the house stood, and its sudden proximity caused Mat to start so
violently that he overturned the pitch torch at his elbow, and
extinguished the flickering light. The women crowded up against the men,
seeking comfort by physical contact with them, their teeth chattering
like castanets. The men gripped their spears, and squatted tremblingly
in the half light thrown by the dying embers of the fire, and the flecks
cast upon floor and wall by the faint moonbeams struggling through the
interstices of the thatched roof.
'Fear nothing, Mînah,' Che’ Seman whispered, in a hoarse, strange voice,
to his little daughter, who nestled miserably against his breast, 'in a
space He will be gone. Even He of the Hairy Face will do us no harm
while we sit within the house.'
Che’ Seman spoke from the experience of many generations of Malays, but
he knew not the nature of the strange beast with whom he had to deal.
Once more the moan-like howl broke out on the still night air, but this
time the note had changed, and gradually it quickened to the ferocious
snarling roar, the charge song, as the tiger rushed forward and leaped
against the side of the house with a heavy jarring thud. A shriek from
all the seven throats went up on the instant, and then came a
scratching, tearing sound, followed by a soft, dull flop, as the tiger,
failing to effect a landing on the low roof, fell back to earth. The men
started to their feet, clutching their weapons convulsively, and, led by
Che’ Seman, they raised, above the shrieks of the frightened women, a
lamentable attempt at a _sôrak_, the Malayan war-cry, which is designed
as much to put heart into those who utter it, as to frighten the enemy
in defiance of whom it is sounded.
Mat, the man who had upset the torch and plunged the house in darkness,
alone failed to add his voice to the miserable cheer raised by his
fellows. Wild with fear of the beast without, he crept, unobserved by
the others, up into the _pâra_, or shelf-like upper apartment, on which
Mînah had been wont to sit, when strangers were about, during the short
days of her virginity. This place, as is usual in most Malay houses,
hardly deserved to be dignified by being termed a room. It consisted of
a platform suspended from the roof in one corner of the house, and among
the dusty lumber with which it was covered Mat now cowered and sought to
hide himself.
A minute or two of sickening suspense followed the tiger's first
unsuccessful charge. But presently the howl broke forth again, quickened
rapidly to the note of the charge song, and once more the house trembled
under the weight of the great animal. This time the leap of Him of the
Hairy Face had been of truer aim, and a crash overhead, a shower of
leaflets of thatch, and an ominous creaking of the woodwork told the
cowering people in the house that their enemy had effected a landing on
the roof.
The miserable thready cheer, which Che’ Seman exhorted his fellows to
raise in answer to the charge song of the tiger, died down in their
throats. All looked upwards in deadly fascination as the thatch was torn
violently apart by the great claws of their assailant. There were no
firearms in the house, but the men instinctively grasped their spears,
and held them ready to await the tiger's descent. Thus for a moment, as
the quiet moonlight poured in through the gap in the thatch, they stood
gazing at the great square face, marked with its black bars, at the
flaming eyes, and the long cruel teeth framed in the hole which the
claws of the beast had made. The timbers of the roof bent and cracked
anew under the unwonted weight, and then, with the agility of a cat, He
of the Hairy Face leaped lightly down, and was in among them before they
knew. The striped hide was slightly wounded by the spears, but the shock
of the brute's leap bore all who had resisted it to the floor. The tiger
never stayed to use its jaws. It sat up, much in the attitude of a
kitten which plays with something dangled before its eyes, and the soft
pit-pat of its paws, as it struck out rapidly and with unerring aim,
speedily disposed of all its enemies. Che’ Seman, with his two sons,
Âwang and Ngah, were the first to fall. Then Iang, Che’ Seman 's wife,
reeled backwards against the wall, with her skull crushed out of all
resemblance to any human member, by the awful strength of one of those
well-aimed buffets from the fearful claws. Kassim, Pôtek, and Äbdollah
fell before the tiger in quick succession, and Mînah, the girl who had
nestled against her father for protection, lay now under his dead body,
sorely wounded, wild with terror, but still alive and conscious. Mat,
cowering on the shelf overhead, breathless with fear, and gazing
fascinated at the carnage going on within a few feet of him, was the
only inmate of the house who remained uninjured.
He of the Hairy Face killed quickly and silently, while there were yet
some alive to resist him. Then, purring gently, he drank a deep draught
of blood from each of his slaughtered victims. At last he reached Che’
Seman, and Mînah, seeing him approach, made a feeble effort to evade
him. Then began a fearful scene, the tiger playing with, and torturing
the girl, just as we all have seen a cat do with a maimed mouse. Again
and again Mînah crawled feebly away from her tormentor, only to be drawn
back again just when escape seemed possible. Again and again she lay
still in the utter inertia of exhaustion, only to be quickened into
agonised movement once more by the touch of the tiger's cruel claws. Yet
so cunningly did he play with her, that, as Mat described it, a time as
long as it would take to cook rice had elapsed, before the girl was
finally put out of her misery.
Even then He of the Hairy Face did not quit the scene of slaughter. Mat,
as he lay trembling in the shelf overhead, watched the tiger, through
the long hours of that fearful night, play with the mangled bodies of
each of his victims in turn. He leaped from one to the other, inflicting
a fresh blow with teeth or claws on their torn flesh, with all the airy,
light-hearted agility and sinuous grace of a kitten playing with its
shadow in the sun. Then when the dawn was breaking, the tiger tore down
the door, leaped lightly to the ground, and betook himself to the
jungle.
When the sun was up, an armed party of neighbours came to the house to
see if ought could be done. But they found the place a shambles, the
bodies hardly to be recognised, the floor-laths dripping blood, and Mat
lying face downward on the shelf, with his reason tottering in the
balance. The bodies, though they had been horribly mutilated, had not
been eaten, the tiger having contented himself with drinking the blood
of his victims, and playing his ghastly game with them till the dawn
broke.
This is, I believe, the only recorded instance in the Peninsula of a
tiger having dared to attack men within their closed houses; and the
circumstances are so remarkable in every way, that I, for one, cannot
find it in me to greatly blame the Malays for attributing the
fearlessness of mankind, and the lust for blood displayed by Him of the
Hairy Face, to the fact that he owed his existence to magic agencies,
and was in reality no mere wild beast, but a member of the race upon
which he so cruelly preyed.
IN THE DAYS WHEN THE LAND WAS FREE
Alas, the shifting years have sped,
Since we were hale and strong,
Who oft have seen the hot blood shed,
Nor held the deed a wrong;
When the flames leap'd bright, thro' the frightened night,
When the _scrak_ rang thro' the lea,
When a man might fight, and when might was right,
In the Days when the Land was Free.
_The Song of the Fettered Folk._
In 1873 the people of Pahang who, then as now, were ever ready to go
upon the war-path, poured over the cool summits of the range that forms
at once the backbone of the Peninsula and the boundary between Pahang
and Selângor. They went, at the invitation of the British Government, to
bring to a final conclusion the protracted struggles, in which Malay
_Râjas_, foreign mercenaries, and Chinese miners had alike been engaged
for years, distracting the State of Selângor, and breaking the peace of
the Peninsula. A few months later, the Pahang Army, albeit sadly reduced
by cholera, poured back again across the mountains, the survivors
slapping their chests and their _kris_-hilts, and boasting loudly of
their deeds, as befitted victorious warriors in a Malay land. The same
stories are still told 'with circumstance and much embroidery,' by those
who took part in the campaign, throughout the length and breadth of
Pahang even unto this day.
Among the great Chiefs who led their people across the range, one of the
last to go, and one of those whose heart was most uplifted by victory,
was the present Mahrâja Perba of Jelai, commonly called To’ Râja. His
own people, even at that time, gave him the title he now bears, but the
Bendahâra of Pahang (since styled Sultân) had never formally installed
him in the hereditary office of which he was the heir, so by the Court
Faction he was still addressed as Panglîma Prang Mâmat.
On his arrival at Pekan, the Panglîma Prang, unmindful of the fate
which, at an earlier period, had befallen his brother Wan Bong, whose
severed head lay buried somewhere near the palace in a nameless grave,
began to assert himself in a manner which no Malay King could be
expected to tolerate. Not content with receiving from his own people the
semi-royal honours, which successive To’ Râjas have insisted upon from
the natives of the interior, Panglîma Prang allowed his pride to run
away with both his prudence and his manners. He landed at Pekan with a
following of nearly fifty men, all wearing shoes, the spoils of war, it
is said, which had fallen to his lot through the capture of a Chinese
store; he walked down the principal street of the town with an umbrella
carried by one of his henchmen; and he ascended into the King's _Bâlai_
with his _kris_ uncovered by the folds of his _sârong_! The enormity of
these proceedings may not, perhaps, be apparent; but, in those days, the
wearing of shoes of a European type, and the public use of an umbrella,
were among the proudest privileges of royalty. To ascend the _Bâlai_
with an uncloaked weapon in one's girdle was, moreover, a warlike
proceeding, which can only be compared to the snapping of fingers in the
face of royalty. Therefore, when Panglîma Prang left Pekan, and betook
himself up river to his house in the Jelai, he left a flustered court,
and a very angry King behind him.
But at this time there was a man in Pahang who was not slow to seize an
opportunity, and in the King's anger he saw a chance that he had long
been seeking. This man was Dâto’ Imâm Prang Indera Gâjah Pahang, a title
which, being interpreted, meaneth, The War Chief, the Elephant of
Pahang. Magnificent and high sounding as was this name, it was found too
large a mouthful for everyday use, and to the people of Pahang he was
always known by the abbreviated title of To’ Gâjah. He had risen from
small beginnings by his genius for war, and more especially for that
branch of the science which the Malays call _tîpu prang_--the deception
of strife--a term which is more accurately rendered into English by the
word treachery, than by that more dignified epithet strategy. He had
already been the recipient of various land grants from the King, which
carried with them some hundreds of devoted families who chanced to live
on the alienated territories; he already took rank as a great Chief; but
his ambition was to become the master of the Lipis Valley, in which he
had been born, by displacing the aged To’ Kâya Stia-wangsa, the
hereditary Chief of the District.
To’ Gâjah knew that To’ Kâya of Lipis, and all his people were more or
less closely related to Panglîma Prang, and to the Jelai natives. He
foresaw that, if war was declared against Panglîma Prang by the King,
the Lipis people would throw in their fortunes with the former. It was
here, therefore, that he saw his chance, and, as the fates would have
it, an instrument lay ready to his hand.
At Kuâla Lipis there dwelt in those days an old and cross-grained
madman, a Jelai native by birth, who, in the days before his trouble
came upon him, had been a great Chief in Pahang. He bore the title of
Ôrang Kâya Haji, and his eldest son was named Wan Lingga. The latter was
as wax in To’ Gâjah's hands, and when they had arranged between
themselves that in the event of a campaign against Panglîma Prang
proving successful, Wan Lingga should replace the latter by becoming To’
Râja of Jelai, while the Lipis Valley should be allotted to To’ Gâjah,
with the title of Dâto’ Kâya Stia-wangsa, they together approached the
Bendahâra on the subject.
They found him willing enough to entertain any scheme, which included
the humbling of his proud vassal Panglîma Prang, who so lately had done
him dishonour in his own capital. Moreover the Bendahâra of Pahang was
as astute as it is given to most men to be, and he saw that strife
between the great Chiefs must, by weakening all, eventually strengthen
his own hand, since he would, in the end, be the peacemaker between
them. Therefore he granted a letter of authority to Wan Lingga and To’
Gâjah, and thus the war began.
The people of Pahang flocked to the interior, all noisily eager to stamp
out of existence the upstart Chief, who had dared to wear shoes, and to
carry an umbrella in the streets of their King's capital. The aged Chief
of Lipis and his people, however, clove to Panglîma Prang, or To’ Râja,
as he now openly called himself, and the war did not prosper. To’ Gâjah
had inspired but little love in the hearts of the men whom the Bendahâra
had given him for a following, and they allowed their stockades to be
taken without a blow by the Jelai people, and on one occasion To’ Gâjah
only escaped by being paddled hastily down stream concealed in the
rolled up hide of a buffalo.
At last it became evident that war alone could never subdue the Jelai
and Lipis districts, and consequently negotiations were opened. A Chief
named the Ôrang Kâya Pahlâwan of Semantan visited To’ Râja in the Jelai,
and besought him to make his peace by coming to Pekan.
'Thou hast been victorious until now,' said he, 'but thy food is running
low. How then wilt thou fare? It were better to submit to the Bendahâra,
and I will go warrant that no harm befalls thee. If the Bendahâra shears
off thy head, he shall only do so when thy neck has been used as a block
for mine own. And thou knowest that the King loveth me.' To’ Râja
therefore allowed himself to be persuaded, but stipulated that Wan
Lingga, who was then at Kuâla Lipis, should also go down to Pekan, since
if he remained in the interior he might succeed in subverting the
loyalty of the Jelai people who hitherto had been faithful to To’ Râja.
Accordingly Wan Lingga left Kuâla Lipis, ostensibly for Pekan, but,
after descending the river for a few miles, he turned off into a side
stream, named the Kichan, where he lay hidden biding his time.
When To’ Râja heard of this, he at first declined to continue his
journey down stream, but at length, making a virtue of necessity, he
again set forward, saying that he entertained no fear of Wan Lingga,
since one who could hide in the forest 'like a fawn or a mouse-deer'
could never, he said, fill the seat of To’ Râja of Jelai.
It is whispered, that it had been To’ Gâjah's intention to make away
with To’ Râja, on his way down stream, by means of that 'warlike' art
for which, I have said, he had a special aptitude; but the Jelai people
knew the particular turn of the genius with which they had to deal, and
consequently they remained very much on their guard. They travelled,
some forty or fifty strong, on an enormous bamboo raft, with a large
fortified house erected in its centre. They never parted with their
arms, taking them both to bed and to bath; they turned out in force at
the very faintest alarm of danger; they moored the raft in mid-stream
when the evening fell; and, wonderful to relate, for Malays make bad
sentinels, they kept faithful watch both by day and by night. Thus at
length they won to Pekan without mishap; and thereafter they were
suffered to remain in peace, no further and immediate attempts being
made upon their lives.
To’ Râja--or Panglîma Prang as he was still called by the King and the
Court Faction--remained at the capital a prisoner in all but the name.
The Bendahâra declined to accord him an interview, pointedly avoided
speech with him, when they chanced to meet in public, and resolutely
declined to allow him to leave Pekan. This, in ancient days, was
practically the King's only means of punishing a powerful vassal,
against whom he did not deem it prudent to take more active measures;
and as, at a Malay Court, the _entourage_ of the Râja slavishly follow
any example which their King may set them, the position of a great Chief
living at the capital in disgrace was sufficiently isolated, dreary,
humiliating, and galling.
But To’ Râja's own followers clove to him with the loyalty for which, on
occasion, the natives of Pahang are remarkable. The Bendahâra spared no
pains to seduce them from their allegiance, and the three principal
Chieftains who followed in To’ Râja's train were constantly called into
the King's presence, and were shown other acts of favour, which were
steadfastly denied to their master. But it profited the Bendahâra
nothing, for Imâm Bakar, the oldest of the three, set an example of
loyalty which his two companions, Imâm Prang Sâmah and Khatib Bûjang,
followed resolutely. Imâm Bakar himself acted from principle. He was a
man whom Nature had endowed with firm nerves, a faithful heart, and that
touch of recklessness and fatalism which is needed to put the finishing
touch to the courage of an oriental. He loved To’ Râja and all his
house, nor could he be tempted or scared into a denial of his affection
and loyalty. Imâm Prang Sâmah and Khatib Bûjang, both of whom I know
well, are men of a different type. They belong to the weak-kneed
brethren, and they followed Imâm Bakar because they feared him and To’
Râja. They found themselves, to use an emphatic colloquialism, between
the Devil and the Deep Sea, nor had they sufficient originality between
them to suggest a compromise. Thus they imitated Imâm Bakar, repeated
his phrases after him, and, in the end, but narrowly escaped sharing
with him the fate which awaits those who arouse the wrath of a King.
At each interview which these Chieftains had with their monarch, the
latter invariably concluded the conversation by calling upon them to
testify to the faith that was in them.
'Who,' he would ask, 'is your Master, and who is your Chief?'
And the three, led by Imâm Bakar, would make answer with equal
regularity:
'Thou, O Highness, art Master of thy servants, and His Highness To’ Râja
is thy servants' Chief.'
Now, from the point of view of the Bendahâra, this answer was most
foully treasonable. That in speaking to him, the King, they should give
To’ Râja--the vassal he had been at such pains to humble--a royal title
equal to his own, was in itself bad enough. But that, not content with
this outrage, they should decline to acknowledge the Bendahâra as both
Master and Chief was the sorest offence of all. A man may own duty to
any Chief he pleases, until such time as he comes into the presence of
his King, who is the Chief of Chiefs. Then all loyalty to minor
personages must be laid aside, and the Monarch must be acknowledged as
the Master and Lord above all others. But it was just this one thing
that Imâm Bakar was determined not to do, and at each succeeding
interview the anger of the Bendahâra waxed hotter and hotter.
At the last interview of all, and before the fatal question had been
asked and answered, the King spoke with the three Chieftains concerning
the manner of their life in the remote interior, and, turning to Imâm
Bakar, he asked how they of the upper country lived.
'Thy servants live on earth,' replied the Imâm, meaning thereby that
they were tillers of the soil.
When they had once more given the hateful answer to the oft put
question, and had withdrawn in fear and trembling before the King's
anger, the latter called To’ Gâjah to him and said:
'Imâm Bakar and the men his friends told me a moment since that they eat
earth. Verily the Earth will have its revenge, for I foresee that in a
little space the Earth will swallow Imâm Bakar.'
Next day the three recalcitrant Chiefs left Pekan for their homes in the
interior, and, a day or two later, To’ Gâjah, by the Bendahâra's order,
followed them in pursuit. His instructions were to kill all three
without further questionings, should he chance to overtake them before
they reached their homes at Kuâla Tembeling. If, however, they should
win to their homes in safety, they were once more to be asked the fatal
question, and their lives were to depend upon the nature of their
answer. This was done, lest a rising of the Chieftains' relations
should give needless trouble to the King's people; for the clan was not
a small one, and any unprovoked attack upon the villages, in which the
Chieftains lived, would be calculated to give offence.
Imâm Bakar and his friends were punted up the long reaches of the Pahang
river, past the middle country, where the banks are lined with villages
nestling in the palm and fruit trees; past Gûnong Senuyum--the Smiling
Mountain--that great limestone rock, which raises its crest high above
the forest that clothes the plain in which it stands in solitary beauty;
past Lûbok Plang, where in a nameless grave lies the Princess of ancient
story, the legend of whose loveliness alone survives; past Glanggi's
Fort, those gigantic caves which seem to lend some probability to the
tradition that, before they changed to stone, they were once the palace
of a King; and on and on, until, at last, the yellow sandbanks of Pâsir
Tambang came in sight. And close at their heels, though they knew it
not, followed To’ Gâjah and those of the King's Youths who had been
deputed to cover their Master's shame.
At Kuâla Tembeling, where the waters of the river of that name make
common cause with those of the Jelai, and where the united streams first
take the name of Pahang, there lies a broad stretch of sand glistening
in the fierce sunlight. It has been heaped up, during countless
generations, by little tributes from the streams which meet at its feet,
and it is never still. Every flood increases or diminishes its size, and
weaves its restless sands into some new fantastic curve or billow. The
sun which beats upon it bakes the sand almost to boiling point, and the
heat-haze dances above it, like some restless phantom above a grave. And
who shall say that ghosts of the dead and gone do not haunt this
sandbank far away in the heart of the Peninsula? If native report speaks
true, the spot is haunted, for the sand, they say, is 'hard ground' such
as the devils love to dwell upon. Full well may it be so, for Pâsir
Tambang has been the scene of many a cruel tragedy, and could its sands
but speak, what tales would they have to tell us of woe and murder, of
valour and treachery, of shrieking souls torn before their time from
their sheaths of flesh and blood, and of all the savage deeds of this
race of venomous worms
That sting each other here in the dust.
It was on this sandbank that To’ Gâjah and his people pitched their
camp, building a small open house with rude uprights, and thatching it
with palm leaves cut in the neighbouring jungle. To’ Gâjah knew that
Imâm Bakar was the man with whom he really had to deal. Imâm Prang Sâmah
and Khatib Bûjang he rated at their proper worth, and it was to Imâm
Bakar, therefore, that he first sent a message, desiring him once more
to answer as to who was his Master and who his Chief. Imâm Bakar, after
consulting his two friends, once more returned the answer that while he
acknowledged the Bendahâra as his King and his Master, his immediate
Chief was no other than 'His Highness To’ Râja.' That answer sealed his
doom.
On the following day To’ Gâjah sent for Imâm Bakar, and made all things
ready against his coming. To this end he buried his spears and other
arms under the sand within his hut.