who are alive, risk death or hurt at his hands?' Then he ordered a
volley to be fired, but when the smoke had cleared away, To’ Kâya was
still sitting unharmed on the low wall of the mosque. A second volley
was fired, with a like result, and then To’ Kâya cast away the spear he
still held in his hand, and cried out: 'Perchance this spear is a charm
against bullets, try once more, and I pray thee end this business, for
it has taken over long in the settling.'
A third volley was then fired, and one bullet struck To’ Kâya, but did
not break the skin. He rubbed the place, and leaped up crying: 'Oh! but
that hurts me, I will repay thee!' and, as he rushed at them, the men
fell back before him. With difficulty Tungku Dâlam succeeded in rallying
them, and, this time, a volley was fired, one bullet of which took
effect, passing in at one armpit and out at the other. To’ Kâya
staggered back to the wall, and sank upon it, rocking his body to and
fro. Then a final volley rang out, and a bullet passing through his
head, he fell forward upon his face. The cowardly crowd surged forward,
but fell back again in confusion, for the whisper spread among them that
To’ Kâya was feigning death in order to get at close quarters. At length
a boy named Sâmat, who was related to the deceased Ma’ Chik, summoned
courage to run in and transfix the body with his spear. Little cared the
Dâto’ Kâya Bîji 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 Äbdul Rahman, Pa’
Pek, Ma’ Pek, Tungku Long Pendêkar, Ma’ Chik, Haji Mih, and Semäil; and
had wounded his baby child, his mother-in-law, Che’ Long's daughter
Ësah, and Saleh. This is a sufficiently big butcher's bill for a single
man, and he had done all this because he had had words with his wife,
and, having gone further than he had intended in the beginning, felt
that it would be an unclean thing for him to continue to live upon the
surface of a comparatively clean planet. A white man who had stabbed his
wife in the heat of the moment might not improbably have committed
suicide in his remorse, which would have been far more convenient for
his neighbours; but that is one of the many respects in which a white
man differs from a Malay.
THE FLIGHT OF CHÊP, 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 Sâkai 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 grass or rolling down the leafy lanes, again the
smell of the hay is in his nostrils, and the soft English gloaming is
stealing over the land. The more or less intoxicated reapers astride
upon the load exchange their barbarous badinage with those who follow
on foot; the pleasant glow of health, that follows upon a long day of
hard work in the open air, warms the blood; and in the eyes of all is
the light of expectation, born of a memory of the good red meat, and the
lashings of sound ale and sour cider, awaiting them at the farmhouse two
miles across the meadows.
But in the distant Sâkai country the Harvest Home has little in common
with such scenes as these. The _pâdi_ planted in the clearing, hard by
the spot in which the camp is pitched, has been reaped painfully and
laboriously in the native fashion, each ripe ear being severed from its
stalk separately and by hand. Then, after many days, the grain has at
last been stored in the big bark boxes, under cover of the palm leaf
thatch, and the Sâkai women, who have already performed the lion's share
of the work, are set to husk some portions of it for the evening meal.
This they do with clumsy wooden pestles, held as they stand erect round
a sort of trough, the ding-dong-ding of the pounders carrying far and
wide through the forest, and, at the sound, all wanderers from the camp
turn their faces homeward with the eagerness born of empty stomachs and
the prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the
tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo,
for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable
purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to
eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in
Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from the
liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by that name in the sweltering
tropics, and the cooked grain is eaten ravenously, and in incredible
quantities by the hungry, squalid creatures in a Sâkai camp. These poor
wretches know that, in a day or two, the Malays will come up stream to
'barter' with them, and that the priceless rice will be taken from them,
almost by force, in exchange for a few axe-heads and native wood knives.
Therefore, the Sâkai eat while there is yet time, and while distended
stomachs will still bear the strain of a few additional mouthfuls.
Thus is the harvest home supper devoured in a Sâkai 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 Sâkai 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 Sâkai have trespassed 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 Sâkai, 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 Sâkai
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 Sâkai 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 Sâkai, 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-worship of
the Infidels.
What was he doing here, in the remote Sâkai 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 flashing glance from a pair of bright eyes, set in the
pale yellow face of a slender Sâkai girl, had blinded him, and bereft
him of reason. Life no longer seemed to hold anything of good for him
unless Chêp, the Bird, as her people called her, might be his. In the
abstract he despised the Sâkai 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
superstitious ceremonies. Yet all this sacrifice had hitherto been
unavailing, for Chêp was the wife of a Sâkai named Ku-îsh, 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-îsh, richer, and, moreover, a
Malay, a man of a superior race, she was both pleased and flattered. No
one who knows what a Sâkai'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 Sâkai woman, or would expect her to resist a temptation.
The idea of right and wrong, as we understand it, never probably
occurred to Chêp, 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 Chêp, 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, unobserved by the
Sâkai 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
shingle, and the roar of its waters soon drowned the splashing of the
paddles. Chêp 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 rushing headlong pace. When the
fugitives finally halted at Kria's home, fifty miles separated them from
the Sâkai camp, and they felt themselves safe from pursuit.
To understand this, you must realise what the Sâkai 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. Sâkai 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 Sâkai 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 Sâkai 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 _nê_--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, fashioned
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
Sâkai such as these that Chêp and her people belonged.
There are tribes of other and more savage jungle-dwellers living in the
forests of the broad Sâkai 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 Sâkai 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.
Chêp 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
cluster after cluster of straggling Malay villages. The knowledge that
Kria was at hand to protect her tended to reassure 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 Sâkai 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 Sâkai. 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 Sâkai ways and customs, felt as confident as she.
So Chêp 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 Sâkai camp it was not until day had dawned that the
demon-worshippers, 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-îsh, 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-îsh 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 Chêp 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 _pâdi_ 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 _rûan_ 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 _jôran_, or native fishing 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 fishing tackle, while his son, squatting on
the ground, passed 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 grass 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
grass moved slightly, as though the stalks were brushed against by the
passage of some wild animal.
'Hasten, little one,' said Kria, uneasily; 'it is a tiger.'
But, as he spoke the words, the grass was parted by human hands, and
Kria found himself looking into the wild and angry eyes of Ku-îsh, 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 bloody, mucous
strings of brain flecking the fresh green grass.
At the sight, Kria's son fled screaming along the edge of the pool, but
Ku-îsh's blood was up, and he started in pursuit. The child threw
himself down in the long grass, and, raising his little arms above his
cowering head, shrieked for mercy in his pure shrill treble voice.
Ku-îsh, 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-îsh gathered up the fish, and took all the tobacco he could find on
Kria's body, for a Sâkai rarely loses sight completely of those cravings
of appetite, 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
Chêp 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-îsh told her, in a few passionless sentences, that he
had killed Kria and his son, and she bewailed herself aloud when, at
their first halting-place, she received the severe chastisement, which
Ku-îsh dealt out to her with no grudging hand, as her share in the
general punishment. But, when the thrashing was over, she followed him
meekly, with the tears still wet upon her cheeks, making no attempt to
escape. Thus Ku-îsh, the Porcupine, and Chêp, the Bird, made their way
through the strange forests, until they had once more regained the
familiar Sâkai country, and were safe among their own people.
Pursuit into such a place is impossible, for a Sâkai 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 Sâkai chiefs to meet me
near the limits of their country. My request that Ku-îsh should be
handed over for trial was received by the assembled elders as a demand
which was manifestly ridiculous. Ku-îsh 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
assistance.
At length, a very aged man, the principal 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, _Tûan_, 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.'