In Court and Kampong Part 6

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

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

He had killed his wife, Che' Long, the Kelantan man abdul Rahman, Pa'

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

THE FLIGHT OF CHeP, THE BIRD

When my foe is in my hands, When before me pale he stands, When he finds no means to fight, When he knows that death awaits him At the hands of one who hates him, And his looks are wild with fright; When I stare him in the eyes, Watch the apple fall and rise In the throat his hard sobs tear; O, I'll mark his pain with pleasure, And I'll slay him at my leisure, But I'll kill, and will not spare.

_The Song of the Savage Foeman._

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

But in the distant Sakai country the Harvest Home has little in common with such scenes as these. The _padi_ planted in the clearing, hard by the spot in which the camp is pitched, has been reaped painfully and laboriously in the native fas.h.i.+on, each ripe ear being severed from its stalk separately and by hand. Then, after many days, the grain has at last been stored in the big bark boxes, under cover of the palm leaf thatch, and the Sakai women, who have already performed the lion's share of the work, are set to husk some portions of it for the evening meal.

This they do with clumsy wooden pestles, held as they stand erect round a sort of trough, the ding-dong-ding of the pounders carrying far and wide through the forest, and, at the sound, all wanderers from the camp turn their faces homeward with the eagerness born of empty stomachs and the prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo, for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in Europe, as does the creamy b.u.t.ter in a cool Devons.h.i.+re dairy from the liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by that name in the sweltering tropics, and the cooked grain is eaten ravenously, and in incredible quant.i.ties by the hungry, squalid creatures in a Sakai camp. These poor wretches know that, in a day or two, the Malays will come up stream to 'barter' with them, and that the priceless rice will be taken from them, almost by force, in exchange for a few axe-heads and native wood knives.

Therefore, the Sakai eat while there is yet time, and while distended stomachs will still bear the strain of a few additional mouthfuls.

Thus is the harvest home supper devoured in a Sakai camp, with gluttony and beast noises of satisfaction, while the darkness is falling over the land; but, when the meal has been completed, the sleep of repletion may not fall upon the people. The Spirits of the Woods and of the Streams, and the Demons of the grain must be thanked for their gifts, and propitiated for such evil as has been done them. The forests have been felled to make the clearing, the crop has been reaped, and the rice stored by the tribe. Clearly the Spirits stand in need of comfort for the loss they have sustained, and the Sakai customs provide for such emergencies. The house of the Chief or the Medicine Man--the largest hut in the camp--is filled to the roof with the sodden green growths of the jungle. The Sakai have trespa.s.sed on the domains of the Spirits, and now the Demons of the Woods are invited to share the dwellings of men. Then, when night has fallen, the Sakai, men, women, and little children, creep into the house, stark naked and entirely unarmed, and sitting huddled together in the darkness, under the shelter of the leaves and branches with which the place is crammed, raise their voices in a weird chant, which peals skyward till the dawn has come again.

No man can say how ancient is this custom, nor yet the beginnings in which it had its origin. Does it date back to a period when huts and garments, even of bark, were newly acquired things, and when the Sakai suffered both ungladly after the manner of all wild jungle creatures?

Did they, in those days, cast aside their bark loin clothes, and revel once more in pristine nakedness, and in the green things of the forest, on all occasions of rejoicing? We can only speculate, and none can tell us whether we guess aright. But year after year, in a hundred camps throughout the broad Sakai country, the same ceremony is performed, and the same ancient chant goes up through the still night air, on the day which marks the bringing home of the harvest. The Malays call this practice _ber-jermun_, because they trace a not altogether fanciful resemblance between the sheds stuffed with jungle and the _jermun_ or nest-like huts which wild boars construct for their shelter and comfort.

But although the Malays, as a race, despise the Sakai, and all their heathenish ways, on the occasion of which I write, Kria, a man of their nation, was present, and taking an active part in the demon-wors.h.i.+p of the Infidels.

What was he doing here, in the remote Sakai camp, herding naked among the green stuff with the chanting jungle people? He was a Malay of the Malays, a Muhammadan, who, in his sane moments, hated all who prayed to devils, or bowed down to stocks and stones, but, for the moment, he was mad. He had come up stream a few weeks before to barter with the forest dwellers, and the flas.h.i.+ng glance from a pair of bright eyes, set in the pale yellow face of a slender Sakai girl, had blinded him, and bereft him of reason. Life no longer seemed to hold anything of good for him unless Chep, the Bird, as her people called her, might be his. In the abstract he despised the Sakai as heartily as ever, but, for the sake of this girl, he smothered his feelings, dwelt among her people as one of themselves, losing thereby the last atom of his self-respect, and finally consented to risk his soul's salvation by joining in their superst.i.tious ceremonies. Yet all this sacrifice had hitherto been unavailing, for Chep was the wife of a Sakai named Ku-ish, or the Porcupine, who guarded her jealously, and gave Kria no opportunity of prosecuting his intimacy with the girl.

On her side, she had quickly divined that Kria had fallen a victim to her charms, and, as he was younger than Ku-ish, richer, and, moreover, a Malay, a man of a superior race, she was both pleased and flattered. No one who knows what a Sakai's life is, nor of the purely haphazard manner in which they are allowed to grow up, would dream of looking for principle in a Sakai woman, or would expect her to resist a temptation.

The idea of right and wrong, as we understand it, never probably occurred to Chep, and all she waited for was a fitting time at which to elope with her Malay lover.

Their chance came on the night of the Harvest Home. In the darkness Kria crept close to Chep, and, when the chant was at its loudest, he whispered in her ear that his dug-out lay ready by the river bank, and that he loved her. Together they stole out of the hut, un.o.bserved by the Sakai folk, who sang and grovelled in the darkness. The boat was found, and the lovers, stepping into it, pushed noiselessly out into the stream. The river at this point runs furiously over a sloping bed of s.h.i.+ngle, and the roar of its waters soon drowned the splas.h.i.+ng of the paddles. Chep held the steering oar, and Kria, squatting in the bows, propelled the boat with quick strong strokes. Thus they journeyed on in silence, save for an occasional word of endearment from one to the other, until the dawn had broken, and a few hours later they found themselves at the Malay village at which Kria lived. They had come down on a half freshet, and that, in the far upper country, where the streams tear over their pebbly or rocky beds through the gorges formed by the high banks, means travelling at a rus.h.i.+ng headlong pace. When the fugitives finally halted at Kria's home, fifty miles separated them from the Sakai camp, and they felt themselves safe from pursuit.

To understand this, you must realise what the Sakai of the interior is.

Men of his race who have lived for years surrounded by Malay villages are as different from him, as the fallow-deer in an English park from the Sambhur of the jungles. Sakai who have spent all their lives among Malays, who have learned to wear clothes, and to count up to ten, or may be twenty, are hardly to be distinguished from their neighbours, the other ignorant up country natives. They are not afraid to wander through the villages, they do not rush into the jungle or hide behind trees at the approach of strangers, a water-buffalo does not inspire them with as much terror as a tiger, and they do not hesitate to make, comparatively speaking, long journeys from their homes if occasion requires. In all this they differ widely from the semi-wild Sakai of the centre of the Peninsula. These men trade with the Malays, it is true, but the trade has to be carried on by visitors who penetrate into the Sakai country for the purpose. Most of them have learned to speak Malay, though many know only their own primitive language, and when their three numerals, _na-nu_, _nar_, and _ne_--one, two, and three--have been used, fall back for further expression of arithmetical ideas on the word _Kerpn_, which means 'many.' For clothes they wear, the narrow loin cloth, fas.h.i.+oned from the bark of certain trees, which only partially covers their nakedness; they are as shy as the beasts of the forest, and never willingly do they quit that portion of the country which is still exclusively inhabited by the aboriginal tribes. It was to semi-wild Sakai such as these that Chep and her people belonged.

There are tribes of other and more savage jungle-dwellers living in the forests of the broad Sakai country, men who fly to the jungles even when approached by the tamer tribesmen. Their camps may be seen, on a clear day, far up the hillsides on the jungle-covered uplands of the remote interior; their tracks are occasionally to be met with mixed with those of the bison and the rhinoceros, the deer and the wild swine, but the people themselves are but rarely encountered. The tamer Sakai trade with them, depositing the articles of barter at certain spots in the forest, whence they are removed by the wild men and replaced by various kinds of jungle produce. Of these, the most valued are the long straight reeds, found only in the most distant fastnesses of the forest, which are used by the tamer tribes to form the inner casing of their blow-pipes.

Chep had the traditions of her people, and her great love for Kria had alone served to nerve her to leave her tribe, and the forest country that she knew. A great fear fell upon her when, the familiar jungles being left far behind, she found herself floating down stream through cl.u.s.ter after cl.u.s.ter of straggling Malay villages. The knowledge that Kria was at hand to protect her tended to rea.s.sure her, but the instinct of her race was strong upon her, and her heart beat violently, like that of some wild bird held in a human hand. All her life the Malays, who preyed upon her people, had been spoken of with fear and terror by the simple Sakai at night time round the fires in their squalid camps. Now she found herself alone in the very heart--so it seemed to her--of the Malay country. Kria, while he lived among her people as one of themselves, had seemed to her merely a superior kind of Sakai. Now she realised that he was in truth a Malay, one of the dominant foreign race, and her spirit sank within her. None the less, it never occurred to her to fear pursuit. She knew how much her tribesmen dreaded the Malays, and how strongly averse they were to quitting the forest lands with which they were familiar, and Kria, who had recently acquired a considerable knowledge of the Sakai ways and customs, felt as confident as she.

So Chep and her lover halted at the latter's village, and took up their abode in his house. The girl was delighted with her new home, which, in her eyes, seemed a veritable palace, when compared with the miserable dwelling places of her own people; and the number and variety of the cooking pots, and the large stock of household stores filled her woman's soul with delight. Also, Kria was kind to her, and she eat good boiled rice daily, which was a new and a pleasant experience. Sooner or later the importunate longing for the jungle, which is born in the hearts of all forest dwellers, would rise up and drive her back to her own people, but of this she knew nothing, and for the time she was happy.

In the Sakai camp it was not until day had dawned that the demon-wors.h.i.+ppers, looking at one another through heavy sleepless eyes, set in pallid faces, among the draggled greenery in the house, noted that two of their number were missing. The quick sight of the jungle people soon spied the trail of a man and a woman, and, following it, they crowded down to the place where the boat had been moored. Here they squatted on the ground and began to smoke. '_Rej-a-roj!_'--'She is lost!'--they said laconically, in the barbarous jargon of the jungle people, and then relapsed into silence.

'May they be devoured by a tiger!' snarled Ku-ish, the Porcupine, deep down in his throat, and, at the word, all his hearers shuddered. The curse is the most dreadful that the jungle people know, and if you shared your home with the great cats, as they do, you would regard it with equal fear and respect. Ku-ish said little more, but he went back to the camp and unslung an exceedingly ancient match-lock, which hung from a beam of the roof in the Chief's hut. It was the only gun in the camp, and was the most precious possession of the tribe, but no man asked him what he was doing, or tried to stay him when he presently plunged into the jungle heading down stream.

Two days later, in the cool of the afternoon, Kria left Chep in the house busy with the evening's rice, and, accompanied by a small boy, his son by a former marriage, he went to seek for fish in one of the swamps at the back of the village. These marshy places, which are to be found in the neighbourhood of many Malay _Kampongs_, are ready-made rice fields, but since the cultivation of a _padi_ swamp requires more exacting labour than most Malays are prepared to bestow upon it, they are often left to lie fallow, while crops are grown in clearings on the neighbouring hills. In dry weather the cracked, parched earth, upon which no vegetation sprouts, alone marks the places which, in the rainy season, are pools of stagnant water, but so sure as there is a pond, there also are the little muddy fish which the Malays call _ruan_ and _sepat_. Where they vanish to when the water in which they live is licked up by the sunrays, or how they support life during a long season of drought, no man clearly knows, but it is believed that they burrow deep into the earth, and live in the moist mud underfoot until better times come with the heavy tropic rain.

Kria carried two long _joran_, or native fis.h.i.+ng rods, over his shoulder, and his little naked son pattered along at his heels, holding a tin containing bait in his tiny hands. The boy crooned to himself, after the manner of native children, but his father walked along in silence. Arrived at the swamp, which was now a broad pool of water, with here and there a tuft of rank rushes showing above the surface, Kria and his child each took a rod and began patiently angling for the little fish. The sun crept lower and lower down the western sky, till its slanting rays painted the surface of the pool to the crimson hue of blood. The clouds were dyed with a thousand gorgeous tints, and the soft light of the sunset hour mellowed all the land. Kria had seen the same sight many a hundred times before, and he looked on it with the utter indifference to the beauties of nature, which is one of the least attractive characteristics of Malays. If the reddened pool at his feet suggested anything to him, it was only that the day was waning, and that it was time to be wending his way homeward.

He began to gather up his fis.h.i.+ng tackle, while his son, squatting on the ground, pa.s.sed a rattan cord through the fishes' gills to their mouths, so that the take might be carried with greater ease. While they were so engaged, a slight rustle in the high gra.s.s behind them caused both father and son to start and look round. Not a breath of wind was blowing, but, none the less, a few feet away from them, the tops of the gra.s.s moved slightly, as though the stalks were brushed against by the pa.s.sage of some wild animal.

'Hasten, little one,' said Kria, uneasily; 'it is a tiger.'

But, as he spoke the words, the gra.s.s was parted by human hands, and Kria found himself looking into the wild and angry eyes of Ku-ish, the Porcupine, along the length of an ancient gun barrel. He had time to note the rust upon the dulled metal, the fantastic shape of the clumsy sight, and the blue tatoo marks on the nose and forehead of his enemy.

All these things he saw mechanically, in an instant of time, but before he had moved hand or foot the world seemed to break in fragments around him, to the sound of a furious deafening explosion, and he lay dead upon the sward with his skull shattered to atoms, and the b.l.o.o.d.y, mucous strings of brain flecking the fresh green gra.s.s.

At the sight, Kria's son fled screaming along the edge of the pool, but Ku-ish's blood was up, and he started in pursuit. The child threw himself down in the long gra.s.s, and, raising his little arms above his cowering head, shrieked for mercy in his pure shrill treble voice.

Ku-ish, for answer, plunged his spear again and again through the little writhing body, and, at the second blow, the expression of horror and fear faded from the tender rounded face, and was replaced by that look of perfect rest and peace which is only to be seen in the countenance of a sleeping child.

Ku-ish gathered up the fish, and took all the tobacco he could find on Kria's body, for a Sakai rarely loses sight completely of those cravings of appet.i.te, which, with him, are never wholly satisfied. Then, when the darkness had shut down over the land, he crept to Kria's house, and bade Chep follow him. She came without a word, for women whose ancestors have been slaves for generations have very little will of their own. She wept furtively when Ku-ish told her, in a few pa.s.sionless sentences, that he had killed Kria and his son, and she bewailed herself aloud when, at their first halting-place, she received the severe chastis.e.m.e.nt, which Ku-ish dealt out to her with no grudging hand, as her share in the general punishment. But, when the thras.h.i.+ng was over, she followed him meekly, with the tears still wet upon her cheeks, making no attempt to escape. Thus Ku-ish, the Porcupine, and Chep, the Bird, made their way through the strange forests, until they had once more regained the familiar Sakai country, and were safe among their own people.

Pursuit into such a place is impossible, for a Sakai comes and goes like a shadow, and can efface himself utterly when he desires to do so. Thus, though Kria's relatives clamoured for vengeance, little could be done. I was myself at that time in charge of the district in which these things occurred, and it was only by the most solemn promises that no evil should befall them, that I induced the various Sakai chiefs to meet me near the limits of their country. My request that Ku-ish should be handed over for trial was received by the a.s.sembled elders as a demand which was manifestly ridiculous. Ku-ish was in the jungle, and they knew that pursuit would be useless, unless his own people aided in the chase.

This they were determined not to do, and I, being bound by promises not to harm the Chiefs, was powerless to force them to come to my a.s.sistance.

At length, a very aged man, the princ.i.p.al headman present, a wrinkled old savage, scarred by encounters with wild beasts, and mottled with skin disease and dirt, lifted up his voice and spoke, shaking his straggling mop of frowsy grizzled hair in time to the words he uttered.

'There is a custom, _Tuan_, when such things occur. The Porcupine has killed the _Gob_ (Malay), and our tribe must repay sevenfold. Seven lives for a life. It is the custom.'

The proposal sounded generous, and I was inclined to jump at it, until, on inquiry, I discovered what the ancient chief really intended. His suggestion was that the blood-money should take the form of seven human beings, who were to be duly delivered to the relations of the murdered man as slaves. These seven creatures were not to be members of his or Ku-ish's tribe, but were to be captured by them from among the really wild people of the hills, who had had no share in the ill-doing which it was my object to punish. The Porcupine and his brethren, he explained, would run some risk, and be put to a considerable amount of trouble, before the seven wild men could be caught, and this was to be the measure of their punishment. The old Chief went on to tell me that the wild Sakai only pursued a raiding party until they came to a spot where a spear had been left sticking upright in the ground. This custom, he said, was well known to the marauders, who took care to avail themselves of it, so soon as their captives had been secured. My informant said that the wild men would never venture past a spear left in this manner, but he was unable to explain the reason, and did not profess to understand the superst.i.tion with which this spear is probably connected in the minds of the jungle dwellers.

Blood-money in past times, I was a.s.sured both by Malays and Sakai, had always been paid in this manner by the semi-wild tribes of the interior.

It was the custom, and Kria's relatives were eager in their prayers to me to accept the proposal. Instead, I exacted a heavy fine of jungle produce from the tribe to which Ku-ish, the Porcupine, belonged, and thus I gave complete dissatisfaction to all parties concerned. The Sakai disliked the decision because they found the fine more difficult to pay, while the Malays thought the blood-money paid hopelessly inadequate, when compared with the value of seven slaves. But, as the Indian Proverb says, 'an order is an order until one is strong enough to disobey it.'

Therefore the fine was paid by the Sakai and accepted by the Malays with grumblings, of which I only heard the echoes.

So ends the story of the Flight of Chep, the Bird, and of the deed whereby Ku-ish, the Porcupine, cleansed his honour from the shame that had been put upon him. The murder was a brutal act, savagely done, and the ruthless manner in which the Porcupine killed the little defenceless child, who had done no evil to him or his, makes one's blood boil. None the less, when one remembers the heavy debt of vengeance, for long years of grinding cruelty and wicked wrong, which the Sakai owes to the Malay, one can find it in one's heart to forgive much that he may do when the savage l.u.s.t of blood is upon him, and when, for a s.p.a.ce, his enemies of the hated race are delivered into his hand.

THE VAULTING AMBITION

Adown the stream, whence mist like steam Arises in early morning, 'Mid shout and singing they bear me swinging A mark for the people's scorning.

By long hair hanging, amid the clanging Of drums that are beaten loud, I am borne--the Head of the ghastly Dead, That ne'er knew coffin nor shroud!

But I swing there, nor greatly care If the Victor jeers or sings, Nor heed my foe, for now I know The worth of these mortal things.

_The Song of the Severed Head._

When the Portuguese Filibusters descended upon the Peninsula, they employed--so says the native tradition--the time-worn stratagem of the Pious aeneas; and, having obtained, by purchase, as much land as could be enclosed by the hide of a bull, from the Sultan of Malacca, they cut the skin up into such cunning strips that a s.p.a.ce large enough to build a formidable fort was won by them. This they erected in the very heart of the capital, which, at that time, was the head and front of the Malay Kingdoms of the Peninsula. Thence they speedily overran the State of Malacca, and, though the secret of making gunpowder, and rude match-locks, was known to the Malays, native skill and valour was of no avail when opposed to the discipline and the bravery of the mail-clad Europeans. Thus, the country was soon subdued, and, in 1511, Sultan Muhammad, with most of his relations and a few faithful followers, fled to Pahang, which, at that time, was a dependency of Malacca. Here he founded a new Dynasty, his descendants a.s.suming the t.i.tle of Bendahara, and doing homage and owing allegiance to the Sultan of Daik, whose kingdom, in its turn, has since fallen to the portion of the Dutch.

The people of Pahang were ever lawless, warlike folk, and the Malacca _Rajas_, who seem to have been a mild enough set of people while in their own country, speedily caught the infection from their surroundings. Thus, from one generation to another, various rival claimants to the throne strove for the mastery during successive centuries. The land was always more or less on the rack of civil war, and so to-day the largest State in the Peninsula carries a population of only some four human beings to the square mile.

War was lulled, and peace fell upon Pahang when Bendahara ali, the father of the present Sultan, came to the throne; but, when he died in his palace among the cocoa-nut trees, across the river opposite to the Pekan of to-day, civil war broke out once more with redoubled fury.

During the years that he was a fugitive from the land of his birth, Che'

Wan ahmad, who now bears the high-sounding t.i.tle of Sultan ahmad Maatham, Shah of Pahang, made numerous efforts to seize the throne from his brother and nephew, but it was not until the fifth attempt that he was finally successful.