their shapeless gashes of mouth set with the fine keen teeth; the
sword-fishes with their barred weapons seven and eight feet long; the
stinging ray, shaped like a child's kite, with its rasping hide and its
two sharp bony prickers set on its long tail; the handsome _tenggîri_,
marked like a mackerel, the first of which when taken are a royal
perquisite on the Coast; the little smelts and red-fish; the thousand
varieties that live among the sunken rocks, and are brought to the
surface by lines six fathoms long; the cray-fish, prawns, and shrimps;
and the myriad forms of semi-vegetable life that find a home in the
tepid tropic sea, all these, and many more for which we have no name,
live and die and prey upon each other along the eastern shores of the
Peninsula.
Here may be seen the schools of porpoises--which the Malays name 'the
racers'--plunging through the waves, or leaping over one another with
that ease of motion, and that absence of all visible effort, which gives
so faint an idea of the pace at which they travel. Yet when a ship is
tearing through the waters at the rate of four hundred miles a day, the
porpoises play backwards and forwards across the ploughing forefoot of
the bow, and find no difficulty in holding their own. Here, too, is that
monster fish which so nearly resembles the shark that the Malays call it
by that name, with the added title of 'the fool.' It lies almost
motionless about two fathoms below the surface, and when the fisher folk
spy it, one of their number drops noiselessly over the side, and swims
down to it. Before this is done it behoves a man to look carefully, and
to assure himself that it is indeed the Fool, and not his brother of the
cruel teeth who lies down below through the clear water. A mistake on
this point means a sudden violent commotion on the surface, a glimpse of
an agonised human face mutely imploring aid, the slow blending of
certain scarlet patches of fluid with the surrounding water, and then a
return to silence and peace, and the calm of an unruffled sea. But if it
is indeed the Fool that floats so idly below them, the boatmen know that
much meat will presently be theirs. The swimmer cautiously approaches
the great lazy fish, which makes no effort to avoid him. Then the gently
agitated fingers of a human hand are pressed against the monster's side
just below the fins, and fish and man rise to the surface, the latter
tickling gently, the former placid and delighted by the novel sensation.
The swimmer then hitches one hand on to the boat in order to support
himself, and continues the gentle motion of the fingers of his other
hand, which still rests under the fin of his prey. The great fish seems
too intoxicated with pleasure to move. It presses softly against the
swimmer, and the men in the boat head slowly for the shore. When the
shallow water is reached every weapon on board is plunged into the body
of the Fool, and he is cut up at leisure.
Cray-fish also are caught by tickling all along the coast. The
instrument used in this case is not the human hand, but a small rod,
called a _jai_, to the end of which a rattan noose is fixed. The work is
chiefly entrusted to little children, who paddle into the shallow water
at points where the cray-fish are feeding, and gently tickle the itching
prominent eyeballs of their victims. The irritation in these organs must
be constant and excessive, for the cray-fish rub them gently against
any object that presents itself, and when they feel the soothing
friction of the rattan noose they lie motionless, paralysed with
pleasure. The noose is gradually slipped over the protruding eyes, when
it is drawn taut, and thus the great prawns are landed. Even when the
strain has been taken too soon, and a cray-fish has escaped with one
eyeball wrenched from its socket, it not uncommonly occurs that the
intolerable irritation in its other eye drives it back once more to the
rattan noose, there to have the itching allayed by the gentle friction.
Jelly-fish, too, abound on the East Coast. They come aboard in the nets,
staring with black beady eyes from out the shapeless masses of their
bodies, looking in the pale moonlight like the faces of lost souls,
showing on the surface of the bottomless pit, casting despairing arms
around their heads in impotent agony. The water which has sluiced over
their slimy bodies is charged with irritating properties, such as drive
a man to tear the very flesh from his bones in a fruitless attempt to
allay the horrible itching. When the water dries, the irritation ceases,
but at sea, and at night, when the dew falls like rain, and one is
drenched to the skin by water from the nets, it is not easy for anything
to become dry. Therefore one must suffer patiently till the boat puts
back again at dawn.
These are some of the creatures which share with the Fisher Folk the
seas of the East Coast, and hundreds of devices are used to capture
them. Nets of all shapes and sizes, seine nets with their bobbing
floats, bag nets of a hundred kinds, drop nets, and casting nets. Some
are set all night, and are liberally sprinkled with bait. Some are
worked round schools of fish by a single boat, which flies in its giant
circle, propelled by a score of paddles dripping flame from the
phosphorescence with which each drop of the Eastern sea is charged. Some
are cautiously spread by the men in one boat, according to directions
signalled to them by a second, from the side of which a diver hangs by
one arm, listening intently to the motion of the fish, and judging with
marvellous accuracy the direction which they are taking. Lines of all
sorts, hooks of every imaginable shape, all the tricks and devices,
which have been learned by hundreds of years of experience on the
fishing grounds, are employed by the people of the East Coast to swell
their daily and nightly takes of fish.
In the sheltered water of the Straits of Malacca, huge traps are
constructed of stakes driven into the sea-bottom, and in these the vast
majority of the fish are caught. But on the East Coast such a means of
taking fish is forbidden by nature. A single day of monsoon wind would
be sufficient to destroy and scatter far and wide the work of months,
and so the Fisher Folk whose lot is cast by the waters of the China Sea,
display more skill in their netting and lining than any other Peninsula
Malays, for on these alone can they depend for the fish by which they
live.
Their boats are of every size, but the shape is nearly the same in each
case, from the tiny _kôlek_ which can only hold three men, to the great
_pûkat dâlam_ or seine-boat, which requires more than a score of
paddlers to work her. They are all made of _chengal_, one of the hardest
and toughest woods that is yielded by the jungles of the Peninsula.
They all rise slightly at the stern and at the bows; they all are decked
in with wide laths of bamboo; they all carry a mast which may be lowered
or raised at will, and which seems to be altogether too tall and heavy
for safety; they all fly under a vast spread of yellow palm-mat sail,
the sight of which, as it fills above you, and you lie clutching the
bulwark on the canting boat, while half the crew are hanging by ropes
over the windward side, fairly takes your breath away; and all are so
rigged that if taken aback the mast must part or the boat be inevitably
capsized. But the Fisher Folk know the signs of the heavens as no others
may know them, and when danger is apprehended the mast is lowered, the
sail furled, and the boat headed for shore.
The real danger is when men are too eagerly engaged in fishing to note
the signals which the skies are making to them. A party of Kelantan
fisher folk nearly came by their death a year or two ago by reason of
such carelessness. One of them is a friend of mine, and he told me the
tale. Eight of them put to sea in a _jâlak_ to troll for fish, and ran
before a light breeze, with two score of lines trailing glistening
spoon-baits in their wake. The fish were extraordinarily active, itself
a pretty sure sign that a storm was not far off, but the men were too
busy pulling in the lines, knocking the fish from the hooks with their
wooden mallets, and trailing the lines astern again, to spare a glance
at the sky or the horizon. Suddenly came the gust, striking, as do the
squalls of the tropics, like the flat of a giant's hand. The mast was
new and sound, the boat canted quickly, the water rose to the line of
the bulwarks, paused, shivered, and then in a deluge plunged into the
hold. A cry from the crew, a loud but futile shriek of directions from
the owner, a splashing of released fish, a fighting flood of water, and
the eight fishermen found themselves struggling in the arms of an angry
sea.
The boat, keel uppermost, rocked uneasily on the waves, and the men,
casting off their scant garments, made shift to swim to her, and climb
up her slippery dipping side. The storm passed over them, a line of
tropic rain, beating a lashing tattoo upon the white-tipped troubled
waters; then a blinding downpour stinging on the bare brown backs of the
shivering fishermen; and lastly a black shadow, lowering above a
foam-flecked sea, driving quickly shorewards. Then came the sun, anxious
to show its power after its temporary defeat. It beat pitilessly on the
bare bodies of the men huddled together on the rocking keel of the boat.
First it warmed them pleasantly, and then it scorched and flayed them,
aided as it was by the fierce reflection thrown back from the salt
waters. For a day and a night they suffered all the agonies of exposure
in the tropics. Burning heat by day, chill airs at night, stiffening the
uncovered limbs of the fishermen, who now half mad with hunger, thirst,
and exhaustion, watched with a horrid fascination the great fins, which
every now and then showed above the surface of the waters, and told them
only too plainly that the sharks expected soon to get a meal very much
to their liking.
On the second day Che’ Leh, the owner of the boat, urged his fellows to
attempt to right her by a plan which he explained to them, but at first
the fear of the sharks held them motionless. At length hunger and thirst
aiding Che’ Leh's persuasions, they dropped off the boat, making a great
splashing to scare the sharks, and after hours of cruel toil, for which
their exhausted condition fitted them but ill, they succeeded in
loosening the mast, and releasing the palm-leaf sail. Long pauses were
necessary at frequent intervals, for the men were very weak. At last the
sail floated upwards under the boat, and by a great effort the castaways
succeeded in spreading it taut, so that the boat was half supported by
it. Then, all pushing from one side, gaining such a foothold as the sail
afforded them, they succeeded, after many straining efforts, in righting
her. Slowly and painfully they baled her out, and then lay for many
hours too inert to move.
Late on the third day they reached the shore, but they had been carried
many miles down the coast to a part where they were unknown. The eight
naked men presented themselves at a village and asked for food and
shelter, but the people feared that they were fugitives from some
_Râja's_ wrath, and many hours elapsed before they received the aid of
which they stood so sorely in need.
The beliefs and superstitions of the Fisher Folk would fill many
volumes. They believe in all manner of devils and local sprites. They
fear greatly the demons that preside over animals, and will not
willingly mention the names of birds or beasts while at sea. Instead,
they call them all _cheweh_--which, to them, signifies an animal, though
to others it is meaningless, and is supposed not to be understanded of
the beasts. To this word they tack on the sound which each beast makes
in order to indicate what animal is referred to; thus the pig is the
grunting _cheweh_, the buffalo the _cheweh_ that says '_uak_,' and the
snipe the _cheweh_ that cries '_kek-kek_.' Each boat that puts to sea
has been medicined with care, many incantations and other magic
observances having been had recourse to, in obedience to the rules which
the superstitious people have followed for ages. After each take the
boat is 'swept' by the medicine man, with a tuft of leaves prepared with
mystic ceremonies, which is carried at the bow for the purpose. The
omens are watched with exact care, and if they be adverse no fishing
boat puts to sea that day. Every act in their lives is regulated by some
regard for the demons of the sea and air, and yet these folk are
nominally Muhammadans, and, according to that faith, magic and sorcery,
incantations to the spirits, and prayers to demons are all unclean
things forbidden to the people. But the Fisher Folk, like other
inhabitants of the Peninsula, are Malays first and Muhammadans
afterwards. Their religious creed goes no more than skin deep, and
affects but little the manner of their daily life.
All up and down the coast, from Sedeli in Johor to the islands near
Senggôra, the Fisher Folk are found during the open season. Fleets of
smacks leave the villages for the spots along the shore where fish are
most plentiful, and for eight months in the year these men live and
sleep in their boats. The town of Kuâla Trenggânu, however, is the
headquarters of the fishing trade, as indeed it is of all the commercial
enterprise on this side of the Peninsula. At the point where the
Trenggânu river falls into the sea, a sandy headland juts out, forming
a little bay, to which three conical rocky hills make a background,
relieving the general flatness of the coast. In this bay, and
picturesquely grouped about the foot of these hills, the thatched houses
of the capital, and the cool green fruit groves cluster closely.
Innumerable fishing crafts lie at anchor, or are beached along the
shore; gaily-dressed natives pass hither and thither, engrossed in their
work or play; and the little brown bodies of the naked children fleck
the yellow sands. Seen across the dancing waves, and with the appearance
of motion which, in this steaming land, the heat-haze gives to even
inanimate objects, this scene is indescribably pretty, shining and
alive.
But at dawn the prospect is different. The background is the same, but
the colour of the scene is less intense, though the dark waves have rosy
lights in them reflected from the ruddy sky of the dawn. A slowly paling
fire shines here and there upon the shore, and the cool land breeze
blows seaward. Borne upon the wind come stealing out a hundred graceful,
noiseless fishing smacks. The men aboard them are cold and sleepy. They
sit huddled up in the stern, with their _sârongs_ drawn high about their
shoulders, under the shadow of the palm-leaf sail, which shows dark
above them in the faint light of early morning. The only sound is the
whisper of the wind in the rigging, and the song of the forefoot as it
drives the water before it in little curving ripples. And so the fleet
floats out and out, and presently is lost on the glowing eastern
sky-line. At sundown the boats come racing back, heading for the
sinking sun, borne on the evening wind, which sets steadily shorewards,
and at about the same hour the great seine-boats, with their crews of
labouring paddlers, beat out to sea.
So live they, so die they, year in and year out. Toiling and enduring,
with no hope or wish for change of scene. Delighting in such simple
pleasures as their poor homes afford; surrounded by beauties of nature,
which they lack the soul to appreciate; and yet experiencing that keen
enjoyment which is born of dancing waves, of pace, of action, and of
danger, that thrilling throb of the red blood through the veins, which,
when all is said and done, makes up more than half of the joy of living.
It was not always so with them, for within the memory of old men upon
the Coast, the Fisher Folk were once pirates to a man. The last survivor
of those who formed the old lawless bands was an intimate friend of mine
own. When I last saw him, a day or two before his death in 1891, he
begged that I would do him one final act of friendship by supplying him
with a winding sheet, that he might go decently to his grave under the
sods and the spear-grass, bearing thither a token of the love I bore
him. It was a good shroud of fine white calico bought in the bazaar, and
it cost more than a dollar. But I found it very willingly, for I
remembered that I was aiding to remove from the face of the earth, and
to lay in his quiet resting-place, the last Pirate on the East Coast.
THE STORY OF BÂYAN THE PAROQUET
Said one among them, 'Surely not in vain
My substance from the common Earth was ta'en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again.'
_Omar Khayya’m._
Life--meaning the life which animates the bodies of other people--is not
priced high by the natives of the East Coast; but eight or nine years
ago, it was held even more lightly than it is at present. Murder was
frequently done for the most trivial causes, and a Malay often drew a
knife, when an Englishman would have been content to drop a damn. Young
Chiefs were wont to take a life or two from pure _galeté de cœur_,
merely to show that they were beginning to feel their feet, and were
growing up brave and manly as befitted their descent. Such doings were
not regarded altogether with disfavour by the boy's parents,--for, in a
rude state of society, a Chief must be feared before he is loved, if his
days are to be long in the land,--and some of the older men encouraged
their sons to make a kill, much in the same spirit which animated
parents in Europe half a century ago, when they put a finishing touch to
the education of their children by sending them on the Grand Tour. Some
fathers went even further than this, and Râja Haji Hamid once told me
that he killed his first man when he was a child of eleven or twelve,
his victim being a very thin, miserable-looking Chinaman, upon whom his
father bade him try his 'prentice hand. The Chinaman had done no evil,
but he was selected because he was feeble and decrepit, and would show
no fight even if attacked by a small boy with a _kris_. Râja Haji told
me that he botched the killing a good deal, but that he hacked the life
out of the Chinaman at last, though the poor wretch, like Charles II.,
took an unconscionable time adying. Death to this Chinaman must have
only been one degree less unpleasant than it was to the man who
beyond the seas
Was scraped to death with oyster shells
Among the Carrabees.
The story of Bâyan the Paroquet, which I am about to tell, is another
rather striking instance of the utter impunity with which the son of a
Chief may take life, under the rule of a Native Prince in an Independent
Malay State.
I first met Bâyan the Paroquet some six months before his death, when I
was making my way across the Peninsula, _viâ_ the Slim Mountains, in
1887. We were camped for the night at a spot in the jungle on the Pêrak
side of the range, in a natural refuge, which has probably sheltered
wayfarers in these forests ever since primitive man first set foot in
the Peninsula. The place is called Bâtu Sâpor--the Stone Lean-to Hut--in
the vernacular, and the name is a descriptive one. It is situated on the
banks of the Brêseh, a little babbling stream which runs down to the
Slim. The banks are high and shelving, but, on the top, they are flat,
and it is here that the gigantic overhanging granite boulder stands,
which gives the place its name. It is of enormous size, and is probably
deeply embedded in the ground, for large trees have taken root and grow
upon its upper surface. It projects some thirty feet over the flat bank,
and then, shelving suddenly away to the ground, forms a stone roof,
under which a score of men can camp with ease. The Pahang Prince, with
whom I was travelling, unlike most of the men of that breed, was a very
nervous person, and it was not without much persuasion that I had
succeeded in inducing him to join me in my camp under the shadow of the
great rock. He feared that it would topple over and crush us, nor was he
completely reassured until Saiyid Jasin--the chief of his followers--a
shrunken, wizened little man of many wiles, had propped the stone up
with a slender sapling, over which he had duly recited certain magic
incantations.
My attention was specially attracted to Bâyan the Paroquet, because he
was the man who was told off to shampoo me after my march. He was a man
of about forty years of age, thickset and large-limbed for a Malay, with
a round bullet-shaped head, and a jolly smiling face.
Now, Bâyan the Paroquet was what is technically termed a _Peng-lîpor
Lâra_--or 'Soother of Cares,'--a class of men which is fast dying out in
the Peninsula, as other mediæval landmarks become effaced. These people
are simply the wandering bards and minstrels, who find their place in an
Independent Malay State as naturally as did their prototypes in the
countries of Europe during the Middle Ages. They learn by rote some
old-world tale, which has been transmitted by word of mouth through
countless generations, and they wander from village to village, singing
it for pay to the unlettered people, to whom these songs and stories
represent the only literature which comes within their experience. Such
minstrels are greatly loved by the villagers, who hold them in high
honour, giving them hearty welcome, and the name by which they are known
in the vernacular bears witness to the joy which they bring with them
whithersoever they go. Bâyan's real name was Mat Sâman, but we always
called him Bâyan--which means the Paroquet--because the tale which he
sang told of the wonderful doings of a prince, who was transformed into
a fabulous bird called the Bûrong Âgot, and whose attendants were the
Paroquet and the Pied-robin (_Mûrai_). As he sat kneading me, as a baker
kneads dough, he began to sing, and, that evening, and for many nights
after, he sang his song to the _Râja_ and myself, to the huge delight of
our people.
There was also in camp at this time a boy named To’ Mûda Long, who was
the eldest son of one of the great up-country Chiefs. He was returning
from Singapore with the _Râja_, to whom he had fled after some escapade
of his had excited the paternal wrath. He was a nice-looking youngster,
with a slight lisp, and a manner as soft as floss-silk, and he was
always smartly dressed in pretty Malay garments. We travelled together
for more than three months, and I got to know him pretty well, and took
something of a liking to him. I knew, of course, that his manner to his
own people was not always as gentle as that which he assumed when in the
presence of the _Râja_ or of myself, and during our progress through his
father's district I heard many tales of his ill doings. To these,
however, I attached but little importance, for Malays are very apt to
malign a young Chief who, as they say, is born like a tiger cub, with
teeth and claws, and may always be expected to do evil. Nevertheless, it
would certainly never have occurred to me at that time that this
mild-eyed, soft-spoken, silken-mannered, rather melancholy young man was
capable of committing a peculiarly cruel, deliberate, and cold-blooded
murder. Until one begins to understand them, one's Malay friends always
seem to be breaking out in some new and unexpected place, to the intense
mortification and surprise of people who attempt to judge Oriental
character from a purely European standpoint.
The _Râja_ and I journeyed through Pahang with great state and
pageantry, our party increasing in bulk as we went along, after the
manner of a snowball. The _Râja_ and I were accommodated on a huge raft
or floating house, and a perfect flotilla of boats accompanied us. At
length, after many days spent in floating down the beautiful Pahang
river, with the cool ripple of the water in our ears, and the
ever-changing views to delight our eyes, we came in sight of Pekan, and,
that night, we tied up about half a mile below the capital, at the
landing-place which belonged to my travelling companion.
Thereafter followed negotiations, and interviews--made terrible by
unearthly sweetmeats--much talk, and long waiting. Endless delays on
the one side, stubborn patience that refused to be tired out on the
other; and, as dawn was breaking on a certain Easter Sunday, I found
myself, with a promise of a Treaty in my pocket, making my way out of
the mouth of the river _en route_ for Singapore. A fortnight later I was
back at Pekan, to the no small disgust of my friend the Sultân and his
people, but now I had quarters assigned to me in the royal village, and
accordingly I saw but little of the _Râja_ with whom I had formerly
travelled, and the people who had accompanied him from the interior.