it should be borne in mind that the fighting cock of a Malay Prince is not to be lightly trifled with.

I have said that all birds fight more or less, but birds are not alone in this. The little wide-mouthed, goggled-eyed fishes, which Malay ladies keep in bottles and old kerosine tins, fight like demons. Goats sit up and strike with their cloven hoofs, and butt and stab with their horns. The silly sheep canter gaily to the battle, deliver thundering blows on one another's foreheads, and then retire and charge once more. The impact of their horny foreheads is sufficient to reduce a man's hand to a shapeless pulp, should it find its way between the combatants' skulls. Tigers box like pugilists, and bite like French school-boys; and buffaloes fight clumsily, violently, and vindictively, after the manner of their kind.

The natives of India have an ingenious theory, whereby they account for the existence of that ungainly fowl, the water-buffalo,—a fact in natural history, which certainly seems to call for some explanation. The High Gods, they say, when creating all things, made also the cow, the highest of the beasts that perish. This the devil beheld, and, in futile emulation, striving to outdo the work of the High Ones, he imitated their creation, and produced the water-buffalo! Every one who knows this brute, must admit that the Indian theory bears on its face the imprint of truth; for a more detestable beast of the field does not exist, and it would be difficult, for any one less skilled in evil than His Satanic Majesty, to have conceived the idea of so diabolical an animal. In the Malay Peninsula, its principal functions would appear to be stamping bridle-paths into quagmires; dragging unwieldy lumbering carts, and thereby frightening horses into fits; tugging and frequently running away with, all manner of primitive ploughs and sledges; and humiliating as publicly as possible, any white man that it does not gore. It seems to cherish a peculiar spite against all Europeans; for a buffalo, that is as mild as a lamb with the most unattractive native, cannot be brought to tolerate the proximity of the most refined, and least repulsive of white men. Which one is there amongst us, who does not bear a grudge against the water-buffalo as a class, and against some one black or pink bully in particular? Which of us is there, who has not passed moments in the company of these brutes, such as might well 'score years from a strong man's life'? Some of us have been gored by the brutes, and most of us, who have pursued the crafty snipe bird in his native pâdi swamps, have put in various mauvais quarts d'heure, with some of these sullenly vindictive animals mouching after us, much in the way that a gendarme pursues a gamin. Then has entered upon the scene a Delivering Angel, in the shape of a very small, very muddy, very naked child of exceedingly tender years. This tiny deus ex machina has straightway tackled the angry monster, with all the fearlessness of a child, has struck it twice in the face, in a most business-like manner, has piped 'Diam! Diam!'[8]—which sounds like a curse word,—in a furious voice, and finally has hooked his finger into the beast's nose ring, and has led it away reluctant, and crestfallen, but unresisting. Most of us, I say, have experienced these things at the hands of the small boy and the water-buffalo; and, when both have disappeared in the brushwood, and the sweat of fear has had time to dry on our clammy foreheads, we have one and all cursed the Devil who made the brute, and have felt not a little humiliated at the superiority of the minute native boy over our wretched and abject selves.

All these bitter memories crowd into our minds, when we find ourselves in a Malay bull-ring, and we should be more than human if we felt any keen sympathy for the combatant buffaloes. We are apt to experience also an intense sense of relief at the thought that the brutes are about to fight one another, and will be too busy to waste any of their energies in persecuting the European spectators, with the amiable intention of putting them to the shame of open shame, and generally taking a rise out of them.

The bulls have been trained and medicined, for months beforehand, with much careful tending, many strength-giving potions, and volumes of the old-world charms, which put valour and courage into a beast. They stand at each end of a piece of grassy lawn, with their knots of admirers around them, descanting on their various points, and with the proud trainer, who is at once keeper and medicine man, holding them by the cord which is passed through their nose-rings. Until you have seen the water-buffalo stripped for the fight, it is impossible to conceive how handsome the ugly brute can look. One has been accustomed to see him with his neck bowed to the yoke he hates, and breaks whenever the opportunity offers; or else in the pâdi fields. In the former case he looks out of place,—an anachronism belonging to a prehistoric period, drawing a cart which seems also to date back to the days before the Deluge. In the fields the buffalo has usually a complete suit of grey mud, and during the quiet evening hour, goggles at you through the clouds of flies, which surround his flapping ears and brutal nose, the only parts that can be seen of him, above the surface of the mud-hole, or the running water of the river. In both cases he is unlovely, but in the bull-ring he has something magnificent about him. His black coat has a gloss upon it which would not disgrace a London carriage horse, and which shews him to be in tip-top condition. His neck seems thicker and more powerful than that of any other animal, and it glistens with the chili water, which has been poured over it, in order to increase his excitement. His resolute shoulders, his straining quarters,—each vying with the other for the prize for strength,—and his great girth, give a look of astonishing vigour and vitality to the animal. It is the head of the buffalo, however, which it is best to look at on these occasions. Its great spread of horns is very imposing, and the eyes which are usually sleepy, cynically contemptuous and indifferent, or sullenly cruel,—are for once full of life, anger, passion, and excitement. He stands there quivering and stamping, blowing great clouds of smoke from his mouth and nose:

The wild joy of battle is sending the blood boiling through the great arteries of the beast, and his accustomed lethargic existence is galvanised into a new fierce life. You can see that he is longing for the battle, with an ardour that would have distanced that of a Quixote, and, for the first time, you begin to see something to admire even in the water-buffalo.

A crowd of Râjas, Chiefs, and commoners are assembled, in their gaily coloured garments, which always serve to give life and beauty to every Malay picture, with its setting of brilliant never-fading green. The women in their gaudy silks, and dainty veils, glance coquettishly from behind the fenced enclosure, which has been prepared for their protection, and where they are quite safe from injury. The young Râjas stalk about, examine the bulls, and give loud and contradictory orders, as to the manner in which the fight is to be conducted. The keepers, fortunately, are so deafened by the row which every one near them is making, that they are utterly incapable of following directions which they cannot hear. Malays love many people, and many things, and one of the latter is the sound of their own voices. When they are excited—and in the bull-ring they are always wild with excitement—they wax very noisy indeed, and, as they all talk, and no one listens to what any one else is saying, the green sward, on which the combat is to take place, speedily becomes a pandemonium, compared with which the Tower of Babel was a quiet corner in Sleepy Hollow.

At last the word to begin is given, and the keepers of the buffaloes let out the lines made fast to the bull's noses, and lead their charges to the centre of the green. The lines are crossed, and then gradually drawn taut, so that the bulls are soon facing one another. Then the knots are loosed, and the cords slip from the nose-rings. A dead silence falls upon the people, and for a moment the combatants eye one another. Then they rush together, forehead to forehead, with a mighty impact. A fresh roar rends the sky, the backers of each beast shrieking advice, and encouragement to the bull which carries their money.

After the first rush, the bulls no longer charge, but stand with interlaced horns, straining shoulders, and quivering quarters, bringing tremendous pressure to bear one upon the other, while each strives to get a grip with the point of its horns upon the neck, or cheeks, or face of its opponent. A buffalo's horn is not sharp, but the weight of the animal is enormous, and you must remember that the horns are driven with the whole of the brute's bulk for lever and sledge-hammer. Such force as is exerted, would be almost sufficient to push a crowbar through a stone wall, and, tough though they are, the hardest of old bull buffaloes is not proof against the terrible pressure brought to bear. The bulls show wonderful activity and skill in these fencing matches. Each beast gives way the instant that it is warned by the touch of the horn-tip that its opponent has found an opening, and woe betide the bull that puts its weight into a stab which the other has time to elude. In the flick of an eye,—as the Malay phrase has it,—advantage is taken of the blunder, and, before the bull has time to recover its lost balance, its opponent has found an opening, and has wedged its horn-point into the neck or cheek. When at last a firm grip has been won, and the horn has been driven into the yielding flesh, as far as the struggles of its opponent render possible, the stabber makes his great effort. Pulling his hind legs well under him, and straightening his fore-legs to the utmost extent, till the skin is drawn taut over the projecting bosses of bone at the shoulders, and the knots of muscle stand out like cordage on a crate, he lifts his opponent. His head is skewed on one side, so that the horn on which his adversary is hooked, is raised to the highest level possible, and his massive neck strains and quivers with the tremendous effort. If the stab is sufficiently low down, say in the neck, or under the cheek-bone, the wounded bull is often lifted clean off his fore-feet, and hangs there helpless and motionless 'while a man might count a score.' The exertion of lifting, however, is too great to admit of its being continued for any length of time, and as soon as the wounded buffalo regains its power of motion,—that is to say, as soon as its fore-feet are again on the ground,—it speedily releases itself from its adversary's horn. Then, since the latter is often spent, by the extraordinary effort which has been made, it frequently happens that it is stabbed, and lifted in its turn, before balance has been completely recovered.

Once, and only once, have I seen a bull succeed in throwing his opponent, after he had lifted it off its feet. The vanquished bull turned over on its back, before it succeeded in regaining its feet, but the victor was itself too used up, to more than make a ghost of a stab at the exposed stomach of its adversary. This throw is still spoken of in Pahang as the most marvellous example of skill and strength, which has ever been called forth, within living memory, by any of these contests.

As the stabs follow one another, to the sound of the clicking of the horns, and the mighty blowing and snorting of the breathless bulls, lift succeeds lift with amazing rapidity. The green turf is stamped into mud, by the great hoofs of the labouring brutes, and at length one bull owns himself to be beaten. Down goes his head,—that sure sign of exhaustion,—and in a moment, he has turned round, and is off in a bee-line, hotly pursued by the victor. The chase is never a long one, as the conqueror always abandons it at the end of a few hundred yards, but while it lasts, it is fast and furious, and woe betide the man who finds himself in the way of either of the excited animals.

Mr. Kipling has told us all about the Law of the Jungle,—which after all is only the code of man, adapted to the use of the beasts, by Mr. Rudyard Kipling,—but those who know the ways of buffaloes, are aware that they possess one very well recognised law. This is 'Thou shalt not commit trespass.' Every buffalo-bull has his own ground; and into this no other bull willingly comes. If he is brought there to do battle, he fights with very little heart, and is easily vanquished by an opponent of half his strength and bulk, who happens to be fighting on his own land. When bulls are equally matched, they are taken to fight on neutral ground. When they are badly matched, the land owned by the weaker is selected for the scene of the contest. This is an interesting fact, in its way, as it tends to prove that it is not only the unhappy Malay of Malacca who feels that he is born possessing some rights in the soil from which he springs, and on which he lives, moves, and has his being.

All these fights are brutal, and in time they will, we trust, be made illegal. To pass a prohibitionary regulation, however, without the full consent of the Chiefs and people of Pahang, would be a distinct breach of the understanding on which British Protection was accepted by them. The Government is pledged not to interfere with native customs, and the sports in which animals are engaged are among the most cherished institutions of the people of Pahang. To fully appreciate the light in which any interference with these things would be viewed by the native population, it is necessary to put oneself in the position of a keen member of the Quorn, who saw Parliament making hunting illegal, on the grounds that the sufferings inflicted on the fox, rendered it an inhuman pastime. As I have said in a former chapter, the natives of Pahang are, in their own way, very keen sportsmen indeed; and, when all is said and done, it is doubtful whether hunting is not more cruel than anything which takes place in a Malay cock-pit or bull-ring. The longer the run, the better the sport, and more intense and prolonged the agony of the fox, that strives to run for his life, even when he is so stiff with exertion, that he can do little more than roll along. All of us have, at one time or another, experienced in nightmares, the agony of attempting to fly from some pursuing phantom, when our limbs refuse to serve us. This, I fancy, is much what a fox suffers, only his pains are intensified by the grimness of stern reality. If he stops, he loses his life, therefore he rolls, and flounders, and creeps along when every movement has become a fresh torture. The cock, quail, dove, bull, ram, or fish, on the other hand, fights because it is his nature to do so, and when he has had his fill he stops. His pluck, his pride, and his hatred of defeat alone urge him to continue the contest. He is never driven by the relentless whip of stern inexorable necessity. This it is which makes fights between animals, that are properly conducted, less cruel than one is apt to imagine.

The necessity that knows no law, is the only real slave driver, as the sojourner in Eastern exile knows full well. No fetters ever gall so much, as the knowledge that the chain is made fast at the other end.

Footnotes:

[8] Diam! = Be still!

THE WERE-TIGER

The Song of the Loup Garou.

If you ask that excellent body of savants the Society for Psychical Research, for an opinion on the subject, they will tell you that the belief in ghosts, magic, witchcraft, and the like having existed in all ages, and in every land, is in itself a fact sufficient to warrant a faith in these things, and to establish a strong probability of their reality. It is not for me, or such as I am, to question the opinion of these wise men of the West, but if ghosts, and phantoms, and witchcraft and hag-ridings are to be accepted on such grounds, I must be allowed to put in a plea, for similar reasons, in favour of the Loup Garou, the Were-Tiger, and all their gruesome family. Wherever there are wild beasts to prey upon the sons of men, there also is found the belief that the worst and most rapacious of the man-eaters are themselves human beings, who have been driven to temporarily assume the form of an animal, by the aid of the Black Art, in order to satisfy their overpowering lust for blood. This belief, which seeks to account for the extraordinary rapacity of an animal by tracing its origin to a human being, would seem to be based upon an extremely cynical appreciation of the blood-thirsty character of our race. The white man and the brown, the yellow and the black, independently, and without receiving the idea from one another, have all found the same explanation for the like phenomena, all apparently recognising the truth of the Malay proverb, that we are like unto the tôman fish that preys upon its own kind. This general opinion, which seems the more worthy of acceptance in that it is the reverse of flattering to the very races that have formed this curious estimate of their own unlovely character, might by the ignorant and vulgar be supposed to be the real basis of the belief of which I speak, were it not for that dictum of the Society for Psychical Research to which I have above referred. But bowing to this authority, we must accept the Loup Garou and all its kith and kin as stern realities, and not attribute it, as we might perhaps have been inclined to do, to a deadly fear of wild beasts, coupled to a thorough knowledge of the unpleasant qualities of primitive human nature.

Educated Europeans, who live in a land where even Nature, when she can be seen for the houses, has had man's hall-mark scarred deep into her face, are apt to think that the Age of Superstition has gone to fill the lumber-room of the past. Occasionally they are awakened from this belief by the torturing of a witch in a cabin by an Irish-bog; but even an event so near home as that is powerless to altogether disabuse their minds of their preconceived opinion. The difficulty really is, that they cannot get completely rid of the notion that the world is peopled by educated Europeans like themselves, and by a few other unimportant persons, who do not matter. They know that, numerically, they are as but a drop in the ocean of mankind, but it is possible to know a thing very thoroughly and to realise it not at all. Thus they come by their false opinion; for, in truth, the Age of Superstition lives as lustily to-day, as when, in past years, witches blazed at Smithfield, or died with rending gulps and bursting lungs, lashed fast to an English ducking stool.

In the remote portions of the Malay Peninsula we live in the Middle Ages, with all the appropriate accessories of the dark centuries. Magic and evil spirits, witchcraft and sorcery, spells and love-potions, charms and incantations are, to the mind of the native, as real and as much a matter of everyday life as are the miracle of the growing rice, and the mysteries of the reproduction of species. This must be not only known but realised, not only accepted as a theory, but acknowledged as a fact, if the native view of life is to be understood and appreciated. Tales of the marvellous and the supernatural excite interest and fear in a Malay audience, but they occasion no surprise. Malays know that strange things have happened in the past, and are daily occurring to them and to their fellows. Some are struck by lightning, while others go unscathed; and similarly some have strange experiences, which are not wholly of this world, while others live and die untouched by the supernatural. The two cases, to the Malay mind, are completely parallel; and though both furnish matter for discussion, and excite fear and awe, neither are unheard of phenomena calculated to awaken wonder and surprise.

Thus the existence of the Malayan Loup Garou to the native mind is a fact and not a mere belief. The Malay knows that it is true. Evidence, if it be needed, may be had in plenty; the evidence, too, of sober-minded men, whose words, in a Court of Justice, would bring conviction to the mind of the most obstinate jurymen, and be more than sufficient to hang the most innocent of prisoners. The Malays know well how Haji Äbdallah, the native of the little state of Korinchi in Sumatra, was caught naked in a tiger trap, and thereafter purchased his liberty at the price of the buffaloes he had slain, while he marauded in the likeness of a beast. They know of the countless Korinchi men who have vomited feathers, after feasting upon fowls, when for the nonce they had assumed the forms of tigers; and of those other men of the same race who have left their garments and their trading packs in thickets, whence presently a tiger has emerged. All these things the Malays know have happened, and are happening to-day, in the land in which they live, and with these plain evidences before their eyes, the empty assurances of the enlightened European that Were-Tigers do not, and never did exist, excite derision not unmingled with contempt.

The Slim Valley lies across the hills which divide Pahang from Pêrak. It is peopled by Malays of various races. Râwas and Mĕnangkâbaus from Sumatra, men with high-sounding titles and vain boasts, wherewith to carry off their squalid, dirty poverty; Pêrak men from the fair Kinta valley, prospecting for tin, or trading skilfully; fugitives from Pahang, long settled in the district; and the sweepings of Sumatra, Java, and the Peninsula. It was in this place that I heard the following story of a Were-Tiger, from Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh, who was, and perhaps is still, the Headman of this miscellaneous crew.

Into the Slim Valley, some years ago, there came a Korinchi trader named Haji Äli, and his two sons, Äbdulrahman and Äbas. They came, as is the manner of their people, laden with heavy packs of sârongs,—the native skirts or waist-cloths,—trudging in single file through the forests and through the villages, hawking their goods to the natives of the place, with much cunning haggling or hard bargaining. But though they came to trade, they stayed long after the contents of their packs had been disposed of, for Haji Äli took a fancy to the place. Therefore he presently purchased a compound, and with his two sons set to work upon planting cocoa nuts, and cultivating a rice-swamp. They were quiet, well-behaved people; they were regular in their attendance at the mosque for the Friday congregational prayers, and as they were wealthy and prosperous they found favour in the eyes of their poorer neighbours. Thus it happened that when Haji Äli let it be known that he desired to find a wife, there was a bustle in the villages among the parents with marriageable daughters, and, though he was a man well past middle life, Haji Äli found a wide range of choice offered to him.

The girl he selected was Patimah, the daughter of poor parents, peasants living on their land in one of the neighbouring villages. She was a comely maiden, plump and round, and light of colour, with a merry face to cheer, and willing fingers wherewith to serve a husband. The wedding portion was paid, a feast proportionate to Haji Äli's wealth was held to celebrate the occasion, and the bride was carried off, after a decent interval, to her husband's home among the fruit groves and the palm-trees. This was not the general custom of the land, for among Malays the husband usually shares his father-in-law's house for a long period after his marriage. But Haji Äli had a fine new house of his own, brave with wattled walls stained cunningly in black and white, and with a luxuriant covering of thatch. Moreover, he had taken the daughter of a poor man to wife, and could dictate his own terms to her and to her parents. The girl went willingly enough, for she was exchanging poverty for wealth, a miserable hovel for a handsome home, and parents who knew exactly how to get out of her the last fraction of work of which she was capable, for a husband who seemed ever kind, generous, and indulgent. None the less, three days later she was found beating on the door of her parents' house, at the hour when dawn was breaking, trembling in every limb, with her hair disordered, her garments drenched with dew from the brushwood through which she had forced her way, with her eyes wild with horror, and mad with a great fear. Her story—the first act in the drama of the Were-Tiger of Slim—ran in this wise, though I shall not attempt to reproduce the words or the manner in which she told it, brokenly, with shuddering sobs, to her awe-stricken parents.

She had gone home with Haji Äli to the house where he dwelt with his two sons, Äbdulrahman and Äbas, and all had treated her kindly and with courtesy. The first day she cooked the rice ill, but though the young men grumbled, Haji Äli said never a word of blame, when she had expected blows, such as would have fallen to the lot of most wives under similar circumstances. She had no complaint to make of her husband's kindness, but none the less she had fled his dwelling, and her parents might 'hang her on high, sell her in a far land, scorch her with the sun's rays, immerse her in water, burn her with fire,' but never again would she return to one who hunted by night as a Were-Tiger.

Every evening after the Isa[9] Haji Äli had left the house on one pretext or another, and had not returned until an hour before the dawn. Twice she had not been aware of his return until she found him lying on the sleeping-mat by her side; but, on the third evening, she had remained awake until a noise without told her that her husband was at hand. Then she had hastened to unbar the door, which she had fastened after Äbas and Äbdulrahman had fallen asleep. The moon was behind a cloud, and the light she cast was dim, but Patimah saw clearly enough the sight which had driven her mad with terror.

On the topmost rung of the ladder, which in this, as in all Malay houses, led from the ground to the threshold of the door, there rested the head of a full-grown tiger. Patimah could see the bold, black stripes which marked his hide, the bristling wires of whisker, the long cruel teeth, and the fierce green light in the beast's eyes. A round pad, with long curved claws partially concealed, lay on the ladder rung, one on each side of the monster's head, and the lower portion of its body reaching to the ground was so foreshortened that to the girl it looked like the body of a man. Patimah gazed at the tiger, from the distance of only a foot or two, for she was too paralysed with fear to move or cry out, and as she looked a gradual transformation took place in the creature at her feet. Slowly, as one sees a ripple of wind pass over the surface of still water, the tiger's features palpitated and were changed, until the horrified girl saw the face of her husband come up through that of the beast, much as the face of a diver comes up to the surface of a pool. In another moment Patimah saw that it was Haji Äli who was ascending the ladder of his house, and the spell that had hitherto bound her was snapped. The first use she made of her regained power of motion was to leap through the doorway past her husband, and to plunge into the jungle which edged the compound.

Malays do not love to travel singly through the jungle even when the sun is high, and under ordinary circumstances no woman could by any means be prevailed upon to do such a thing. But Patimah was wild with fear of what she had left behind her, and though she was alone, though the moonlight was dim, and the dawn had not yet come, she preferred the dismal depths of the forest to the home of her Were-Tiger husband. Thus she pushed her way through the underwood, tearing her garments and her flesh with thorns, catching her feet in creepers and trailing vines, stumbling over unseen logs, and drenching herself to the skin with the dew from the leaves and grasses against which she brushed. A little before daybreak she made her way, as I have described, to her father's house, there to tell the tale of her strange adventure.

The story of what had occurred was speedily noised through the villages, and the parents with marriageable daughters, who had been disappointed by Haji Äli's choice of a wife, rejoiced exceedingly, and did not forget to tell Patimah's papa and mamma that they had always anticipated something of the sort. Haji Äli made no effort to regain possession of his wife, and his neighbours drawing a natural inference from his actions, avoided him and his sons until they were forced to live in almost complete isolation.

But the drama of the Were-Tiger of Slim was to have a final act.

One night a fine young water-buffalo, the property of the Headman, Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh, was killed by a tiger, and its owner, saying no word to any man upon the subject, constructed a cunningly arranged spring-gun over the carcase. The trigger-lines were so set that should the tiger return to finish the meal, which he had begun by tearing a couple of hurried mouthfuls from the rump of his kill, he must infallibly be wounded or slain by the bolts and slugs with which the gun was charged.

Next night a loud report, breaking in clanging echoes through the stillness, an hour or two before the dawn was due, apprised Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh that some animal had fouled the trigger-lines. In all probability it was the tiger, and if he was wounded he would not be a pleasant creature to meet on a dark night. Accordingly Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh lay still until morning.

In a Malay village all are astir very shortly after daybreak. As soon as it is light enough to see to walk the doors of the houses open one by one, and the people of the village come forth singly huddled to the chin in their sârongs or bed coverlets. Each man makes his way down to the river to perform his morning ablutions, or stands on the bank of the stream, staring sleepily at nothing in particular, a black figure silhouetted against the broad ruddiness of a Malayan dawn. Presently the women of the village come out of the houses, in little knots of three or four, with the children pattering at their heels. They carry clusters of gourds in either hand, for it is their duty to fill them from the running stream with the water which will be needed during the day. It is not until the sun begins to rise, when morning ablutions have been carefully performed, and the first sleepiness of the waking hour has departed from heavy eyes, that the people of the village begin to set about the avocations of the day.

Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh arose that morning and performed his usual daily routine before he collected a party of Malays to aid him in his search for the wounded tiger. He had no difficulty in finding men who were willing to share the excitement of the adventure, and presently he set off with a ragged following of near a dozen at his heels, the party having two guns and many spears and kris. They reached the spot where the spring-gun had been set, and they found that beyond a doubt the tiger had returned to his kill. The tracks left by the great pads were fresh, and the tearing up of the earth on one side of the dead buffalo, in a spot where the grass was thickly flecked with blood, showed that the shot had taken effect.

Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh and his people then set down steadily to follow the trail of the wounded tiger. This was an easy matter, for the beast had gone heavily on three legs, the off-hind leg dragging uselessly. In places, too, a clot of blood showed red among the dew-drenched leaves and grasses. None the less the Pĕnghûlu and his party followed slowly and with caution. They knew that a wounded tiger is never in a mood in which a child may play with him, and also that, even when he has only three legs with which to spring upon his enemies, he can on occasion arrange for a large escort of human beings to accompany him into the land of shadows.

The trail led through the brushwood, in which the dead buffalo lay, and thence into a belt of jungle which edged the river bank a few hundred yards above Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh's village, and extended up-stream to Kuâla Chin Lâma, a distance of half a dozen miles. The tiger turned up-stream when this jungle was reached, and half a mile higher up he came out upon a slender wood-path.

When Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh had followed thus far, he halted and looked at his people.

'Know ye whither this track leads, my brothers?' he asked in a whisper.

The men nodded, but said never a word. A glance at them would have shown you that they were anxious and uneasy.

'What say ye?' continued the Pĕnghûlu. 'Do we still follow this trail?'

'It is as thou wilt, O Pĕnghûlu,' said the oldest man of the party, answering for his fellows, 'we follow thee whithersoever thou goest.'

'It is well!' said the Pĕnghûlu. 'Come let us go.' No more was said, when this whispered colloquy was ended, and the party set down to the trail again silently and with redoubled caution.

The narrow track, which the wounded tiger had followed, led on towards the river bank, and presently the high wattled bamboo fence of a native compound became visible through the trees. Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh pointed at it. 'Behold!' was all he said. Then the party moved on again, still following the tracks of the tiger, and the flecks of red blood on the grass. These led them to the gate of the compound, and through it to the ’lâman or open space before the house. Here they were lost at a spot where the rank spear-blades of the lâlang grass had been beaten down by the falling of some heavy body. A veritable pool of blood marked the place. To it the trail of the limping tiger led. Away from it there was no tracks, save those of the human beings who come and go through the rank growths which cloak the earth in a Malay compound. 'Behold!' said Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh once more. 'Come, let us ascend into the house.' And so saying he led the way up the stair-ladder of the dwelling where Haji Äli lived with his two sons Äbas and Äbdulrahman, and whence a month or two before Patimah had fled during the night-time with a deadly fear in her eyes, and the tale of a strange experience faltering on her lips.

Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh and his people found Äbas sitting cross-legged in the outer apartment preparing a quid of betel-nut with elaborate care. The visitors squatted on the mats, and the usual customary salutations over, Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh said:

'I have come in order that I may see thy father. Is he within the house?'

'He is,' said Äbas laconically.

'Then make known to him that I would have speech with him.'

'My father is sick,' said Äbas in a surly tone, and at the word a tremor of excitement ran through Pĕnghûlu Mat Saleh's followers.

'What is that patch of blood in the lâlang before the house?' asked the Pĕnghûlu conversationally, after a short pause.

'We slew a goat yesternight,' replied Äbas.

'Hast thou the skin, O Äbas?' asked the Pĕnghûlu, 'for I am renewing the faces of my drums, and would fain purchase it.'

'The skin was mangy, and we cast it into the river,' said Äbas.

'What ails thy father, Äbas?' asked the Pĕnghûlu returning to the charge.

'He is sick,' said suddenly a voice from the curtained doorway, which led to the inner apartment. It was the elder son Äbdulrahman who spoke. He held a sword in his hand, and his face wore an ugly look as his words came harshly and gratingly with the foreign accent of the Korinchi people. He went on, still standing, near the doorway, 'He is sick, O Pĕnghûlu, and the noise of your words disturbs him. He would slumber and be still. Descend out of the house, he cannot see thee, Pĕnghûlu. Listen to these my words!'

Äbdulrahman's manner, and the words he spoke, were at once so rough and defiant that the Pĕnghûlu saw that he must choose between a scuffle, which would mean bloodshed, and a hasty retreat. He was a mild old man, and he drew a monthly salary from the Pêrak Government. Moreover, he knew that the white men, who guided the destinies of Pêrak, were averse to bloodshed and homicide, even if the person slain was a wizard, or the son of a wizard. Therefore he decided upon retreat.

As they clambered down the steps of the door-ladder, Mat Tahir, one of the Pĕnghûlu's men, plucked him by the sleeve, and pointed to a spot beneath the house. Just below the place, in the inner apartment, where Haji Äli might be supposed to lie stretched upon the mat of sickness, the ground was stained a dim red for a space of several inches in circumference. Malay floors are made of laths of wood or of bamboo laid parallel to one another, with spaces between each one of them. This is convenient, as the whole of the ground beneath the house can thus be used as a slop-pail, waste-basket, and rubbish heap. The red stain lying where it did had the look of blood, blood moreover from some one within the house, whose wound had very recently been washed and dressed. It might also have been the red juice of the betel-nut, but its stains are but rarely seen in such large patches. Whatever it may have been the Pĕnghûlu and his people had no opportunity of examining it more closely, for Äbdulrahman and Äbas followed them out of the compound, and barred the door against them.

Then the Pĕnghûlu set off to tell his tale to the District Officer, the white man under whose charge the Slim Valley had been placed. He went with many misgivings, for Europeans are sceptical concerning such tales, and when he returned, more or less dissatisfied, some five days later, he found that Haji Äli and his sons had disappeared. They had fled down river on a dark night, without a soul being made aware of their intended departure. They had neither stayed to reap their crops, which now stood ripening in the fields; to sell their house and compound, which had been bought with good money,—'dollars of the whitest,' as the Malay phrase has it,—nor yet to collect their debts. This is a fact; and to one who knows the passion for wealth and for property, which is to be found in the breast of every Sumatran Malay, it is perhaps the strangest circumstance of all the weird events, which go to make up the drama of the Were-Tiger of Slim.

There is, to the European mind, only one possible explanation. Haji Äli and his sons had been the victims of foul play. They had been killed by the simple villagers of Slim, and a cock-and-bull story trumped up to account for their disappearance. This is a very good, and withal a very astute explanation, showing as it does a profound knowledge of human nature, and I should be more than half inclined to accept it as the correct one, but for the fact that Haji Äli and his sons turned up in quite another part of the Peninsula some months later. They have nothing out of the way about them to mark them from their fellows, except that Haji Äli goes lame on his right leg.

Footnotes:

[9] Isa = The hour of evening prayer.

THE AMOK OF DÂTO KÂYA BÎJI DĔRJA

The Rhyme of the Joyous Garde.

The average stay-at-home Englishman knows very little about the Malay, and cares less. Any fragmentary ideas that he may have concerning him are, for the most part, vague and hopelessly wrong. When he thinks of him at all, which is not often, he conjures up the figure of a wild-eyed, long-haired, blood-smeared, howling and naked savage, armed with what Tennyson calls the 'cursed Malayan crease,' who spends all his spare time running âmok. As a matter of fact, âmok are not as common as people suppose, but false ideas on the subject, and more especially concerning the reasons which lead a Malay to run âmok, are not confined to those Europeans who know nothing about the natives of the Peninsula. White men, in the East and out of it, are apt to attribute âmok running to madness pure and simple, and, as such, to regard it as a form of disease, to which any Malay is liable, and which is as involuntary on his part as an attack of smallpox. This, I venture to think, is a mistaken view of the matter. It is true that some âmok are caused by madness, but such acts are not peculiar to the Malays. Given a lunatic who has arms always within his reach, and the result is likely to be the same, no matter what the land in which he lives, or the race to which he belongs. In independent Malay States everybody goes about armed; and weapons, therefore, are always available. As a consequence, madmen often run âmok, but such cases are not typical, and do not present any of the characteristic features which distinguish the âmok among Malays, from similar acts committed by people of other nationalities. By far the greater number of Malay âmok results from a condition of mind which is described in the vernacular by the term sâkit hâti—sickness of liver—that organ, and not the heart, being regarded as the centre of sensibility. The states of feeling which are described by this phrase are numerous, complex, and differ widely in degree, but they all imply some measure of anger, excitement, and mental irritation. A Malay loses something he values; he has a bad night in the gambling houses; some of his property is wantonly damaged; he has a quarrel with one whom he loves; his father dies; or his mistress proves unfaithful; any one of these things causes him 'sickness of liver.' In the year 1888, I spent two nights awake by the side of Râja Haji Hamid, with difficulty restraining him from running âmok in the streets of Pĕkan, because his father had died a natural death in Sĕlângor. He had no quarrel with the people of Pahang, but his 'liver was sick,' and to run âmok was, in his opinion, the natural remedy. This is merely one instance of many which might be cited, and serves to illustrate my contention that âmok is caused, in most cases, by a condition of mind, which may result from either serious or comparatively trivial causes, but which, while it lasts, makes a native weary of life. At such times, he is doubtless to some extent a madman—just as all suicides are more or less insane—but the state of feeling which drives a European to take his own life makes a Malay run âmok. All Malays have the greatest horror of suicide, and I know of no properly authenticated case in which a male Malay has committed such an act, but I have known several who ran âmok when a white man, under similar circumstances, would not improbably have taken his own life. Often enough something trivial begins the trouble, and, in the heat of the moment, a blow is struck by a man against one whom he holds dear, and the hatred of self which results, causes him to long for death, and to seek it in the only way which occurs to a Malay—namely, by running âmok. A man who runs âmok, too, almost always kills his wife. He is anxious to die himself, and he sees no reason why his wife should survive him, and, in a little space, become the property of some other man. He also frequently destroys his most valued possessions, as they have become useless to him, since he cannot take them with him to that bourne whence no traveller returns. The following story, for the truth of which I can vouch in every particular, illustrates all that I have said:

In writing of the natives of the East Coast, I have mentioned that the people of Trĕnggânu are, first and foremost, men of peace. This must be borne in mind in reading what follows, for I doubt whether things could have fallen out as they did in any other Native State, and, at the time when these events occurred, the want of courage and skill shown by the Trĕnggânu people made them the laughing stock of the whole of the East Coast. To this day no Trĕnggânu man likes to be chaffed about the doings of his countrymen at the âmok of Bîji Dĕrja, and any reference to it, gives as much offence as does the whisper of the magic words 'Rusty buckles' in the ears of the men of a certain cavalry regiment.

When Băginda Ümar ruled in Trĕnggânu there was a Chief named To’ Bĕntâra Haji, who was one of the monarch's adopted sons, and early in the present reign the eldest son of this Chief was given the title of Dâto’ Kâya Bîji Dĕrja. At this, the minds of the good people of Trĕnggânu were not a little exercised, for the title is one which it is not usual to confer upon a commoner, and Jûsup, the man now selected to bear It, was both young and untried. He was of no particular birth, he possessed no book-learning—such as the Trĕnggânu people love—and was not even skilled in the warrior's lore which is so highly prized by the ruder natives of Pahang. The new To’ Kâya was fully sensible of his unfitness for the post, and determined to do all that in him lay to remedy his deficiencies. He probably knew that, as a student, he could never hope to excel; so he set his heart on acquiring the ëlĕmu hûlubâlang or occult sciences, which it behoves a fighting man to possess. In Trĕnggânu there were few warriors to teach him the lore he desired to learn, though he was a pupil of Tŭngku Long Pĕndêkar, who was skilled in fencing and other kindred arts. At night-time, therefore, he took to haunting graveyards, in the hope that the ghosts of the mighty dead—the warriors of ancient times—would appear to him and instruct him in the sciences which had died with them.

Women are notoriously perverse, and To’ Kâya's wife persisted in misunderstanding the motives which kept him abroad far into the night. She attributed his absences to the blandishments of some unknown lady, and she refused to be pacified by his explanations, just as other wives, in more civilised communities, have obstinately disregarded the excuses of their husbands, when the latter have pleaded that 'business' has detained them.

At length, for the sake of peace and quietness, To’ Kâya abandoned his nocturnal prowls among the graves, and settled down to live the orderly domestic life for which he was best fitted, and which he had only temporarily forsaken when the Sultân's ill-advised selection of him to fill a high post, and to bear a great name, had interrupted the even tenor of his ways.

One day, his father, To’ Bĕntâra Haji, fell sick, and was removed to the house of one Che’ Äli, a medicine man of some repute. To’ Kâya was a dutiful son, and he paid many visits to his father in his sickness, tending him unceasingly, and consequently he did not return to his home until late at night. I have said that this was an old cause of offence, and angry recriminations passed between him and his wife, which were only made more bitter because To’ Kâya mistook a stringy piece of egg, in his wife's sweetmeats, for a human hair. To a European, this does not sound a very important matter, but To’ Kâya, in common with many Malays, believed that a hair in his food betokened that the dish was poisoned, and he refused to touch it, hinting that his wife desired his death. Next night he was also absent until a late hour, tending his father in his sickness, and, on his return, his wife again abused him for infidelity to her. He cried to her to unbar the door, which, at length, she did, using many injurious words the while, and he, in his anger, replied that he would shortly have to stab her to teach her better manners.

At this she flew into a perfect fury of rage, 'Hei! Stab then! Stab!' she cried, and, as she shouted the words, she made a gesture which is the grossest insult that a Malay woman can put upon a man. At this To’ Kâya lost both his head and his temper, and, hardly knowing what he did, he drew his dagger clear and she took the point in her breast, their baby, who was on her arm, being also slightly wounded. Dropping the child upon the verandah, she rushed past her husband, and took refuge in the house of a neighbour named Che’ Long. To’ Kâya followed her, and cried to those within the house to unbar the door. Che’ Long's daughter Ësah ran to comply with his bidding; but, before she could do so, To’ Kâya had crept under the house, and he stabbed at her savagely through the interstices of the bamboo flooring, wounding her in the hip. The girl's father, hearing the noise, ran out of the house, and was greeted by To’ Kâya with a spear thrust in the stomach which doubled him up, and, like Abner Dean of Angel's, 'the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.' Meanwhile, To’ Kâya's wife had rushed out of the house, and returned to her home. Her husband pursued her, overtook her on the verandah, and stabbed her through the breast, killing her on the spot.

He then entered his house, which was still tenanted by his son, and his mother-in-law, and set fire to the bed curtains with a box of matches. Now, the people of Kuâla Trĕnggânu dread fire more than anything in the world; for, their houses, which are made of very inflammable material, jostle one another on every foot of available ground. When a Trĕnggânu man deliberately sets fire to his own house, he has reached the highest pitch of desperation, and is 'burning his ships' in sober earnest. At the sight of the flames, To’ Kâya's son, a boy of about twelve years of age, made a rush at the curtains, pulled them down, and stamped the fire out. To’ Kâya's mother-in-law, meanwhile, had rushed out of the house, seized the baby who still lay on the verandah, and set off at a run. The sight of his mother-in-law in full flight was too much for To’ Kâya, who probably owed her many grudges, and he at once gave chase, overtook her, and stabbed her through the shoulder. She, however, succeeded in making good her escape, carrying the baby with her. To’ Kâya then returned to his house, whence his son had also fled, and set it afire once more, and this time it blazed up bravely.

As he stood looking at the flames, a Kĕlantan man named Äbdul Rahman came up and asked him how the house had caught fire.

'I know not,' said To’ Kâya.

'Let us try to save some of the property,' said Äbdul Rahman, for, like many Kĕlantan natives, he was a thief by trade, and knew that a fire gave him a good opportunity of practising his profession.

'Good!' said To’ Kâya, 'Mount thee into the house, and lift the boxes, while I wait here and receive them.'

Nothing loth, Äbdul Rahman climbed into the house, and presently appeared with a large box in his arms. As he leaned over the verandah, in the act of handing it down to To’ Kâya, the latter stabbed him shrewdly in the vitals, and box and man came to the ground with a crash. Äbdul Rahman picked himself up, and ran as far as the big stone mosque, where he collapsed and died. To’ Kâya did not pursue him, but stood looking at the leaping flames.

The next man to arrive on the scene was Pa’ Pek, a Trĕnggânu native, who, with his wife Ma’ Pek, had tended To’ Kâya when he was little.

'Wo’,' he said, for he spoke to To’ Kâya as though the latter was his son, 'Wo’, what has caused this fire?'

'I know not,' said To’ Kâya.

'Where are thy children, Wo’?' asked Pa’ Pek.

'They are still within the house,' said To’ Kâya.

'Then suffer me to save them,' said Pa’ Pek.

'Do so, Pa’ Pek,' said To’ Kâya, and, as the old man climbed into the house, he stabbed him in the ribs, and Pa’ Pek ran away towards the mosque till he tripped over the prostrate body of Äbdul Rahman, fell, and eventually died where he lay.

Presently, Ma’ Pek came to look for her husband, and asked To’ Kâya about the fire, and where the children were.

'They are still in the house,' said To’ Kâya, 'but I cannot be bothered to take them out of it.'

'Let me fetch them,' said Ma’ Pek.

'Do so, by all means,' said To’ Kâya, and, as she scrambled up, he stabbed her as he had done her husband, and she, running away, tripped over the two other bodies, and gave up the ghost.

Then a Trĕnggânu boy named Jûsup came up, armed with a spear, and To’ Kâya tried to kill him, but he hid behind a tree. To’ Kâya at first emptied his revolver at Jûsup, missing with all six chambers, and then, throwing away the pistol, he stabbed at him with his spear, but in the darkness he struck the tree. 'Thou art invulnerable!' he cried, thinking that the tree was Jûsup's chest, and, a panic seizing him, he promptly turned and fled. Jûsup, meanwhile, made off in the opposite direction as fast as his frightened legs would carry him.

Seeing that he was not pursued, To’ Kâya returned, and went to Tŭngku Long Pĕndêkar's house. At the alarm of fire, all the men in the house—Tŭngku Long, Tŭngku Îtam, Tŭngku Pa, Tŭngku Chik, and Che’ Mat Tŭkang—had rushed out, but all of them had gone back again to remove their effects, with the exception of Tŭngku Long himself, who stood looking at the flames. He was armed with a rattan-work shield, and an ancient and very pliable native sword. As he stood gazing upwards, quite unaware that any trouble, other than that involved by the conflagration, was toward, To’ Kâya rushed upon him and stabbed him with his spear in the ribs. For a long time they fought, Tŭngku Long lashing To’ Kâya with his little pliable sword, but only succeeding in bruising him. At length, To’ Kâya was wounded in the left hand, and almost at the same moment he struck Tŭngku Long with such force in the centre of the shield that he knocked him down. He then jumped upon his chest, and, stabbing downwards, as one stabs fish with a spear, pinned him through the neck. Tŭngku Îtam, who had been watching the struggle as men watch a cock-fight, without taking any part in it, then ran away. To’ Kâya passed out of the compound, and Che’ Mat Tŭkang, running out of the house, climbed up the fence and threw a spear at To’ Kâya, striking him in the back. Che’ Mat then very prudently ran away too.

To’ Kâya, passing up the path, met a woman named Ma’ Chik—a very aged, bent, and feeble crone—and her he stabbed in the breast, killing her on the spot. Thence he went to the compound of a pilgrim named Haji Mih, who was engaged in getting his property out of his house in case the fire spread. Haji Mih asked To’ Kâya how the fire had originated.

'God alone knows,' said To’ Kâya, and so saying, he stabbed Haji Mih through the shoulder.

'Help! Help!' cried the pilgrim, and his son-in-law Saleh and four other men rushed out of the house and fell upon To’ Kâya, driving him backwards in the fight until he tripped and fell. Then, as he lay on his back, he stabbed upwards, striking Saleh through the elbow and deep into his chest. At this, Saleh and all the other men with him fled incontinently. To’ Kâya, then picked himself up. He had not been hurt in the struggle, for Saleh and his people had not stayed to unbind their spears, which were fastened into bundles, and, save for the slight wounds in his hand and on his back, he was little the worse for his adventures.

He next went to the Makam Lĕbai Salâm—the grave of an ancient Saint—and here he bathed in a well hard by, dressed himself, and eat half a tin of Messrs. Huntly and Palmer's 'gem' biscuits, which he had brought with him. Having completed his toilet, he returned to Haji Mih's house and cried out:

'Where are those my enemies, who engaged me in fight a little while agone?'

It was now about 3 A.M., but the men were awake and heard him.

'Come quickly!' he shouted again, 'Come quickly, and let us finish this little business with no needless delay.'

At this, ten men rushed out of Haji Mih's house, and began to throw spears at him, but though they struck him more than once they did not succeed in wounding him. He retreated backwards, and, in doing so, he tripped over a root near a clump of bamboos and fell to the earth. Seeing this, the men fancied that they had killed him, and fear fell upon them, for he was a Chief, and they had no warrant from the Sultân. Thereupon they fled, and To’ Kâya once more gathered himself together and returned to Lĕbai Salâm's grave, where he finished the tin of 'gem' biscuits.

At dawn he returned to Haji Mih's house. Here he halted to bandage his wounds with the rags of cotton that had been bound about some rolls of mats and pillows, which Haji Mih had removed from the house at the alarm of fire. Then he shouted to the men within the house to come out and fight with him anew, but no one came, and he laughed aloud and went on down the road till he came to Tŭngku Pa's house. Tŭngku Pa and a man named Sĕmäil were in the verandah, and when the alarm was raised that To’ Kâya was coming, Tŭngku Pa's wife rushed to the door, and bolted it on the inside, while her husband yammered to be let in.

When To’ Kâya saw him, he cried to him as he would have cried to an equal:

'O Pa! I have waited for thee the long night through though thou camest not. I have much desired to fight with a man of rank. At last we have met, and I shall have my desire.'

Sĕmäil at once made a bolt of it, but To’ Kâya was too quick for him, and as he leaped down, the spear took him through the body, and he died. Then Tŭngku Pa stabbed down at To’ Kâya from the verandah and struck him in the groin, the spear head becoming bent in the muscles, so that it could not be withdrawn. Now was Tŭngku Pa's opportunity, but instead of seizing it and rushing in upon To’ Kâya to finish him with his kris, he let go the handle of the spear, and fled to a large water jar, behind which he sought shelter. To’ Kâya tugged at the spear, and at length succeeded in wrenching it free, and Tŭngku Pa, seeing this, broke cover from behind the jar, and took to his heels. To’ Kâya was too lame to attempt to overtake him, but he cried out:

'He, Pa! Did the men of old bid thee fly from thy enemies?'

Tŭngku Pa halted and turned round. 'I am only armed with a kris, and have no spear as thou hast,' he said.

'This house is thine,' said To’ Kâya. 'If thou dost desire arms, go up into the house, and fetch as many as thou canst carry, while I await thy coming.'

But Tŭngku Pa had had enough, and he turned and fled at the top of his speed.

'Hah! Hah! Hah! Ho! Ho! Ho!' laughed To’ Kâya. 'Is this, then, the manner in which the men of the rising generation fight their enemies?'

Seeing that Tŭngku Pa was in no wise to be tempted or shamed into giving battle, To’ Kâya went past the spot where the body of Ma’ Chik still lay, until he came to the pool of blood which marked the place where Tŭngku Long Pĕndêkar had come by his death. Standing there, he cried to Tŭngku Îtam who was within the house:

'O Tŭngku! Be pleased to come forth if thou desire to avenge the death of Tŭngku Long, thy cousin. Now is the acceptable time, for thy servant has still some little life left in him. Hereafter thou mayst not avenge thy cousin's death, thy servant being dead. Condescend, therefore, to come forth and fight with thy servant.'

But Tŭngku Îtam, like Gallio, cared for none of these things, and To’ Kâya, seeing that his challenge was not answered, cried once more:

'If thou will not take vengeance, the fault is none of thy servant's,' and, so saying, he passed upon his way.

The dawn was breaking grayly, and the cool land breeze was making a little stir in the fronds of the palm trees, as To’ Kâya passed up the lane, and through the compounds, whose owners had fled hastily from fear of him. Presently, he came out on the open space before the mosque, and here some four hundred men, fully armed with spears and daggers, were assembled. It was light enough for To’ Kâya to see and mark the fear in their eyes. He smiled grimly.

'This is indeed good!' cried he. 'Now at last shall I have my fill of stabbing and fighting,' and, thereupon, he made a shambling, limping charge at the crowd, which wavered, broke, and fled in every direction, the majority rushing into the enclosure of Tŭngku Ngah's compound, the door of which they barred.

One of the hindermost was a man named Gĕnih, and to him To’ Kâya shouted:

'Gĕnih! it profits the Râja little that he gives thou and such as thee food both morning and evening! Thou art indeed a bitter coward.[10] If thou fearest me so greatly, go seek for guns and kill me from afar off!'

Gĕnih took To’ Kâya's advice. He rushed to the Bâlai, or State Hall, and cried to Tŭngku Mûsa, the Sultân's uncle and principal adviser:

'Thy servant To’ Kâya bids us bring guns wherewith to slay him.'

Now, all was not well in the Bâlai at this moment. When the first news of the âmok had reached the Sultân, all the Chiefs had assembled in the palace, and it had been unanimously decided that no action could be taken until the day broke. At dawn, however, it was found that all the Chiefs except Tŭngku Pănglîma, To’ Kâya Dûyong, Pănglîma Dâlam, Imâm Prang Lôsong, and Pahlâwan, had sneaked away under the cover of the darkness. Tŭngku Mûsa, the Sultân's great uncle, was there to act as the King's mouthpiece, but he was in as great fear as any of them.

At last the Sultân said:

'Well, the day has dawned, why does no one go forth to kill To’ Kâya Bîji Dĕrja?'

Tŭngku Mûsa turned upon Tŭngku Pănglîma, 'Go thou and slay him,' he said.

Tŭngku Pănglîma said, 'Why dost thou not go thyself or send Pahlâwan?'

Pahlâwan said, 'Thy servant is not the only Chief in Trĕnggânu. Many eat the King's mutton in the King's Bâlai, why then should thy servant alone be called upon to do this thing?'

Tŭngku Mûsa said: 'Imâm Prang Lôsong, go thou then and kill To’ Kâya.'

'I cannot go,' said Imâm Prang, 'for I have no trousers.'

'I will give thee some trousers,' said Tŭngku Mûsa.

'Nevertheless I cannot go,' said Imâm Prang, 'for my mother is sick, and I must return to tend her.'

Then the Sultân stood upon his feet and stamped.

'What manner of a warrior is this?' he asked, pointing at Tŭngku Pănglîma. 'He is a warrior made out of offal!'

Thus admonished, Tŭngku Pănglîma sent about a hundred of his men to kill To’ Kâya, but after they had gone some fifty yards they came back to him, and though he bade them go many times, the same thing occurred over and over again.

Suddenly, old Tŭngku Dâlam came hurrying into the palace yard, very much out of breath, for he is of a full habit of body, binding on his kris as he ran. 'What is this that men say about To’ Kâya running âmok in the palace? Where is he?' he cried.

'At the Mosque,' said twenty voices.

'Ya Allah!' said Tŭngku Dâlam, 'They said he was in the palace! Well, what motion are ye making to slay him?'

No one spoke, and Tŭngku Dâlam, cursing them roundly, sent for about forty guns, and, leading the men himself, he passed out at the back of the palace to Tŭngku Chik Pâya's house near the mosque, where To’ Kâya still sat upon the low wall which surrounds that building. When he saw Tŭngku Dâlam, he hailed him, saying:

'Welcome! Welcome! Thy servant has desired the long night through to fight with one who is of noble birth. Come, therefore, and let us see which of us twain is the more skilful with his weapons.'

At this, Mat, one of Tŭngku Dâlam's men, leaped forward and said, 'Suffer thy servant to fight with him, it is not fitting, Tŭngku, that thou shouldst take part in such a business.'

But Tŭngku Dâlam said: 'Have patience. He is a dead man. Why should we, who are alive, risk death or hurt at his hands?' Then he ordered a volley to be fired, but when the smoke had cleared away, To’ Kâya was still sitting unharmed on the low wall of the mosque. A second volley was fired, with a like result, and then To’ Kâya cast away the spear he still held in his hand, and cried out: 'Perchance this spear is a charm against bullets, try once more, and I pray thee end this business, for it has taken over long in the settling.'

A third volley was then fired, and one bullet struck To’ Kâya, but did not break the skin. He rubbed the place, and leaped up crying: 'Oh! but that hurts me, I will repay thee!' and, as he rushed at them, the men fell back before him. With difficulty Tŭngku Dâlam succeeded in rallying them, and, this time, a volley was fired, one bullet of which took effect, passing in at one armpit and out at the other. To’ Kâya staggered back to the wall, and sank upon it, rocking his body to and fro. Then a final volley rang out, and a bullet passing through his head, he fell forward upon his face. The cowardly crowd surged forward, but fell back again in confusion, for the whisper spread among them that To’ Kâya was feigning death in order to get at close quarters. At length a boy named Sâmat, who was related to the deceased Ma’ Chik, summoned courage to run in and transfix the body with his spear. Little cared the Dâto’ Kâya Bîji Dĕrja, however, for his soul had 'past to where beyond these voices there is peace.'

He had killed his wife, Che’ Long, the Kĕlantan man Äbdul Rahman, Pa’ Pek, Ma’ Pek, Tŭngku Long Pĕndêkar, Ma’ Chik, Haji Mih, and Sĕmäil; and had wounded his baby child, his mother-in-law, Che’ Long's daughter Ësah, and Saleh. This is a sufficiently big butcher's bill for a single man, and he had done all this because he had had words with his wife, and, having gone further than he had intended in the beginning, felt that it would be an unclean thing for him to continue to live upon the surface of a comparatively clean planet. A white man who had stabbed his wife in the heat of the moment might not improbably have committed suicide in his remorse, which would have been far more convenient for his neighbours; but that is one of the many respects in which a white man differs from a Malay.

Footnotes:

[10] Pĕn-âkut pâhit.

THE FLIGHT OF CHÊP, THE BIRD

The Song of the Savage Foeman.

In a large Sâkai camp on the Jĕlai river, at a point some miles above the last of the scattered Malay villages, the annual Harvest Home was being held one autumn night in the Year of Grace 1893. The occasion of the feast was the same as that which all tillers of the soil are wont to celebrate with bucolic rejoicings, and the name, which I have applied to it, calls up in the mind of the exile many a well-loved scene in the quiet country land at Home. Again he sees the loaded farm carts labouring over the grass or rolling down the leafy lanes, again the smell of the hay is in his nostrils, and the soft English gloaming is stealing over the land. The more or less intoxicated reapers astride upon the load exchange their barbarous badinage with those who follow on foot; the pleasant glow of health, that follows upon a long day of hard work in the open air, warms the blood; and in the eyes of all is the light of expectation, born of a memory of the good red meat, and the lashings of sound ale and sour cider, awaiting them at the farmhouse two miles across the meadows.

But in the distant Sâkai country the Harvest Home has little in common with such scenes as these. The pâdi planted in the clearing, hard by the spot in which the camp is pitched, has been reaped painfully and laboriously in the native fashion, each ripe ear being severed from its stalk separately and by hand. Then, after many days, the grain has at last been stored in the big bark boxes, under cover of the palm leaf thatch, and the Sâkai women, who have already performed the lion's share of the work, are set to husk some portions of it for the evening meal. This they do with clumsy wooden pestles, held as they stand erect round a sort of trough, the ding-dong-ding of the pounders carrying far and wide through the forest, and, at the sound, all wanderers from the camp turn their faces homeward with the eagerness born of empty stomachs and the prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo, for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from the liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by that name in the sweltering tropics, and the cooked grain is eaten ravenously, and in incredible quantities by the hungry, squalid creatures in a Sâkai camp. These poor wretches know that, in a day or two, the Malays will come up stream to 'barter' with them, and that the priceless rice will be taken from them, almost by force, in exchange for a few axe-heads and native wood knives. Therefore, the Sâkai eat while there is yet time, and while distended stomachs will still bear the strain of a few additional mouthfuls.