All manner of thoughts came unbidden to my mind. I could see Inchi Mohamed propped up on cushions in the launch reading "A Little Book of Profitable Tales" that had just been sent me by its author. I started to smile at the tale of The Clycopeedy. Then I caught sight of the peak of Mount Ophir through a notch in the jungle and all sorts of absurd hypotheses in regard to its authenticity flashed through my mind. All this takes time to relate, but those who have stood in mortal peril will know how short a time it takes to think.

From the moment I left the water, but a few seconds had elapsed and the saurian was not two yards from me. The abject horror and hopelessness of that moment was something I can never forget. Suddenly Lekas came floundering through the mud; a second more, and he perceived my enemy when almost within reach of his jaws.

Barking furiously, Lekas began to back away. One breathless moment, and the reptile turned to follow this new prey. I sank down among the roots regardless of the slime and watched the crocodile crawl deliberately away, with the gallant little dog retreating before him, keeping up a succession of angry barks.

When I arrived at the mouth of the creek, weak, faint, and covered from head to foot with mud, I found the Chief Justice awaiting me. The barking of the dog had attracted his attention and he had steamed up to see what was the matter.

I had not strength left to stroke the head of the brave little fellow who had thus twice done me a most welcome service. I had, indeed, but just strength enough to spring in, throw myself down on the cushions, and let my "boys" pull off my clothes and bring me a suit of clean pajamas and cool grass slippers.



A NEW YEAR'S DAY IN MALAYA

And some of its Picturesque Customs

My Malay syce came close up to the veranda and touched his brown forehead with the back of his open hand.

"Tuan" (Lord), he said, "have got oil for harness, two one-half cents; black oil for cudah's (horse) feet, three cents; oil, one cent one-half for bits; oil, seven cents for cretah (carriage). Fourteen cents, Tuan."

I put my hands into the pockets of my white duck jacket and drew out a roll of big Borneo coppers.

The syce counted out the desired amount, and handed back what was left through the bamboo chicks, or curtains, that reduced the blinding glare of the sky to a soft, translucent gray. I closed my eyes and stretched back in my long chair, wondering vaguely at the occasion that called for such an outlay in oils, when I heard once more the quiet, insistent "Tuan!" I opened my eyes.

"No got red, white, blue ribbon for whip."

"Sudah chukup!" (Stop talking) I commanded angrily. The syce shrugged his bare shoulders and gave a hitch to his cotton sarong.

"Tuan, to-morrow New Year Day. Tuan, mem (lady) drive to Esplanade. Governor, general, all white tuans and mems there. Tuan Consul's carriage not nice. Shall syce buy ribbons?"

"Yes," I answered, tossing him the rest of the coppers, "and get a new one for your arm."

I had forgotten for the moment that it was the 31st of December. The syce touched his hand to his forehead and salaamed.

Through the spaces of the protecting chicks I caught glimpses of my Malay kebun, or gardener, squatting on his bare feet, with his bare knees drawn up under his armpits, hacking with a heavy knife at the short grass. The mottled crotons, the yellow allamanda and pink hibiscus bushes, the clump of Eucharist lilies, the great trailing masses of orchids that hung among the red flowers of the stately flamboyant tree by the green hedge, joined to make me forget the midwinter date on the calendar. The time seemed in my half-dream July in New York or August in Washington.

Ah Minga, the "boy" in flowing pantalets and stiffly starched blouse, came silently along the wide veranda, with a cup of tea and a plate of opened mangosteens. I roused myself, and the dreams of sleighbells and ice on window-panes, that had been fleeting through my mind at the first mention of New Year's Day by the syce, vanished.

Ah Minga, too, mentioned, as he placed the cool, pellucid globes before me, "To-mollow New Year Dlay, Tuan!"

On Christmas Day, Ah Minga had presented the mistress with the gilded counterfeit presentment of a Joss. The servants, one and all, from Zim, the cookee, to the wretched Kling dhobie (wash-man), had brought some little remembrance of their Christian master's great holiday.

In respecting our customs, they had taken occasion to establish one of their own. They had adopted New Year's as the day when their masters should return their presents and good will in solid cash.

At midnight we were awakened by a regular Fourth of July pandemonium. Whistles from the factories, salvos from Fort Canning, bells from the churches, Chinese tom-toms, Malay horns, rent the air from that hour until dawn with all the discords of the Orient and a few from Europe. By daylight the thousands of natives from all quarters of the peninsula and neighboring islands had gathered along the broad Ocean Esplanade of Singapore in front of the Cricket Club House, to take part in or watch the native sports by land and sea.

The inevitable Chinaman was there, the Kling, the Madrasman, the Sikh, the Arab, the Jew, the Chitty, or Indian money-lender,—they were all there, many times multiplied, unconsciously furnishing a background of extraordinary variety and picturesqueness.

At ten o'clock the favored representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race took their place on the great veranda of the Cricket Club, and gave the signal that we would condescend to be amused for ten hours. Then the show commenced. There were not over two hundred white people to represent law and civilization amid the teeming native population.

In the centre of the beautiful esplanade or playground rose the heroic statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, the English governor who made Singapore possible. To my right, on the veranda, stood a modest, gray-haired little man who cleared the seas of piracy and insured Singapore's commercial ascendency, Sir Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak. A little farther on, surrounded by a brilliant suite of Malay princes, was the Sultan of Johore, whose father sold the island of Singapore to the British.

The first of the sports was a series of foot-races between Malay and Kling boys, almost invariably won by the Malays, who are the North American Indians of Malaysia—the old-time kings of the soil. They are never, like the Chinese, mere beasts of burden, or great merchants, nor do they descend to petty trade, like the Indians or Bengalese. If they must work they become horsemen.

Next came a jockey race, in which a dozen long-limbed Malays took each a five-year-old child astride his shoulders, and raced for seventy-five yards. There were sack-races and greased-pole climbing and pig-catching.

Now came a singular contest—an eating match. Two dozen little Malay, Kling, Tamil, and Chinese boys were seated at regular intervals about an open circle by one of the governor's aids. Not one could touch the others in any way. Each had a dry, hard ship-biscuit before him. A pistol shot and two dozen pairs of little brown fists went pit-a-pat on the two dozen hard biscuits, and in an instant the crackers were broken to powder.

Then commenced the difficult task of forcing the powdered pulp down the little throats. Both hands were called into full play during the operation, one for crowding in, the other for grinding the residue and patting the stomach and throat. Each little competitor would shyly rub into the warm earth, or hide away in the folds of his many-colored sarong, as much as possible, or when a rival was looking the other way, would snap a good-sized piece across to him.

The little brown fellow who won the fifty-cent piece by finishing his biscuit first simply put into his mouth a certain quantity of the crushed biscuit, and with little or no mastication pushed the whole mass down his throat by sheer force.

The minute the contest was decided, all the participants, and many other boys, rushed to a great tub of molasses to duck for half-dollars. One after another their heads would disappear into the sticky, blinding mass, as they fished with their teeth for the shining prizes at the bottom.

Successful or otherwise, after their powers were exhausted they would suddenly pull out their heads, reeking with the molasses, and make for the ocean, unmindful of the crowds of natives in holiday attire who blocked their way.

Then came a jinrikisha race, with Chinese coolies pulling Malay passengers around a half-mile course. Letting go the handles of their wagons as they crossed the line, the coolies threw their unfortunate passengers over backward.

Tugs of war, wrestling matches, and boxing bouts on the turf finished the land sports, and we all adjourned to the yachts to witness those of the sea. There were races between men-of-war cutters, European yachts, rowing shells, Chinese sampans, and Malay colehs with great, dart-like sails, so wide-spreading that ropes were attached to the top of the masts, and a dozen naked natives hung far out over the side of the slender boat to keep it from blowing over. In making the circle of the harbor they would spring from side to side of the boat, sometimes lost to our view in the spray, often missing their footholds, and dragging through the tepid water.

Between times, while watching the races, we amused ourselves throwing coppers to a fleet of native boys in small dugouts beneath our bows. Every time a penny dropped into the water, a dozen little bronze forms would flash in the sunlight, and nine times out of ten the coin never reached the bottom.

Last of all came the trooping of the English colors on the magnificent esplanade, within the shadow of the cathedral; the march past of the sturdy British artillery and engineers, with their native allies, the Sikhs and Sepoys; then the feu-de-joie, and New Year's was officially recognized by the guns of the fort.

That night we danced at Government House,—we exiles of the Temperate Zone,—keeping up to the last the fiction that New Year's Day under a tropic sky and within sound of the tiger's wail was really January first. But every remembrance and association was, in our homesick thoughts, grouped about an open arch fire, with the sharp, crisp creak of sleigh-runners outside, in a frozen land fourteen thousand miles away.



IN THE BURST OF THE SOUTHWEST MONSOON

A Tale of Changhi Bungalow

We had been out all day from Singapore on a wild-pig hunt. There were eight of us, including three young officers of the Royal Artillery, besides somewhere between seventy and a hundred native beaters. The day had been unusually hot, even for a country whose regular record on the thermometer reads 150 degrees in the sun.

We had tramped and shot through jungle and lallang grass, until, when night came on, I was too tired to make the fourteen miles back across the island, and so decided to push on a mile farther to a government "rest bungalow." I said good-by to my companions and the game, and accompanied only by a Hindu guide, struck out across some ploughed lands for the jungle road that led to and ended at Changhi.

Changhi was one of three rest bungalows, or summer resorts, if one can be permitted to mention summer in this land of perpetual summer. They were owned and kept open by the Singapore Government for the convenience of travellers, and as places to which its own officials can flee from the cares of office and the demands of society. I had stopped at Changhi Bungalow once for some weeks when my wife and a party of friends and all our servants were with me. It was lonely even then, with the black impenetrable jungle crowding down on three sides, and a strip of the blinding, dazzling waters of the uncanny old Straits of Malacca in front.

There were tigers and snakes in the jungle, and crocodiles and sharks in the Straits, and lizards and other things in the bungalow. I thought of all this in a disjointed kind of a way, and half wished that I had stayed with my party. Then I noticed uneasily that some thick oily-looking clouds were blotting out the yellow haze left by the sun over on the Johore side. A few big hot drops of rain splashed down into my face, as I climbed wearily up the dozen cement steps of the house.

The bamboo chicks were all down, and the shutter-doors securely locked from the inside, but there was a long rattan chair within reach, and I dropped into it with a sigh of satisfaction, while my guide went out toward the servant-quarters to arouse the Malay mandor, or head gardener, whom H. B. M.'s Government trusted with this portion of her East Indian possessions.

As might have been expected, that high functionary was not to be found, and I was forced to content myself, while my guide went on to a neighboring native police station to make inquiries. I unbuttoned my stiff kaki shooting-jacket, lit a manila, which my mouth was too dry to smoke, and gazed up at the ceiling in silence.

It was stiflingly hot. Even the cicadas in the great jungle tree, that towered a hundred and fifty feet above the house, were quiet. Every breath I took seemed to scorch me, and the balls of my eyes ached. The sky had changed to a dull cartridge color.

A breeze came across the hot, glaring surface of the Straits, and stirred the tops of a little clump of palms, and died away. It brought with it the smell of rain.

For a moment there was a dead stillness,—not even a lizard clucked on the wall back of me; then all at once the thermometer dropped down two or three degrees, and a tearing wind struck the bamboo curtains and stretched them out straight; the tops of the massive jungle trees bent and creaked; there was a blinding flash and a roar of thunder, and all distance was lost in darkness and rain. It was one of the quick, fierce bursts of the southwest monsoon.

I did not move, although wet to the skin.

Presently I could make out three blurred figures fighting their way slowly against the storm across the compound. One was the guide; the second was the mandor, naked save for a cotton sarong around his waist; the third was a stranger.

The trio came up on the veranda—the stranger hanging behind, with an apologetic droop of his head. He was a white man, in a suit of dirty, ragged linen. It took but one look to place him. I had seen hundreds of them "on the beach" in Singapore,—there could be no mistake. "Loafer" was written all over him—from his ragged, matted hair to the fringe on the bottom of his trousers. He held a broken cork helmet, that had not seen pipe-clay for many a month, in his grimy hands, and scraped one foot and ducked his dripping head, as I turned toward him with a gruff,—

"Well?"

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, in a harsh, rasping voice, "but I heard that the American Consul was here. I am an American."

He looked up with a watery leer in his eyes.

"Go on," I said, without offering to take the hand of my fellow-countryman.

He let his arm fall to his side.

"I ain't got any passport; that went with the rest, and I never had the heart to ask for another."

He gave a bad imitation of a sob.

"Never mind the side play," I commented, as he began to rumble in the bottomless pocket of his coat. "I will supply all that as you go along. What is it you want?"

He withdrew his hand and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

"Come in out of the rain and you won't need to do that," I said, amused at this show of feeling.

"I thought as how you might give a countryman a lift," he whined.

I smiled and stepped to the door.

"Boy, bring the gentleman a whiskey and soda."

The "boy" brought the liquor, while I commenced to unstrap and dry my Winchester.

My fellow-countryman did not move, but stood nervously tottering from one leg to the other, as I went on with my task. He coughed once or twice to attract my attention.

"Beg pardon, sir, but I meant work—good, honest work. Work was what I wanted, to earn this very glass of whiskey for my little gal. She's sick, sir, sick—sick in a hut at the station."

"Your little what?" I asked in amazement.

"My little gal, sir. She's all that's left me. If you'll trust me with the glass, I'll take it to her. Can't give you no security, I'm afraid, only the word of a broken-down old father, who has got a little gal what he loves better than life!"

My long experience with tramps and beach-combers was at fault. No words can convey an idea of the pathos and humility he threw into his tone and actions. The yearning of the voice, the almost divine air of self-abnegation, the subdued flash of pride here and there that suggested better days, the hopeless droop of the arms, and the irresolute tremble of the corners of his mouth would have appealed to the heart of a heathen idol. That one of his caste should refuse a glass of "Usher's Best," and be willing to brave the burst of a southwest monsoon to take it to any one—child, mother, or wife—was incredible.

"Drink it," I said roughly. "You will need it before you get to the station. Boy, bring me my waterproof and an umbrella. Now out you go. We'll see whether this 'little gal' is male or female,—seven or seventy."

The loafer snatched up his helmet with an avidity that admitted of no question as to his earnestness.

We made a wild rush down across the oozing compound, through a little strip of dripping jungle, over a swaying foot-bridge that spanned the muddy Sonji Changhi, and along the sandy floor of a cocoanut grove. On the outskirts of a station we came upon a deserted bungalow, that was trembling in the storm on its rotten supports.

We went up its rickety ladder and across its open bamboo floor, to the darkest corner, where, on an old mat under the only dry spot in the hut, lay a bundle of rags.

My companion dropped down among the decayed stumps of pineapples and cocoanut refuse, and commenced to croon in a hoarse voice, "Daddy come,—Daddy come,—poor dearie," and made a motion as though to put the bottle to a small, dirty white face that I could just make out among the rags.

I pushed him aside and gathered the unconscious little burden up into my arms. There was no time for sentiment. Every minute I expected the miserable old shelter would go over.

We made our way as best we could back through the darkness and driving blasts of rain. The loafer followed with a long series of "God bless you's." He essayed once or twice to hold the umbrella over his "little gal's" head, but each time the wind turned it inside out, and he gave it up with an air of feeble inconsequence that characterized all his movements.

I put my burden down on a couch in the dining room, and chafed her hands and feet, while the boy brought a beer bottle filled with hot water.

It was a sweet little face, pinched and drawn, with big hazel eyes, that looked up into mine as my efforts sent the blood coursing through her veins. She was between five and six years old. A mass of dark brown hair, unkempt and matted, fell about her face and shoulders.

I wrapped a rug about her. She was asleep almost before I had finished.

A little later I roused her, and she nestled her damp little head against my shoulder as I gave her some soup; but her eyelids were heavy, and it seemed almost cruel to keep her awake, even for the food she so badly needed. The father had shuffled about uneasily during my motherly attentions, and seemed relieved when I was through.

While the boy brought a steaming hot curry and a goodly supply of whiskey and soda, I turned the self-confessed father of the big hazel eyes into the bath-room.

With the grime and dirt off his face he was pale and haggard. There were big blue marks under his shifting gray eyes and his hair hung ragged and singed about his ears.

He had discarded his dirty linen for a blue-flannel bathing-suit that some former high official of H. B. M. service had left behind. There were traces of starvation or dissipation in every movement. His hand trembled as he conveyed the hot soup to his blue lips.

Gradually the color came back to his sunken cheeks, and by the time he had laid in the second plate of curry and drank two whiskey and sodas he looked comparatively sleek and respectable. Even his anxiety for the little sleeper seemed to fade out of his weak face.

I had been watching him narrowly during the meal. I could not make up my mind whether he was a clever actor or only an unfortunate; he might be the latter, and still be what I was certain of,—a scamp.

The wind whistled and roared about the great verandas and into the glassless windows with all the vehemence of a New England snowstorm. It caught our well-protected punkah-lamps, and turned their broad flames into spiral columns of smoke. Ever and again a flash of lightning flared in our eyes, and revealed the water of the narrow straits lashed into a white fury.

I should have been thankful for the company of even a dog on such a night, and think the loafer felt it, for I could see that he was more at ease with every crash of thunder. I tiptoed over to the "little gal," and noted her soft, regular breathing and healthful sleep, undisturbed by the fierce storm outside.

I lit a manila, and handed one to my companion. We puffed a moment in silence, while the boy replenished our glasses.

"Now," I said, tipping my chair back against the wall, "tell me your story."

My guest's face at once assumed the expression of the professional loafer. My faith in him began to wane.

"I am an American," he began glibly enough under the combined effects of the whiskey and dinner, "an old soldier. I fought with Grant in the Wilderness, and—"

"Of course," I interrupted, "and with Sherman in Georgia. I have heard it all by a hundred better talkers than you. Suppose you skip it."

I did not look up, but I was perfectly familiar with the expression of injured innocence that was mantling his face.

He began again in a few minutes, but his voice had lost some of its engaging frankness.

"I am the son of a kind and indulgent mother,—God bless her. My father died before I knew him—"

I moved uneasily in my chair.

He hurried on:—

"I fell in bad ways in spite of her saintly love, and ran away to sea."

"Look here, my friend," I said, "I am sorry to spoil your little tale, but it is an old one. Can't you give me something new? Now try again."

He looked at me unsteadily under his thin eyebrows, shuffled restlessly in his seat, and said with something like a sob in his voice:—

"Well, sir, I will. You have been kind to me and taken my little gal in; you saved her life, and, for a change, I'll tell you the truth."

He drew himself up a little too ostentatiously, threw his head back, and said proudly:—

"I am a gentleman born."

"Good," I laughed. "Now you are on the right track, and besides you look it."

"Ah! you may sneer," he retorted, "but I tell you the truth."

His face flushed and his lip quivered. He brought his fist down on the table.

"I tell you my father,—ah! but never mind my father." His voice failed him.

"Certainly," I replied. "Only get on with your story."

"I came out to India from Boston as a young man," he continued, "either in '66 or '68, I forget which."

"Try '67," I suggested.

"It was not '67," he exclaimed angrily, "it was either '66 or '68."

"Or some other date. However, that's but a detail. Proceed."

"Sir, you can make sport of me, but what I am telling you is God's truth. May I be struck dead if one lie passes my lips. I came out to plant coffee; I thought, like many others, that I had only to cut down the jungle and put in coffee plants, and make my everlasting fortune."

"And didn't you?" I asked, glancing at his dilapidated old helmet that hung over the corner of the sideboard.

"Look at me!" he burst forth, springing upon his feet, his breast heaving under his blue pajamas.

"Pardon the question," I answered. "Go on, you are doing bravely."

He sank back into his chair with a commendable air of dignity.

"I had a little money of my own," he continued, "and opened up an estate. It promised well, but I soon came to the end of my small capital. I thought I could go to Calcutta and Bombay and Simla, and cultivate my mind by travel and society, while the bushes were growing. Well it ended in the same old way. I got into the chitties' hands—they are worse than Jews—at two per cent a month on a mortgage on my estate. Then I went back to it with a determination to pay up my debt, make my estate a success, and after that to see the world. I worked, sir, like a nigger, and for a time was able to meet my naked creditor, from month to month, hoping all the time against hope for a bumper crop."

"I understand," I said. "Your bumper crop did not come, and your chitty did. Where does she come in?" I nodded in the direction of the little sleeper.

He glanced uneasily in the same direction, and a tear gathered in his eye.

"I married on credit, sir, the daughter of an English army officer. It was infernal. But, sir, you would have done likewise. Live under the burning sun of India for four years, struggle against impossibilities and hope against hope, and then have a pair of great hazel eyes look lovingly into yours and a pair of red lips turned up to yours,—and tell me if you would not have closed your eyes to the future, and accepted this precious gift as though it were sent from above?"

The pale, shrunken face of the speaker glowed, and his faded eyes lit up with the light of love.

"We were happy for a time, and the little gal was born, but the bumper crop did not come. Then, sir, I sold farm tools and my horse, and sent the wife to a hill station for her health. I kept the little gal. I stayed to work, as none of my natives ever worked. It was a gay station to which she went. You know the rest,—she never came back. That ended the struggle. I would have shot myself but for the little one. I took her and we wandered here and there, doing odd jobs for a few months at a time. I drifted down to Singapore, hoping to better myself, but, sir, I am about used up. It's hard—hard."

He buried his head in his long, thin fingers, and sat perfectly still.

There was a sound outside above the roar of the wind and the rain. At first faint and intermittent, it grew louder, and continuous, and came close. There was no mistaking it,—the march of booted men.

"What's that?" asked my companion, with a start.

"Tommy Atkins," I replied, "the clang of the ammunition boot as big as life."

His face grew ashy white, and he looked furtively around the room.

"What's the matter?" I exclaimed, but as I asked, I knew.

I opened the bath-room door and shoved him in.

"Go in there" I said, "and compose some more fairy tales."

He was scarcely out of sight when the front door was thrown open, and a corporal's guard, wet yet happy, marched into the room.

The corporal stood with his back to the door, and gave himself mental words of command,—"Eyes left, eyes right,"—then, as a last resource,—"eyes under the table." He had not noticed the little bundle in the dark corner. He drew himself up and gave the military salute.

"Beg pardon, sir, but we are out for a deserter from the 58th,—Bill Hulish,—we 'ave tracked him 'ere, and with the compliments of the commanding hofficer, we'll search the 'ouse."

"Search away," I answered, as I heard the outside bath-room door open and close softly.

They returned empty-handed, but not greatly disappointed.

"Wet night, corporal," I ventured.

"One of the worst as ever I knew, sir," he replied, eying the whiskey bottle and the two half-drained glasses.

"'Ad a long march, sir, fourteen miles."

I pushed the bottle toward him, and with a deprecatory salute he turned out a stiff drink.

"'Ere's to yer 'ealth, sir, an' may ye always 'ave an extra glass ready for a visitor."

I smiled, and motioned for his men to do likewise, and then, because he was a man of sweet composure and had not asked any questions as to the extra glass and chair, told him that his bird had flown.

"Bad 'cess to him, sir, 'e's led us a pretty chase for these last four weeks. If 'e was only a deserter I wouldn't mind, but 'e's a kidnapper. Leastways, Tommy Loud's young'n turned up missin' the day he skipped, an' we ain't seen nothin' of 'er since."

"Is this she?" I asked, leading him to the cot.

Hardly looking at the child, he raised her in his arms and kissed her.

"God be praised, sir," he said with a show of feeling. "We 'ave got her back. I think her mother would 'ave died if we 'ad come back again without her,—but, O my little darlin', you look cruel bad. Drugged, sir, that's what she is. Drugged to keep 'er quiet and save food. The blag'ard!"

"But what did he take her for?" I asked.

"Bless you, sir," replied the corporal, "she was his stock in trade. I reckon she's drawn many dibs out of other people's pockets that would 'ave been nestlin' there to-day if it 'adn't 'a' bin for 'er."

Then a broad grin broke over his ruddy features, and he looked at me quizzically.

"But 'e was a great play hactor, sir."

"And a poet," I added enthusiastically.

"'E could beat Kipling romancin', sir." He checked himself, as though ashamed of awarding such meed of praise to his ex-colleague.

"But we must be goin'; orders strict. With your permission, sir, I will leave her with a guard of one man for to-night, and send the ambulance for her in the morning."

He drew up his little file, saluted, and marched out into the rain and wind, with all the cheerfulness of a duck.

I could hear them singing as they crossed the compound and struck into the jungle road:—

"Oh, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, go away'; But it's 'Thank you, Mister Atkins,' when the band begins to play, The band begins to—"

A peal of thunder that shook the bungalow from its attap roof to its nebong pillars drowned the melody and drove me inside.



A PIG HUNT

In the Malayan Jungle

The thermometer stood at 155 degrees in the sun. The dry lallang grass crackled and glowed and returned long irregular waves of heat to the quivering metallic dome above.

The sensitive mimosa, at our feet, had long since surrendered to the fierce wooing of the sun-god, submissively folding its leaves and then its branches and putting aside its morning dress of green for one more in keeping with the color of the earth and sky. Even the clamorous cicada had hushed its insistent whir.

We were dressed in brown kaki suits. Wide-spreading cork helmets were filled with the stiff varnished leaves of the mango, and wet handkerchiefs were draped from underneath their rims; yet, after an hour of exposure, our flesh ached—it was tender to the touch. The barrel of my Express scorched my hand, and I wrapped my camerabuna about it. But then it was no hotter than any other day. In fact, we never gave a thought to the weather.

We were formed in a line, perhaps two miles in length, in a deserted pepper plantation, fronting a jungle of timboso trees and rubber-vines. I squatted patiently under the checkered shade of a neglected coffee tree and kept my eyes fixed on the seemingly impenetrable walls of the jungle. A hundred feet to the right and the left, under like protection, were two of my companions, determined like myself to be successful in three points,—to have the first shot at the pigs, to avoid getting shot, or shooting a neighbor. But our minds rose above mental cautions with the first faint halloos of the Hindu shikaris on the opposite side of the jungle. In another moment the babel gave place to a confusion of shrieks, howls, yells, laughs, barking of dogs, beating of tins, blowing of horns, explosions of crackers, and a din that represents all that is wild and untamable in three nations. It is a weird, almost appalling prologue. Those laughs!—they are a study—they fairly chill the blood—they would make the fortune of a comic actor—so intense, thrilling, surprising, and seemingly filled with a ghoulish glee. Over and over they would break out clear and distinct above the tintamarre. I have never been able to find out whether it belongs to the Malay or the Kling or the Tamil.

The yelling became more distinct. A troop of brown and silver wah-wahs swung with their long arms out to the very edge of the jungle and then up to the tops of the highest trees, the while uttering the full, clear note from which they take their name; followed by a troop of gray little jungle monkeys, whistling and scolding at the unwonted disturbance. A colony of cicadas on the limbs of a great gutta tree awoke into life and pierced our ears with buzz-saw strains.

In an instant we were all alert,—the heat was forgotten. At any minute a herd of pigs might dart out and on to us, or possibly our drivers might rouse a tiger. The screaming ascended to a delirious pitch—the pigs were discovered! I threw my cartridge from the magazine into the barrel. It was a 50x95 Express and I had perfect confidence that one ball to a pig was sufficient.

The yelling grew nearer until, with a sudden deploy, one hundred Klings and Malays dashed out into the open, close on the heels of a dozen wild pigs. We could just see their black backs above the grass, as they broke down a little ravine in single file, led by a big, hoary boar with tusks. They were three hundred yards off, but I could not resist the temptation. I brought my rifle to my shoulder and fired twice in rapid succession. Two or three more shots were heard beyond. I threw out the shells as the herd lunged on me. It was so sudden that I was dazed, but fortunately so were the pigs, with the exception of a wary old leader, who made into the jungle behind, almost between my legs. One little fellow threw himself on his haunches for an instant and stared at me. I came to my senses first and put a ball into his wondering eyes. My second shot was so near that it tore away a pound of meat from his shoulder and killed him instantly.

The firing had opened up all along the line. The drivers were pushing in nearer and nearer, beating the grass and clumps of bushes, seemingly regardless of the widely flying balls. I suspect they held our prowess in contempt. I know they looked it, when it was discovered that out of the dozen pigs they had raised, we had allowed over half to escape. Then, too, their lives were insured, in a way; for they knew that their deaths would cost us twenty big Mexican dollars.

Pig-hunting is the one big-game hunt that can be indulged in on the Malay Peninsula without great preparation and danger. Deer and tapirs are scarce. Tigers, or harimau as the Malays call them, abound, but live in the depths of the almost inaccessible jungle, and come forth only at rare intervals, except in the case of the man-eaters, who are usually ignominiously caught in pitfalls, very seldom affording true sport. Elephants are still hunted in the native states north of Singapore, but the sport is too expensive for the generality of sportsmen. One of the peculiar attributes of the Malayan tiger is his decided penchant for Chinese flesh, repeatedly striking down Chinese coolies in the fields to the exclusion of the Malays or Europeans who are working by their side. Perhaps once a month, a tiger or his skin will be brought into the city by natives, and several times at night I have heard them in the jungle; but to my knowledge only three have been shot by European sportsmen during my residence in the island. So wild pigs really remain the one item of big game.

The pigs live in the jungle bordering plantations in which they can range for pineapples, sweet potatoes, and tapioca root. They are the ordinary wild hog, black in color, and fleet of foot. The older ones have good-sized tusks and show fight when cornered. The lone sportsman has very little chance of obtaining a shot, so they are hunted in large companies of from five to fifteen guns. Such parties generally organize a hunt at least once a week and leave Singapore early in the morning for an all-day shoot.

The pig hunts organized by the officers of the Royal Artillery are the largest, and as a description of one is a description of all, I will take one up in regular order, rather than quote from many.

We left Singapore at six o'clock in the morning in a four-horse dray. As the sun had not reached the tops of the trees, the atmosphere was mild and pleasant. A half-hour took us outside the great cosmopolitan city, of three hundred thousand inhabitants. The low, cool bungalows with their wide-spreading lawns gave place to the grass-thatched huts of the Chinese coolies, and the omnipresent eating-stalls. A hard-packed road carried us through almost endless cocoanut groves. At intervals a Malay kampong, or village, was revealed in the heart of the grove, its queer attap-thatched houses raised a man's height from the ground, and connected with it by rickety ladders. Dozens of nude little children played under the shadow of the palms, while the comely faces and syrah-stained teeth of their mothers peeped at us from behind low barred windows. The cocoanut groves were superseded by tapioca, pepper, and coffee plantations. At regular distances were neat stations, manned by Malay and Sikh police. The roads over which we dashed were in perfect repair. In another hour we were nine miles from Singapore and near our first "beat."

Major Rich had sent his shikaris on the night before to collect beaters, so that when we arrived we were welcomed by a small army of Klings, Tamils, and Malays, and the usual sprinkling of pariah dogs. A wild, strange set are these beaters. They toil not, neither do they spin. Their wives do that occasionally, making a few sarongs for home use and an odd one for the market. Cocoanuts, pineapples, a little patch of paddy with a dozen half-wild chickens, and perchance, if they are not Mohammedans, a pig with its litter, afford them sustenance. For their day's beating they were to receive fifteen cents apiece. They were all ranged in line and counted, after which we took up our march through a plantation of tapioca, the brush standing about level with our heads. Chinese coolies were working about its roots keeping down the great pest of Malayan farmers,—lallang grass. The tapioca was broken in places by a few acres of pepper vines and again by neglected coffee shrubs.

Our procession was truly formidable. Fifty or more natives went on ahead making a path. Then we followed, fifteen in number, each with a native to carry his gun. The rear was brought up by twoscore more and half as many dogs. Three-quarters of an hour's walk brought us to our first beat. The head shikaris placed us in an open position, from fifty to one hundred yards apart, facing the jungle. The beaters, in the meantime, had gone by a long detour around the jungle to drive whatever it contained within reach of our guns.

In the second of these beats (I described the first in the opening of this chapter) a deer ran out far in advance of the pigs. We caught but a fleeting glimpse of it above the grass. My gun and that of my neighbor went off simultaneously. The deer disappeared. We rushed to the spot and found the leaves dyed with blood. Then commenced a chase, which, although fruitless, was well worth the exertion. All the panorama of tropical life seemed to lay in our tracks. For an half-hour we traversed the rolling plain with its burden of grass. Some smoker dropped a match in it, and in an instant it was all ablaze, spreading away like a whirlwind, burning only the very tips, toward a distant jungle. Then we dove into a bosky wood by a narrow winding path, and through a stream of water. The path was like a tunnel, the dense foliage shutting it in on both sides and above. The thorns of the rattans reached down and tore our clothes, and long trailing rubber-vines caught up our helmets and held our feet. In a marshy bit of jungle, a small colony of unwieldy sago palms found root, while pitcher-plants and orchids hung from almost every limb. Clumsy gray iguanas and long-tailed lizards of a brilliant green rushed up the trunks of lichen-covered trees. Troops of monkeys went scattering away on all sides, and black squirrels chattered on in the perfect security of the dim obscurity. In a bit of sandy bottom, a silken-haired, zebra-striped tapir scuttled away ere we were half alive to his presence.

Outside was the metallic glare of the Malayan sun once more, now at its height, and another march was before us, over the burning hot mesa. At one o'clock we came upon a half-neglected plantation. The bloody trail of the deer led through it. In the centre of the plantation we found a huge wedge-shaped attap house for drying pepper, and there we rested.

Our tiffin baskets were six miles away in the dray, and sending after them was out of the question. So we foraged for eatables. Cocoanuts were easily obtained from trees all about, and a little whiskey mixed with its milk made a very refreshing drink. Pineapples, small oranges, limes, papayas, custard apples, and bananas were in large quantities. Our drivers added to this bill of fare by roasting the sweet-potato-like roots of the tapioca. After this impromptu lunch they compounded their quids of areca-nut and lime, and were ready once more to beat up an adjacent jungle for deer, pig, or tiger.

As before, we were soon in position in the open before the jungle and the beaters were yelling at the top of their voices.

I was half dozing in the sun, trying to smoke a Manila cigar that my mouth was too dry to draw, when I was aroused by my neighbor, who called my attention to a file of pigs at the extreme end of the line. I could just see what was going on from the knoll on which I was standing. They were received by Major Rich, one of his subalterns, and his Hindu gun-carrier. One of the file fell at the first volley, two more broke through the line, and the remaining six or seven, led by a fierce old fellow, from whose long tusks the foam dripped, turned up the line and charged point-blank on the next gunner, who fired and missed, but succeeded in keeping them between the line and the jungle. The fourth gun brought down the second pig and wounded the boar in the shoulder. Frantic with rage and pain, the old fellow tore up the ground and grass with his tusks and then, seeming to give up all idea of escape, wheeled sharply around and with his back bristles standing erect and his mouth open, charged directly on to the fifth, who was in the act of throwing the cartridge into the barrel. Taken completely by surprise, the officer gave one lusty yell and started to run in line with the gun on his right. The boar was gaining on him at every step when he tripped and fell. The report of No. 6's Winchester Express rang out almost simultaneously. For an instant we held our breaths, wondering whether the man or boar had been hit. It was a splendid shot and took a steady hand. The boar's shoulder was shattered and his heart reached. Two or three angry grunts and he lay quiet. He weighed close to three hundred pounds. The bristles on his back were white with age. All in all, he was not nice to look at.

As half of our beaters were Mohammedans and so forbidden to touch pork, the burden of carrying our pigs the six miles through lallang grass, jungle and swamp land, came hard on our Brahmists. We knew that the only way to make them work was to call them "Sons of dogs" and walk off and leave them with a parting injunction to "get in by the time we did if they wanted their wages."

This we did without deigning to notice their pathetic gestures, heart-rending appeals and protestations to the "Sons of the Heaven-Born" that they could not lift one hundredth part of such burdens.



IN THE COURT OF JOHORE

The Crowning of a Malayan Prince

Tunku Ibrahim was just past seventeen when his father, the Sultan Abubaker, chose to recognize him as his heir and Crown Prince of Johore.

From the day when the little prince had been deemed old enough to leave his mother and the women's palace until the day he had entered the native artillery as a lieutenant, he had been schooled and trained by the English missionaries and the Tuan Kadi, or Mohammedan high priest, as becomes a son of so illustrious a father.

Tunku Ibrahim had made one trip to England when he was fifteen years old, and with his little cousin, the Tunku, or Prince, Othman, had dined with the Queen at Windsor.

So, when the Sultan returned from a long stay at Carlsbad and found that the Sultana was dead and that Ibrahim had shot up into a man, he said:—

"I am getting to be an old man and may die at any time. I will call all my nobles and people to the palace, and they shall see me place the crown on Ibrahim's head. Then if I die, he will rule, and the British will not take his country from him as long as he is wise and kingly."

Whereupon his Highness sent out invitations to the Governor and all the foreign consuls in Singapore to be his guests and witness the crowning of his son.

We started in quaint little box-like carriages, called gharries, long before the fierce Malayan sun had risen above the palms, accomplishing the fourteen miles across the beautiful island in little over an hour.

The diminutive Deli ponies, not larger than Newfoundland dogs, broke into a run the moment we closed the lattice doors, and it was all their half-naked drivers could do to keep their perches on the swaying shafts.

When we arrived at the little half-Malay, half-Chinese village of Kranji, on the shores of the famous old Straits of Malacca, our ponies were panting with heat, and the sun beat down on our white cork helmets with a quivering, naked intensity.

Close up to the shore we found a long, keel boat manned by a dozen Malays in canary-colored suits. An aide-de-camp in a gorgeous uniform of gold and blue came forward and touched his forehead with the back of his brown palm and said in good English:—

"His Highness awaits your excellencies."

We stepped into the boat. The men lightly dipped their spear-shaped paddles in the tepid water, the rattan oarlocks squeaked shrilly, and the light prow shot out into the strait. We could see the istana, or palace, close down to the opposite shore, with the royal standard of white, with black star and crescent in centre, floating above it.

For a moment I felt as though I had invaded some dreamland of my childhood.

As our boat drew up to the iron pier that extended from the broad palace steps out into the straits, the guns from the little fort on the hill above the town boomed out a welcome and the flags of our several countries were run to the tops of the poles. A squad of native soldiers presented arms, and we were conducted up the stone steps, to the cool, dim corridors of the reception or waiting room. Malays in red fezzes and silken sarongs that hung about their legs like skirts conducted us along a marble hall to our rooms in a wing of the palace. Crowds were already gathering outside on the palace grounds, and we could look down from our windows and watch them as we bathed, dressed, and drank tea.

The Chinese in their holiday pantaloons and shirts of pink, lavender, and blue silk: outnumbered all the other races; for, strange as it may seem, this Malay Sultan numbers among his 250,000 or 300,000 subjects 175,000 Chinamen. They are as loyal and a great deal more industrious than the Malays, and many of them, styled Baboos, do not even know their native tongue.

The Malays, dressed in gayly colored sarongs and bajus (jackets), with little rimless caps on their heads, squatted on their heels and chewed betel-nut, with eyes half closed and mouths distended.

The Arab traders and shopkeepers were grouped about in little knots, gravely conversing and watching the files of gharries or carriages, and even rickshaws, that were bringing Malay unkus (princes not of the royal blood), patos (peers), holy men, and rich Chinese mandarins to the steps that led up to the plaza before the throne-room.

The palace was two stories high, long and narrow. The interior rooms were separated from the outer walls by wide, airy corridors. The lattice-work windows were without glass and were arranged to admit the breezes from the ocean and ward off the searching rays of the equatorial sun. In these dusky corridors were long rattan chairs, divans, and tables covered with refreshments, and along its walls were arranged weapons of war and chase, Japanese suits of straw armor, Javanese shields, and Malay krises and limbings.

In a little court at the end of our corridor, where a fountain splashed over a clump of lotus flowers and blue water lilies, a long-armed silver wah-wah monkey played with a black Malay cat that had a kink in its tail like the joint in a stovepipe, and chased the clucking little gray lizards up the polished walls.

The gorgeous aide stared in poorly concealed wonderment, when he entered to conduct us to the grand salon, at my plain evening dress suit, destitute of gold lace or decorations, but he was too polite to say anything, and I humbly followed my uniformed colleagues through the long suite of rooms. It would have been useless for me to have tried to explain the great American doctrine of "Jeffersonian simplicity." He would have shrugged his narrow shoulders, which would have meant, "When you are among Romans, you should do as Romans do."

In the grand salon, more than in any other part of the palace, one feels that he is in the home of an Oriental prince whose tastes far outrun his own dominions.

Velvet carpets from Holland, divans from Turkey, rugs from Bokhara, tapestries from Persia, and lace from France mingle with embroideries from China, cut glass from England, and rare old Satsuma ware from Japan. On a grand square German piano is a mass of music in which the masterpieces of all countries have equal rights with the national anthem of Johore.

Going directly through a mass of Oriental drapery, we are in the throne-room, where are gathered the nobility of the little Sultanate.

Amid the crash of music and the booming of guns the Sultan took his seat in one of the gilded chairs on the dais, with the English Governor on his left. Ranged about the burnished walls of the great room, several files deep, were the nobility of the kingdom, the ministers of state, and officers of the army and navy, the space back of them being filled with Chinese mandarins and towkoys, and rich native merchants in their picturesque costumes. In front of the nobility, standing in the form of a square, were the sons of the datos each bearing golden, jewel-studded chogans, spears, krises, and maces. Inside the square stood the fifteen consuls. Back of the throne were four young princes, two bearing each the golden bejewelled kris of the Malay, another the golden sword of state, and the fourth the cimeter of the Prophet.

Up to the steps of the throne came the young prince, dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant of artillery, with the royal order of Darjah Krabat ablaze with jewels on his breast. He was slightly taller than his father, the Sultan, straight, graceful, and handsome, with big, brown eyes and strongly marked features. He was nervous and agitated, and his lips trembled as he bent on one knee and kissed his Highness's hand.

Above our heads in the gilded walls, behind a grated opening, were Inche Kitega, the Sultan's beautiful Circassian wife, and the women of the court. We could see their black eyes as they peered curiously down. It was only when the Dato Mentri, or Prime Minister, stood up and asked his people if they wished the young Tunku to be their future lord that we could hear their shrill voices mingling with the "Suku, suku" ("We wish it, we wish it"), of the men.

It is only the wives of the nobles that are secluded in the istana isaras, or women palaces, according to Mohammedan law; the women of the poor are as free as the more civilized countries of Europe. They bask in the sun with their brown babies on their laps, or wander among the cocoanuts that always surround their palm-thatched homes, happy and contented, with no thought for the morrow. The trees furnish them their food, and a few hours before their looms of dark kamooning wood each week keep them supplied with their one article of dress—the sarong. They never heard of the Bible, but they are very religious, and at sunrise and sunset, at the deep-toned boom of the hollow log that hangs before their little thatched mosques, they fall on their faces and pray to "Allah, the All Merciful and Loving Kind."

When the Crown Prince had stepped modestly back among his brothers and cousins, a holy man in green robes and turban came forward and read an address in Arabic. He recited the glories of the Prophet, the promises of the Koran, and then told of the ancient greatness of Johore,—how it once ruled the great peninsula that forever points like a lean, disjointed finger down into the heart of the greatest archipelago of the world,—how its ruler was looked up to and made treaties with, by the kings of Europe,—of the coming of the thieving Portuguese and the brutal Dutch,—of the dark, bloody years when the deposed descendants of the once proud Emperors of Johore turned to piracy,—of the new days that commenced when that great Englishman, Sir Stamford Raffles, founded Singapore,—down to the glorious reign of the present just ruler, Abubaker.

Our eyes wandered from time to time out through the cool marble courts and tried vainly to pierce the botanic chaos that crowded close up to the palace grounds. Banian and sacred waringhan trees covered great stretches of ground, and dropped their fantastic roots into the steaming earth like living stalactites. The fan-shaped, water-hoarding traveller's palm formed a background for the brilliant magenta-colored bougainvillea. The dim, translucent depths of an orchid-house lured us on, or a great pond covered with the sacred lotus, blue lilies, and the flush-colored cups of the superb Victoria regia commanded our admiration. Palms, flowering shrubs, ferns, and creepers rioted on all sides. Monkeys swung above in the ropelike tendrils of the rubber-vines, and spotted deer gamboled beneath the shade of mango trees.

The brilliant audience listened with bated breath to the dramatic recital of their nation's story. Even we, who did not understand a word, were impressed by their flushed faces and eager attention, and when the band in the columned corridors beyond broke forth into the national anthem of Johore and the vast concourse outside took up the shouts of fealty that began within, I, for one, felt an almost irresistible desire to join in the shouts and do honor to the kindly old Sultan and his graceful son.

After his Highness, the Sultan, had spoken, through the mouth of his Prime Minister, to the nobles, and commended his son to their care, we crowded forward and congratulated him in the names of our respective countries.

We filed through the grand salon, with its luxurious medley of divans, tapestries, and rugs, through a great hall whose walls were hung with heroic-sized paintings of the English royal family, down a flight of steps, across the marble reception room, and into the open doors of the royal dining room.

From its polished ceiling of black billion wood hung great white punkahs, which half-nude Indians on the outside kept gently swaying back and forth.

In the centre of the vast table stood a golden urn filled with delicate maidenhair ferns and dragon orchids. Against a great plate-glass mirror, at the far end, rested massive salvers of gold, engraven with the arms of Johore, and in its flawless depths shone the jewels that decked the entering throng and the splendid service of plate that dazzled our eyes.

Around his Highness's throat was a collar of diamonds and on his hands and in the decorations that covered his breast were diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, of almost priceless value. Each button of his coat and low-cut vest was a diamond, and from the front of his rimless cap waved a plume of diamonds. On his wrists were heavy gold bracelets of Malayan workmanship, and his fingers were cramped with almost priceless rings. In his buttonhole blazed a diamond orchid. The handle and scabbard of his sword were a solid mass of precious stones. Altogether this little known Oriental potentate possessed $10,000,000 worth of diamonds, the second largest collection on earth.

In personal appearance his Highness compared favorably with the best representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race. He was five feet eight in height, well built, with clean-cut, kindly features, in color nearer the Spanish type than the Indian. His hands and feet were small, forehead high and full, lips thin, and nose aquiline, his hair and mustache iron gray. He spoke good English, and was able to converse in French and German. In every-day dress he affected the English Prince Albert suit, to which he added a narrow silk sarong and a rimless black cap.

Besides being a lover of jewels, his Highness was a lover of good horseflesh and of yachts. His stud comprised two hundred horses, among which were fleet Arabians, sturdy little Deli ponies, thoroughbred Australians, and Indian galloways. Twice a year he offered a cup at the Singapore jockey races, and entered a half dozen of his best runners. At his tent on the grounds he dispensed champagne, ices, and cakes, and his native band of thirty pieces played alternately with the regimental band from the English barracks.

His three hundred ton steam-launch was built on the Clyde. Besides the Sultan's saloon on the lower deck, which was furnished befitting a king, there were cabins for ten people. The promenade deck was under an awning, and was furnished with a heavy rosewood dining-table and long chairs. She carried four guns of long range.

The revenue of Johore amounts to six million dollars a year, to which the Sultan's private property in Singapore adds nearly a half million more. The bulk of the national revenue is raised from opium, spirits, and gambling. The scheme of taxation is simple, but most effective. Any Chinaman who has a longing for the pipe pays into his Highness's treasury one dollar a month, and is granted a permit to buy and smoke opium; another monthly dollar and he is licensed to drink.

The gambling privilege is given to the highest bidder, and he has the monopoly for the kingdom. There is also a small export tax on gambier and tin. On the other hand, any immigrant that wishes to settle and open a farm of any kind is given all the ground he can work, rent free, to have and to hold as long as he keeps it under cultivation. Should he leave, it reverts with all its improvements to the crown.

The government is autocratic, but tempered and kept in sympathy with the English ideas of justice as seen in the great colonies that surround it.

The dinner throughout was European, save for the one national dish, curry. Every Malay, from the poorest fisherman along the mangrove-fretted lagoon to the chef of his Highness's kitchen, justly boasts of the excellence of his curry and the number of sambuls he can make.

First came a golden bowl filled with rice, as white and as light as snow; then another, in which was a gravy of yellow curry powder, choice bits of fowl, and plump, fresh slices of egg-plant. Then came the sambuls, or condiments, more than forty varieties, in little circular dishes of Japanese ware on big silver trays. There were fish-roes, ginger, and dried fish, or "Bombay duck," duck's eggs hashed with spices, chutney, peppers, grated cocoanut, anchovies, browned crumbs, chicken livers, fried bananas, barley sprouts, onions, and many more, that were mixed and stirred into the spongy rice until your taste was baffled and your senses bewildered.

We knew that the curry was coming, so we passed courses that were as expensive and rare in this equatorial land as the fruit of the durians would be in New York,—mutton from Shanghai, turkey from Siam, beef from Australia, and oysters from far up the river Maur. We felt that besides being a pleasure to ourselves it was a compliment to our royal host to partake generously of his national dish.

"This service," said the old Tuan Hakim, or chief justice, pointing to the gold plate off which we were dining, "is the famous Ellinborough plate that once belonged to that strange woman, Lady Ellinborough. His Highness attended the auction of her things in Scotland. Do you see the little Arabic character on the rim of each? It is the late Sultana's name. His Highness telegraphed to her for the money to pay for it, and she telegraphed back two hundred thousand dollars, with the request that her name be engraved on each. Then she presented them to her husband. The Sultana was very rich in her own right, and left the Sultan over two million dollars when she died."

Throughout the long dinner the native band played the airs of Europe and America, intermixed with bits of weird Malayan song. After we had lighted our cigars from the golden censer, the British Governor arose and proposed the health of the Sultan and the young heir apparent. His Highness raised his glass of pineapple juice to his lips in acknowledgment, and said smilingly to me as the Prime Minister said the magic word that stirs every Englishman's heart,—

"The Queen!"

"Your people think all Orientals very bad."

I protested.

"Oh, yes, you do; that is why you send so many missionaries among us. But," he went on pleasantly, "look around my table. Not one of my court has touched the wine. A Mohammedan never drinks. Can you say as much for your people?"

Then he raised his glass once more to his lips and said quietly, while his eyes twinkled at my confusion:—

"Tell your great President that Abubaker, Sultan of Johore, drank his health in simple pineapple juice."

As the sun sank behind the misty dome of Mount Pulei we embarked once more at the broad palace steps in the royal barges, amid the booming of guns and the strains of the international "God Save the Queen," "My Country, 'tis of Thee," and bared our heads to the royal standard of Johore that floated so proudly above the palace, thankful for this short peep into the heart of an Oriental court.



So the young Prince received the crown from the hands of his father. To-day, the bones of that grand old statesman, the Sultan of Johore, rest beside those of his royal fathers within the shadow of the mosque.

In 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles purchased the island on which Singapore now stands from the father of the late Sultan of Johore, the royal palace was a palm-thatched bungalow, the country an unbroken jungle, and the inhabitants pirates and fishermen by turns; the notorious Strait of Malacca was infested with long, keen, swift pirate praus, and the snake-like kris menaced the merchant marine of the world.

The advancement of the United States has not been more rapid since that date than the advancement of Johore. The attap istana, or palace, has given place to a series of palaces that rival those of many a much better-known country; the jungle has given place to plantations of gambier, tea, coffee, and pepper; the few elephant tracks and forest paths, to a network of macadamized roads and projected railways; and the native praus, to English-built barks and deeply laden cargo steamers.

Two hundred thousand hard-working, money-making Chinese have been added to the thirty-five thousand Malay aborigines, and the revenue of this remnant of an empire is far greater than was the revenue of the original state.

It remains to be seen whether the young Sultan will follow in the footsteps of his father and preserve to Johore the distinction of being, with the one exception of Siam, the only independent native kingdom in southern Asia. One misstep and he will become but a dependency of the great British Empire, a king only in name.



IN THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE

A Peep at the City of Singapore

Could an American boy, like a prince in the Arabian Nights, be taken by a genie from his warm bed in San Francisco or New York and awakened in the centre of Raffles Square, in Singapore, I will wager that he would be sadly puzzled to even give the name of the continent on which he had alighted.

Neither the buildings, the people, or the vehicles would aid him in the least to decide.

Enclosing the four sides of the little banian-tree shaded park in which he stands are rows of brick, white-faced, high-jointed go-downs. Through their glassless windows great white punkahs swing back and forth with a ceaseless regularity. Standing outside of each window, a tall, graceful punkah-wallah tugs at a rattan withe, his naked limbs shining like polished ebony in the fierce glare of the Malayan sun.

For a moment, perhaps, the boy thinks himself in India, possibly at Simla, for he has read some of Rudyard Kipling's stories.

Back under the portico-like verandas, whose narrow breadths take the place of sidewalks, are little booths that look like bay windows turned inside out. On the floor of each sits a Turk, cross-legged, or an Arab, surrounded by a heterogeneous assortment of wares, fez caps, brass finger-bowls, a praying rug, a few boxes of Japanese tooth-picks, some rare little bottles of Arab essence, a betel-nut box, and a half dozen piles of big copper cents, for all shopkeepers are money-changers.

The merchant gathers his flowing party-colored robes about him, tightens the turban head, and draws calmly at his water-pipe while a bevy of Hindu and Tamil women bargain for a new stud for their noses, a showy amulet, or a silver ring for their toes.

Squatting right in the way of all passers is a Chinese travelling restaurant that looks like two flour barrels, one filled with drawers, the other containing a small charcoal fire. The old cookee, with his queue tied neatly up about his shaven head, takes a variety of mixtures from the drawers,—bits of dried fish, seaweed, a handful of spaghetti, possibly a piece of shark's fin, or better still a lump of bird's nest, places them in the kettle, as he yells from time to time, "Machen, machen" (eating, eating).

Next to the Arab booth is a Chinese lamp shop, then a European dry-goods store, an Armenian law office, a Japanese bazaar, a foreign consulate.

A babble of strange sounds and a jargon of languages salute the astonished boy's ears.

In the broad well-paved streets about him a Malay syce, or driver, is trying to urge his spotted Deli pony, which is not larger than a Newfoundland dog, in between a big, lumbering two-wheeled bullock-cart, laden with oozing bags of vile-smelling gambier, and a great patient water buffalo that stands sleepily whipping the gnats from its black, almost hairless hide, while its naked driver is seated under the trees in the square quarrelling and gambling by turns.

The gharry, which resembles a dry-goods box on wheels, set in with latticed windows, smashes up against the ponderous hubs of the bullock-cart. The meek-eyed bullocks close their eyes and chew their cuds, regardless of the fierce screams of the Malay or the frenzied objurgations of their driver.

But no one pays any attention to the momentary confusion. A party of Jews dressed in robes of purple and red that sweep the street pass by, without giving a glance at the wild plunging of the half-wild pony. A Singhalese jeweller is showing his rubies and cat's-eyes to a party of Eurasian, or half-caste clerks, that are taking advantage of their master's absence from the godown to come out into the court to smoke a Manila cigarette and gossip. The mottled tortoise-shell comb in the vender's black hair, and his womanish draperies, give him a feminine aspect.

An Indian chitty, or money-lender, stands talking to a brother, supremely unconscious of the eddying throng about. These chitties are fully six feet tall, with closely shaven heads and nude bodies. Their dress of a few yards of gauze wound about their waists, and red sandals, would not lead one to think that they handle more money than any other class of people in the East. They borrow from the great English banks without security save that of their caste name, and lend to the Eurasian clerks just behind them at twelve per cent a month. If a chitty fails, he is driven out of the caste and becomes a pariah. The caste make up his losses.

Dyaks from Borneo idle by. Parsee merchants in their tall, conical hats, Chinese rickshaw runners and cart coolies, Tamil road-menders, Bugis, Achinese, Siamese, Japanese, Madras serving-men, negro firemen, Lascar sailors, throng the little square,—the agora of the commercial life of the city.

Such is Singapore, embracing all the races of Asia and Europe. Is it any wonder that the American boy is bewildered, standing there under the great banian tree with a Malay in sarong and kris by his side, singing with his syrah-stained lips the glorious promises of the Koran?



Look on the map of Asia for the southernmost point of the continent, and you will find it at the tip of the Malay Peninsula,—a giant finger that points down into the heart of the greatest archipelago in the world. At the very end of this peninsula, like a sort of cut-off joint of the finger, is the little island of Singapore, which is not over twenty-five miles from east to west, and does not exceed fifteen miles in width at its broadest point.

The famous old Straits of Malacca, which were once the haunts of the fierce Malayan pirates, separate the island from the mainland and the Sultanate of Johore.

The shipping that once worked its way through these narrow straits, in momentary fear that its mangrove-bound shores held a long, swift pirate prau, now goes further south and into the island-guarded harbor before Singapore.

Nothing can be more beautiful than the sea approach to Singapore. As you enter the Straits, the emerald-green of a bevy of little islands obstructs the vision, and affords a grateful relief to the almost blinding glare of the Malayan sky, and the metallic reflections of the ocean.

Some seem only inhabited by a graceful waving burden of strange, tropical foliage, and by a band of chattering monkeys; on others you detect a Malay kampong, or village, its umbrella-like houses of attap, close down to the shore, built high up on poles, so that half the time their boulevards are but vast mud-holes, the other half—Venice, filled with a moving crowd of sampans and fishing praus. A crowd of bronzed, naked little figures sport within the shadow of a maze of drying nets, and flee in consternation as the black, log-like head and cruel, watchful eyes of a crocodile glide quietly along the mangrove roots.

On another island you discern the grim breastworks and the frowning mouth of a piece of heavy ordnance.

Soon the island of Singapore reveals itself in a long line of dome-like hills and deep-cut shadows, whose stolid front quickly dissolves. The tufted tops of a sentinel palm, the wide-spreading arms of the banian, clumps of green and yellow bamboo, and the fan-shaped outlines of the traveller's palm become distinguishable. As the great, red, tropical sun rises from behind the encircling hills, the monotony of the foliage is relieved in places by objects which it all but hid from view. The granite minaret of the Mohammedan mosque, the carved dome of a Buddhist temple, the slender spire of an English cathedral, the bold projections of Government House, and the wide, white sides of the Municipal buildings all hold the eye.

Then a maze of strange shipping screens the nearing shore—the military masts and yards of British and Dutch men-of-war, the high-heeled, shoe-like lines of Chinese junks, innumerable Malay and Kling sampans, and great, unwieldy Borneo tonkangs.

For six miles along the wharves and for six miles back into the island extend the municipal limits of the city. Two hundred thousand people live within these limits; while outside, over the rest of the island along the sea-coast, in fishing villages, and in the interior on plantations of tapioca and pepper, live a hundred thousand more. Of these three hundred thousand over one hundred and seventy thousand are Chinese and only fifteen hundred are Europeans.

Grouped about Raffles Square, and facing the Bund, are the great English, German, and Chinese houses that handle the three hundred million dollars' worth of imports and exports that pass in and out of the port yearly, and make Singapore one of the most important marts of the commercial world.

Beyond, and back from the Square, is Tanglin, or the suburbs, where the government officials and the heads of these great firms live in luxurious bungalows, surrounded by a swarm of retainers.

Let us drive from Raffles Square through this cosmopolitan city and out to Tanglin. Beginning at Cavanagh Bridge, at one end of which stands the great Singapore Club and the Post Office, is the ocean esplanade,—the pride of the city. It encloses a public playground of some fifteen acres, reclaimed from the sea at an expense of over two hundred thousand dollars. Every afternoon when the heat of the day has fallen from 150 deg. to 80 deg., the European population meets on this esplanade park to play tennis, cricket, and football, and to promenade, gossip, and listen to the music of the regimental or man-of-war band.

The drive from the sea, up Orchard Road to the Botanic Gardens, carries you by all the diversified life of the city. The Chinese restaurant is omnipresent. By its side sits a naked little bit of bronze, with a basket of sugar-cane—each stick, two feet long, cleaned and scraped, ready for the hungry and thirsty rickshaw coolies, who have a few quarter cents with which to gratify their appetites. On every veranda and in every shady corner are the Kling and Chinese barbers. They carry their barber-shops in a kit or in their pockets, and the recipient of their skill finds a seat as best he may. The barber is prepared to shave your head, your face, trim your hair, braid your queue, and pull the hairs out of your nose and ears.

There is no special quarter for separate trades. Madras tailor shops rub shoulders with Malay blacksmith shops, while Indian wash-houses join Manila cigar manufactories.

Once past the commercial part of the ride, the great bungalows of the European and Chinese merchants come into view. The immediate borders of the road itself reveal nothing but a dense mass of tropical verdure and carefully cut hedges, but at intervals there is a wide gap in the hedge, and a road leads off into the seeming jungle. At every such entrance there are posts of masonry, and a plate bearing the name of the manor and its owner.

At the end of a long aisle of palms and banians you see a bit of wide-spreading veranda, and the full-open doors of a cool, black interior. Acres of closely shaven lawns, dotted with flowering shrubs of the brightest reds, deepest purples, and fieriest solferinos, beds of rich-hued foliage plants, and cool, green masses of ferns meet your eye.

Perhaps you spy the inevitable tennis-court, swarming with players, and bordered with tables covered with tea and sweets. Red-turbaned Malay kebuns, or gardeners, are chasing the balls, and scrupulously clean Chinese "boys" are passing silently among the guests with trays of eatables.

Dozens of gharries dodge past. Hundreds of rickshaws pull out of the way.

A great landau, drawn by a pair of thoroughbred Australian horses, driven by a Malay syce, and footman in full livery, and containing a bare-headed Chinese merchant, in the simple flowing garments of his nation, dashes along. The victoria and the dog-cart of the European, and the universal palanquin of the Anglo-Indian, form a perfect maze of wheels.

Suddenly the road is filled with a long line of bullock-carts. You swing your little pony sharply to one side, barely escaping the big wooden hub of the first cart. The syce springs down from behind, and belabors the native bullock driver, who, paying no attention to the blows rained upon his naked back, belabors his beasts in turn, calling down upon their ungainly humps the curses of his religion. The scene is so familiar that only a "globe-trotter" would notice it. Yet to me there is nothing more truly artistic, or more typically Indian in India, than a long line of these bullock-carts, laden with the products of the tropics,—pineapples, bananas, gambier, coffee,—urged on by a straight, graceful driver, winding slowly along a palm and banian shaded road. We would meet such processions at every turning, but never without recalling glorious childish pictures of the Holy Land and Bible scenery as we painted them, while our father read of a Sunday morning out of the old "Domestic Bible,"—we children pronounce it "Dom-i-stick,"—how the Lord said unto Moses, "Go take twenty fat bullocks and offer them as a sacrifice." As we would see these "twenty fat bullocks" time and again, I confess, with a feeling of reluctance, that some of the gilt and rose tint was rubbed from our childish pictures, and that a realistic artist drawing from the life before him would not deck out the patient subject in quite our extravagant colors.

The color of the Indian bullock varies. Some are a dirty white, some a cream color, some almost pink, and a few are of the darker shades. They are about the size of our cows, seldom as large as a full-grown ox. Their horns, which are generally tipped with curiously carved knobs, and often painted in colors, are as diversified in their styles of architecture as are the horns of our cattle, though they are more apt to be straight and V-shaped. Their necks are always "bowed to the yoke," to once more use biblical phraseology, and seem almost to invite its humiliating clasp. Above their front legs is the mark of their antiquity, the great clumsy, flabby, fleshy, tawny hump, always swaying from side to side, keeping time to every plodding step of its sleepy owner. This seemingly useless mountain of flesh serves as a cushion against which rests a yoke. Not the natty yoke of our rural districts, but a simple pole, with a pin of wood through each end, to ride on the outside of the bullocks' necks. The burden comes against the projecting hump when the team pulls. To the centre of this yoke is tied, with strong withes of rattan, the pole of a cart, that in this nineteenth century is generally only to be seen in national museums, preserved as a relic of the first steps in the art of wagon building. And yet as a cart it is not to be despised: all the heavy traffic of the colonies is done within its rude board sides. It has two wheels, with heavy square spokes that are held on to a ponderous wooden axle-tree by two wooden pins. A platform bottom rests on the axle-tree, and two fence-like sides.

The genie of the cart, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, is a tall, wiry, bronze-colored Hindu. He has a yard of white gauze about his waist, and another yard twisted up into a turban on his head. The dictates of fashion do not interest him. He does not plod along year in and year out behind his team for the pittance of sixty cents per day, to squander on the outside of his person. Not he. He has a wife up near Simla. He hopes to go back next year, and buy a bit of ground back from the hill on the Allabadd road from his father-in-law, old Mohammed Mudd. They have cold weather up in Simla, and he knows of a certain gown he is going to buy of a Chinaman in the bazaar. But his bullocks lag, and he saws on the gamooty rope that is attached to their noses, and beats them half consciously with his rattan whip. Ofttimes he will stand stark upright in the cart for a full half-hour, with his rattan held above his head in a threatening attitude, and talk on and on to his animals, apotheosizing their strength and patience, telling them how they are sacred to Buddha, how they are the companions of man, and how they shall have an extra chupa of paddy when the sun goes down, and he has delivered to the merchant sahib on the quay his load of gambier; or he reproves them for their slowness and want of interest, and threatens them with the rod, and tells them to look how he holds it above them. If in the course of the harangue one of the dumb listeners pauses to pick a mouthful of young lallang grass by the roadside, the softly crooning tones give place to a shriek of denunciation.

The agile Kling springs down from his improvised pulpit, and rushes at the offender, calls him the offspring of a pariah dog, shows him the rattan, rubs it against his nose, threatening to cut him up with it into small pieces, and to feed the pieces to the birds. Then he discharges a volley of blows on the sleek sides of the offender, that seem to have little more effect than to raise a cloud of tiger gnats, and to cause the recipient to bite faster at the tender herbs.

As the bullock-cart that has blocked our way, and at the same time inspired this description, shambles along down the shady road, and out of the reach of the syce's arms, the driver slips quietly up the pole of the cart until a hand rests on either hump, and commences to talk in a half-aggrieved, half-caressing tone to his team. Our syce translates. "He say bullock very bad to go to sleep before the palanquin of the Heaven-Born. If they no be better soon, their souls will no become men. He say he sorry that they make the great American sahib angry."

The singular trio passes on, the driver praising and reprimanding by turns in the soft, musical tongue of his people, the historic beasts swinging lazily along, regardless of their illustrious past, all unconscious of the fact that their names are embalmed in sacred writ and Indian legend, and rounding a corner of the broad, red road, are lost to view amid the olive-green shadows of a clump of gently swaying bamboo. To me, for the moment, they seem to disappear, like phantoms, into the mists of the dim centuries, from out of which my imagination has called them forth.

Soon you are at the wide-open gates of the Botanic Garden. A perfect riot of strange tropical foliage bursts upon the view. The clean, red road winds about and among avenues of palms, waringhans, dark green mangosteens, casuarinas, and the sweet-smelling hibiscus, all alike covered with a hundred different parasitic vines and ferns. Artificial lakes and moats are filled with the giant pods of the superb Victoria regia, and the flesh-colored cups of the lotus.

In the translucent green twilight of the flower-houses a hundred varieties of the costly orchids thrive—not costly here. A shipload can be bought of the natives for three cents apiece.

Walks carry you out into the dim aisles of the native jungle. Monkeys, surprised at your footsteps, spring from limb to limb, and swing, chattering, out of sight in a mass of rubber-vines. Splendid macadamized roads, that are kept in perfect repair by a force of naked Hindus and an iron roller drawn by six unwilling, hump-backed bullocks, spread out over the island in every direction. Leave one at any point outside the town, and plunge into the bordering jungle, and you are liable to meet a tiger or a herd of wild boar. The tigers swim across the straits from the mainland, and occasionally strike down a Chinaman. It is said that if a Chinaman, a Malay, and a European are passing side by side through a field, the tiger will pick out the Chinaman to the exclusion of the other two.

Acres upon acres of pineapples stretch away on either hand, while patches of bananas and farms of coffee are interspersed with spice trees and sago swamps.

This road system is the secret of the development of the agriculture, and one of the secrets of the rapid growth of the great English colonies. Were it not for the great black python, that lies sleeping in the road in front of you, or the green iguana that hangs in a timboso tree over your head, or a naked runner pulling a rickshaw, you might think you were travelling the wide asphaltum streets of Washington.

The home of the European in Singapore is peculiar to the country. The parks about their great bungalows are small copies of the Botanic Gardens—filled with all that is beautiful in the flora of the East. From five to twenty servants alone are kept to look after its walks and hedges and lawns.

A bungalow proper may consist of but a half-dozen rooms, and yet look like a vast manor house. It is the generous sweep of the verandas running completely around the house that lends this impression. Behind its bamboo chicks you retire on your return from the office. The Chinese "boy" takes your pipe-clayed shoes and cork helmet, and brings a pair of heelless grass slippers. If a friend drop in, you never think of inviting him into your richly furnished drawing-room, but motion him to a long rattan chair, call "Boy, bring the master a cup of tea," and pass a box of Manila cigars.

Bungalows are one story high, with a roof of palm thatch, and are raised above the ground from two to five feet by brick pillars, leaving an open space for light and air beneath. Nearly every day it rains for an hour in torrents. The hot, steaming earth absorbs the water, and the fierce equatorial sun evaporates it, only to return it in a like shower the next day. So every precaution must be taken against dampness and dry-rot.

In every well-ordered bungalow seven to nine servants are an absolute necessity, while three others are usually added from time to time. The five elements, if I may so style them, are the "boy," or boys, the cook and his helpers, the horseman, the water-carrier, the gardener, and the maid. The adjuncts are the barber, the wash man, the tailor, and the watchman. In a mild way, you are at the mercy of these servants. Their duties are fixed by caste, one never intruding on the work of another. You must have all or none. Still this is no hardship. Only newcomers ever think, of trying to economize on servant bills. The record of the thermometer is too appalling, and you speedily become too dependent on their attentions.

The Chinese "boy"—he is always the "boy" until he dies—is the presiding genius of the house. He it is who brings your tea and fruit to the bedside at 6 A.M., and lays out your evening suit ready for dinner, puts your studs in your clean shirt, brings your slippers, knows where each individual article of your wardrobe is kept, and, in fact, thinks of a hundred and one little comforts you would never have known of, had he not discovered them. He is your valet de chambre, your butler, your steward and your general agent, your interpreter and your directory. He controls the other servants with a rod of iron, but bows to the earth before the mem, or the master. For his ten Mexican dollars a month he takes all the burdens from your shoulders, and stands between you and the rude outside polyglot world. He is a hero-worshipper, and if you are a Tuan Besar—great man—he will double his attentions, and spread your fame far and wide among his brother majordomos.

But a description of each member of the menage and their duties would be in a large measure the description of the odd, complex life of the East.

The growth of Singapore since its founding by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819 would do honor to the growth of one of our Western cities.

Within three months after the purchase of the ground from the Sultan of Johore, Raffles wrote to Lord Warren Hastings, the Governor:—

"We have a growing colony of nearly five thousand souls," and a little later one of his successors wrote apologetically to Lord Auckland, discussing some project relating to Singapore finance;—

"These details may appear to your Lordship petty, but then everything connected with these settlements is petty, except their annual surplus cost to the Government of India."

To-day the city and colony has a population of over one million, and a revenue of five million dollars—a magnificent monument to its founder's foresight!

From a commercial and strategic stand-point, the site of the city is unassailable. When the English and the Dutch divided the East Indies by drawing a line through the Straits of Malacca,—the English to hold all north, the Dutch all south,—the crafty Dutchman smiled benignly, with one finger in the corner of his eye, and went back to his coffee and tobacco trading in the beautiful islands of Java and Sumatra, pitying the ignorance of the Englishman, who was contented with the swampy jungles of an unknown and savage neck of land, little thinking that inside of a half century all his products would come to this same despised district for a market, while his own colonies would retrograde and gradually pass into the hands of the English.

Singapore is one of the great cities of the world, the centre of all the East Indian commerce, the key of southern Asia, and one of the massive links in the armored chain with which Great Britain encircles the globe.



A FIGHT WITH ILLANUM PIRATES

The Yarn of a Yankee Skipper

The Daily Straits Times on the desk before me contained a vivid word picture of the capture of the British steamship Namoa by three hundred Chinese pirates, the guns of Hong Kong almost within sight, and the year of our Lord 1890 just drawing to a close. The report seemed incredible.

I pushed the paper across the table to the grizzled old captain of the Bunker Hill and continued my examination of the accounts of a half-dozen sailors of whom he was intent on getting rid. By the time I had signed the last discharge and affixed the consular seal he had finished the article and put it aside with a contemptuous "Humph!" expressive of his opinion of the valor of the crew and officers. I could see that he was anxious for me to give him my attention while he related one of those long-drawn-out stories of perhaps a like personal experience. I knew the symptoms and sometimes took occasion to escape, if business or inclination made me forego the pleasure. To-day I was in a mood to humor him.

There is always something deliciously refreshing in a sailor's yarn. I have listened to hundreds in the course of my consular career, and have yet to find one that is dull or prosy. They all bear the imprint of truth, perhaps a trifle overdrawn, but nevertheless sparkling with the salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at the rapidity with which the scene and personnel change. The icebergs and the aurora borealis of the Arctic give place to the torrid waters and the Southern Cross of the South Pacific. A volcanic island, an Arabian desert, a tropical jungle, and the breadth and width of the ocean serve as the theatre, while a Fiji Islander, an Eskimo, and a turbaned Arab are actors in a half-hour's tale. In interest they rival Verne, Kingston, or Marryat. All they lack is skilled hands to dress them in proper language.



I

THE CAPTAIN'S YARN

The captain helped himself to one of my manilas and began:—

I've nothing to say about the fate of the poor fellows on the Namoa, seeing the captain was killed at the first fire, but it looks to me like a case of carelessness which was almost criminal. The idea of allowing three hundred Chinese to come aboard as passengers without searching them for arms. Why! it is an open bid to pirates. Goes to show pretty plain that these seas are not cleared of pirates. Sailing ships nowadays think they can go anywhere without a pound of powder or an old cutlass aboard, just because there is an English or Dutch man-of-war within a hundred miles. I don't know what we'd have done when I first traded among these islands without a good brass swivel and a stock of percussion-cap muskets.

Let me see; it was in '58, I was cabin boy on the ship Bangor. Captain Howe, hale old fellow from Maine, had his two little boys aboard. They are merchants now in Boston. I've been sailing for them on the Elmira ever since. We were trading along the coast of Borneo. Those were great days for trading in spite of the pirates. That was long before iron steamers sent our good oaken ships to rot in the dockyards of Maine. Why, in those days you could see a half-dozen of our snug little crafts in any port of the world, and I've seen more American flags in this very harbor of Singapore than of any other nation. We had come into Singapore with a shipload of ice (no scientific ice factories then), and had gone along the coast of Java and Borneo to load with coffee, rubber, and spices, for a return voyage. We were just off Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, and about loaded, when the captain heard that gold had been discovered somewhere up near the head of the Rejang. The captain was an adventurous old salt, and decided to test the truth of the story; so, taking the long-boat and ten men, he pulled up the Sarawak River to Kuching and got permission of Rajah Brooke to go up the Rejang on a hunting expedition. The Rajah was courteous, but tried to dissuade us from the undertaking by relating that several bands of Dyaks had been out on head-hunting expeditions of late, and that the mouth of the Rejang was infested by Illanum pirates. The captain only laughed, and jokingly told Sir James that if the game proved scarce he might come back and claim the prize money on a boat-load of pirate heads.

We started at once,—for the captain let me go; we rowed some sixty miles along the coast to the mouth of the Rejang; then for four days we pulled up its snakelike course. It was my first bit of adventure, and everything was strange and new. The river's course was like a great tunnel into the dense black jungle. On each side and above we were completely walled in by an impenetrable growth of great tropical trees and the iron-like vines of the rubber. The sun for a few hours each day came in broken shafts down through the foliage, and exposed the black back of a crocodile, or the green sides of an iguana. Troops of monkeys swung and chattered in the branches above, and at intervals a grove of cocoanut broke the monotony of the scenery. Among them we would land and rest for the day or night, eat of their juicy fruit, and go on short excursions for game. A roasted monkey, some baked yams, and a delicious rice curry made up a royal bill of fare, and as the odor of our tobacco mixed with the breathing perfume of the jungle, I would fall asleep listening to sea-yarns that sometimes ran back to the War of 1812.



II

At the end of the fifth day we arrived at the head of the Rejang. Here the river broke up into a dozen small streams and a swamp. A stockade had been erected, and the Rajah had stationed a small company of native soldiers under an English officer to keep the head-hunting Dyaks in check. I don't remember what our captain found out in regard to the gold fields, at least it was not encouraging; for he gave up the search and joined the English lieutenant in a grand deer-hunt that lasted for five days, and then started back accompanied by two native soldiers bearing despatches to the Rajah.

It was easy running down the river with the current. One man in each end of the boat kept it off roots, sunken logs, and crocodiles, and the rest of us spent the time as best our cramped space allowed. Twice we detected the black, ugly face of a Dyak peering from out the jungle. The men were for hunting them down for the price on their heads, but the captain said he never killed a human being except in self-defence, and that if the Rajah wanted to get rid of the savages he had better give the contract to a Mississippi slave-trader. Secretly, I was longing for some kind of excitement, and was hoping that the men's clamorous talk would have some effect. I never doubted our ability to raid a Dyak village and kill the head-hunters and carry off the beautiful maidens. I could not see why a parcel of blacks should be such a terror to the good Rajah, when Big Tom said he could easily handle a dozen, and flattered me by saying that such a brawny lad as I ought to take care of two at least.

In the course of three days we reached the mouth of the river, and prepared the sail for the trip across the bay to the Bangor. Just as everything was in readiness, one of those peculiar and rapid changes in the weather, that are so common here in the tropics near the equator, took place. A great blue-black cloud, looking like an immense cartridge, came up from the west. Through it played vivid flashes of lightning, and around it was a red haze. "A nasty animal," I heard the bo's'n tell the captain, and yet I was foolishly delighted when they decided to risk a blow and put out to sea. The sky on all sides grew darker from hour to hour. A smell of sulphur came to our nostrils. It was oppressively hot; not a breath of wind was stirring. The sail flapped uselessly against the mast, and the men labored at the oars, while streams of sweat ran from their bodies.

The captain had just taken down the mast, when, without a moment's warning, the gale struck us and the boat half filled with water. We managed to head it with the wind, and were soon driving with the rapidity of a cannon-ball over the boiling and surging waters. It was a fearful gale; we blew for hours before it, ofttimes in danger of a volcanic reef, again almost sunk by a giant wave. I baled until I was completely exhausted. But the long-boat was a stanch little craft, and there were plenty of men to manage it, so as long as we could keep her before the wind, the captain felt no great anxiety as to our safety.



III

At about six bells in the afternoon, the wind fell away, and the rain came down in torrents, leaving us to pitch about on the rapidly decreasing waves, wet to the skin and unequal to another effort. We were within a mile of a rocky island that rose like a half-ruined castle from the ocean. The Dyak soldiers called it Satang Island, and I have sailed past it many a time since. Without waiting for the word, we rowed to it and around it, before we found a suitable beach on which to land. One end of the island rose precipitous and sheer above the beach a hundred feet, and ended in a barren plateau of some two dozen acres. The remainder comprised some hundred acres of sand and rocks, on which were half a dozen cocoanut trees and a few yams. Along the beach we found a large number of turtles' eggs.