Râja_, but his immediate chief was Saiyid Üsmân, a youngster who was
also one of the King's Youths, and was usually spoken of as Tûan Bângau.
Âwang had been born and bred in the house of which Tûan Bângau's father
was the head, and, though in accordance with the immutable Malay custom,
Âwang always spoke of himself as 'thy servant' when he addressed Tûan
Bângau, the relations which subsisted between them more nearly resembled
those of brothers, than those which we recognise as being proper to
master and servant. They had crawled about the floor of the women's
apartments in company, until they were old enough to play in the open
air; they had played _pôrok_ and _tûju lûbang_, and all the games known
to Malay children, still in company; they had splashed about in the
river together, cooling their little brown bodies in the running water;
they had often eaten from the same plate, and had slept side by side on
the same mat spread in the verandah. Later, they had been circumcised on
the same day, and, having thus entered upon man's estate, they had
together begun to participate in the life of dissipation which every
court-bred Malay boy regards as his birth-right. Thus they had gone
astraying after strange women, gambling and quarelling with the other
youths, but still in company, and with their old love for one another
unaltered. They had been duly entered as members of the King's Youths,
and had proved themselves not to be the least reckless and truculent of
those who form that ruffianly gang, but they had chiefly used their
position to carry on their love intrigues with greater freedom and
daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed
boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay
around it, who cast loving eyes upon them. Âwang, however, cared little
for this, for, by the irony of that Fate which always directs that men
should fall in love with the wrong women, and _vice versâ_, his heart
was eaten up with a fiery desire for a girl who was a _jâmah-jâmah-an_,
or casual concubine of the King, and who resolutely declined to have
ought to do with him. Nevertheless, the moth still fluttered around the
candle, and Âwang never missed an opportunity of catching a passing
glimpse of the object of his longing. It was an evil day for both Âwang
Îtam and Tûan Bângau, however, when, as they swaggered past the
palace-fence, seeking to peep at this girl, they were seen by the King's
daughter, Tungku Ûteh, and a desire was straightway born in her breast
for the young and handsome Saiyid.
In the East, love affairs develop quickly; and that very day Âwang Îtam
again saw Iang Mûnah, the girl whom he had loved so long and so
hopelessly, and by a flash of an eye-lid was informed that she had that
to tell him which it concerned him to know. When both parties desire a
secret interview many difficulties may be overcome, and that evening
Âwang whispered into the ear of Tûan Bângau that 'the moon was about to
fall into his lap.'
'I dreamed not long since,' said Tûan Bângau, 'that I was bitten by a
very venomous snake!' And then Âwang knew that his friend was ready for
any adventure.
To dream of a snake bite, among any of the people of the Far East, means
that ere long the dreamer will receive generous favours from some lady
who is either of exalted rank, or of most surpassing beauty. The greater
the venom of the snake, the brighter, it is believed, are the qualities
with which the dreamer's future mistress is endowed. It is not only in
Europe, that venom enters into the soul of a man by reason of a woman,
and this is, perhaps, the explanation of how this dream comes to bear
this peculiar interpretation.
Tûan Bângau's position was a curious one. He did not desire Tungku Ûteh
for herself; she was his King's daughter, and the wife of a royal
husband; and his duty and his interest alike forbade him to accept her
advances. If his intrigue with her was discovered, he was a ruined, if
not a dead man, and, moreover, he was at this time devoted to another
girl, whom he had recently married. The challenge which had been
conveyed to him, however, was one which, in spite of all these things,
his code of honour made it impossible for him to refuse. The extreme
danger, which lay in such an intrigue, gave him no choice but to accept
it. That was his point of view, 'His honour rooted in dishonour stood,'
and no self-respecting Malay, brought up in the poisonous atmosphere of
an Independent Malay State, could admit of any other opinion.
With Âwang Îtam things were different. I have already said that he was
passionately in love with Iang Mûnah, and he knew that he would at
length win his Heart's Desire. He would accompany his chief on his
nocturnal visits to the palace, and, while Tûan Bângau wooed the
Princess, the handmaiden would give herself to him. He felt the 'blood
run redder in every vein' at the bare thought, and he was the eager and
impatient lover when the twain crept into the palace in the noon of the
night.
They effected their entrance by a way known only to themselves, and left
by the same means before the breaking of the dawn, passing to their
quarters in the guard-house, through the slumbering town, and lay
sleeping far into the day. For more than a month they paid their secret
visits unobserved by any save those whom they sought, and by the old
crone who unbarred the door for them to enter; but, upon a certain
night, they narrowly escaped detection. The King, like many Malay
_Râjas_, kept curious hours. Sometimes, he slept all day, sometimes he
slept all night; some days he went to rest at noon, to awake at
midnight; and, on such occasions, he often wandered about the palace
alone, pouncing upon ill-doers, like the lion which seeketh whom it may
devour. In this way he chanced upon Tûan Bângau and Âwang Îtam, but
they had fled from the palace before he had learned who they were, and
who were the girls whom they had come to seek.
After this the meetings ceased for a space, but Tungku Ûteh was not to
be so easily baulked, and a taunting message soon brought Tûan Bângau
once more to her feet. The meetings, however, no longer took place
within the palace itself, the lovers meeting and passing the night in a
wood-shed within the fence of the royal enclosure.
Things had gone on in this way for some time when Tungku Ûteh began to
weary of the lack of excitement attending the intrigue. Like many Malay
women she regarded it as a reproach to a girl if no man desired her, and
the longing became greater and greater to show her partner and her
immediate _entourage_ that she also was wooed and loved. She had an
affection for Tûan Bângau, and admired him as a lover and a man, but
even this could not restrain the growing longing for notoriety. Perhaps
she hardly realised how grave would be the consequences; perhaps she
struggled against the impulse; who can say? The fact remains that her
lover was sacrificed, as many a man has been before and since, upon the
altar of a woman's ungovernable vanity.
One night, when the yellow dawn was splashing the gray in the East, and
the thin smoke-like clouds were hurrying across the sky, like great
night fowls winging their homeward way, Tûan Bângau awoke and found Ûteh
sitting beside him with his _kris_ and girdle in her hands. She had
taken them from his pillow as he slept, and no persuasions on his part
could induce her to return them. While he yet sought to coax her into
foregoing her resolve, she leaped to her feet, and, with a sweet little
laugh, disappeared in the palace, and Tûan Bângau returned homeward with
Âwang Îtam, each knowing that now indeed their hour was come.
Once inside her own apartments, Tungku Ûteh placed the _kris_
ostentatiously at the head of her sleeping mat, and then composed
herself calmly to enjoy the tranquil slumber, which in the West is
erroneously supposed to be the peculiar privilege of the just. Next day,
the _kris_ had been seen and recognised, but her father and mother
received nothing but taunts from Ûteh in reply to their inquiries. What
her object was is difficult for the European mind to appreciate, for it
must be distinctly remembered that she had no quarrel with Tûan Bângau.
A Malay woman, however, is very far from regarding the possession of a
lover as a disgrace: in this case, Ûteh's vanity was gratified by the
intrigue becoming known. To obtain this even the sacrifice of her lover
did not seem too heavy a price to pay.
The King's anger knew no bounds when he heard of what had occurred, and
physical punishment was, of course, the only means of covering his
shame, which occurred to his primitive and unoriginal imagination. His
position, however, was a difficult one. Tûan Bângau was a member of a
very powerful clan; he was also a Saiyid, and the King feared that the
fanaticism of his people would be aroused if he openly slew a
descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Âwang Îtam, whose intrigue had also
become known, was arrested, carried into the palace, and all trace was
lost of him for months. Iang Mûnah also disappeared from among the
women; but to Tûan Bângau not a word was said, and never by sign or
gesture was he allowed to guess that his crime was known to the King.
One day the King went a hunting, and took his way up a small stream
which was totally uninhabited. Tûan Bângau was of the party, and those
who went with them were all men selected for their discretion, and their
unwavering loyalty to the King. The hunting party travelled in boats, of
which there were two, the King going in one, and his son Tungku Saleh in
the other. In the latter boat sat Tûan Bângau, and about a dozen of the
King's Youths. Arrived at a certain place, the King's boat went on round
the point, and Tungku Saleh's boat tied up in mid-stream, while the
Prince ate some sweatmeats which had been brought for the purpose.
When he had eaten his fill, he bade Tûan Bângau and one or two other
Saiyids, who were among his followers, fall to on what remained, and it
was while Tûan Bângau was washing his mouth over the side of the boat
after eating, that Tungku Saleh gave the signal which heralded his
death. A man who was behind him stabbed him in the shoulder with a
spear, and another blow given almost simultaneously knocked him into the
river. Tûan Bângau dived, and swam until he had reached the shallow
water near the bank. Here he rose to his feet, drew his _kris_, and
called to those within the boat to come and fight him one at a time if
they dared. The only answer was a spear which wounded him in the neck,
and a bullet from a gun which penetrated to his heart. In a moment all
that remained of Tûan Bângau was a shapeless heap of useless flesh,
lying in the shallow water, with the eddies playing around and in and
out of the brilliant silk garments, which had made him so brave a sight
when alive. Those who had slain him, buried him; where, no man knoweth;
the report that he had strayed and been lost, was diligently spread,
and, though generally disbelieved, was found to be impossible of
disproof. But Bêdah, his wife who had loved him, had learnt these
things, and now told all to the White Man, hoping that thus her
husband's murder might be avenged, and thereby she risked the life which
his death had temporarily made desolate.
Compared with that of Âwang Îtam, however, Tûan Bângau's fate was a
happy one. When the former disappeared from the sight of men, he was the
victim of nameless tortures. As he told the tale of what he had suffered
on the night that followed his arrest; of the ghastly tortures and
mutilations which had wrecked his manhood, and left him the pitiable
ruin he then was, the White Man writhed in sympathy, and was filled with
a horror that made him sick.
'Better it were to die,' said he, 'than to live the life which is no
life, and to suffer these nameless torments.'
'It is true,' said Âwang Îtam, 'it is true. But readily would I bear it
over again, _Tûan_, if thereby for a little space I might be what I
have been, and my Heart's Desire could once more be satisfied!'
These were the last words spoken while the dawn was breaking, as the
White Man clambered over the side and wended his way homeward; and,
therefore, I have called this tale the story of 'His Heart's Desire.'
A NIGHT OF TERROR
The glaring eyes through the brushwood shine,
And the striped hide shows between
The trees and bushes, 'mid trailing vine
And masses of ever-green.
A snarling moan comes long and low,
We may neither flee nor fight,
For well our leaping pulses know
The Terror that stalks by Night.
If you put your finger on the map of the Malay Peninsula an inch or two
from its exact centre, you will find a river in Pahang territory which
has its rise in the watershed that divides that State from Kelantan and
Trenggânu. This river is called the Tembeling, and it is chiefly
remarkable for the number of its rapids and the richness of its
gutta-bearing forests. Its inhabitants are a ruffianly lot of Malays,
who are preyed upon by a family of _Wans_, a semi-royal set of nobles
who do their best to live up to their traditions. Below the rapids the
natives are chiefly noted for the quaint pottery that they produce from
the clay which abounds there, and the rude shapes and ruder tracery of
their vessels have probably suffered no change since the days when
Solomon's fleets sought gold and peafowl and monkeys in the jungles of
the Peninsula, as everybody knows. Above the rapids the Malays plant
enough _gambir_ to supply the wants of the whole betel-chewing
population of Pahang, and, as the sale of this commodity wins them a few
dollars annually, they are too indolent to plant their own rice. This
grain, which is the staple of all Malays, without which they cannot
live, is therefore sold to them by down river natives, at the exorbitant
price of half a dollar the bushel.
A short distance up stream, and midway between the mouth and the big
rapids, there is a straggling village, called Ranggul, the houses of
which, made of wattled bamboos and thatched with palm leaves, stand on
piles, amid the groves of cocoa-nut and areca-nut palms, varied by
clumps of smooth-leaved banana trees. The houses are not very close
together, but a man can call from one to the other with ease; and thus
the cocoa-nuts thrive, which, as the Malays say, grow not with pleasure
beyond the sound of the human voice. The people of the village are not
more indolent than other Malays. They plant a little rice, when the
season comes, in the swamps behind the village. They work a little
jungle produce, when the pinch of poverty drives them to it, but, like
all Malays, they take life sufficiently easily. If you chance to go into
the village of Ranggul, during any of the hot hours of the day, you will
find most of its occupants lying about in their dark, cool houses,
engaged upon such gentle mental tasks as may be afforded by whittling a
stick, or hacking slowly at the already deeply scored threshold-block,
with their clumsy wood-knives. Sitting thus, they gossip with a passing
neighbour, who stops to chatter as he sits propped upon the stair
ladder, or they croak snatches of song, with some old-world refrain to
it, and, from time to time, break off to cast a word over their
shoulders to the wife in the dim background near the fireplace, or to
the little virgin daughter, carefully secreted on the shelf overhead, in
company with a miscellaneous collection of dusty, grimy rubbish, the
disused lumber of years. Nature has been very lavish to the Malay, and
she has provided him with a soil which returns a maximum of food for a
minimum of grudging labour. The cool, moist fruit groves call aloud to
all mankind to come and revel in their fragrant shade during the
parching hours of mid-day, and the Malay has caught the spirit of his
surroundings, and is very much what Nature has seen fit to make him.
Some five-and-thirty years ago, when Che’ Wan Âhmad, now better known as
Sultân Âhmad Maätham Shah, was collecting his forces in Dûngun,
preparatory to making his last and successful descent into the Tembeling
valley, whence to overrun and conquer Pahang, the night was closing in
at Ranggul. A large house stood, at that time, in a somewhat isolated
position, within a thickly-planted compound, at one extremity of the
village. In this house, on the night of which I write, seven men and two
women were at work on the evening meal. The men sat in the centre of the
floor, on a white mat made from the plaited leaves of the _mengkûang_
palm, with a plate piled with rice before each of them, and a brass
tray, holding various little china bowls of curry, placed where all
could reach it. They sat cross-legged, with bowed backs, supporting
themselves on their left arms, the left hand lying flat on the mat, and
being so turned that the outspread fingers pointed inwards. With the
fingers of their right hands they messed the rice, mixing the curry well
into it, and then swiftly carried a large handful to their mouths,
skilfully, without dropping a grain. The women sat demurely, in a half
kneeling position, with their feet tucked away under them, and
ministered to the wants of the men. They said never a word, save an
occasional exclamation, when they drove away a lean cat that crept too
near to the food, and the men also held their peace. There was no sound
to be heard, save the hum of the insects out of doors, the deep note of
the bull-frogs in the rice swamps, and the unnecessarily loud noise of
mastication made by the men as they ate.
When the meal was over the women carried what was left to a corner near
the fireplace, and there fell to on such of the viands as their lords
had not consumed. If you had looked carefully, however, you would have
seen that the cooking-pots, over which the women ruled, still held a
secret store for their own consumption, and that the quality of the food
in this _cache_ was by no means inferior to that which had been allotted
to the men. In a land where women wait upon themselves, and have none to
attend to their wants, or forestall their wishes, they very soon acquire
an extremely good notion of how to look after themselves; and, since
they have never known a state of society in which women are treated as
they are amongst ourselves, they do not repine, and seem, for the most
part, to be sufficiently bright, light-hearted, and happy.
The men, meanwhile, had each rolled up a quid of betel-nut, taking the
four ingredients carefully from the little brass boxes in the wooden
tray before them, and having prepared cigarettes of Javenese tobacco,
with the dried shoots of the _nîpah_ palm for wrappers, had at length
broken the absorbed silence, which had held them fast while the matter
of the meal was occupying their undivided attention.
The talk flitted lightly over many subjects; for a hearty meal, and the
peace of soul which repletion brings with it, are not conducive to
concentration of attention, nor yet to activity of mind. The Malay, too,
is always superficial, and talk among natives generally plays round
facts, rather than round ideas. Che’ Seman, the owner of the house, and
his two sons, Âwang and Ngah, discussed the prospects of the crop then
growing in the fields behind the compound. Their cousin Äbdollah, who
chanced to be passing the night in the house, told of a fall which his
wife's aunt's brother had come by, when climbing a cocoa-nut tree. Mat,
his _bîras_ (for they had married two sisters, which established a
definite form of relationship between them, according to Malay ideas),
added a few more or less ugly details to Äbdollah's description of the
corpse after the accident. And as this attracted the attention of the
two remaining men, Pôtek and Kassim, who had been discussing the price
of rice, and the varying chances of _getah_ hunting, the talk at this
point became general. Pôtek and Kassim had recently returned from
Dûngun, where, as has been said, the present Sultân of Pahang was, at
that time, collecting the force with which he afterwards successfully
invaded and conquered the State. They told of all they had seen and
heard, multiplying their figures with the daring recklessness that is
born of unfettered imaginations, and the lack of a rudimentary knowledge
of arithmetic. But even this absorbing topic could not hold the
attention of their hearers for long. Before Pôtek and Kassim had well
finished the enumeration of the heavy artillery, of the thousands of the
elephants, and the tens of thousands of the followers, with which they
credited the adventurous, but slender bands of ragamuffins, who followed
Âhmad's fortunes, Che’ Seman broke into their talk with words on a
subject which, at that time, was ever uppermost in the minds of the
Tembeling people, and the conversation straightway drifted into the
channel in which it had run, with only casual interruptions, for many
weeks past.
'He of the Hairy Face[12] is with us once more,' ejaculated Che’ Seman;
and when this announcement had caused a dead silence to fall upon his
hearers, and had even stilled the chatter of the women-folk near the
fireplace, he continued:
'At the hour when the cicada is heard (sunset), I met Imâm Sîdik of
Gemûroh, and bade him stay to eat rice, but he would not, saying that He
of the Hairy Face had made his kill at Lâbu yesternight, and it behoved
all men to be within their houses before the darkness fell. And so
saying he paddled his dug-out down stream with the short quick stroke
used when we race boats. Imâm Sîdik is a wise man, and his words are
true. He of the Hairy Face spares neither priest nor prince. The girl
he killed at Lâbu was a daughter of the _Wans_--her name Wan Ësah.'
[Footnote 12: _Si Pôdong_ = one of the names used by jungle-bred
Malays to describe a tiger. They avoid using the beast's real
name lest the sound of it should reach his ears, and cause him
to come to the speaker.]
'That makes three-and-twenty whom He of the Hairy Face hath slain in one
year of maize' (three months), said Âwang in a low fear-stricken voice.
'He touches neither goats nor kine, and men say He sucketh more blood
than He eateth flesh.'
'That it is which proves Him to be the thing he is,' said Ngah.
'Thy words are true,' said Che’ Seman solemnly. 'He of the Hairy Face
has his origin in a man. The _Semang_--the negrits of the woods--drove
him forth from among them, and now he lives solitarily in the jungles,
and by night he takes upon himself the form of Him of the Hairy Face,
and feasts upon the flesh of his own kind.'
'I have heard tell that it is only the men of Korinchi who have this
strange power,' interposed Äbdollah, in the tone of one who longs to be
reassured.
'Men say that they also possess the power,' rejoined Che’ Seman, 'but
certain it is that He of the Hairy Face was born a _Semang_,--a negrit
of the woods,--and when He goeth forth in human guise he is like all
other _Semangs_ to look upon. I and many others have seen him, roaming
alone, naked, and muttering to himself, when we have been in the forests
seeking for jungle produce. All men know that it is He who by night
harries us in our villages. If one ventures to go forth from our houses
in the time of darkness, to the bathing raft at the river's edge, or to
tend our sick, or to visit a friend, Si Pûdong is ever to be found
watching, and thus the tale of his kills waxes longer and longer.'
'But men are safe from him while they sit within their houses?' asked
Mat with evident anxiety.
'God alone knows,' answered Che’ Seman piously, 'who can say where men
are safe from Him of the Hairy Face? He cometh like a shadow, and slays
like a prince, and then like a shadow he is gone! And the tale of his
kills waxes ever longer and yet more long. May God send Him far from us!
Ya Allah! It is He! Listen!'
At the word, a dead silence, broken only by the hard breathing of the
men and women, fell upon all within the house. Then very faintly, and
far away up stream, but not so faintly but that all could hear it, and
shudder at the sound, the long-drawn, howling, snarling moan of a hungry
tiger broke upon the stillness. The Malays call the roar of the tiger
_äum_, and the word is vividly onomatopœtic, as those who have heard
the sound in the jungle during the silent night watches can bear
witness. All who have listened to the tiger in his forest freedom know
that he has many voices wherewith to speak. He can give a barking cry,
which is not unlike that of a deer; he can grunt like a startled boar,
and squeak like the monkeys cowering at his approach in the branches
overhead; he can shake the earth with a vibrating, resonant purr, like
the sound of faint thunder in the foot-hills; he can mew and snarl like
an angry wildcat; and he can roar like a lusty lion cub. But it is when
he lifts up his voice in the long-drawn moan that the jungle chiefly
fears him. This cry means that he is hungry, and, moreover, that he is
so sure of his kill that he cares not if all the world knows that his
belly is empty. It has something strangely horrible in its tone, for it
speaks of that cold-blooded, dispassionate cruelty which is only to be
found in perfection in the feline race. These sleek, smooth-skinned,
soft-footed, lithe, almost serpentine animals, torture with a grace of
movement, and a gentleness in strength which has something in it more
violently repugnant to our natures than any sensation with which the
thought of the blundering charge and savage goring of the buffalo, or
the clumsy kneading with giant knee-caps, that the elephant metes out to
its victims, can ever inspire in us.
Again the long-drawn moaning cry broke upon the stillness. The cattle in
the byre heard it and were panic-stricken. Half mad with fear, they
charged the walls of their pen, bearing all before them, and in a moment
could be heard in the distance plunging madly through the brushwood, and
splashing through the soft earth of the _pâdi_ fields. The dogs
whimpered and scampered off in every direction, while the fowls beneath
the house set up a drowsy and discordant screeching. The folk within the
house were too terror-stricken to speak, for fear, which gives voices to
the animal world, renders voluble human beings dumb. And all this time
the cry broke forth again and again, ever louder and louder, as He of
the Hairy Face drew nearer and yet more near.