Chapter III: Part 3

Seen nothing, certainly. That was not strange, it was a jungly place, and to be ten yards off in the jungle is as good, for those who seek concealment and know the jungle, as to be in another district. As for hearing anything, that too was most unlikely: the only people he could hear from were Malays, the only means of communication the Malay language, of which Grant knew very little, and the only condition on which information is to be obtained from Malays about Malays would be an intimacy with and respect for the threatened man to which Grant could hardly aspire. There must be some very powerful influence at work to induce a Muhammadan, who is not personally in danger, to tell a Christian that there is a Muhammadan plot against his life. Grant, at any rate, if he thought about it at all, could hardly expect that he, a new-comer, possessed friends who would do so much for him.

He was still resting when, about 4 P.M., a party of nearly twenty armed men suddenly appeared in front of the house and stood some fifty yards away, while two of them, carrying only the ordinary jungle knives, came up to the house and asked Grant if he wanted to buy fowls. He told the inquirers to take them to his servant, and got up as the Malays left him.

The men had no fowls, and instead of going to the servant’s quarters they rejoined their companions, and the whole body advanced towards the house.

At this moment Maämih appeared, and instantly divining that the strangers meant no good, she screamed out, “They are going to murder us.” But Grant said that he and she had done no harm and the Malays could mean none, and, taking the woman with him, he went out of the house and a few steps forward to meet his assailants.

These last stopped some twenty yards from Grant and the woman, and she said, “What harm have we done?” The answer was “_Titah_”—it is by order of the Raja—and they told the woman to leave the infidel and go away. But she replied, “I shall stay with him.”

Then several men said, “If you do not go, we will kill you as well as the white man.”

Grant may not have understood this sentence of death on himself, he may not have realised how strangely the times were out of joint, that he who was the enemy of no man, who had done no wrong, who represented no cause, should suddenly, in the broad light of day, hear his own death sentence, and in the same breath learn that he was facing his executioners and his account with the world was closed. There was no time to think: instinct said, “There is Death,” and doubtless instinct also said, “Death is disagreeable: shun it.”

It is commonly reputed that there are people who do not know what fear is; to them in such a situation instinct no doubt suggests that death is a new and pleasant experience. With this man it was different; as he saw here and there a gun raised and pointed at him from a distance of a few paces, he probably felt the fear of sudden and violent death, and if he was in any way responsible for what he did in that supreme moment his thought must have suggested that these men would not harm a woman of their own nationality and religion, for he took her in his arms.

A shot was fired, and the bullet shattered Maämih’s left arm. Then, seeing what had happened, Grant put her behind him and two more shots were fired, one of which struck Grant in the breast, and saying, “They have killed me,” he fell on his face to the ground.

A Malay rushed up with a heavy chopping knife, but the woman threw herself on the body and put her unwounded arm over Grant’s neck to save him. The Malay’s first blow inflicted a deep wound on Maämih’s arm and made her loose her hold; the man then struck Grant a heavy blow on the back of the neck, but he was already dead.

The murderers took no further notice of the woman, except to try and rob her of the jewellery she wore, but they plundered the house, and having decapitated the dead man and otherwise mutilated his body, they threw the remains into the river and departed.

The woman was cared for by a countryman of her own until she could be removed to a hospital, where, after weeks of suffering, she recovered from her injuries.

The motive of this outrage was simply the desire of an individual and his small following to wipe out the white man, and as Grant’s isolated position made him a specially easy prey, he fell a victim. His only European neighbour was also murdered by the same band. I know of no similar attack being made by Malays on a white man within modern times, and I question whether there is such another instance of a Malay woman’s devotion—not that they are not capable of such self-sacrifice, I think they are, but the circumstances necessary to call it forth very seldom arise.

This woman realised what was going to happen before she left the shelter of the house, she had time after that to think, her life was not sought, she was told to go away and warned that if she did not separate herself from the white man she would share his fate. Moreover, she knew that no sacrifice of hers could save him, and more than all, as affecting her woman’s nerves, she saw face to face the men with murder in their faces and the means to accomplish it in their hands.

The motive which kept Maämih by Grant’s side and which led her, after receiving the first shot, to interpose herself between his body and the weapons of his foes, must have been as high as it was powerful. Just as there was nothing to fear by standing aside (for none would have blamed her), so there was nothing to hope from the forbearance of Grant’s murderers, and that she did not also lose her life by her devotion to him was the accident of an ill-directed shot and a well-aimed blow which sought to sever the woman’s arm and reach the neck it protected—the neck of a dead man.

United to the devotion which deemed no sacrifice too great for one she loved, was that other sort of courage which comes of knowledge and deliberate intention. No one can fail to admire the pluck which takes no thought of danger, the instinct which impels a wild beast to charge an enemy and probably achieve thereby its own destruction. Even then it can hardly be said that the sensation of fear has never been and cannot be experienced by the most formidable and gallant denizens of the forest and the desert. All sportsmen know the contrary, and a child has put a tiger to flight by suddenly throwing a basket in the face of the beast. Had the child run away, its death was probable, whereas it saved the life of an old man already in the tiger’s clutches, and yet the child’s action was not the result of courage but of fear.

This Malay woman, in whom the love of life was strong, and on whose nerves the horror and certainty of what awaited her must have had a terrifying effect, deliberately renounced safety, with that higher resolve which, vanquishing fear, faces the unknown in the spirit described by the Persian who, writing eight centuries ago, has found so worthy an interpreter in the author of the lines—

“So when the Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river brink
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul,
Forth to your Lips to quaff—
You shall not shrink.”

XI

IN THE NOON OF NIGHT

Her soul upheld
By some deep-working charm

KIRKE WHITE

On the western coast of the Peninsula, more especially that part of it which forms one side of the Straits of Malacca, the shore-line is generally one long stretch of mud, covered with mangrove trees to the verge of high-water mark and rather further, for when the tide is up there are thousands of acres of mangrove whose roots and several inches of the stems are submerged. Beyond this forest the receding tide leaves great wastes of evil-smelling mire, soft and clinging, in which the searcher for shell-fish sinks almost to his waist.

Many rivers, small and great, find their way to the sea through this wide flat. At high water they look imposing enough, but when the tide is out a narrow and shallow channel is left winding about between low slimy banks, and right and left the eye wanders over a desolation of glistening mud with an almost imperceptible slope to the edge of the distant sea.

Pools of shallow water and tiny channels, through which the receding tide finds easier road to river or sea, alone break the monotony of the unsightly waste.

That is as far as physical features go. The mud-flats have their denizens, but they are not over-attractive.

First, there is the Malay fisherman, hunting for mussels and other shell-fish. If he is there at all he will be hard to see, for he pushes his little dug-out fifty or a hundred yards up a mud creek, leaves it and fossicks about, sunk above his knees in the mire.

Then there are myriads of birds, attracted by the great possibilities of gain to the industrious searcher after garbage, stranded fish, and all sorts of particularly loathsome-looking and foul-smelling dead things to be found in such a place. These birds are often strange-looking creatures, vast of size, long and lank of leg, snaky of neck and spiky of bill. But they are wary to a degree, they always seems to be standing just in the tiny ripple of the smallest wavelets where you instinctively know the mud and sea meet, and there they watch the gradually receding tide with melancholy abstraction, as though they took no real interest in the daily toil of sustaining life.

Last, there is something else here, and, if you are not quite a stranger, you will look first, look longest, and look always for this other thing. Perhaps it is the extraordinary fitness of her surroundings (I say _her_ advisedly), perhaps the art with which nature has designed the body of the saurian to make you think her a log, or a stranded palm-branch, a half-buried spar of a wrecked boat, or even a lighter or darker ridge of the surrounding mud—certain it is that as the crocodile lies there, basking in the sun which makes air and water and blistering slime shimmer and dance before your eyes, you will not notice the creature, nay, even when pointed out to you, it is ten to one that you will not even then realise that she is there.

But get nearer, speak no word and let your rowers pull a long and noiseless stroke till some one with a quick eye and a steady hand can put a bullet in the reptile’s neck. As that great mouth suddenly opens, disclosing the rows of shining teeth, as it shuts again with the noise of a steel trap, as the horrible scaly claws dig deep into the mud in their agony and the great spiked tail lashes round in fury, as the loathsome yellow belly slides over the ooze and you catch sight of the stony cruelty of the crocodile’s eye, then you will realise what manner of thing she is, and you will probably conceive for her and all her kind a deadly horror and loathing, and a consuming desire to slay the whole brood will seize you then and remain with you for all time.

If it should happen to you to have to fight a wounded crocodile at close quarters, if accident brings you in contact with a man who has just lost arm or leg, or with a corpse out of which a crocodile has torn the life, your feelings towards these river-murderers will not be softened.

There are Malay rivers so infested by these reptiles that at low water for a mile or two from the river’s mouth they will be seen, in twos and threes or larger groups, lying on either bank basking or sleeping in the sun. It repeatedly happens that they knock people out of their boats and then kill and devour them, and in places where the creatures are specially numerous, if a crocodile is shot dead on the bank, in less than half an hour the carcase will be dragged into the river and a crowd of the reptiles will be tearing it in pieces and fighting for the remains.

Villages on the Malay coast are nearly always situated on the bank of a river; the sea is full of fish and the men of a coast village are mostly fishermen. If the village is of any size and the industry of any importance, the catching of fish is supplemented by curing—that is, salting and drying them.

The whereabouts of a village of this kind may be recognised by the traveller on sea or land when he is yet a great way off. Probably for that reason, and because the cleaning of thousands of fish loads the water with food of a kind that is specially attractive to the saurian, the immediate neighbourhood of a fishing village is the favourite resort of the crocodile.

At the mouth of a wide river on the Perak coast there is just such a village. It is thriving, and as there are a number of Chinese as well as Malay fishermen, it boasts a police-station. The houses are built for the most part on piles; at high water the sea washes under them, and the means of inter-communication are wooden stagings from house to house. At low water there is mud, great stretches of mud, running from the edge of the mangrove swamp which backs the village far out to the west and the waters of the Straits of Malacca.

It was in the month of Ramthân, when begin those forty days of fast observed by all good Muhammadans—though so few of them know why they fast, or the details of the touching story which tells the sufferings of the Martyrs of Kerbela—that one night, past the middle of the month, but when the moon still lit up the water and made things plain as day, a strange thing happened at this small coast village.

In it there lived a Malay revenue officer with his wife and child, and on the night in question these three, being at home, went to sleep about 10 P.M. as was their wont.

A slight breeze was blowing off the sea, blowing against the falling tide, and the moonlight glorified the hideous expanse of slime till it looked like a limitless mirror, blending far away with the haze-enshrouded waters of the sea, but bordered landwards by that dark fringe of mangroves, the thick forest forming a striking contrast to the moonlit beauty of the glistening shore.

The wind sighed up the river, played through the great brown nets hanging up to dry, and, scarcely stirring the tops of the mangroves, swept gently towards the distant hills.

All the village slept, except the one Guardian of the Peace, who showed his devotion to duty by punctually striking the hours on a huge metal gong.

The night was far advanced, when suddenly he heard a child crying in the house of the Malay revenue clerk. Then there was the noise of footsteps and the voice of the man calling to his wife, but no answer. After a few minutes there was the sound of approaching feet, a shout from the Malay, followed by the man himself.

The constable called out, “What is the matter, Che Mat?”

Che Mat replied, “I was asleep, but awoke hearing the child crying for its mother. I could not see her anywhere, and she did not answer when I spoke. Then I got up and saw at once the door of the house was open, but she is nowhere to be seen. Have you heard anything of her?”

The constable had heard nothing, but there was evidently something uncanny about this disappearance, for, in a village such as this, where the houses are more in the water than on land, where the pathless mangrove is the background, and the waters of the river the foreground, there are few places left in which to look for any one or anything with any chance of finding them.

The man on guard roused his comrades, and, as Malays do not sit down and discuss plans of action, some one at once made a move; the others followed, and they all walked out to the last house on the platform, and then listened.

“Hark! did you not hear something?” Yes, through the silence of the night, wafted on the incoming breeze, there was a distinct but faint cry from the direction of the sea.

It did not take the men long to get down to the ground, and first hurrying along the edge of the trees, they went some distance, hearing the cries at intervals and ever more plainly, till it became necessary to strike right out across the mud. By this time there was no doubt about the source of the cries, for the voice of the object of their search was recognised, and that the woman was in sore distress did not admit of doubt. Making all the speed they could, sinking above their knees at every step, stumbling, falling, but ever pressing on, they saw at last to their horror, in the brilliant moonlight, the woman on the ground being literally worried by three crocodiles, each six or eight feet in length.

As crocodiles go, six or eight feet is no great length, but to go to sleep in your own house and wake up at midnight within a hundred feet of the sea, but with half a mile of mud between you and anything like dry land, and at the same time assailed by _three_ crocodiles quite big enough to kill you, is calculated to shock the strongest nerves.

After a short but exciting fight, the police beat off the scaly beasts with difficulty, and found the woman had been badly torn in legs, and arms, and neck.

Whilst the men were arranging to carry her back, no easy matter over half a mile of soft but sticky wet mud and ooze, she told her tale:

“I was sleeping,” she said, “and had a vision. Two radiant Beings appeared to me and bid me rise and follow them, and they would show me a sight more glorious than is vouchsafed to mortals. Transported with joy, I rose and followed them, and whilst filled with ecstatic rapture by the companionship of these Celestial Beings, I seemed to be borne along without effort of my own through enchanted fields of more than earthly beauty. Suddenly I was awakened by feeling the teeth of a crocodile in my leg, and, to my horror, I found I was out here on this mud-flat half a mile from home, but close to the sea, with three crocodiles attacking me, no means of defending myself, and little hope of help. I fell, and the beasts tore and worried me, biting my arms, and legs, and neck, while I screamed for help until you came and rescued me.”

Well, after all, there is nothing very strange in that. A woman of peculiar nervous organisation, a somnambulist, dreams a dream and walks out into the balmy atmosphere of a moonlit Eastern night. She walks rather far, and has a rude awakening. That is nothing; other sleepers have walked further, and their awakening has been to the life beyond the grave.

Only this was curious: that while the men sank deep into the mud at every step, the woman had never sunk in at all. When found, there was only mud on the _soles_ of her feet, and, though she had walked half a mile across the flat, and her tracks were plainly visible in the moonlight, they were all on the surface, and she had crossed the soft, unstable mire as easily as though it had been a metalled road.

So the men bore her home, not wondering overmuch, for in this thing they saw the hand of the Celestial Beings who guided her feet with such consideration, to abandon her to the ferocious attentions of the crocodiles.

The woman herself, her husband, and the police were satisfied as to the means, but found the end too hard for their understanding.

The ideal woman, the product of higher education and deep research in divers subjects, supplies the real clue to the phenomenon, for, when asked “where the true Spirit of God is,” she modestly replies, “I can tell you: it is in us _women_. We have preserved it and handed it down from one generation to another of our own sex unsullied.”[2]

Doubtless—from the time when the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and, later, on the Sea of Galilee; but it is more difficult to understand how woman, unaided, has handed anything down from one generation to another.

The same idea is, however, more happily conveyed in the injunction of the President of the Scraggsville Woman’s Suffrage League to her husband, when ordering him to go and purchase a divided skirt. “If you are afraid, pray to God for courage; _She_ will help you.”

The mere male has his uses, one of which is to assist the unsullied sex to perpetuate the Spirit of God, and another to be within hail when there are crocodiles about.

XII

VAN HAGEN AND CAVALIERO

How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot,
A heap of dust alone remains of thee

POPE

Not many months after my first arrival in the East I met, in a club in Singapore, an Italian called Cavaliero. He was quite young, tall, dark, and good-looking, of a pronounced Italian type. What his occupation was I have no idea; I suppose he had some sort of business, but it could not have been very attractive or profitable, for one day I was told that he and a Hollander named Van Hagen had collected about a hundred natives of all sorts and conditions and had accepted service with the Viceroy of the Sultan of Selangor.

Selangor was then an absolutely independent Malay State, so independent in fact that the principal and almost only employment of its inhabitants was fighting.

The Sultan was and is an old gentleman for whom I have the highest regard, and I desire to speak of him with the greatest respect. He had had his own fighting day and was tired of it, he wished to be left alone, that was all; but he recognised that boys will be boys, and if the young Selangor Rajas took their pleasure in this way, he was inclined to regard their escapades with an indulgent eye, provided they did not interfere with his _opium cum dignitate_ and his immediate surroundings.

The Sultan’s own sons were very much interested in the guerilla warfare that was then being carried on throughout Selangor, and the feature of the disturbances was that every chief said he had the Sultan’s approval of his proceedings. Some time later I was myself in Selangor, and, as this statement was constantly being dinned into my ears, I took the liberty of asking his Highness what it meant.

He promptly pointed out that each of these Rajas in turn came to him, stated his case, and asked the Sultan if that was not correct. His Highness always replied, “Quite correct,” but, as he explained to me, “_bĕnar ka-pâda dia, bûkan bĕnar ka-pâda kami_,” which being interpreted means, “correct in their view, not in mine.” He was evidently tickled by this happy inspiration and laughed heartily at his own ingenuity.

The gossips declared that his Highness was always requested to give a tangible proof of his approval in the shape of gunpowder and lead, and that he gave them to every applicant with strict impartiality. On this point the Sultan told me nothing, and I was not indiscreet enough to inquire, but as Selangor is no more free from gossip than its neighbours, I put the statement down to irresponsible chatter.

All this is, however, by the way. Certain Rajas held certain important strategical points from which other Rajas kept trying to oust them, and the fight waxed hottest about Klang, the principal port of the State, and Kuala Lumpor, the principal mining centre.

As to Klang, it had just been captured by a notable warrior named Raja Mahdi, and its whilom defenders driven out when the Sultan gave his only daughter in marriage to Tunku dia Udin, brother of the Sultan of Kĕdah. The Sultan’s son-in-law espoused the cause of those who had been driven from Klang, and, as he was created Viceroy and had powerful support in Singapore, matters were further complicated.

The Viceroy and his friends recovered possession of Klang and secured the friendship and assistance of the Chinese miners at Kuala Lumpor.

These Chinese were led by one Ah Loi, a remarkable man, styled the “Capitan China,” whose instincts were distinctly warlike and his authority with his countrymen supreme.

Raja Mahdi also had friends who were acting against the Chinese in the interior, and supporters outside the State who helped him with money, stores, and arms, and thus the ball rolled merrily along.

Dame Fortune was, as usual, fickle, and success was now with the Viceroy and now with Mahdi and his friends. The Capitan China did his share in his own way. He offered fifty silver dollars for every enemy’s head delivered in the market-place in front of his house at Kuala Lumpor, and he told me himself that his man who stood there ready to receive the hideous trophies and pay the money did quite a brisk business.

As with all Malay war, the operations languished and revived by fits and starts. Plenty of money meant plenty of men, arms, and ammunition, and with them a spasmodic effort would be made and probably a success gained. Then would follow dire scarcity, and the other side, having raised some money, would in their turn gain an advantage.

Thus the tide of battle ebbed and flowed for months and years, and the only plain and evident result was that the population of Selangor was rapidly diminishing, the ground in the immediate neighbourhood of Kuala Lumpor town being thickly planted with corpses, for there the battle was always the hottest, both because of the Capitan China’s special method and because of the value of the mines. The survivors on both sides were not only being reduced to penury, but their leaders were becoming involved in debts which only the complete success of one side followed by lasting peace and order could enable the victors to pay from the revenues derived from the tin-mines. The debts of the defeated would naturally be irrecoverable.

While the State was distracted by all this trouble the Sultan still secured a comparative tranquillity by his diplomatic sympathy with the combatants, and whichever side held the Klang custom-house supplied him with funds. That was the price of his qualified approval.

It was at this time that the Viceroy’s party, being in funds, conceived the plan of raising a force in Singapore with which they hoped to deal an effective blow to their enemies.

I have said I knew little of Cavaliero, but of Van Hagen, who took command of the recruits, I know less. I was told that he had been an officer in the Netherlands army, and that he lost his commission owing to some breach of discipline, but that he was a man of birth, character, and courage.

His heterogeneous force, composed of natives of half-a-dozen nationalities, went by sea to Klang, disembarked and made its way with guides through the jungle to Kuala Lumpor. There they stockaded themselves on a hill above the town and did valiantly in its defence. But the place was invested by the enemy, supplies were cut off, and while the force was daily harassed by the fire from the enemy’s works, provisions ran short and the men were threatened at once with starvation and the probability of being surrounded and entirely cut off from their base at Klang, twenty-five miles distant by a jungle track.

Under these circumstances, and probably moved by the growing discontent of their men, Van Hagen and Cavaliero determined, ere it should be too late, to endeavour to make their way back to the port.

They were all strangers in the country, and they could find no one to guide them through the jungle, but their difficulties became so great that they decided to risk the journey as a choice of evils, and early one morning they set out.

I have elsewhere tried to describe a Malay jungle, and the path which these men had to traverse was, as I know from my own experience, beset with peculiar difficulty, and led for a great deal of the way through swamp and water, where, of course, there was no track visible. It is not surprising that the party lost its way. Not only that, but weak from want of food, wanting in cohesion and discipline, and with the knowledge that they were seeking blindly for a road unknown to all, a feeling of despair overcame many of them, and they wandered off in different directions never to be seen or heard of again.

The main body, with Van Hagen and Cavaliero, after a weary day’s march and no food, arrived in the evening, utterly exhausted, at a place called Patâling, only four miles from Kuala Lumpor! They had been walking in a circle, and had got back to a point not far from that of their original departure.

Patâling was held by a considerable body of the enemy under two Malay Rajas, and the weary wanderers walked straight into their arms and gave themselves up without a struggle.

Another story says that, at the last moment before leaving Kuala Lumpor, a guide presented himself and offered his services, which were accepted; that he led the party hither and thither through the jungle, and in the evening, when thoroughly exhausted, took them into Patâling.

I never heard rightly what became of the rank and file; they may have been given their liberty and told to find their own way out of the State. For the officers was reserved another fate.

Finding the principal defenders of Kuala Lumpor had withdrawn, the place was occupied without difficulty by those who had for so long invested it. The leading Chinese were made very uncomfortable, but on them depended the working of the mines, and they were allowed to purchase their lives.

I do not think this alternative was offered to Van Hagen and Cavaliero. They were escorted from Patâling to Kuala Lumpor, and, arrived there, they were taken out and shot.

In excavating for the foundations of the houses which now form the town of Kuala Lumpor, it was usual to dig up a large number of skeletons, the bones of those who had fallen during the years of Selangor’s internecine strife. As many as sixteen skeletons have been discovered in digging out the foundations for one house.

One day, not many years ago, two skeletons were thus discovered. The bones were larger, the figures taller, than those usually met with. They were the skeletons of two men face to face, and locked in each other’s arms.

XIII

THE PASSING OF PĔNGLIMA PRANG SĔMAUN

Oh vengeance! thou art sweet

LEWIS MORRIS

On the Perak River, about fifty miles from its mouth, and just above the tidal influence, where the water is clear and shallow and the banks are lined with palm groves and orchards, there is a large Malay village called Bandar.

More than twenty years ago there dwelt in this village a man named Mĕgat Raja, married to a particularly well-favoured girl named Mĕriam. The fact of her marriage drew her into some sort of notoriety, and her attractions were soon the gossip of the place. The gilded youths of Bandar were fired by the description of Mĕriam’s charms, and one of them, a boy of good family, position, and means, got sight of and fell in love with her.

The husband, Mĕgat Raja, was conveniently called away to accompany the Sultan on a journey to Penang and Che Nuh, the youth aforesaid, profiting by that opportunity, pushed his addresses with such fervour and success that he became the lady’s lover.

Late one night when Che Nuh was in the house of his mistress, Mĕgat Raja unexpectedly returned and the first the lovers knew of their danger was the demand of the husband to be admitted. The house was a large one enclosed by a palisade, and Mĕriam thus suddenly surprised, and fearing instant death if her husband should discover Che Nuh, implored her lover to escape by the door at the back of the house while that at the front was being opened.

Che Nuh complied, but the husband had evidently heard something of what had been going on in his absence, and, as the lover was about to descend the steps, he drew back seeing Mĕgat Raja waiting on the ground beneath them.

He drew back, but not before his presence had been perceived.

Mĕgat Raja called out “Who is that?”

Che Nuh replied “It is I, Che Nuh.”

The husband, drawing his _kris_, said “What are you doing in my house at this time? Come down on to the ground.”

Mat Nuh was alone and Mĕgat Raja was accompanied by two other men, but the youth unsheathed his _kris_ and went down ready to accept the chances of a hand-to-hand struggle.

Seeing that Mat Nuh would defend himself, and knowing that he was no contemptible adversary, the three men hesitated. What was of more account in their minds was that Che Nuh belonged to a powerful family, and his father was one of the principal chiefs in the country. There was, therefore, the certainty of retaliation should they kill him, and the uncertainty of his guilt, for Mĕriam was not the only woman in the house. As the men stood mutually on the defensive, Mĕgat Raja asked him whom he had come to see, and Che Nuh replied that it was a girl in the house. Thinking to assure himself on this point, the husband entered the house and questioned one of the servant-women, but dissatisfied with what he heard he dashed out again determined to attack Che Nuh.

The latter had, however, taken advantage of Mĕgat Raja’s momentary absence to get outside the gate of the palisade, and once there he shouted for help and was soon surrounded by his friends.

In reply to a call, Che Nuh bid his adversary come outside the gate and he would give him any satisfaction he pleased.

That of course meant an internecine struggle between the two parties, and Mĕgat Raja declined it, for the odds were now against him, and he was still uncertain whether his wife were unfaithful or not.

On the strong suspicion that he held, his inclination was to at least make short work of the woman, but here again he was deterred by the knowledge that her relations would certainly be revenged on him. He, therefore, decided on another course of action. On the assumption that his wife was guilty (and of this he became tolerably well assured), he treated her as though he held the proofs, divorced her, turned her out of his house, and declined to let her have any of her own possessions or to remove any of his.

This action was considered a very serious indignity by Mĕriam’s friends, and it so happened that she possessed a relative named Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun, an adherent of the Sultan’s Wazîr, the Raja Bĕndahâra, and he was reputed one of the principal warriors in the country.

Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun called upon the Chief of Bandar and laid a formal complaint against Mĕgat Raja, demanding to know why he had taken the law into his own hands and treated Mĕriam in a manner to put all her relatives to shame.

The Chief of the village of Bandar was also one of the great officers of State named the Ôrang Kâya Shabandar. He was a man renowned for his courage, was wealthy, a trusted officer of the Sultan, the receiver of customs, and lived at the upper end of the village.

He listened politely to Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun, and when the latter wound up his complaint by saying he would certainly attack Mĕgat Raja if he obtained no redress, the Shabandar put his advice in the form of this ancient saw:

“If you have no gold, it is well to sing small; if you have no pivot-guns (jingals), it is well to put a pleasant face on the matter; and if you have no cannon, it is better to be quiet.”

The advice was meant in good part and not as a taunt, but Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun took it as the latter and retired with rage in his heart, saying “It is well for you who have gold and jingals and cannon to tell me I have none of these things, but I will have my revenge of you with only a _kris_.”

Then he returned to his own home to think how this was to be worked out.

The Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun’s house was between these of the Shabandar, up stream, and Mĕgat Raja, down stream, and he knew that he was not strong enough to resist a combined attack from both of them. Therefore he determined that force must be backed by cunning if he was to achieve his end. He concluded that his only plan was to attack the Shabandar, dispose of him first as the most important, and then deal with Mĕgat Raja at his leisure.

Meanwhile, Che Nuh had expressed his desire to marry Mĕriam, but as his relatives recognised that such an open avowal of his _liaison_ must lead to trouble with Mĕgat Raja and his folk, they declined to allow him to do this, and Che Nuh’s negative attitude towards the lady only increased the wrath of her kinsman, Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun.

I have said that this bravo, for that was his _métier_, was the henchman of the Raja Bĕndahâra, the highest authority in the State after the Sultan. Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun, having determined to kill the Shabandar, felt it necessary to report the intention to his master and, mindful of possible wrath to come, to ask his sanction.

Accordingly the Pĕnglima went up river to Blanja where the Bĕndahâra lived, told his tale and asked for leave to kill the Shabandar.

The reply of the Bĕndahâra was, “If you think you are able to do it, go on.”

That was enough. Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun returned to Bandar with a kindred spirit named Haji Ali, another bravo of reputation as evil as his own, and these two worthies soon settled their plan of operations.

The Sultan was at Pâsir Panjang (only a few miles above Bandar), with a large following and a crowd of boats, and the Pĕnglima and his friend determined to wreak their vengeance on the Shabandar on the _Râya Haji_, the day to which the most religious Muhammadans prolong the fast of Ramthân.

The day did not, however, suit, there were too many people constantly about the Shabandar’s house, and the conspirators had to return home without effecting their purpose.

On the following day, however, in the afternoon, Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun, Haji Ali, and three others, made a formal visit to the Shabandar, obtained admission to his house, and found in it no one besides himself and a Sumatran Raja, a visitor from down river. I say no one else but, as Pĕnglima Prang well knew, there were in the Shabandar’s house two aged ladies, the mother of the Sultan’s children and her sister.

The five men waited until they saw the Sumatran Raja take his departure, and in order to do this visitor honour, the Shabandar unarmed and unattended, accompanied him to the river-bank and there bid him farewell.

This was the moment for the development of the plot.

Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun took leave of the Shabandar and shook hands with him. Haji Ali, a very big powerful man, then also took leave and grasped the Shabandar’s hand, but instead of letting it go he drew the Dâtoh towards him, and the reply to his question of what this meant was a stab in the back from Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun’s _kris_.

The blade did not pierce the skin, it bent, and the thrust was repeated with the same result, Haji Ali all the while holding the unarmed man by the hand.

Then the Pĕnglima threw away the useless weapon, and, seizing another _kris_, plunged it time after time into the helpless body of the Shabandar, who fell to the ground, while Haji Ali and each of the others stabbed him in turn.

Leaving the body lying on the bank, the men rushed straight back into the house, shut the gates of the enclosure and immediately prepared to defend themselves, taking particular care that the two ladies already mentioned should not get away.

The news of a murder perpetrated like this is carried on the breeze, and for a few minutes the Shabandar’s adherents rushed up one after the other to be slaughtered as they arrived by the Pĕnglima and his party reinforced by their own men who had been awaiting the _dénoûement_.

Then gates and doors were closed, windows barred, cannon, pivot-guns, and muskets loaded, and Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun having rifled the house (which contained the customs collections as well as the Shabandar’s private property), and thus possessed himself of all those things which he previously lacked, sat down to calmly await the development of events.

The plot had been cunningly conceived. The brutal murder of the unarmed chief was certain to be instantly avenged, and that would have been done by an attack on the house had it not been that it contained, besides the murderers, the Sultan’s late wife and her sister, who were well-nigh sure to come to harm in the assault.

The risk of that possibility deterred the Sultan’s people, who had surrounded the house with stockades, and all that could be done was to prevent the Pĕnglima, Haji Ali, and their men, from escaping. The process of starving out the besieged could not be resorted to, for here also the ladies would have suffered.

The moment the deed was done, Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun proclaimed that he was merely the instrument of the Sultan’s Wazîr, and that he had acted on the authority of the Raja Bĕndahâra. That, if true, complicated the case considerably, and as matters had arrived at an _impasse_, a parley was called, and it was arranged that the Pĕnglima and his people should be given a safe-conduct to the Sultan at Pâsir Panjang.

Accordingly, the Pĕnglima Prang, Haji Ali, and the others left their shelter and embarked in boats provided for them, but they took good care not to let the ladies, who were their prisoners, get out of reach.

Arrived at Pâsir Panjang, Pĕnglima Prang at once sent a messenger to the Raja Bĕndahâra to inform him of the state of affairs and ask his aid. The Bĕndahâra responded to this appeal by taking boat, and, with a great following, descended the river to Pâsir Panjang. Once there, he availed himself of an ancient custom called _îkat-diri_—that is, to “bind yourself”—and, accompanied by all his people, he went and stood in front of the Sultan’s house with his hands loosely tied behind his back with his own head-kerchief, and, thus uncovered in the sun, he and all his following shouted _âmpun Tûan-ku, be-rîbu-rîbu âmpun_—“Pardon, my lord, a thousand-thousand pardons.”

After a quarter of an hour’s waiting, while the air was filled with this plea for mercy, and the Bĕndahâra and his company stood like prisoners in front of the closed house, a door opened, a herald bearing the Sultan’s insignia appeared and cried out: “Our lord pardons you, and permits you to enter into his presence.”

That settled the affair. The Sultan’s minister had accepted the responsibility for what had been done; he was far too great a man to be treated as a criminal, and, taking advantage of an old custom, he confessed his fault, offered himself a prisoner, sought and obtained the Sultan’s pardon.

Amongst those who had received the message of peace, and who entered into the presence, were the Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun, Haji Ali, and the three other murderers of the Shabandar.

Now, the Shabandar had a brother, and he was a man of war, and the Sultan well knew that this method of dealing with the murderers would not satisfy him, so he at once created him Dâtoh Shabandar in succession to the dead man, in the hope that the gift of this dignity might make for the general peace.

The Raja Bĕndahâra, accompanied by Pĕnglima Prang and his friends, then returned to Blanja.

The new Shabandar had no intention of leaving his brother’s murderers to boast of their exploit, and, in a very short time, he asked for the Sultan’s permission to attack them and wipe out the disgrace of his relative’s unavenged death.

The Sultan said the request must be preferred to the Raja Bĕndahâra, for so long as the Pĕnglima Prang was in his village he could not be attacked without the Wazîr’s sanction. Application was duly made to the Bĕndahâra, who replied that it would be contrary to custom to attack the Pĕnglima Prang while living at his door, but that if they could get him away they might do what they pleased.

The Pĕnglima Prang was, however, far too wary to be lured away from safety, and matters were in this state when there returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca a man called Haji Mûsah, nearly related to the late Shabandar.

Haji Mûsah was at this time a rather small, spare man of middle age, but his heart was out of proportion to the size of his body, and when he heard what had recently taken place in Bandar, and how Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun and Haji Ali had got away unpunished, his anger knew no bounds.

He promptly waited upon the Sultan and begged for permission to attack the Pĕnglima, and, if necessary, to include in the operations his protector, the Raja Bĕndahâra.

The Sultan hesitated to give the desired permission, but the fact that the proposal had been made very soon reached Blanja and the ears of both the Wazîr and Pĕnglima Prang. Whatever the latter was he could not be accused of cowardice, and he at once offered to anticipate an attack by making an expedition against Haji Mûsah to silence so arrogant a foe.

The Raja Bĕndahâra enraged at the idea that his name should have been mentioned with so little respect, and apprehensive that Haji Mûsah might find the means (as he knew he had the will) to carry out his suggestion, cordially approved the Pĕnglima’s proposal.

It did not take long to collect from the neighbouring village of Lambor enough men to fill two boats, and, as that was all the Pĕnglima wanted for his purpose, the party had started for Bâtak Râbit (Haji Mûsah’s village) before the down-stream people had the smallest inkling of their intention. The time was specially well chosen from the fact that the Shabandar was absent in a remote district.

In Japan they say, “If you have not seen Nikko you cannot say _gekko_,” and if there is anyone who knows the Malay Peninsula and yet has never watched the sun set across the rice-fields, when the ripe grain hangs heavily in the ear, his knowledge of the beauties of Malay scenery is very incomplete.

A wide, flat plain covered by the golden harvest, the rice-stalks standing five or six feet above the ground from which they have sucked all the water which nourished them in the earlier stages of growth. One yellow sea of yellow ears, the green stalks only discernible in the near foreground.

This sea is broken by islands of palms and fruit-trees in which nestle the picturesque brown huts of cottagers, houses of wood, built on wooden piles with palm-thatched roofs and mat walls.

The setting sun strikes in great beams of saffron light across this wide expanse of grain bounded by distant ranges of soft blue hills. How greedily one drinks it all in! and, as the Eye of Day droops lower, there shoot from between its closing lids rays of fire which tinge the glistening palms with a rosy effulgence, followed all too soon by the pale opalescent shades which proclaim the approach of the fast-driving chariot of night.

A grey haze rises from the damp earth, spreads in thin wreaths across the darkening plain, thickens to a heavy dead-white vapour, and as the silver sickle rises over the distant hills it shines upon clustered plumes of dark fronds mysteriously poised above a motionless drift of snow-like cloud.

On the edge of such a field was the home of Haji Mûsah. Behind stretched the rich plain, in front a great river, both wide and deep, its banks lined by groves of coco-nuts in the neighbourhood of villages, but elsewhere covered by forest and the _nipah_ palm.

The dwelling stood a few feet back from the river, and, as its owner was a man of means, the structure was of some size, the floor and walls of stout planks and a strong palisade enclosed the surrounding yard. The house was, as usual, on wooden piles, and the kitchen, also on piles but separated from the main building, was connected with it by a platform.

It was here that Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun, Haji Ali, and the rest of their crew arrived one morning before daylight and quickly landed under the cover of darkness.

The enterprise they had undertaken was a perilous one. Their force numbered about thirty men all told, they had come about ninety miles right into the heart of the enemy’s country, and, if there were any failure, retreat was a choice between a return against the current with a hostile people on either bank, or a long pull to the river’s mouth under the same conditions and then the sea.

Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun had, however, calculated the chances, and he counted on a successful surprise and, if need be, the pursuit of those tactics which he had already, at Bandar, found so useful.

Once on shore the palisade of Haji Mûsah’s house was cautiously approached, and, the gate being locked, it was scaled, and the whole party noiselessly established themselves beneath the house and waited for daylight.

It so happened that the house contained only two men and two women—Haji Mûsah and his wife, Haji Hawah, and their daughter and son-in-law, the latter named Haji Sâhil.

At daybreak the back door of the house was opened and the two women came out and went into the kitchen. In a moment Haji Hawah discovered that the space beneath the house was full of armed men, and with a scream she rushed back towards the door. Ere she could gain it, Haji Ali sprang upon the platform and seized one of her hands, while her husband, unpleasantly alive to the situation, caught hold of the other and tried to pull her within the door, an effort which she seconded with all her might.

A real tug-of-war was carried on for a few moments, and Haji Ali was joined by another man.

Local tradition says that Haji Ali experienced suddenly a feeling that something dire was going to happen, and he asked his companion to relieve him of his hold of the woman’s hand. The man took it, and Haji Mûsah from the inside making a great effort drew his wife towards him, and at the same time, with a spear, thrust out beyond her with so true an aim that he transfixed her would-be captor. The man released his hold, fell with a groan into Haji Ali’s arms, and Haji Mûsah, drawing his wife into the house and believing he had wounded Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun, shouted as he closed the door, “That has wetted you, Pĕnglima!”

Wetted him with blood.

Haji Ali called to the Pĕnglima, “Help me, a ‘watering’ has befallen our friend”; a polite way of expressing a disaster. By the time they got the man to the ground he was dead, for the spear had struck home.

The Pĕnglima, furious at this sight, leapt on the platform, and, finding the door immovable, dashed open a small side-window with the butt end of a musket and fired into the house, but hurt no one.

In the scuffle before the door was closed Haji Mûsah had accidentally given his son-in-law a flesh wound on the shoulder, and that had disabled him, so the defence of the position rested on one man alone.

Pĕnglima Prang Sĕmaun now summoned Haji Mûsah to surrender, but the reply was, “I will not surrender.”