The Malays who were with him feared a trap, and implored him not to go alone; but the White Man did not fancy that treachery was likely just then, and, in any case, he was anxious for the adventure, and could not afford to let his people think that he was afraid. The man who, dwelling alone among Malays in an unsettled country, shows the slightest trace of fear, signs his own death-warrant. No people are more susceptible to 'bluff,' and, given a truculent bearing, and a sufficiency of bravado, a coward may pass for a brave man in many a Malay State.

The decks of the boat were wet with dew and drizzle, and she smelt abominably of ancient fish cargoes which she had carried before she was beached. A light rain was falling, and the White Man crept along the side until he reached the stern, which was covered with a roofing of rotten palm-leaf mats. Through the rents at the stern he could see the moon rising like a great red ball, throwing a broad wave of dancing light along the reaches of the river. Then he squatted down, rolled a cigarette, and awaited developments.

Presently the soft splish, whisp! splash, whisp! of a single paddle came to his listening ear; and, a moment later, a girl's form, standing erect on the vessel's side, showed distinctly in the growing moonlight. She called softly to know if anybody was aboard, and the White Man answered equally cautiously. She then turned and whispered to some unseen person in a boat moored alongside, and, after some seconds, she came towards the White Man and said:

'There is one who would speak with thee, Tuan, but he cannot climb up the ship's side. He is like a dead man—unless one lifts him, how can he move? Will the Tuan, therefore, aid him to ascend into the ship?'

The White Man loosened his pistol in its holster, covertly, that she might not see, and stepped cautiously to the place where the boat appeared to be moored, for he, too, began to fear a trap. What he saw over the side reassured him. The dug-out was of the smallest, and it had only one occupant. He was a man who, even in the dim moonlight, showed the sharp angles of his bones. He had a peculiarly drawn and shrunken look, and the skin was stretched across his hollow cheeks like the goat-hide on a drum-face. The White Man leaped down into the boat, and, aided by the girl, he lifted the man on board. Then, painfully and very slowly, the latter crept aft, going on all fours like some unclean animal, until he had reached the shelter in the stern. The girl and the White Man followed, and they all three squatted down on the creaking bamboo decking. The man sat, all of a heap, moaning at short intervals, as Malays moan when the fever holds them. The girl sat unconcernedly preparing a quid of betel-nut from its four ingredients, and the White Man inhaled his cigarette and waited for them to speak. He was trying to get the hang of the business, and to guess what had caused two people, whom he did not know, to seek an interview with him in this weird place, at such an untimely hour.

The girl, the moonlight told him, was pretty. She had a small, perfectly shaped head, a wide smooth forehead, neat, glossy hair, bright, laughing eyes, with eyebrows arched and well-defined, 'like the artificial spur of a fighting cock,' and the pretty little hands and feet which are so common among all well-born Malay women. The man was hideous. His shrunken and twitching face with its taut skin, and his utterly broken, degraded, and decrepit appearance were indescribably horrible, and the flickering of the moonlight, through the torn mat overhead, only added to the grotesqueness of his figure.

At length the girl looked up at the White Man, and spoke:

'The Tuan knows Awang Itam?' she asked. Yes, the White Man knew him well, but had not seen him for some months.

'This is he,' she said, pointing to the abject figure by her side, and her listener felt as though she had struck him across the face. When last he had seen Awang Itam, he was one of the best favoured of the King's Youths, a fine, upstanding youngster, dressed in many-coloured silks, and with an amount of side and swagger about him, which would have amply sufficed for a regiment of Her Majesty's Guards. Now he half lay, half sat, on the damp decking, the most pitiful wreck of humanity that the White Man had ever seen. What had befallen him to cause so fearful a change? I will tell you the tale, in my own words, as the White Man learned it from him and Bedah, as they sat talking during the watches of that long night.

In every Independent Malay State, there is a gang of fighting men, which watches over the person of the King and acts as his bodyguard. It is recruited from the sons of the chiefs, nobles, and men of the well-bred classes; and its members follow at the heels of the King whenever he goes abroad, paddle his boat, join with him in the chase, gamble unceasingly, do much evil in the King's name, slay all who chance to offend him, and flirt lasciviously with the girls within the palace. They are always ready for anything from 'pitch-and-toss to manslaughter,' and no Malay king has to ask twice in their hearing 'Will nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?' Their one aim in life is to gain the favour of their master, and, having won it, to freely abuse their position. As the Malay proverb has it, they carry their master's work upon their heads, and their own under their arms, and woe betide those who are not themselves under the immediate protection of the King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of irregular police force, levying chantage from those whom they detect in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own price. They are known as the Budak Raja—or King's Youths—and are greatly feared by the people, for they are as reckless, as unscrupulous, as truculent, and withal as gaily dressed and well born a gang of young ruffians, as one would be like to meet in a long summer's cruise.

Awang Itam had served the King for several years as one of the Budak Raja, but his immediate chief was Saiyid Usman, a youngster who was also one of the King's Youths, and was usually spoken of as Tuan Bangau. Awang had been born and bred in the house of which Tuan Bangau's father was the head, and, though in accordance with the immutable Malay custom, Awang always spoke of himself as 'thy servant' when he addressed Tuan Bangau, the relations which subsisted between them more nearly resembled those of brothers, than those which we recognise as being proper to master and servant. They had crawled about the floor of the women's apartments in company, until they were old enough to play in the open air; they had played porok and tuju lubang, and all the games known to Malay children, still in company; they had splashed about in the river together, cooling their little brown bodies in the running water; they had often eaten from the same plate, and had slept side by side on the same mat spread in the verandah. Later, they had been circumcised on the same day, and, having thus entered upon man's estate, they had together begun to participate in the life of dissipation which every court-bred Malay boy regards as his birth-right. Thus they had gone astraying after strange women, gambling and quarelling with the other youths, but still in company, and with their old love for one another unaltered. They had been duly entered as members of the King's Youths, and had proved themselves not to be the least reckless and truculent of those who form that ruffianly gang, but they had chiefly used their position to carry on their love intrigues with greater freedom and daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay around it, who cast loving eyes upon them. Awang, however, cared little for this, for, by the irony of that Fate which always directs that men should fall in love with the wrong women, and vice versa, his heart was eaten up with a fiery desire for a girl who was a jamah-jamah-an, or casual concubine of the King, and who resolutely declined to have ought to do with him. Nevertheless, the moth still fluttered around the candle, and Awang never missed an opportunity of catching a passing glimpse of the object of his longing. It was an evil day for both Awang Itam and Tuan Bangau, however, when, as they swaggered past the palace-fence, seeking to peep at this girl, they were seen by the King's daughter, Tungku Uteh, and a desire was straightway born in her breast for the young and handsome Saiyid.

In the East, love affairs develop quickly; and that very day Awang Itam again saw Iang Munah, the girl whom he had loved so long and so hopelessly, and by a flash of an eye-lid was informed that she had that to tell him which it concerned him to know. When both parties desire a secret interview many difficulties may be overcome, and that evening Awang whispered into the ear of Tuan Bangau that 'the moon was about to fall into his lap.'

'I dreamed not long since,' said Tuan Bangau, 'that I was bitten by a very venomous snake!' And then Awang knew that his friend was ready for any adventure.

To dream of a snake bite, among any of the people of the Far East, means that ere long the dreamer will receive generous favours from some lady who is either of exalted rank, or of most surpassing beauty. The greater the venom of the snake, the brighter, it is believed, are the qualities with which the dreamer's future mistress is endowed. It is not only in Europe, that venom enters into the soul of a man by reason of a woman, and this is, perhaps, the explanation of how this dream comes to bear this peculiar interpretation.

Tuan Bangau's position was a curious one. He did not desire Tungku Uteh for herself; she was his King's daughter, and the wife of a royal husband; and his duty and his interest alike forbade him to accept her advances. If his intrigue with her was discovered, he was a ruined, if not a dead man, and, moreover, he was at this time devoted to another girl, whom he had recently married. The challenge which had been conveyed to him, however, was one which, in spite of all these things, his code of honour made it impossible for him to refuse. The extreme danger, which lay in such an intrigue, gave him no choice but to accept it. That was his point of view, 'His honour rooted in dishonour stood,' and no self-respecting Malay, brought up in the poisonous atmosphere of an Independent Malay State, could admit of any other opinion.

With Awang Itam things were different. I have already said that he was passionately in love with Iang Munah, and he knew that he would at length win his Heart's Desire. He would accompany his chief on his nocturnal visits to the palace, and, while Tuan Bangau wooed the Princess, the handmaiden would give herself to him. He felt the 'blood run redder in every vein' at the bare thought, and he was the eager and impatient lover when the twain crept into the palace in the noon of the night.

They effected their entrance by a way known only to themselves, and left by the same means before the breaking of the dawn, passing to their quarters in the guard-house, through the slumbering town, and lay sleeping far into the day. For more than a month they paid their secret visits unobserved by any save those whom they sought, and by the old crone who unbarred the door for them to enter; but, upon a certain night, they narrowly escaped detection. The King, like many Malay Rajas, kept curious hours. Sometimes, he slept all day, sometimes he slept all night; some days he went to rest at noon, to awake at midnight; and, on such occasions, he often wandered about the palace alone, pouncing upon ill-doers, like the lion which seeketh whom it may devour. In this way he chanced upon Tuan Bangau and Awang Itam, but they had fled from the palace before he had learned who they were, and who were the girls whom they had come to seek.

After this the meetings ceased for a space, but Tungku Uteh was not to be so easily baulked, and a taunting message soon brought Tuan Bangau once more to her feet. The meetings, however, no longer took place within the palace itself, the lovers meeting and passing the night in a wood-shed within the fence of the royal enclosure.

Things had gone on in this way for some time when Tungku Uteh began to weary of the lack of excitement attending the intrigue. Like many Malay women she regarded it as a reproach to a girl if no man desired her, and the longing became greater and greater to show her partner and her immediate entourage that she also was wooed and loved. She had an affection for Tuan Bangau, and admired him as a lover and a man, but even this could not restrain the growing longing for notoriety. Perhaps she hardly realised how grave would be the consequences; perhaps she struggled against the impulse; who can say? The fact remains that her lover was sacrificed, as many a man has been before and since, upon the altar of a woman's ungovernable vanity.

One night, when the yellow dawn was splashing the gray in the East, and the thin smoke-like clouds were hurrying across the sky, like great night fowls winging their homeward way, Tuan Bangau awoke and found Uteh sitting beside him with his kris and girdle in her hands. She had taken them from his pillow as he slept, and no persuasions on his part could induce her to return them. While he yet sought to coax her into foregoing her resolve, she leaped to her feet, and, with a sweet little laugh, disappeared in the palace, and Tuan Bangau returned homeward with Awang Itam, each knowing that now indeed their hour was come.

Once inside her own apartments, Tungku Uteh placed the kris ostentatiously at the head of her sleeping mat, and then composed herself calmly to enjoy the tranquil slumber, which in the West is erroneously supposed to be the peculiar privilege of the just. Next day, the kris had been seen and recognised, but her father and mother received nothing but taunts from Uteh in reply to their inquiries. What her object was is difficult for the European mind to appreciate, for it must be distinctly remembered that she had no quarrel with Tuan Bangau. A Malay woman, however, is very far from regarding the possession of a lover as a disgrace: in this case, Uteh's vanity was gratified by the intrigue becoming known. To obtain this even the sacrifice of her lover did not seem too heavy a price to pay.

The King's anger knew no bounds when he heard of what had occurred, and physical punishment was, of course, the only means of covering his shame, which occurred to his primitive and unoriginal imagination. His position, however, was a difficult one. Tuan Bangau was a member of a very powerful clan; he was also a Saiyid, and the King feared that the fanaticism of his people would be aroused if he openly slew a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Awang Itam, whose intrigue had also become known, was arrested, carried into the palace, and all trace was lost of him for months. Iang Munah also disappeared from among the women; but to Tuan Bangau not a word was said, and never by sign or gesture was he allowed to guess that his crime was known to the King.

One day the King went a hunting, and took his way up a small stream which was totally uninhabited. Tuan Bangau was of the party, and those who went with them were all men selected for their discretion, and their unwavering loyalty to the King. The hunting party travelled in boats, of which there were two, the King going in one, and his son Tungku Saleh in the other. In the latter boat sat Tuan Bangau, and about a dozen of the King's Youths. Arrived at a certain place, the King's boat went on round the point, and Tungku Saleh's boat tied up in mid-stream, while the Prince ate some sweatmeats which had been brought for the purpose.

When he had eaten his fill, he bade Tuan Bangau and one or two other Saiyids, who were among his followers, fall to on what remained, and it was while Tuan Bangau was washing his mouth over the side of the boat after eating, that Tungku Saleh gave the signal which heralded his death. A man who was behind him stabbed him in the shoulder with a spear, and another blow given almost simultaneously knocked him into the river. Tuan Bangau dived, and swam until he had reached the shallow water near the bank. Here he rose to his feet, drew his kris, and called to those within the boat to come and fight him one at a time if they dared. The only answer was a spear which wounded him in the neck, and a bullet from a gun which penetrated to his heart. In a moment all that remained of Tuan Bangau was a shapeless heap of useless flesh, lying in the shallow water, with the eddies playing around and in and out of the brilliant silk garments, which had made him so brave a sight when alive. Those who had slain him, buried him; where, no man knoweth; the report that he had strayed and been lost, was diligently spread, and, though generally disbelieved, was found to be impossible of disproof. But Bedah, his wife who had loved him, had learnt these things, and now told all to the White Man, hoping that thus her husband's murder might be avenged, and thereby she risked the life which his death had temporarily made desolate.

Compared with that of Awang Itam, however, Tuan Bangau's fate was a happy one. When the former disappeared from the sight of men, he was the victim of nameless tortures. As he told the tale of what he had suffered on the night that followed his arrest; of the ghastly tortures and mutilations which had wrecked his manhood, and left him the pitiable ruin he then was, the White Man writhed in sympathy, and was filled with a horror that made him sick.

'Better it were to die,' said he, 'than to live the life which is no life, and to suffer these nameless torments.'

'It is true,' said Awang Itam, 'it is true. But readily would I bear it over again, Tuan, if thereby for a little space I might be what I have been, and my Heart's Desire could once more be satisfied!'

These were the last words spoken while the dawn was breaking, as the White Man clambered over the side and wended his way homeward; and, therefore, I have called this tale the story of 'His Heart's Desire.'



A NIGHT OF TERROR

The glaring eyes through the brushwood shine, And the striped hide shows between The trees and bushes, 'mid trailing vine And masses of ever-green. A snarling moan comes long and low, We may neither flee nor fight, For well our leaping pulses know The Terror that stalks by Night.

If you put your finger on the map of the Malay Peninsula an inch or two from its exact centre, you will find a river in Pahang territory which has its rise in the watershed that divides that State from Kelantan and Trengganu. This river is called the Tembeling, and it is chiefly remarkable for the number of its rapids and the richness of its gutta-bearing forests. Its inhabitants are a ruffianly lot of Malays, who are preyed upon by a family of Wans, a semi-royal set of nobles who do their best to live up to their traditions. Below the rapids the natives are chiefly noted for the quaint pottery that they produce from the clay which abounds there, and the rude shapes and ruder tracery of their vessels have probably suffered no change since the days when Solomon's fleets sought gold and peafowl and monkeys in the jungles of the Peninsula, as everybody knows. Above the rapids the Malays plant enough gambir to supply the wants of the whole betel-chewing population of Pahang, and, as the sale of this commodity wins them a few dollars annually, they are too indolent to plant their own rice. This grain, which is the staple of all Malays, without which they cannot live, is therefore sold to them by down river natives, at the exorbitant price of half a dollar the bushel.

A short distance up stream, and midway between the mouth and the big rapids, there is a straggling village, called Ranggul, the houses of which, made of wattled bamboos and thatched with palm leaves, stand on piles, amid the groves of cocoa-nut and areca-nut palms, varied by clumps of smooth-leaved banana trees. The houses are not very close together, but a man can call from one to the other with ease; and thus the cocoa-nuts thrive, which, as the Malays say, grow not with pleasure beyond the sound of the human voice. The people of the village are not more indolent than other Malays. They plant a little rice, when the season comes, in the swamps behind the village. They work a little jungle produce, when the pinch of poverty drives them to it, but, like all Malays, they take life sufficiently easily. If you chance to go into the village of Ranggul, during any of the hot hours of the day, you will find most of its occupants lying about in their dark, cool houses, engaged upon such gentle mental tasks as may be afforded by whittling a stick, or hacking slowly at the already deeply scored threshold-block, with their clumsy wood-knives. Sitting thus, they gossip with a passing neighbour, who stops to chatter as he sits propped upon the stair ladder, or they croak snatches of song, with some old-world refrain to it, and, from time to time, break off to cast a word over their shoulders to the wife in the dim background near the fireplace, or to the little virgin daughter, carefully secreted on the shelf overhead, in company with a miscellaneous collection of dusty, grimy rubbish, the disused lumber of years. Nature has been very lavish to the Malay, and she has provided him with a soil which returns a maximum of food for a minimum of grudging labour. The cool, moist fruit groves call aloud to all mankind to come and revel in their fragrant shade during the parching hours of mid-day, and the Malay has caught the spirit of his surroundings, and is very much what Nature has seen fit to make him.

Some five-and-thirty years ago, when Che' Wan Ahmad, now better known as Sultan Ahmad Maatham Shah, was collecting his forces in Dungun, preparatory to making his last and successful descent into the Tembeling valley, whence to overrun and conquer Pahang, the night was closing in at Ranggul. A large house stood, at that time, in a somewhat isolated position, within a thickly-planted compound, at one extremity of the village. In this house, on the night of which I write, seven men and two women were at work on the evening meal. The men sat in the centre of the floor, on a white mat made from the plaited leaves of the mengkuang palm, with a plate piled with rice before each of them, and a brass tray, holding various little china bowls of curry, placed where all could reach it. They sat cross-legged, with bowed backs, supporting themselves on their left arms, the left hand lying flat on the mat, and being so turned that the outspread fingers pointed inwards. With the fingers of their right hands they messed the rice, mixing the curry well into it, and then swiftly carried a large handful to their mouths, skilfully, without dropping a grain. The women sat demurely, in a half kneeling position, with their feet tucked away under them, and ministered to the wants of the men. They said never a word, save an occasional exclamation, when they drove away a lean cat that crept too near to the food, and the men also held their peace. There was no sound to be heard, save the hum of the insects out of doors, the deep note of the bull-frogs in the rice swamps, and the unnecessarily loud noise of mastication made by the men as they ate.

When the meal was over the women carried what was left to a corner near the fireplace, and there fell to on such of the viands as their lords had not consumed. If you had looked carefully, however, you would have seen that the cooking-pots, over which the women ruled, still held a secret store for their own consumption, and that the quality of the food in this cache was by no means inferior to that which had been allotted to the men. In a land where women wait upon themselves, and have none to attend to their wants, or forestall their wishes, they very soon acquire an extremely good notion of how to look after themselves; and, since they have never known a state of society in which women are treated as they are amongst ourselves, they do not repine, and seem, for the most part, to be sufficiently bright, light-hearted, and happy.

The men, meanwhile, had each rolled up a quid of betel-nut, taking the four ingredients carefully from the little brass boxes in the wooden tray before them, and having prepared cigarettes of Javenese tobacco, with the dried shoots of the nipah palm for wrappers, had at length broken the absorbed silence, which had held them fast while the matter of the meal was occupying their undivided attention.

The talk flitted lightly over many subjects; for a hearty meal, and the peace of soul which repletion brings with it, are not conducive to concentration of attention, nor yet to activity of mind. The Malay, too, is always superficial, and talk among natives generally plays round facts, rather than round ideas. Che' Seman, the owner of the house, and his two sons, Awang and Ngah, discussed the prospects of the crop then growing in the fields behind the compound. Their cousin Abdollah, who chanced to be passing the night in the house, told of a fall which his wife's aunt's brother had come by, when climbing a cocoa-nut tree. Mat, his biras (for they had married two sisters, which established a definite form of relationship between them, according to Malay ideas), added a few more or less ugly details to Abdollah's description of the corpse after the accident. And as this attracted the attention of the two remaining men, Potek and Kassim, who had been discussing the price of rice, and the varying chances of getah hunting, the talk at this point became general. Potek and Kassim had recently returned from Dungun, where, as has been said, the present Sultan of Pahang was, at that time, collecting the force with which he afterwards successfully invaded and conquered the State. They told of all they had seen and heard, multiplying their figures with the daring recklessness that is born of unfettered imaginations, and the lack of a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic. But even this absorbing topic could not hold the attention of their hearers for long. Before Potek and Kassim had well finished the enumeration of the heavy artillery, of the thousands of the elephants, and the tens of thousands of the followers, with which they credited the adventurous, but slender bands of ragamuffins, who followed Ahmad's fortunes, Che' Seman broke into their talk with words on a subject which, at that time, was ever uppermost in the minds of the Tembeling people, and the conversation straightway drifted into the channel in which it had run, with only casual interruptions, for many weeks past.

'He of the Hairy Face[12] is with us once more,' ejaculated Che' Seman; and when this announcement had caused a dead silence to fall upon his hearers, and had even stilled the chatter of the women-folk near the fireplace, he continued:

'At the hour when the cicada is heard (sunset), I met Imam Sidik of Gemuroh, and bade him stay to eat rice, but he would not, saying that He of the Hairy Face had made his kill at Labu yesternight, and it behoved all men to be within their houses before the darkness fell. And so saying he paddled his dug-out down stream with the short quick stroke used when we race boats. Imam Sidik is a wise man, and his words are true. He of the Hairy Face spares neither priest nor prince. The girl he killed at Labu was a daughter of the Wans—her name Wan Esah.'

[Footnote 12: Si Podong = one of the names used by jungle-bred Malays to describe a tiger. They avoid using the beast's real name lest the sound of it should reach his ears, and cause him to come to the speaker.]

'That makes three-and-twenty whom He of the Hairy Face hath slain in one year of maize' (three months), said Awang in a low fear-stricken voice. 'He touches neither goats nor kine, and men say He sucketh more blood than He eateth flesh.'

'That it is which proves Him to be the thing he is,' said Ngah.

'Thy words are true,' said Che' Seman solemnly. 'He of the Hairy Face has his origin in a man. The Semang—the negrits of the woods—drove him forth from among them, and now he lives solitarily in the jungles, and by night he takes upon himself the form of Him of the Hairy Face, and feasts upon the flesh of his own kind.'

'I have heard tell that it is only the men of Korinchi who have this strange power,' interposed Abdollah, in the tone of one who longs to be reassured.

'Men say that they also possess the power,' rejoined Che' Seman, 'but certain it is that He of the Hairy Face was born a Semang,—a negrit of the woods,—and when He goeth forth in human guise he is like all other Semangs to look upon. I and many others have seen him, roaming alone, naked, and muttering to himself, when we have been in the forests seeking for jungle produce. All men know that it is He who by night harries us in our villages. If one ventures to go forth from our houses in the time of darkness, to the bathing raft at the river's edge, or to tend our sick, or to visit a friend, Si Pudong is ever to be found watching, and thus the tale of his kills waxes longer and longer.'

'But men are safe from him while they sit within their houses?' asked Mat with evident anxiety.

'God alone knows,' answered Che' Seman piously, 'who can say where men are safe from Him of the Hairy Face? He cometh like a shadow, and slays like a prince, and then like a shadow he is gone! And the tale of his kills waxes ever longer and yet more long. May God send Him far from us! Ya Allah! It is He! Listen!'

At the word, a dead silence, broken only by the hard breathing of the men and women, fell upon all within the house. Then very faintly, and far away up stream, but not so faintly but that all could hear it, and shudder at the sound, the long-drawn, howling, snarling moan of a hungry tiger broke upon the stillness. The Malays call the roar of the tiger aum, and the word is vividly onomatopoetic, as those who have heard the sound in the jungle during the silent night watches can bear witness. All who have listened to the tiger in his forest freedom know that he has many voices wherewith to speak. He can give a barking cry, which is not unlike that of a deer; he can grunt like a startled boar, and squeak like the monkeys cowering at his approach in the branches overhead; he can shake the earth with a vibrating, resonant purr, like the sound of faint thunder in the foot-hills; he can mew and snarl like an angry wildcat; and he can roar like a lusty lion cub. But it is when he lifts up his voice in the long-drawn moan that the jungle chiefly fears him. This cry means that he is hungry, and, moreover, that he is so sure of his kill that he cares not if all the world knows that his belly is empty. It has something strangely horrible in its tone, for it speaks of that cold-blooded, dispassionate cruelty which is only to be found in perfection in the feline race. These sleek, smooth-skinned, soft-footed, lithe, almost serpentine animals, torture with a grace of movement, and a gentleness in strength which has something in it more violently repugnant to our natures than any sensation with which the thought of the blundering charge and savage goring of the buffalo, or the clumsy kneading with giant knee-caps, that the elephant metes out to its victims, can ever inspire in us.

Again the long-drawn moaning cry broke upon the stillness. The cattle in the byre heard it and were panic-stricken. Half mad with fear, they charged the walls of their pen, bearing all before them, and in a moment could be heard in the distance plunging madly through the brushwood, and splashing through the soft earth of the padi fields. The dogs whimpered and scampered off in every direction, while the fowls beneath the house set up a drowsy and discordant screeching. The folk within the house were too terror-stricken to speak, for fear, which gives voices to the animal world, renders voluble human beings dumb. And all this time the cry broke forth again and again, ever louder and louder, as He of the Hairy Face drew nearer and yet more near.

At last the cruel whining howl sounded within the very compound in which the house stood, and its sudden proximity caused Mat to start so violently that he overturned the pitch torch at his elbow, and extinguished the flickering light. The women crowded up against the men, seeking comfort by physical contact with them, their teeth chattering like castanets. The men gripped their spears, and squatted tremblingly in the half light thrown by the dying embers of the fire, and the flecks cast upon floor and wall by the faint moonbeams struggling through the interstices of the thatched roof.

'Fear nothing, Minah,' Che' Seman whispered, in a hoarse, strange voice, to his little daughter, who nestled miserably against his breast, 'in a space He will be gone. Even He of the Hairy Face will do us no harm while we sit within the house.'

Che' Seman spoke from the experience of many generations of Malays, but he knew not the nature of the strange beast with whom he had to deal. Once more the moan-like howl broke out on the still night air, but this time the note had changed, and gradually it quickened to the ferocious snarling roar, the charge song, as the tiger rushed forward and leaped against the side of the house with a heavy jarring thud. A shriek from all the seven throats went up on the instant, and then came a scratching, tearing sound, followed by a soft, dull flop, as the tiger, failing to effect a landing on the low roof, fell back to earth. The men started to their feet, clutching their weapons convulsively, and, led by Che' Seman, they raised, above the shrieks of the frightened women, a lamentable attempt at a sorak, the Malayan war-cry, which is designed as much to put heart into those who utter it, as to frighten the enemy in defiance of whom it is sounded.

Mat, the man who had upset the torch and plunged the house in darkness, alone failed to add his voice to the miserable cheer raised by his fellows. Wild with fear of the beast without, he crept, unobserved by the others, up into the para, or shelf-like upper apartment, on which Minah had been wont to sit, when strangers were about, during the short days of her virginity. This place, as is usual in most Malay houses, hardly deserved to be dignified by being termed a room. It consisted of a platform suspended from the roof in one corner of the house, and among the dusty lumber with which it was covered Mat now cowered and sought to hide himself.

A minute or two of sickening suspense followed the tiger's first unsuccessful charge. But presently the howl broke forth again, quickened rapidly to the note of the charge song, and once more the house trembled under the weight of the great animal. This time the leap of Him of the Hairy Face had been of truer aim, and a crash overhead, a shower of leaflets of thatch, and an ominous creaking of the woodwork told the cowering people in the house that their enemy had effected a landing on the roof.

The miserable thready cheer, which Che' Seman exhorted his fellows to raise in answer to the charge song of the tiger, died down in their throats. All looked upwards in deadly fascination as the thatch was torn violently apart by the great claws of their assailant. There were no firearms in the house, but the men instinctively grasped their spears, and held them ready to await the tiger's descent. Thus for a moment, as the quiet moonlight poured in through the gap in the thatch, they stood gazing at the great square face, marked with its black bars, at the flaming eyes, and the long cruel teeth framed in the hole which the claws of the beast had made. The timbers of the roof bent and cracked anew under the unwonted weight, and then, with the agility of a cat, He of the Hairy Face leaped lightly down, and was in among them before they knew. The striped hide was slightly wounded by the spears, but the shock of the brute's leap bore all who had resisted it to the floor. The tiger never stayed to use its jaws. It sat up, much in the attitude of a kitten which plays with something dangled before its eyes, and the soft pit-pat of its paws, as it struck out rapidly and with unerring aim, speedily disposed of all its enemies. Che' Seman, with his two sons, Awang and Ngah, were the first to fall. Then Iang, Che' Seman 's wife, reeled backwards against the wall, with her skull crushed out of all resemblance to any human member, by the awful strength of one of those well-aimed buffets from the fearful claws. Kassim, Potek, and Abdollah fell before the tiger in quick succession, and Minah, the girl who had nestled against her father for protection, lay now under his dead body, sorely wounded, wild with terror, but still alive and conscious. Mat, cowering on the shelf overhead, breathless with fear, and gazing fascinated at the carnage going on within a few feet of him, was the only inmate of the house who remained uninjured.

He of the Hairy Face killed quickly and silently, while there were yet some alive to resist him. Then, purring gently, he drank a deep draught of blood from each of his slaughtered victims. At last he reached Che' Seman, and Minah, seeing him approach, made a feeble effort to evade him. Then began a fearful scene, the tiger playing with, and torturing the girl, just as we all have seen a cat do with a maimed mouse. Again and again Minah crawled feebly away from her tormentor, only to be drawn back again just when escape seemed possible. Again and again she lay still in the utter inertia of exhaustion, only to be quickened into agonised movement once more by the touch of the tiger's cruel claws. Yet so cunningly did he play with her, that, as Mat described it, a time as long as it would take to cook rice had elapsed, before the girl was finally put out of her misery.

Even then He of the Hairy Face did not quit the scene of slaughter. Mat, as he lay trembling in the shelf overhead, watched the tiger, through the long hours of that fearful night, play with the mangled bodies of each of his victims in turn. He leaped from one to the other, inflicting a fresh blow with teeth or claws on their torn flesh, with all the airy, light-hearted agility and sinuous grace of a kitten playing with its shadow in the sun. Then when the dawn was breaking, the tiger tore down the door, leaped lightly to the ground, and betook himself to the jungle.

When the sun was up, an armed party of neighbours came to the house to see if ought could be done. But they found the place a shambles, the bodies hardly to be recognised, the floor-laths dripping blood, and Mat lying face downward on the shelf, with his reason tottering in the balance. The bodies, though they had been horribly mutilated, had not been eaten, the tiger having contented himself with drinking the blood of his victims, and playing his ghastly game with them till the dawn broke.

This is, I believe, the only recorded instance in the Peninsula of a tiger having dared to attack men within their closed houses; and the circumstances are so remarkable in every way, that I, for one, cannot find it in me to greatly blame the Malays for attributing the fearlessness of mankind, and the lust for blood displayed by Him of the Hairy Face, to the fact that he owed his existence to magic agencies, and was in reality no mere wild beast, but a member of the race upon which he so cruelly preyed.



IN THE DAYS WHEN THE LAND WAS FREE

Alas, the shifting years have sped, Since we were hale and strong, Who oft have seen the hot blood shed, Nor held the deed a wrong; When the flames leap'd bright, thro' the frightened night, When the scrak rang thro' the lea, When a man might fight, and when might was right, In the Days when the Land was Free.

The Song of the Fettered Folk.

In 1873 the people of Pahang who, then as now, were ever ready to go upon the war-path, poured over the cool summits of the range that forms at once the backbone of the Peninsula and the boundary between Pahang and Selangor. They went, at the invitation of the British Government, to bring to a final conclusion the protracted struggles, in which Malay Rajas, foreign mercenaries, and Chinese miners had alike been engaged for years, distracting the State of Selangor, and breaking the peace of the Peninsula. A few months later, the Pahang Army, albeit sadly reduced by cholera, poured back again across the mountains, the survivors slapping their chests and their kris-hilts, and boasting loudly of their deeds, as befitted victorious warriors in a Malay land. The same stories are still told 'with circumstance and much embroidery,' by those who took part in the campaign, throughout the length and breadth of Pahang even unto this day.

Among the great Chiefs who led their people across the range, one of the last to go, and one of those whose heart was most uplifted by victory, was the present Mahraja Perba of Jelai, commonly called To' Raja. His own people, even at that time, gave him the title he now bears, but the Bendahara of Pahang (since styled Sultan) had never formally installed him in the hereditary office of which he was the heir, so by the Court Faction he was still addressed as Panglima Prang Mamat.

On his arrival at Pekan, the Panglima Prang, unmindful of the fate which, at an earlier period, had befallen his brother Wan Bong, whose severed head lay buried somewhere near the palace in a nameless grave, began to assert himself in a manner which no Malay King could be expected to tolerate. Not content with receiving from his own people the semi-royal honours, which successive To' Rajas have insisted upon from the natives of the interior, Panglima Prang allowed his pride to run away with both his prudence and his manners. He landed at Pekan with a following of nearly fifty men, all wearing shoes, the spoils of war, it is said, which had fallen to his lot through the capture of a Chinese store; he walked down the principal street of the town with an umbrella carried by one of his henchmen; and he ascended into the King's Balai with his kris uncovered by the folds of his sarong! The enormity of these proceedings may not, perhaps, be apparent; but, in those days, the wearing of shoes of a European type, and the public use of an umbrella, were among the proudest privileges of royalty. To ascend the Balai with an uncloaked weapon in one's girdle was, moreover, a warlike proceeding, which can only be compared to the snapping of fingers in the face of royalty. Therefore, when Panglima Prang left Pekan, and betook himself up river to his house in the Jelai, he left a flustered court, and a very angry King behind him.

But at this time there was a man in Pahang who was not slow to seize an opportunity, and in the King's anger he saw a chance that he had long been seeking. This man was Dato' Imam Prang Indera Gajah Pahang, a title which, being interpreted, meaneth, The War Chief, the Elephant of Pahang. Magnificent and high sounding as was this name, it was found too large a mouthful for everyday use, and to the people of Pahang he was always known by the abbreviated title of To' Gajah. He had risen from small beginnings by his genius for war, and more especially for that branch of the science which the Malays call tipu prang—the deception of strife—a term which is more accurately rendered into English by the word treachery, than by that more dignified epithet strategy. He had already been the recipient of various land grants from the King, which carried with them some hundreds of devoted families who chanced to live on the alienated territories; he already took rank as a great Chief; but his ambition was to become the master of the Lipis Valley, in which he had been born, by displacing the aged To' Kaya Stia-wangsa, the hereditary Chief of the District.

To' Gajah knew that To' Kaya of Lipis, and all his people were more or less closely related to Panglima Prang, and to the Jelai natives. He foresaw that, if war was declared against Panglima Prang by the King, the Lipis people would throw in their fortunes with the former. It was here, therefore, that he saw his chance, and, as the fates would have it, an instrument lay ready to his hand.

At Kuala Lipis there dwelt in those days an old and cross-grained madman, a Jelai native by birth, who, in the days before his trouble came upon him, had been a great Chief in Pahang. He bore the title of Orang Kaya Haji, and his eldest son was named Wan Lingga. The latter was as wax in To' Gajah's hands, and when they had arranged between themselves that in the event of a campaign against Panglima Prang proving successful, Wan Lingga should replace the latter by becoming To' Raja of Jelai, while the Lipis Valley should be allotted to To' Gajah, with the title of Dato' Kaya Stia-wangsa, they together approached the Bendahara on the subject.

They found him willing enough to entertain any scheme, which included the humbling of his proud vassal Panglima Prang, who so lately had done him dishonour in his own capital. Moreover the Bendahara of Pahang was as astute as it is given to most men to be, and he saw that strife between the great Chiefs must, by weakening all, eventually strengthen his own hand, since he would, in the end, be the peacemaker between them. Therefore he granted a letter of authority to Wan Lingga and To' Gajah, and thus the war began.

The people of Pahang flocked to the interior, all noisily eager to stamp out of existence the upstart Chief, who had dared to wear shoes, and to carry an umbrella in the streets of their King's capital. The aged Chief of Lipis and his people, however, clove to Panglima Prang, or To' Raja, as he now openly called himself, and the war did not prosper. To' Gajah had inspired but little love in the hearts of the men whom the Bendahara had given him for a following, and they allowed their stockades to be taken without a blow by the Jelai people, and on one occasion To' Gajah only escaped by being paddled hastily down stream concealed in the rolled up hide of a buffalo.

At last it became evident that war alone could never subdue the Jelai and Lipis districts, and consequently negotiations were opened. A Chief named the Orang Kaya Pahlawan of Semantan visited To' Raja in the Jelai, and besought him to make his peace by coming to Pekan.

'Thou hast been victorious until now,' said he, 'but thy food is running low. How then wilt thou fare? It were better to submit to the Bendahara, and I will go warrant that no harm befalls thee. If the Bendahara shears off thy head, he shall only do so when thy neck has been used as a block for mine own. And thou knowest that the King loveth me.' To' Raja therefore allowed himself to be persuaded, but stipulated that Wan Lingga, who was then at Kuala Lipis, should also go down to Pekan, since if he remained in the interior he might succeed in subverting the loyalty of the Jelai people who hitherto had been faithful to To' Raja. Accordingly Wan Lingga left Kuala Lipis, ostensibly for Pekan, but, after descending the river for a few miles, he turned off into a side stream, named the Kichan, where he lay hidden biding his time.

When To' Raja heard of this, he at first declined to continue his journey down stream, but at length, making a virtue of necessity, he again set forward, saying that he entertained no fear of Wan Lingga, since one who could hide in the forest 'like a fawn or a mouse-deer' could never, he said, fill the seat of To' Raja of Jelai.

It is whispered, that it had been To' Gajah's intention to make away with To' Raja, on his way down stream, by means of that 'warlike' art for which, I have said, he had a special aptitude; but the Jelai people knew the particular turn of the genius with which they had to deal, and consequently they remained very much on their guard. They travelled, some forty or fifty strong, on an enormous bamboo raft, with a large fortified house erected in its centre. They never parted with their arms, taking them both to bed and to bath; they turned out in force at the very faintest alarm of danger; they moored the raft in mid-stream when the evening fell; and, wonderful to relate, for Malays make bad sentinels, they kept faithful watch both by day and by night. Thus at length they won to Pekan without mishap; and thereafter they were suffered to remain in peace, no further and immediate attempts being made upon their lives.

To' Raja—or Panglima Prang as he was still called by the King and the Court Faction—remained at the capital a prisoner in all but the name. The Bendahara declined to accord him an interview, pointedly avoided speech with him, when they chanced to meet in public, and resolutely declined to allow him to leave Pekan. This, in ancient days, was practically the King's only means of punishing a powerful vassal, against whom he did not deem it prudent to take more active measures; and as, at a Malay Court, the entourage of the Raja slavishly follow any example which their King may set them, the position of a great Chief living at the capital in disgrace was sufficiently isolated, dreary, humiliating, and galling.

But To' Raja's own followers clove to him with the loyalty for which, on occasion, the natives of Pahang are remarkable. The Bendahara spared no pains to seduce them from their allegiance, and the three principal Chieftains who followed in To' Raja's train were constantly called into the King's presence, and were shown other acts of favour, which were steadfastly denied to their master. But it profited the Bendahara nothing, for Imam Bakar, the oldest of the three, set an example of loyalty which his two companions, Imam Prang Samah and Khatib Bujang, followed resolutely. Imam Bakar himself acted from principle. He was a man whom Nature had endowed with firm nerves, a faithful heart, and that touch of recklessness and fatalism which is needed to put the finishing touch to the courage of an oriental. He loved To' Raja and all his house, nor could he be tempted or scared into a denial of his affection and loyalty. Imam Prang Samah and Khatib Bujang, both of whom I know well, are men of a different type. They belong to the weak-kneed brethren, and they followed Imam Bakar because they feared him and To' Raja. They found themselves, to use an emphatic colloquialism, between the Devil and the Deep Sea, nor had they sufficient originality between them to suggest a compromise. Thus they imitated Imam Bakar, repeated his phrases after him, and, in the end, but narrowly escaped sharing with him the fate which awaits those who arouse the wrath of a King.

At each interview which these Chieftains had with their monarch, the latter invariably concluded the conversation by calling upon them to testify to the faith that was in them.

'Who,' he would ask, 'is your Master, and who is your Chief?'

And the three, led by Imam Bakar, would make answer with equal regularity:

'Thou, O Highness, art Master of thy servants, and His Highness To' Raja is thy servants' Chief.'

Now, from the point of view of the Bendahara, this answer was most foully treasonable. That in speaking to him, the King, they should give To' Raja—the vassal he had been at such pains to humble—a royal title equal to his own, was in itself bad enough. But that, not content with this outrage, they should decline to acknowledge the Bendahara as both Master and Chief was the sorest offence of all. A man may own duty to any Chief he pleases, until such time as he comes into the presence of his King, who is the Chief of Chiefs. Then all loyalty to minor personages must be laid aside, and the Monarch must be acknowledged as the Master and Lord above all others. But it was just this one thing that Imam Bakar was determined not to do, and at each succeeding interview the anger of the Bendahara waxed hotter and hotter.

At the last interview of all, and before the fatal question had been asked and answered, the King spoke with the three Chieftains concerning the manner of their life in the remote interior, and, turning to Imam Bakar, he asked how they of the upper country lived.

'Thy servants live on earth,' replied the Imam, meaning thereby that they were tillers of the soil.

When they had once more given the hateful answer to the oft put question, and had withdrawn in fear and trembling before the King's anger, the latter called To' Gajah to him and said:

'Imam Bakar and the men his friends told me a moment since that they eat earth. Verily the Earth will have its revenge, for I foresee that in a little space the Earth will swallow Imam Bakar.'

Next day the three recalcitrant Chiefs left Pekan for their homes in the interior, and, a day or two later, To' Gajah, by the Bendahara's order, followed them in pursuit. His instructions were to kill all three without further questionings, should he chance to overtake them before they reached their homes at Kuala Tembeling. If, however, they should win to their homes in safety, they were once more to be asked the fatal question, and their lives were to depend upon the nature of their answer. This was done, lest a rising of the Chieftains' relations should give needless trouble to the King's people; for the clan was not a small one, and any unprovoked attack upon the villages, in which the Chieftains lived, would be calculated to give offence.

Imam Bakar and his friends were punted up the long reaches of the Pahang river, past the middle country, where the banks are lined with villages nestling in the palm and fruit trees; past Gunong Senuyum—the Smiling Mountain—that great limestone rock, which raises its crest high above the forest that clothes the plain in which it stands in solitary beauty; past Lubok Plang, where in a nameless grave lies the Princess of ancient story, the legend of whose loveliness alone survives; past Glanggi's Fort, those gigantic caves which seem to lend some probability to the tradition that, before they changed to stone, they were once the palace of a King; and on and on, until, at last, the yellow sandbanks of Pasir Tambang came in sight. And close at their heels, though they knew it not, followed To' Gajah and those of the King's Youths who had been deputed to cover their Master's shame.

At Kuala Tembeling, where the waters of the river of that name make common cause with those of the Jelai, and where the united streams first take the name of Pahang, there lies a broad stretch of sand glistening in the fierce sunlight. It has been heaped up, during countless generations, by little tributes from the streams which meet at its feet, and it is never still. Every flood increases or diminishes its size, and weaves its restless sands into some new fantastic curve or billow. The sun which beats upon it bakes the sand almost to boiling point, and the heat-haze dances above it, like some restless phantom above a grave. And who shall say that ghosts of the dead and gone do not haunt this sandbank far away in the heart of the Peninsula? If native report speaks true, the spot is haunted, for the sand, they say, is 'hard ground' such as the devils love to dwell upon. Full well may it be so, for Pasir Tambang has been the scene of many a cruel tragedy, and could its sands but speak, what tales would they have to tell us of woe and murder, of valour and treachery, of shrieking souls torn before their time from their sheaths of flesh and blood, and of all the savage deeds of this

race of venomous worms That sting each other here in the dust.

It was on this sandbank that To' Gajah and his people pitched their camp, building a small open house with rude uprights, and thatching it with palm leaves cut in the neighbouring jungle. To' Gajah knew that Imam Bakar was the man with whom he really had to deal. Imam Prang Samah and Khatib Bujang he rated at their proper worth, and it was to Imam Bakar, therefore, that he first sent a message, desiring him once more to answer as to who was his Master and who his Chief. Imam Bakar, after consulting his two friends, once more returned the answer that while he acknowledged the Bendahara as his King and his Master, his immediate Chief was no other than 'His Highness To' Raja.' That answer sealed his doom.

On the following day To' Gajah sent for Imam Bakar, and made all things ready against his coming. To this end he buried his spears and other arms under the sand within his hut.

When the summons to visit To' Gajah reached Imam Bakar, he feared that his time had come. He was not a man, however, who would willingly fly from danger, and he foresaw moreover that if he took refuge in flight all his possessions would be destroyed by his enemies, while he himself, with his wife and little ones, would die in the jungles or fall into the hands of his pursuers. He already regarded himself as a dead man, but though he knew that he could save himself even now by a tardy desertion of To' Raja, the idea of adopting this means of escape was never entertained by him for an instant.

'If I sit down, I die, and if I stand up, I die!' he said to the messenger. 'Better then does it befit a man to die standing. Come, let us go to Pasir Tambang and learn what To' Gajah hath in store for me!'

The sun was half-mast high in the heavens as Imam Bakar crossed the river to Pasir Tambang in his tiny dug-out. Until the sun's rays fall more or less perpendicularly, the slanting light paints broad reaches of water a brilliant dazzling white, unrelieved by shadow or reflection. The green of the masses of jungle on the river banks takes to itself a paler hue than usual, and the yellow of the sandbanks changes its shade from the colour of a cowslip to that of a pale and early primrose. It was on such a white morning as this that Imam Bakar crossed slowly to meet his fate. His dug-out grounded on the sandbank, and when it had been made fast to a pole, its owner, fully armed, walked towards the hut in which To' Gajah was seated.

This Chief was a very heavily built man, with a bullet-shaped head, and a square resolute jaw, partially cloaked by a short sparse beard of coarse wiry hair. His voice and his laugh were both loud and boisterous, and he usually affected an air of open, noisy good-fellowship, which was but little in keeping with his character. When he saw Imam Bakar approaching him, with the slow and solemn tread of one who believes himself to be walking to his death, he cried out to him, while he was yet some way off, with every appearance of friendship and cordiality:

'O Imam Bakar! What is the news? Come hither to me and fear nothing. I come as thy friend, in peace and love. Come let us touch hands in salutation as befits those who harbour no evil one to another.'

Imam Bakar was astonished at this reception. His heart bounded against his ribs with relief at finding his worst fears so speedily dispelled, and being, for the moment, off his guard, he placed his two hands between those of To' Gajah in the usual manner of Malay formal salutation. Quick as thought, To' Gajah seized him by the wrists, his whole demeanour changing in a moment from that of the rough good-fellowship of the boon companion, to excited and cruel ferocity.

'Stab! Stab! Stab! Ye sons of evil women!' he yelled to his men, and before poor Imam Bakar could free himself from the powerful grasp which held him, the spears were unearthed, and half a dozen of their blades met in his shuddering flesh. It was soon over, and Imam Bakar lay dead upon the sandbank, his body still quivering, while the peaceful morning song of the birds came uninterrupted from the forest around.

Then Khatib Bujang and Imam Prang Samah were sent for, and as they came trembling into the presence of To' Gajah, whose hands were still red with the blood of their friend and kinsman, they squatted humbly on the sand at his feet.

'Behold a sample of what ye also may soon be,' said To' Gajah, spurning the dead body of Imam Bakar as he spoke. 'Mark it well, and then tell me who is your Master and who your Chief!'

Khatib Bujang and Imam Prang Samah stuttered and stammered, but not because they hesitated about the answer, but rather through over eagerness to speak, and a deadly fear which held them dumb. At last, however, they found words and cried together:

'The Bendahara is our Master, and our Chief is whomsoever thou mayest be pleased to appoint.'

Thus they saved their lives, and are still living, while To' Gajah lies buried in an exile's grave; but many will agree in thinking that such a death as Imam Bakar's is a better thing for a man to win, than empty years such as his companions have survived to pass in scorn and in dishonour.

But while these things were being done at Pekan and at Pasir Tambang, Wan Lingga, who, as I have related, had remained behind in the upper country when To' Raja was carried to Pekan, was sparing no pains to seduce the faithful natives of the interior from their loyalty to their hereditary Chief. In all his efforts, however, he was uniformly unsuccessful, for, though he had got rid of To' Raja, there remained in the Lipis Valley the aged Chief of the District, the Dato' Kaya Stia-wangsa, whom the people both loved and feared. He had been a great warrior in the days of his youth, and a series of lucky chances and hair-breadth escapes had won for him an almost fabulous reputation, such as among a superstitious people easily attaches itself to any striking and successful personality. It was reported that he bore a charmed life, that he was invulnerable alike to lead bullets and to steel blades, and even the silver slugs which his enemies had fashioned for him had hitherto failed to find their billet in his body. From the first this man had thrown in his lot with his kinsman To' Raja, and, unlike him, he had declined to allow himself to be persuaded to visit the capital when the war came to an end. Thus he continues to live at the curious little village of Penjum, on the Lipis river, and, so long as he was present in person to exert his influence upon the people, Wan Lingga found it impossible to make any headway against him.

These things were reported by Wan Lingga to To' Gajah, and by the latter to the Bendahara. The result was an order to Wan Lingga, charging him to attack To' Kaya Stia-wangsa by night, and to slay him and all his house. With To' Kaya dead and buried, and To' Raja a State prisoner at the capital, the game which To' Gajah and Wan Lingga had been playing would at least be won. The Lipis would fall to the former, and the Jelai to the latter as their spoils of war; and the people of these Districts, being left 'like little chicks without the mother hen,' would acquiesce in the arrangement, following their new Chiefs as captives of their bows and spears.

Thus all looked well for the future when Wan Lingga set out, just before sun-down, from his house at Atok to attack To' Kaya Stia-wangsa at Penjum. The latter village was at that time inhabited by more Chinese than Malays. It was the nearest point on the river to the gold mines of Jalis, and at the back of the squalid native shops, that lined the river bank, a well-worn footpath led inland to the Chinese alluvial washings. Almost in the centre of the long line of shops and hovels which formed the village of Penjum, stood the thatched house in which To' Kaya Stia-wangsa lived, with forty or fifty women, and about a dozen male followers. The house was roofed with thatch. Its walls were fashioned from plaited laths of split bamboo, and it was surrounded by a high fence of the same material. This was the place which was to be Wan Lingga's object of attack.

A band of nearly a hundred men followed Wan Lingga from Atok. Their way lay through a broad belt of virgin forest, which stretches between Atok and Penjum, a distance of about half a dozen miles. The tramp of the men moving in a single file through the jungle, along the narrow footpath, worn smooth by the passage of countless naked feet, made sufficient noise to scare all living things from their path. The forests of the Peninsula, even at night, when their denizens are afoot, are not cheerful places. Though a man lie very still, so that the life of the jungle is undisturbed by his presence, the weird night noises, that are borne to his ears, only serve to emphasise the solitude and the gloom. The white moonlight straggles in patches through the thick canopy of leaves overhead, and makes the shadows blacker and more awful by the contrast of light and shade. But a night march through the forest is even more depressing, when the soft pat of bare feet, the snapping of a dry twig, a whispered word of warning or advice, the dull deep note of the night-jar, and the ticking of the tree insects alone break the stillness. Nerves become strung to a pitch of intensity which the circumstances hardly seem to warrant, and all the chances of evil, which in the broad light of day a man would laugh to scorn, assume in one's mind the aspect of inevitable certainties.

I speak by the book; for well I know the depression, and the fearful presentiment of coming evil, which these night marches are apt to occasion; and well can I picture the feelings and thoughts which must have weighed upon Wan Lingga, during that four hours' silent tramp through the forest.

He was playing his last card. If he succeeded in falling upon To' Kaya unawares, and slaying him on the spot, all that he had longed for and dreamed of, all that he desired for himself and for those whom he held dear, all that he deemed to be of any worth, would be his for all his years. And if he failed?—He dared not think of what his position would then be; and yet it was this very thought that clung to him with such persistence during the slow march. He saw himself hated and abhorred by the people of the interior, who would then no longer have reason to fear him; he saw himself deserted by To' Gajah, in whose eyes, he was well aware, he was merely regarded as a tool, to be laid aside when use for it was over; he saw himself in disgrace with the King, whose orders he had failed to carry out; and he saw himself a laughing stock in the land, one who had aspired and had not attained, one who had striven and had failed, with that grim phantom of hereditary madness, of which he was always conscious, stretching out its hand to seize him. All these things he saw and feared, and his soul sank within him.

At last Penjum was reached, and To' Kaya's house was ringed about by Wan Lingga's men. The placid moonlight fell gently on the sleeping village, and showed Wan Lingga's face white with eagerness and anxiety, as he gave the word to fire. In a moment all was noise and tumult. Wan Lingga's men raised their war-yell, and shrieking 'By order of the King!' fired into To' Kaya's house. Old To' Kaya, thus rudely awakened, set his men to hold the enemy in check, and himself passed out of the house in the centre of the mob of his frightened women-folk. He was not seen until he reached the river bank, when he leaped into the stream, and, old man that he was, swam stoutly for the far side. Shot after shot was fired at him, and eight of them, it is said, struck him, though none of them broke the skin, and he won to the far side in safety. Here he stood for a moment, in spite of the hail of bullets with which his enemy greeted his landing. He shook his angry old arm at Wan Lingga, shouted a withering curse, took one sad look at his blazing roof-tree, and then plunged into the forest.

When the looting was over, Wan Lingga's people dispersed in all directions. Nothing, they knew, fails like failure, and the Lipis people, who would have feared to avenge the outrage had Wan Lingga been successful, would now, they feared, wreak summary punishment on those who had dared to attack their Chief. Wan Lingga, finding himself deserted, fled down stream, there to suffer all that he had foreseen and dreaded during that march through the silent forests. His mind gave way under the strain put upon it by the misery of his position at Pekan. The man who had failed was discredited and alone. His former friends stood aloof, his enemies multiplied exceedingly. So when the madness, which was in his blood, fell upon him at Pekan, he was thrust into a wooden cage, where he languished for years, tended as befits the madman whom the Malay ranks with the beasts.

When he regained his reason, the politics of the country had undergone a change, and his old ambitious dreams had faded away for ever. His old enemy To' Raja, whom he had sought to displace, was now ruling the Jelai, and enjoying every mark of the King's favour. Domestic troubles in the royal household had led the King to regard the friendship of this Chief as a matter of some importance, and Wan Lingga's chances of preferment were dead and buried.

He returned to his house at Atok, where he lived, discredited and unhonoured, the object of constant slights. He spent his days in futile intrigues and plots, which were too impotent to be regarded seriously, or as anything but subjects for mirth, and, from time to time, his madness fell upon him, and drove him forth to wallow with the kine, and to herd with the beasts in the forest.

At last, in 1891, he resolved to put away the things of this world, and set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca. All was ready for his departure on the morrow, and his brethren crowded the little house at Atok to wish him god-speed. But in the night the madness fell upon him once more, and rising up he ran amok through his dwelling, slaying his wife and child, and wounding one of his brothers. Then he fled into the forest, and after many days was found hanging dead in the fork of a fruit-tree. He had climbed into the branches to sleep, and in his slumbers had slipped down into the fork where he had become tightly wedged. With his impotent arms hanging on one side of the tree, and his legs dangling limply on the other, he had died of exhaustion, alone and untended, without even a rag to cover his nakedness.

It was a miserable, and withal a tragic death, but not ill fitted to one who had staked everything to gain a prize he had not the strength to seize; one whom Fate had doomed to perpetual and inglorious failure.



UN MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE

Ere the moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light, When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear, Comes a breathing hard behind thee, snuffle-snuffle through the night— It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear! On thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go; In the empty mocking thicket plunge the spear; But thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left thy cheek— It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!

RUDYARD KIPLING'S Song of the Little Hunter.

We had been sitting late in the verandah of my bungalow of Kuala Lipis, which overlooks the long and narrow reach, formed by the combined waters of the Lipis and the Jelai. The moon had risen some hours earlier, and the river ran white between the dark banks of jungle which seemed to fence it in on all sides. The ill-kept garden, with the tennis-ground, that never got beyond the stage of being dug up, and the rank grass behind the bamboo fence, were flooded with the soft light, every tattered detail of its ugliness showing as clearly as though it was noon. The night was very still, and the soft, scented air blew coolly round our faces.

I had been holding forth, to the handful of men who had been dining with me, on Malay beliefs and superstitions, while they manfully stifled their yawns. When a man has a smattering knowledge of anything, which is not usually known to his neighbours, it is a temptation to lecture on the subject, and, looking back, I fear that I had been on the rostrum during the best part of that evening. I had told them of the Penangal, that horrible wraith of a woman who has died in child-birth, and who comes to torment small children, in the guise of a fearful face and bust, with many feet of bloody trailing entrails flying in her wake; of that weird little white animal the Mati-anak, that makes beast noises round the graves of children; and of the familiar spirits that men raise up from the corpses of babes who have never seen the light, the tips of whose tongues they bite off and swallow, after the child has been brought back to life by magic agencies. It was at this point that young Middleton began to cock up his ears, and I, finding that one of my listeners was at last inclined to show some interest, launched out with renewed vigour, until my sorely tried companions had, one by one, gone off to bed, each to his own quarters.

Middleton was staying with me at the time, and he and I sat in silence looking at the light upon the river, and each thinking his own thoughts. Middleton was the first to speak.

'That was a curious myth you were telling us, about the Polong, the Familiar Spirits,' he said. 'I have heard of it before from natives, but there is a thing I have never spoken of, and always swore that I would keep to myself, that I have a good mind to tell you now, if you will promise not to call me a liar.'

'That is all right,' said I. 'Fire away.'

'Well,' said Middleton, puffing at his pipe, 'you remember Juggins, of course? He was a naturalist, you know, and he came to stay with me during the close season[13] last year. He was hunting for bugs and that sort of thing, and he used to fill my bungalow with all sorts of rotting green stuff, that he brought in from the jungle. He stopped with me for about ten days, and when he heard that I was bound for a trip up into the Sakai country, he said he would come too. I did not mind much, as he was a decent beggar enough, in spite of his dirty ways, so I said all right, and we started up together. When we got well up into the Sakai country, we had to leave our boats behind at the foot of the rapids, and leg it for the rest of the time. We had not enough bearers with us to take any food, and we lived pretty well on what we could get, yams, and tapioca, and Indian corn, and soft stuff of that sort. It was new to Juggins, and it used to give him awful gripes, but he stuck to it like a man.

[Footnote 13: Close season = From November to February, when the rivers on the East Coast are closed to traffic by the North-East Monsoon.]

'Well, one evening, when the night was shutting down pretty fast, Juggins and I got to a fairly large camp of Sakai in the middle of a clearing, and of course all the beggars bolted into the jungle when we approached. We went on up to the largest hut of the lot, and there we found a woman lying by the side of her dead child. It was as stiff as Herod, though it had not been born more than half an hour, I should say, and I went up into the house thinking I might be able to do something for the poor, wretched mother. She did not seem to see it, however, for she bit and snarled at me like a wounded animal, so I let her be, and Juggins and I took up our quarters in a smaller hut near by, which seemed fairly new, and was not so filthy dirty as most Sakai lairs.

'Presently, when the beggars who had run away found out who it was, they began to come back again. You know their way. First a couple of men came and looked at us. Then I gave them some baccy, and spoke a word or two to them in Se-noi, that always reassures them. Then they went back and fetched the others, and presently we were as comfortable as possible, though we had a dozen Sakai to share our hut with us. Juggins complained awfully about the uneven flooring of boughs, which you know is pretty hard lying, and makes one's bones ache as though they were coming out at the joints, but we had had a tough day of it and I slept in spite of our hosts. I wonder why it is that Sakai never sleep the whole night through like Christians. I suppose it is their animal nature, and that, like the beasts, they are most awake by night. You know how they lie about in the warm ashes of the fireplaces till they are black as sweeps, and then how they jabber. It is always a marvel to me what they find to yarn about. Even we white men run short of our stock of small-talk unless something happens to keep things going, or unless we have a beggar like you to jaw to us. They say that Englishmen talk about their tubs, when they run dry on all other subjects of conversation, but the Sakai cannot talk about washing, for they never bathe by any chance, it makes that filthy skin disease they are covered with itch so awfully. It had rained a bit that night, when they were hiding away in the jungle, and I could hear their nails going on their dirty hides whenever I woke, and Juggins told me afterwards that they kept him awake by their jabber, and that each time he thought they had settled down for the night, he was disgusted to find that it was only another false start. Juggins tried to get a specimen of the bacillus that causes the skin disease, but I don't know whether he succeeded. I fancy it is due to want of blood. The poor brutes have never had enough to eat for a couple of hundred generations, and what food they do get is bloating beastly stuff. They do not get enough salt either, and that generally leads to skin disease. I have seen little brats, hardly able to stand, covered with it, the skin peeling off in flakes, and I used to frighten Juggins out of his senses by telling him that he had caught it, when his nose peeled with the sun.

'Well, in the morning we got up just in time to see the poor little dead baby, that I told you about, put into a hole in the ground. They fitted it into a piece of bark, and stuck it in the grave they had made for it on the edge of the clearing, and they put a flint and steel, and a wood-knife, and some food and things in with it, though no living baby could have had any use for half of them, let alone a dead one. Then the old medicine man of the tribe recited the ritual over the grave. I took the trouble to translate it once. It goes something like this:—

"O Thou who hast gone forth from among those who dwell upon the surface of the earth, and hast taken for thy dwelling-place the land which is beneath the earth! Fire have we given thee to light thy fires, raiment wherewith thou mayest be clothed, food to fill thy belly, and a knife to clear thy way. Go then and make unto thyself friends among those who dwell beneath the earth, and come back no more to trouble or molest those who live upon the earth's surface."

'It was short and sweet, and then they stamped down the soil, while the mother whimpered about the place like a cat that has lost its kittens. A mangy, half starved dog came and smelt hungrily about the grave, until it was sent howling away by a kick from one of the human animals near it; and a poor little brat, who set up a piping song, a few minutes later, was kicked, and cuffed, and knocked about, by every one who could reach him, with hand, foot, or missile. The Sakai think it unlucky to sing or dance for nine days after a death, so the tribesmen had to give the poor little urchin, who had done the wrong, a fairly bad time of it to propitiate the dead baby.

'Then they began to pack up all their household gods, and in about an hour the last of the laden women, who was carrying so many babies, and cooking pots, and rattan bags and things, that she looked like the outside of a gipsy's cart at home, had filed out of the clearing, and Juggins and I, with our three or four Malays, were left in possession. The Sakai always shift camp like that when a death occurs, because they think the ghost haunts the place where the body died, though what particular harm the ghost of a mite of a baby could do, I cannot pretend to say. When there is an epidemic among the Sakai, they are so busy shifting camp, and building new huts, that they have not time to get proper food, and half those who do not die of the disease die of semi-starvation. They are a queer lot.

'Well,' continued young Middleton, whose pipe had gone out, and who was fairly into his stride now, 'Well, Juggins and I were left alone, and all that day we hunted through the jungle to try and get a shot at a seladang,[14] but we saw nothing, and we came back to the empty Sakai camp at night, my Malays fairly staggering under the weight of the rubbish that Juggins used to call his botanical specimens. We got a meal of sorts, and I was lying off smoking, and thinking how lucky it was that the Sakai had cleared out, when suddenly old Juggins sat up with his eyes fairly snapping at me.

[Footnote 14: Seladang = wild buffalo.]

'"I say," he said, "I must have that baby. It would make a ripping specimen."

'"It would make a ripping stink," I answered. "Go to sleep, Juggins, old man, the tapioca has gone to your head."

'"No, but I am serious," said Juggins, "I mean to have that baby whether you like it or no, and that is flat."

'"Yes," said I, "that is flat enough in all conscience, but I wish you would give it up. People do not like having their dead tampered with."

'"No," said Juggins again, rising as he spoke, and reaching for his shoes, "No, I am going to dig it up now."

'"Juggins," said I sharply, "sit down! You are a lunatic of course, but I was another to bring you up here with me, knowing as I did the particular species of crank you are; and if you really are set on this beastly thing, I suppose I must not leave you in the lurch; though upon my word I do not like the notion of turning resurrection man in my old age."

'"You are a brick!" cried Juggins, jumping up again and fumbling at his boot laces, "Come along!"

'"Sit down, man!" said I in a tone which cooled his enthusiasm for the moment. "I have said that I will see you through, and that is enough. But mind this, you have to do what I tell you. I know more about the people and the country than you do, and I am not going to lose caste with my Malays, and perhaps get stranded in this god-forsaken jumping-off place, just because you choose to do a fool's deed in a fool's own way. These Malays of mine here have no particular love for the exhumed bodies of dead babies, and they would not understand what any sane man could want fooling about with such a thing. They have not been educated up to that pitch of interest in the secrets of science which seems to have made a lunatic of you. If they could understand what we are saying now, they would think that you wanted the kid's body for some devilry or witchcraft business, and we should as like as not get left by them. Then who would carry your precious specimens back to the boats? I would not lift a finger to help you, and I am not over sure that I could even guide you back, if it came to that. No, this thing cannot be done until my people are all asleep, so lie still and wait till I give you the word."

'Juggins groaned, and tried to persuade me to let him go at once, but I replied that nothing would induce me to go before one o'clock, and, so saying, I turned over on my side, and lay reading and smoking, while Juggins fumed and fretted, as he watched the slow hands creeping round the dial of his watch.

'I always take books with me, as you know, when I go into the jungle, and I remember that that evening I lay reading Miss Florence Montgomery's Misunderstood, with the tears running down my nose. When at last Juggins whispered that time was up, that pretty story of child life had made me more sick with Juggins and his disgusting scheme than ever.

'I never felt so like a criminal in all my life as I did that night as Juggins and I crept out of the hut, over the sleeping bodies of my Malays; nor did I know before, how hard it is to walk on an openwork flooring of sticks and boughs, if one is anxious to do it without making a noise. We got out of the house at last, without waking any of my fellows, and then began to creep along the edge of the jungle that lined the clearing. Why did we think it necessary to creep? I do not know, but somehow the long wait, and the uncanny sort of work we were after, had set our nerves going a bit. The night was as still as most nights are in real pukka jungle, that is to say it was as full of noises—little quiet beast and tree noises—as an egg's full of meat, and every one of them made me jump like a half broken gee shying. There was not a breath of air blowing in the clearing, but the clouds were racing across the moon miles up above our heads, and the moon looked as though it was scudding through them in the opposite direction like a great white fire balloon. It was dark along the edge of the clearing, for the jungle threw a heavy shadow, and Juggins kept knocking those great clumsy feet of his against the stumps, and swearing softly, under his breath.

'When we got near the grave, the moon came out suddenly into a thinner cloud, and the slightly increased light showed me something which made me clutch Juggins by the arm.

'"Hold hard!" I whispered as I squatted down. "What is that on the grave?"

'Juggins hauled out his six-shooter with a tug, and, looking at his face, I saw, what I had not noticed before, that he too was a trifle jumpy, though why I cannot say. He squatted down quietly enough by my side, and pressed up against me, a bit closer, I fancied, than he would have thought necessary at any other time. I whispered to Juggins telling him not to shoot, and we sat there for nearly a minute, I should think, peering through the darkness, trying to make out what was the black thing on the grave, that was making that scratching noise.

'Then the moon came out into a patch of open sky, and we saw clearly at last, and what it showed me did not make me feel better. The creature we had been looking at was kneeling on the grave facing us. It, or rather she, was an old, old Sakai hag. She was stark naked, and in the clear moonlight I could see her long pendulous breasts, and the creases all over her withered old hide, which were wrinkles filled with dirt. Her hair hung about her face in great matted locks, falling forward as she bent above the grave, and her eyes glinted through the elf-locks like those of some unclean animal. Her long fingers, with nails like claws to them, were tearing at the dirt of the grave, and the exertion made her sweat so that her body shone in the moonlight.

'"Juggins," whispered I, "here is some one else who wants this precious baby of yours for a specimen."

'I felt him jump to his feet, but I clutched at him, and pulled him back.

'"Keep still, man!" I whispered. "Let us see what the old hag is doing. It is not the brat's mother, is it?"

'"No," whispered Juggins, "this is an older woman. What a ghoul it is!"

'Then we were silent again. Where we squatted we were hidden from the hag by a few tufts of rank lalang grass, and the shadow from the jungle also covered us. Even if we had been in the open, I doubt whether that old woman would have seen us, she was so eagerly intent upon her work. For five minutes or more—I know it seemed an age to me at the time—we sat there watching her scrape, and tear, and scratch at the earth of the grave, and all the while her lips kept going like a shivering man's teeth, though no sound, that I could hear, came from them. At length she got down to the corpse, and I saw her draw the bark wrapper out of the grave, and take the baby's body out of it. Then she sat back on her heels, and threw her head up, just like a dog, and bayed at the moon. She did it three times, and I do not know what there was in the sound that jangled up one's nerves, but each time I heard it my hair fairly lifted. Then she laid the little body down in a position that seemed to have something to do with the points of the compass, for she took a long time arranging it before she was satisfied with the direction of its head and feet.

'Then she got up and began to dance round and round the grave. It was not a pretty sight, out there in the semi-darkness, and miles away from every one and everything, to watch this abominable old hag capering uncleanly, while those restless, noiseless lips of hers called upon all the devils in Hell, in words that we could not hear. Juggins pushed harder against me than ever, and his hand on my arm gripped tighter and tighter. I looked at his face, and saw that it was as white as chalk, and I daresay mine was not much better. It does not sound much, as I tell it to you here, in a civilised house, but at the time the sight of that weird figure dancing in the moonlight, with its ungainly shadow, fairly scared me.

'She danced silently like that for some minutes; setting to the dead baby, and to her own uncouth capering shadow, till the sight made me feel sick. If anybody had told me that morning, that I should ever be badly frightened by an old woman, I should have laughed; but I saw nothing to laugh at in the idea, while that grotesque dancing lasted.

'When it was over she squatted down again with her back towards us, and took up the baby. She nursed it as a mother might nurse her child. I could see the curve of the thing's head beyond her thin left arm, and its little legs dangled loosely near her right elbow. Then she began to croon to it, swinging it gently from side to side. She rocked it slowly at first, but gradually the pace quickened, until she was swaying her body to and fro, and from side to side, at such a pace, that to me she looked as though she was falling all ways at once. And all the time that queer crooning kept getting faster and faster, and more awful to listen to. Then suddenly she changed the motion. She seized the thing she was nursing by its arms, and began dancing it up and down, still moving at a fearful pace, and crooning worse than ever. I could see the little puckered face of the thing above her head, every time she danced it up, and then, as she danced it down again, I lost sight of it for a second, until it reappeared once more. I kept my eye fixed on the thing's face every time it came up, and—do not believe me if you had rather not—it began to be alive. Its eyes seemed to me to be open, and its mouth was working like a little child's when it tries to laugh and is too young to do it properly. Juggins saw it too, for I could hear him drawing his breath harder, and shorter than a healthy man should. Then, all in a moment, she did something. It looked to me as though she bent forward and kissed it, and at that very instant a cry went up like the wail of a lost soul. It may have been something in the jungle, but I know my jungles pretty thoroughly, and I swear to you that I have never heard any cry like it before or since. Then, before we knew what she was doing, that old hag threw the body back into the grave, and began dumping down the earth, and jumping on it, while the cry grew fainter and fainter. It all happened so quickly, that I had not time to think of doing anything, till I was startled back into action by the sharp crack of Juggin's pistol in my ear as he fired at the hag.

'"She's burying it alive!" cried Juggins, which was a queer thing for a man to say, who had seen the baby lying stark and dead more than thirty hours earlier, but the same thought was in my mind too, and we started forward at a run. The hag had vanished into the jungle like a shadow. Juggins had missed her, he was always a shocking bad shot, but we did not trouble about her. We just threw ourselves upon the grave, and dug at it with our hands until the baby lay in my arms. It was cold and stiff, and putrefaction had already begun its work. I forced open its mouth, and saw something that I expected. The tip of its tongue was missing. It had been bitten off by a set of very bad teeth, for the edge of it was like a saw.

'"The thing is quite dead," I said to Juggins.

'"But it cried! it cried!" sobbed Juggins, "I can hear it now. Oh to think that we let that hag kill it."

'Juggins sat down with his head in his hands. He was utterly unmanned. Now that the fright was over, I was beginning to be quite brave again. It is a way I have.

'"Never mind," I said. "Here is your specimen if you want it." I had put the thing down, and now pointed at it from a distance. It was not pleasant to touch. But Juggins only shuddered.

'"Bury it in Heaven's name!" he said. "I would not have it for all the world. Besides it was alive. I saw and heard it."'

'Well, we put it back in the grave, and next day we left the Sakai country. We had seen quite as much of it as we wanted for a bit, I tell you.

'Juggins and I swore one another to secrecy, as neither of us fancied being told we were drunk or lying. You, however, know something of the uncanny things of the East, and to-night I have told the story to you. Now I am going to turn in. Do not give me away.'

Young Middleton went off to bed, and last year he died of fever and dysentery somewhere up country. His name was not Middleton, of course, so I am not really 'giving him away,' as he called it, even now. As for his companion, though he is still alive, I have called him Juggins, and, since the family is a large one, he will not, perhaps, be identified.



UP COUNTRY

The days are hot and damp, and my legs are stiff with cramp, And the office punkahs creak! And I'd give my tired soul, for the life that makes man whole, And a whiff of the jungle reek! Ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear boys, With office stool and pew, For it's time to turn to the lone Trail, our own Trail, the far Trail, Dig out, dig out on the old trail— The trail that is always new.

A Parody.

It has been said that a white man, who has lived twelve consecutive months in complete isolation, among the people of an alien Asiatic race, is never wholly sane again for the remainder of his days. This, in a measure, is true; for the life he then learns to live, and the discoveries he makes in that unmapped land, the gates of which are closed, locked, barred, and chained against all but a very few of his countrymen, teach him to love many things which all right-minded people very properly detest. The free, queer, utterly unconventional life has a fascination which is all its own. Each day brings a little added knowledge of the hopes and fears, longings and desires, joys and sorrows, pains and agonies of the people among whom his lot is cast. Each hour brings fresh insight into the mysterious workings of the minds and hearts of that very human section of our race, which ignorant Europeans calmly class as 'niggers.' All these things come to possess a charm for him, the power of which grows apace, and eats into the very marrow of the bones of the man who has once tasted this particular fruit of the great Tree of Knowledge. Just as the old smugglers, in the Isle of Man, were wont to hear the sea calling to them; go where he may, do what he will, the voice of the jungle, and of the people who dwell in those untrodden places, sounds in the ears of one who has lived the life. Ever and anon it cries to him to come back, come back to the scenes, the people, the life which he knows and understands, and which, in spite of all its hardships, he has learned to love.

The great wheel of progress, like some vast snowball, rolls steadily along, gathering to itself all manner of weird and unlikely places and people, filling up the hollows, laying the high hills low. Rays of searching garish light reflected from its surface are pitilessly flashed into the dark places of the earth, which have been wrapped around by the old-time dim religious light, since first the world began. The people in whose eyes these rays beat so mercilessly, reel and stumble blindly on in their march through life, taking wrong turnings at every step, and going woefully astray. Let us hope that succeeding generations will become used to the new conditions, and will fight their way back to a truer path; for there is no blinking the fact that the first, immediate, and obvious effects of our spirit of progress upon the weaker races, tend towards degeneration.

Ten years ago the Peninsula was very different from what it has since become, and many places where the steam-engine now shrieks to the church bells, and the shirt-collar galls the perspiring neck, were but recently part and parcel of that vast 'up country,' which is so little known but to the few who dwell in it, curse it,—and love it.

I sent my soul through the invisible, Some Letter of the After-Life to spell, And Presently my Soul returned to me And whispered 'Thou thyself art Heaven or Hell.

So sings the old Persian poet, lying in his rose garden, by the wine-cup that robbed him of his Robe of Honour, and his words are true; though not quite in the sense in which he wrote them. For this wisdom the far-away jungles also teach a man who has to rely solely upon himself, and upon his own resources, for the manner of his life, and the form which it is to take. To all dwellers in the desolate solitude, which every white man experiences, who is cast alone among natives, there are two 'up countries'—his Heaven and Hell, and both are of his own making. The latter is the one of which he speaks to his fellow race-mates—if he speaks at all about his solitary life. The former lies at the back of his heart, and is only known to himself, and then but dimly known till the time comes for a return to the Tents of Shem. Englishmen, above all other men, revel in their privilege of being allowed to grumble and 'grouse' over the lives which the Fates have allotted to them. They speak briefly, roughly, and gruffly of the hardships they endure, making but little of them perhaps, and talking as though their lives, as a matter of course, were made up of these things only. The instinct of the race is to see life through the national pea-soup fog, which makes all things dingy, unlovely, and ugly. Nothing is more difficult than to induce men of our race to confess that in their lives—hard though they may have been—good things have not held aloof, and that they have often been quite happy under the most unlikely circumstances, and in spite of the many horrors and privations which have long encompassed them about.