presently showed red in the darkness a few yards away from us, just when
we were despairing of finding either a shelter for the night or a meal
with which to satisfy the pangs of hunger, that a twelve hours' march
had caused to assail us. We pushed on more rapidly when the gleam of
welcome light showed us that men were at hand, and presently we emerged
upon a tiny opening in the forest, in the centre of which the Semang
camp was pitched. The shelters of these people were rough enough to
deserve no better name. They consisted of three or four lean-to huts,
formed of plaited palm leaves, propped crazily on rudely trimmed
uprights, and round the fire, in the centre of the camp, a dozen squalid
aborigines were huddled together. We approached very cautiously, and
when I had been seen and recognised, for I was well known in these
parts, the sudden panic, which our presence had occasioned, subsided
quickly, and we were made free of the encampment and all that it
contained.
Hunger is a good sauce, and I ate with a satisfaction which has often
been lacking at a dinner table at home, of the rude meal set before me.
A cool green leaf of the wild banana was spread for me, and on it were
laid smoking yams and other mealy jungle roots, which fill one, as young
turkeys are filled during their rearing; a few fish, fresh caught in the
stream and cooked over the fire in the cleft of a split stick, and the
meat of some nameless animal--monkey I feared--which had been dried in
the sun until it was as hard as a board, eked out the curious meal. I
did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently left the doubtful
meat alone, and when the cravings of my hunger were appeased, I began to
make advances to my hosts.
First I produced a palm-leaf bag holding about four pounds of coarse
Chinese rock salt, and bade the Semang gather round and partake. The
whole contents of the bag were emptied out on to a leaf with minute care
lest one precious grain should be lost, and then the naked aborigines
gathered round and feasted. These jungle dwellers lack salt in their
daily food, and look upon it as a luxury, much as a child regards the
contents of a _bon-bon_ box. With eager fingers they clutched the salt,
and conveyed it to their mouths in handfuls. This coarse stuff would
take the skin off the tongues of most human beings who attempted to eat
it in this way, but I suppose that nature gives the Semang the power to
take in abnormally large quantities of salt at one time, because his
opportunities of eating it in small daily instalments are few and far
between. In an incredibly short time the four pounds of salt had
disappeared, and when the leaf had been divided up, and licked in solemn
silence, the Chief of the family, an aged, scarred, and deeply wrinkled
negrit, turned to me with a sigh and said--
'It is very sweet, this salt that thou hast given us. Hast thou tobacco
also, that we may smoke and rest?'
I produced some coarse Japanese tobacco which I had brought with me for
the purpose, and when cigarettes had been rolled, with green leaves for
wrappers, we all squatted around the fire, for the night was chilly up
here in the foothills, and the silence of sated appetite and rested
limbs fell gently upon us.
The eyes of one who dwells in the untrodden places of the earth are apt
to grow careless of the picturesque aspect of his surroundings. He is
often too busy following the track beneath his feet, or observing some
other such thing, which is important for his immediate well-being, to
more than glance at the beauties which surround him. Often, too, his
heart is so sick for a sight of the murky fogs, and drizzle-damped
pavements of London, or for the ordered green fields and hedgerows of
the pleasant English country, that he does not readily spare more than a
grudging tribute of admiration to the scenes which surround him in his
exile. To-night, however, as I sat and lay by the crackling logs, I
longed, as I had often done before, to possess that power which
transfers the sights we see to paper or to canvas. Around us the forest
rose black and impenetrable, the shadows deepened by the firelight of
the camp. In the clear sky overhead the glorious Eastern stars were
shining steadfastly, and at our feet a tiny stream pattered busily on
the pebbles of its bed. Around the fire, and reddened by its light, sat
or lay my three Malays, bare to the waist, but clothed in their bright
_sârongs_ and loose short trousers. The Semang, of both sexes and all
ages, coal black, save where the gleams of the fire painted them a dull
red, and nude, save for a narrow strip of coarse bark cloth twisted
round their loins, lay on their stomachs with their chins propped upon
their elbows, or squatted on their hams, smoking placidly. A curious
group to look upon we must have been could any one have seen us: I, the
European, the white man, belonging to one of the most civilised races in
the Old World; the Malays, civilised too, but after the fashion of
unchanging Asia, which differs so widely from the restless progressive
civilisation of the West; and, lastly, the Semangs, squalid savages,
nursing no ambitions save those prompted by their empty stomachs, with
no hope of change or improvement in their lot, and yet representing one
of the oldest races in the world--a race which, though it first
possessed the East, with all its possibilities and riches, could utilise
none of them, and whose members carry in their eyes the melancholy look
of dumb animals, which, when seen on the human countenance, denotes a
people who are doomed to speedy extinction, and who, never since time
began, have had their day or have played a part in human history.
Tobacco upon the mind of man has much the same effect as that which hot
water has upon tea-leaves, or, indeed, as that which that beverage
itself has on the majority of women. It calls out much that, without its
aid, would remain latent and undeveloped. For human beings this means
words, and, while we dignify our own speech over our tobacco by the name
of conversation, we are apt to dispose of that of the ladies round a
tea-table by labelling it gossip. Among a primitive people conversation
means either broken remarks about the material things of life--the food
which is sorely needed and is hard to come by, the boat which is to be
built, or the weapon which is to be fashioned--or else it takes the form
of a monologue, in which the speaker tells some tale of his own or
another's experiences to those who sit and listen. Thus it was that upon
this evening, as we clustered round the fire in this camp of the
Semangs, the aged patriarch, who had praised the 'sweetness' of my salt,
lifted up his voice and spoke in this wise.
'The jungles are growing empty now, _Tûan_, and many things are changed
since the days when I was a boy roaming through the woods of the Plus
valley with my father and my two brothers. Now we live in these poor
jungles of the Upper Pêrak valley, where the yams and roots are less
sweet and less plentiful than in our former home, and where the
fish-traps are often empty, and the game wild and scarce. Does the
_Tûan_ ask why then we quitted the valley of the Plus, and the hills of
Legap, where once our camps were pitched? The _Tûan_ knows many things,
and he has visited the forests of which I speak, why then does he ask
our reason? It was not for love of these poor hunting grounds that we
quitted the Plus valley, but because we loved our women-folk and our
little ones. The _Tûan_ knows the tribe of Sâkai who have their homes in
the Plus, but does he not know also that they entered into a compact
with the Malays of Lâsak to aid in hunting us through the woods and
selling all of our people whom they could catch into slavery? We of the
forests had little fear of the Malays, for we could make blind trails
that they could never follow, and could hide our camps in the shady
places, where they could never find them. The Malays were wont, when
they could trace us, to surround our camps at nightfall, and attack when
the dawn was about to break, but many and many a time, when we were so
surrounded, we made shift by night to escape from the circle which
hemmed us in. How did we win out? What then are the trees made for? Has
the _Tûan_ never heard of the bridges of the forest people that the
Malays call _tâli tenau_? When darkness was over the forest, the young
men would ascend the trees, and stretch lines of rattan from bough to
bough, over the places where the trees were too far apart for a woman to
leap, and when all was ready, we would climb into the branches, carrying
our cooking-pots and all that we possessed, the women bearing their
babies at their breasts, and the little children following at their
mothers' heels. Thus, treading shrewdly on the lines of rattan, we would
pass from tree to tree, and so escape from our enemies. What does the
_Tûan_ say? That it is difficult and hazardous to walk by night on
slender lines stretched among the tree-tops? No, the matter was easy.
Where there is room to set a foot, why need a man fear to fall? And thus
we baffled the Malays, and won our freedom. But when the Sâkai dogs
aided the Malays, matters were changed indeed. They would sit in the
tree-tops, the whole night through, calling one to another when we tried
to break away; and, by day, they would track our foot-prints through
places where no Malay might follow; and no trail was so blind but that
the Sâkai could see the way it tended. Men said that they served the
Malays in this manner that thereby they might preserve their own
women-folk from captivity. But I know not. The Sâkai live in houses, and
plant growing things--like the Malays. They know much of the lore of the
forest, but many secrets of the jungle which are well known to us are
hidden from their eyes. Yea, even though the fair valley of the Plus is
now possessed by them, and the mountain of Korbu is now _their_ home as
it was once our own, the spirits of the hills and streams are still our
friends, and they teach not their secrets to the strangers. How should
it not be so? Our tribe springs from the mountain of Korbu, and the
hills of Legap; theirs from the broad forests towards the rising sun,
beyond the Kinta valley. No tribe but ours knows of the forests at the
back of Gûnong Korbu, nor of the doom, which, in the fulness of time,
will fall upon the Sâkai. Beyond that great peak, in the depths of the
silent forest places, there lives a tribe of women, fair of face and
form, taller than men, paler in colour, stronger, bolder. This is the
tribe that is to avenge us upon those who have won our hunting grounds.
These women know not men; but when the moon is at the full they dance
naked, in the grassy places near the salt-licks, where the passing
to-and-fro of much game has thinned the forest. The Evening Wind is
their only spouse, and through Him they conceive and bear children.
Yearly are born to them offspring, mostly women-folk whom they cherish
even as we do our young; but if, perchance, they bear a manchild, the
mother slays it ere it is well-nigh born. Thus live they, and thrive
they, ever increasing and multiplying, and their bows and blow-pipes are
sometimes found by us in the deep hollows of the woods. Larger are they
than those we use, more beautifully carved, and, moreover, they are of a
truer aim. But woe to the man who meets these women, or who dares to
penetrate into the woods in which they dwell, for he will surely die
unless the ghosts give speed to his flight. Of all this tribe, I alone
have seen these women, and that when I was a young hunter, many many
moons agone. I and two others, my brothers, when hunting through the
forest, passed beyond the limits of our own woods, following the halting
tracks of a wounded stag. After much walking, and eager following of the
trail, for the camp was hungry lacking meat, we found the stag lying
near a brook, killed by a larger arrow than the bow we carry throws,
and, at the same moment, we heard a loud, threatening cry in a strange
tongue. Then I, looking up, beheld a gigantic form, as of a pale-skinned
woman, breaking through the jungle, some two hundred elbow-lengths away,
and, at the same moment, my elder brother fell pierced by an arrow. I
stayed to see no more, but ran, with all my young blood tingling with
fear, leaving my brothers and the slaughtered stag, tearing through the
thickets of thorn, but never feeling them rend my skin, nor ever stopped
to catch my breath or drink, until, all wounded and breathless, covered
with blood and sweat-like foam, I half fell, half staggered to the camp
of mine own people. Thereafter, for long days, I lay 'twixt life and
death, screaming in fear of the dreadful form I ever fancied was
pursuing me. My brothers never again returned to camp, and I alone am
left to tell the tale.'
The old man ceased his weird story, the fear of what he thought he had
seen still apparently strong upon him. He certainly believed what he
said, as also did every person present, with the exception of my own
sceptical self, and I have often tried to find some reasonable
explanation for the story. I have not succeeded, for, even in the
wildest parts of the Peninsula, the aborigines do not shoot one another
on sight, whatever they may do to bands of marauding Malays, nor do
serious quarrels ever arise between them over the division of a little
fresh meat. Judging by the scared look in his eyes, as he told the
story, the old Semang had felt the fear of imminent death very close at
hand that day long ago in the quiet forests at the back of Gûnong Korbu.
His brethren, too, must undoubtedly have been killed by some one or
something, and perhaps the old-world tradition of the Amazons, furnished
to the mind of the survivor the most natural explanation of the
catastrophe.
A dozen years and more have slipped away since I heard this tale, told
in the fire-light of the Semang camp, in the Upper Pêrak valley, and now
there is a trigonometrical survey station on the summit of Korbu. It is
true that the surveyors employed there have made no mention in their
reports of the Amazons of the neighbourhood, and the Sâkai are still
living in prosperity, in spite of the impending doom, which the old
Semang foretold for them. None the less, however, I hold to the belief
that my informant actually did see something weird and uncanny at the
back of Gûnong Korbu; and that the keen eyes of a jungle-dwelling Semang
should not be able to clearly recognise anything their owner could
encounter in the forests of the Peninsula, is, in itself, a miracle.
'HIS HEART'S DESIRE'
They wrench my back on a red-hot rack,
They comb my nerves with wire,
They poison with pain the blood of my brain
Till the Devils of Devilry tire;
They spit from Above on the name of my Love,
They call my Love a liar;
But they can't undo the joy I knew
When I knew my Heart's Desire.
_The Song of the Lost Soul._--ANON.
Where and when these things happened does not signify at all. The East
Coast is a long one, and the manners of the Malay _Râjas_ who dwell
thereon have suffered but little change for centuries. Thus, both in the
matter of time and of space, there is a wide choice, and plenty of
exercise may be given to the imagination. The facts anyway are true, and
they were related, in the watches of the night, to a White Man--whose
name does not matter--by two people, with whose identity you also have
no concern. One of the latter was a man whom I will call Âwang Îtam, and
the other was a woman whose name was Bêdah, or something like it. The
place in which the tale was told was an empty sailing boat which lay
beached upon a sandbank in the centre of a Malay river, and, as soon as
the White Man had scrambled up the side, the dug-out, which had brought
him, sheered off and left him.
He had come to this place by appointment, but he did not know precisely
whom he was to meet, as the assignation had been made in the secret
native fashion, which is as different from the invitation card of Europe
as most things in the East are different from white men's gear. Twice
that day his attention had been very pointedly called to this deserted
sailing boat; once by an old crone who was selling sweetstuff from door
to door, and once by a young chief who had stopped to speak to him,
while passing up the street of the native town. By both of these some
reference had been made to the moon-rise and to 'a precious thing'; and
this was enough to show the White Man that something was to be learned,
seen, or experienced by going to the deserted sailing boat at the rising
of the moon.
The Malays who were with him feared a trap, and implored him not to go
alone; but the White Man did not fancy that treachery was likely just
then, and, in any case, he was anxious for the adventure, and could not
afford to let his people think that he was afraid. The man who, dwelling
alone among Malays in an unsettled country, shows the slightest trace of
fear, signs his own death-warrant. No people are more susceptible to
'bluff,' and, given a truculent bearing, and a sufficiency of bravado, a
coward may pass for a brave man in many a Malay State.
The decks of the boat were wet with dew and drizzle, and she smelt
abominably of ancient fish cargoes which she had carried before she was
beached. A light rain was falling, and the White Man crept along the
side until he reached the stern, which was covered with a roofing of
rotten palm-leaf mats. Through the rents at the stern he could see the
moon rising like a great red ball, throwing a broad wave of dancing
light along the reaches of the river. Then he squatted down, rolled a
cigarette, and awaited developments.
Presently the soft _splish, whisp! splash, whisp!_ of a single paddle
came to his listening ear; and, a moment later, a girl's form, standing
erect on the vessel's side, showed distinctly in the growing moonlight.
She called softly to know if anybody was aboard, and the White Man
answered equally cautiously. She then turned and whispered to some
unseen person in a boat moored alongside, and, after some seconds, she
came towards the White Man and said:
'There is one who would speak with thee, _Tûan_, but he cannot climb up
the ship's side. He is like a dead man--unless one lifts him, how can he
move? Will the _Tûan_, therefore, aid him to ascend into the ship?'
The White Man loosened his pistol in its holster, covertly, that she
might not see, and stepped cautiously to the place where the boat
appeared to be moored, for he, too, began to fear a trap. What he saw
over the side reassured him. The dug-out was of the smallest, and it had
only one occupant. He was a man who, even in the dim moonlight, showed
the sharp angles of his bones. He had a peculiarly drawn and shrunken
look, and the skin was stretched across his hollow cheeks like the
goat-hide on a drum-face. The White Man leaped down into the boat, and,
aided by the girl, he lifted the man on board. Then, painfully and very
slowly, the latter crept aft, going on all fours like some unclean
animal, until he had reached the shelter in the stern. The girl and the
White Man followed, and they all three squatted down on the creaking
bamboo decking. The man sat, all of a heap, moaning at short intervals,
as Malays moan when the fever holds them. The girl sat unconcernedly
preparing a quid of betel-nut from its four ingredients, and the White
Man inhaled his cigarette and waited for them to speak. He was trying to
get the hang of the business, and to guess what had caused two people,
whom he did not know, to seek an interview with him in this weird place,
at such an untimely hour.
The girl, the moonlight told him, was pretty. She had a small, perfectly
shaped head, a wide smooth forehead, neat, glossy hair, bright, laughing
eyes, with eyebrows arched and well-defined, 'like the artificial spur
of a fighting cock,' and the pretty little hands and feet which are so
common among all well-born Malay women. The man was hideous. His
shrunken and twitching face with its taut skin, and his utterly broken,
degraded, and decrepit appearance were indescribably horrible, and the
flickering of the moonlight, through the torn mat overhead, only added
to the grotesqueness of his figure.
At length the girl looked up at the White Man, and spoke:
'The _Tûan_ knows Âwang Îtam?' she asked. Yes, the White Man knew him
well, but had not seen him for some months.
'This is he,' she said, pointing to the abject figure by her side, and
her listener felt as though she had struck him across the face. When
last he had seen Âwang Îtam, he was one of the best favoured of the
King's Youths, a fine, upstanding youngster, dressed in many-coloured
silks, and with an amount of side and swagger about him, which would
have amply sufficed for a regiment of Her Majesty's Guards. Now he half
lay, half sat, on the damp decking, the most pitiful wreck of humanity
that the White Man had ever seen. What had befallen him to cause so
fearful a change? I will tell you the tale, in my own words, as the
White Man learned it from him and Bêdah, as they sat talking during the
watches of that long night.
In every Independent Malay State, there is a gang of fighting men, which
watches over the person of the King and acts as his bodyguard. It is
recruited from the sons of the chiefs, nobles, and men of the well-bred
classes; and its members follow at the heels of the King whenever he
goes abroad, paddle his boat, join with him in the chase, gamble
unceasingly, do much evil in the King's name, slay all who chance to
offend him, and flirt lasciviously with the girls within the palace.
They are always ready for anything from 'pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter,' and no Malay king has to ask twice in their hearing 'Will
nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?' Their one aim in life is to
gain the favour of their master, and, having won it, to freely abuse
their position. As the Malay proverb has it, they carry their master's
work upon their heads, and their own under their arms, and woe betide
those who are not themselves under the immediate protection of the
King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of
irregular police force, levying _chantage_ from those whom they detect
in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often
exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse
them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own
price. They are known as the _Bûdak Râja_--or King's Youths--and are
greatly feared by the people, for they are as reckless, as unscrupulous,
as truculent, and withal as gaily dressed and well born a gang of young
ruffians, as one would be like to meet in a long summer's cruise.