otherwise.
The island covers an area of several thousand acres, but except for
the few wood-cutters it was, at the time I write of, uninhabited. At
one spot there was a hut containing two Chinese, near it a Malay house
with eight or ten men in it, and at no great distance a large shed
with nearly a score of Chinese. One dark night, about 11 P.M., the two
Chinese who lived together were awakened by a noise in that part of the
hut where they kept their food. One of the two got up, struck a light,
and went into the back room. Immediately there was a dull thud, as of
a man knocked heavily down, and the poor wretch screamed, “Help me, it
is a tiger!” His comrade at once got out of his mosquito-curtain, and
sprang to his friend’s assistance. Seizing him by the arm, he tried
to free him from the clutches of the tiger, who already had a firm hold
of the doomed man’s leg. The tug of life and death did not last long,
for the tiger pulled the would-be rescuer down on his face, and, the
light having been extinguished in the struggle, the man’s courage
went out with it, and, in a paroxysm of fear, he climbed on to the
roof. There he remained till daylight, while, close beneath him, within
the narrow limits of the hut, the tiger dragged his victim hither and
thither, snarling and growling, tearing the flesh and crunching the
bones of the man, whose agonies were mercifully hidden. In the grey
light which heralds dawn, the watcher, clinging to the roof-ridge,
saw the tiger drag out of the house and into the forest the shapeless
remains of his late companion. When once the sun was fairly up, the
survivor slid down, and without daring to look inside the hut, made his
way to the nearest Police Station, and reported what had occurred. An
examination of the premises fully bore out his statement.
A week passed. The Malays, whose hut was nearest to that visited by the
tiger, were careful to bar their door after hearing what had happened;
but in this case the precaution proved useless. Easterns, especially
those engaged in severe manual labour, sleep exceedingly heavily, and
the men of this household were aroused by a smothered cry from one of
their number; the noise of a heavy body falling through the thatch
having passed practically unnoticed. One of the party got up, lighted a
torch, and was at once knocked down by a tiger springing upon him. In
a moment every man had seized his heavy chopping-knife, and the whole
party fell upon the man-eater, and, by the light of the fallen torch,
hit so hard and straight that the beast suddenly sprang through the
roof and disappeared. It was then, for the first time, discovered that
this was the means by which the tiger had effected its entrance, and
it left by the hole which it had made on entering the hut. The first
man attacked was dead; the second was taken to hospital, and there died
of his wounds.
There was a fourth victim. I am not certain of the facts in that case,
but he was severely injured and was sent to hospital, where, I believe,
he recovered with the entire loss of his scalp. That filled up the cup
of crime. Almost directly afterwards the murderer killed a bullock;
the carcass was poisoned, and the next day the body of a tigress was
found close by that of her victim. She was not very large, eight feet
from nose to the tip of the tail; she was in splendid condition--teeth
perfect and coat glossy--but her legs and feet were disproportionately
large to the size of her body. On her head there was a deep clean cut,
and one of her fore-legs was gashed, evidently by a Malay chopper. The
most curious feature was that in certainly two out of the three cases
the tigress, who always attacked by night, the only time when the huts
were occupied, effected her entrance by springing on the roof and
forcing her way through the thin palm thatching.
There is another tiger story that I can tell you in two words. It is
curious, it sounds highly improbable; but, after hearing it on the spot
from the two men concerned, I believe it.
Quite recently it was the fruit season here, and, as is customary, two
men were watching an orchard situated on the side of a main cart-road.
The orchard was not enclosed in any way, and the fruit trees on one
side actually overhung the road. The road was divided from the orchard
by a rather wide but quite shallow ditch, that was always dry except
during rain. Fifteen or twenty feet on the inside of this ditch was a
tiny lean-to under the trees. The shelter consisted of a raised floor
of split bamboos, covered by a palm-thatch roof, and a narrow sort of
bench, also under the roof, but level with the floor. The bench was
next to the high road.
On the night of which I write, one man was sleeping on the bench,
the other on the floor of the shelter. It was fine, with a young,
early-setting moon; the scattered houses of a considerable village were
all round, and there was nothing to fear.
I said before that natives sleep soundly, and you must believe it,
or you will never credit my story. About 1 A.M. the man sleeping
on the floor of the shelter heard his friend shouting for help.
The voice came from the ditch by the road, and thither the man
ran, shouting “What is the matter?” “Thieves!” promptly replied
the other, but a moment’s conversation dispelled the idea born
of his partially-awakened intelligence, and led them to the true
interpretation of the riddle. The man in the ditch said then, and
says now, that he was asleep, and knew nothing till he suddenly
found himself thrown in the ditch, when he awoke and shouted, “Help,
thieves!” But, all the same, when he tried to get up, and his friend
helped him to the shelter and got a light, it was seen that he had a
deep gash in the shoulder, which kept him in hospital for nearly three
weeks. The light also showed the track of a tiger up to the bench,
thence to the spot in the ditch where the man was lying, and straight
across the high road into another orchard. One other thing it showed,
and that was a patch of earth on the top of the wounded man’s head.
The friend’s theory, shared by all the neighbours, is this. He points
to the exact position in which the sleeper was lying, and how a post,
from ground to roof, completely protected the back of his neck, so that
the tiger could not seize him as he must have wished to do. Owing to
the man’s position, and the way the post of the house and the rails
of the bench (for it had a sort of back) ran, the tiger had to take
a very awkward grip of his prey, catching him by the shoulder, and
therefore carrying him with his head almost on the ground. Three or
four steps, a second or two in time, would bring him to the shallow,
dry ditch. It was so shallow that he would not jump it, but the
in-and-out of a tiger with a kill would be the equivalent of a jump.
In he would go easily enough, but the cut slope of the ditch and the
slight rise into the road on the other side just saved the man’s
life, for the top of his head hit against the edge of the ditch, and,
awkwardly held as he was, knocked him out of the tiger’s mouth.
Once dropped, the beast would not return to pick his prey up again,
especially with one man shouting and the noise of the other coming to
his assistance.
The tiger is the scourge of the land, the crocodile of the water. They
seem to be complement and supplement--each of the other: the “golden
terror with the ebon bars,” the very embodiment of vitality, sinew,
and muscle--of life that is savage and instant to strike--and the
stony-eyed, spiky-tailed monster, outwardly a lifeless, motionless
log; but, once those pitiless jaws open, it is only a question of what
tooth closes on the victim, whether it be “The last chance,” “Tear the
shroud,” or “God save your soul.”
I was starting for some hot springs in a remote spot, far in the
interior, where I was certain of finding both elephant and rhinoceros,
and the second night of my journey I spent at the junction of two large
streams. Strolling back from a swim in the river, the local chief told
me this pathetic story of fruitless heroism.
The country hereabout is very sparsely peopled, only a few scattered
huts breaking the monotony of the virgin forest, Malays and wild tribes
the sole inhabitants. Every house is on the bank of a river, and beyond
the produce of their rice-fields and orchards the people rely mainly on
the water to supply them with food. The Malay is exceedingly cunning
in devising various means for catching fish, but what he likes best is
to go out in the evening, just at sundown, with a casting-net. Either
he wades about by himself, or, with a boy to steer for him, he creeps
along in a tiny dug-out, throws his net in the deep pools, and usually
dives in after it, to free the meshes from the numerous snags on which
they are sure to become entangled.
One evening, a few days before my arrival, a Malay peasant was netting
in the river accompanied by his son, a boy of twelve years old. They
were wading, and, while the father moved along the edge of the deeper
water under the bank, the boy walked in the shallows out in the stream.
The short twilight passed, and the darkness of night was gathering over
the waters of the wide river, when suddenly the father was startled by
a cry from the boy, and, as he turned, he shuddered to hear the one
word, “crocodile,” come in an agonised scream from the poor child.
Dropping his net, the man swam and stumbled through the shallowing
stream to the boy’s rescue. The child was down, but making frantic,
though hopelessly ineffectual struggles to free himself from the grip
of a crocodile which had him by the knee and thigh. The man was naked,
except for a pair of short trousers; he had no weapon whatever, yet he
threw himself, without hesitation, on the saurian, and with his hands
alone began a struggle with the hideous reptile for the possession of
the boy. The man was on the deep-water side of his foe, determined at
all costs to prevent him from drowning the child; he had seized the
creature from behind, so as to save himself from its claws, and he
tried to find, through darkness and water, the eye-sockets, by which
alone he could hope to reach a vulnerable joint in its impenetrable
harness. The father’s fury and despair guided his hands to the
reptile’s eyes, and pressing his thumbs with all his might on these
points of less resistance, he inflicted such pain that the creature
gave a convulsive spring which threw the man backwards into the
water. But the boy was released, and the saurian retired from the
fight to sulk and blink over his defeat in some dark pool beneath the
overhanging grasses of the river bank.
The man carried the boy on shore, and thence to his home; but the poor
child was so severely injured that, with no skilled surgeon to attend
him, he died after three days of suffering.
XXV
A ROSE AND A MOTH
When I came again to this enchanted mountain, above the steaming
plains, the first thing I did was to wander in the garden, amid the
sweet-smelling blossoms and the bees and butterflies, and feast my eyes
upon the ever-new loveliness of the changeless hills, the changeful sky
and sea, that crowd the prospect with a thousand pictures of infinite
beauty and inspiring grandeur. Then I saw a perfect rose, a rose of
divine, deep colour--betwixt rubies and red wine--of the texture of
finest velvet, and I gathered it. Once, long ago, at least so it seems,
you gave me the fellow of this rose, plucked from the same tree. To me
this flower will always suggest you, for, beyond the association, there
are certain characteristics which you share with it, “dark and true and
tender,” a rare sweetness of perfume and, in the heart of the rose, a
slumbering passion, the like of which will some day wake you to the
joy or the sorrow of life. I have treasured that sweet-scented blossom
as long as it would stay with me; and now, when the petals are falling,
I see that they are the counterpart of three rose-petals that had
travelled from far over sea in a letter from you. They came the bearers
of their own message, and now I seem to read it. Have I been very
dense, or am I only fatuous now? Why can’t they speak, these things
you have touched, or do they speak and I lack understanding? At least
you sent them, and that is much from you. I am grateful, and if I am a
prey to vain imaginings, you will forgive me, and understand that I did
not, presumptuously and with indecent haste, set about the construction
of a castle that, even now, has but my wish for its unsubstantial
foundation.
Last night, this morning rather, for it was between midnight and 1 A.M.,
I was reading that very weird story about a phantom dog. I was deeply
engrossed in the weirdest part of it, when I heard a buzzing noise,
and in a dark corner behind the piano I saw a pair of very strange
eyes approaching and receding. They were like small coals of fire,
extraordinarily brilliant, with a pinkish flame, shedding light as
well as containing it. I realised that they were the eyes of what
looked like a very large moth, whose wings never ceased to move with
marvellous rapidity.
My chair was touching a table on which was a long vase of perfume-laden
lilies, white lilies with yellow hearts, and by-and-by the moth flew
to the flowers and stood, poised in air, before a lily-blossom. There
were two very bright lights on the table, and the creature was within
two feet of me, so I saw it plainly enough. The wings never for an
instant stopped their vibration, and it was so rapid that I could not
tell their form or colour. Once directly opposite the flower, the moth
produced a delicate proboscis, which it inserted into the blossom,
and then slowly pushed it right up the stamen, apparently in search
of honey. When extended, this feeler was of quite abnormal length, at
least two or three inches. What, however, surprised me was that, having
withdrawn the probe (for that was what it looked like, a very fine
steel or wire probe, such as dentists use), the instrument seemed to
go back into the moth’s head, or wherever it came from, to be again
extended to sound the depths of another blossom. There! it is past
midnight, and I hear the buzzing in the next room; here it comes; and
I can examine the creature again. Alas! what a disappointment: this is
a horned beetle. I thought it made over-much noise for my interesting
friend. Now to continue my tale.
I observed the moth had a large, dark, cigar-shaped body, with two
longish _antennæ_, much stouter than the proboscis, and infinitely
shorter. After pursuing its researches into the internal economy of
several lilies, the thing flew into my face, and I ought to have
caught and examined it, for then the feeler had disappeared; but I was
surprised and rather alarmed, and I thought it would return to the
flowers, and I could again watch, and, if necessary, catch it. It made,
however, for a dark corner, and then buzzed about the wooden ceiling
till it came to an iron hook from which hung a basket of ferns. I was
carefully watching it all the time, and at the hook it disappeared, the
buzzing ceased, and I concluded the creature had gone into a hole where
it probably lived. To-day, in daylight, I examined the ceiling all
round the hook, but there was no hole anywhere.
Now is this the beginning of the dog business, and am I to be haunted
by those fiery eyes, by the ceaseless clatter of those buzzing wings,
and the long supple feeler that suggests the tortures of dentistry,
and may probe deep into the recesses of my brain? It can’t, I
think, be liver, for I have not yet learnt on which side of me that
useful organ lies, and it is not drink. If it is only a moth of a
rather uncommon kind, I suppose the fire in its eyes is to light
it through the darkness; but I never before saw a moth going into
raptures over flowers, and I can’t yet understand where it puts
away that instrument of torture, unless it winds it round a bobbin,
inside its head or its body, when not using it. It reminds me of a
man I saw swallowing swords at the Aquarium. I was quite willing to
admire and believe, until he took up a sword, the blade of which, by
outside measurement, stretched from his mouth nearly to his knee, and
swallowed it to the hilt at one gulp. Then I doubted; and the knotty
sticks, umbrellas, and bayonets, which he afterwards disposed of
with consummate ease, only increased my dislike for him. Still this
proboscis is not an umbrella, and though it is about twice as long
as the moth itself, and seems to come out of the end of its nose, I
know so little of the internal arrangements of these creatures that I
dare say this one can, by winding the instrument up like the spring
of a watch, find room for it in its head. Why the thing won’t keep
its wings still, and sit quietly on the petals of the flower while it
thrusts that probe into the lily’s nerve-centres, I can’t imagine.
Then one could examine it quietly, and not go to bed in fear of a
deadly nightmare.
Perhaps, after all, it is the result of reading about that “Thing too
much,” that starving, murderous cur, at 1 A.M.; if it is, I had better
go to bed now, for it has just struck the hour. Am I wrong about the
message of the rose? You see how hard I try to do your bidding.
XXVI
A LOVE-PHILTRE
There is, to me, something strangely attractive about Muhammadan
prayers, especially those fixed for the hour of sunset. Time and
again I have gone in with the Faithful, when the priest chants the
_mu’azzin_, and I have sat by and been deeply impressed by the
extraordinary reverence of the worshippers, while eye and ear have
been captivated by the picturesque figures against their colourful
background, the wonderfully musical intoning of the priest, and the
not less harmonious responses. I do not pretend that this oft-repeated
laudation of God’s name, this adoration by deep sonorous words and by
every bodily attitude that can convey profound worship, would appeal to
others as it does to me, even when I have to guess at the exact meaning
of prayers whose general import needs no interpretation.
The fifth hour of prayer follows closely on that fixed for sundown,
and the interval is filled up by singing hymns of praise led by the
priest, or by telling, and listening to, stories of olden times. Of
Eastern places the Malay Peninsula had special attractions for me, and
the few European travellers I met there, and who, like myself, were not
bound to a programme, seemed equally fascinated. Most of them either
prolonged their stay, or determined to return for a longer visit.
It is difficult to say exactly wherein lies the spell, but there
are beauties of scenery, the undoubted charm of the people (as
distinguished from other Easterns), and the sense of mystery, of
exclusiveness, of unspoilt nature and undescribed life, that arouse a
new interest in the wearied children of the West. It is pleasant to
get at something which is not to be found in any encyclopædia, and
it is, above all, gratifying to obtain knowledge direct and at the
fountain-head. This is why I often return, in thought, to the narrow
land that lies between two storm-swept seas, itself more free from
violent convulsions than almost any other. There, is perpetual summer;
no volcanoes, no earthquakes, no cyclones. Even the violence of the
monsoons, that lash the China Sea and the Indian Ocean into periodical
fury, is largely spent before it reaches the unprotected seaboards of
the richly dowered peninsula.
Forgive this digression. I was sitting with the Faithful, and the first
evening prayer was over. The brief twilight was fast deepening into
night. The teacher excused himself, and the disciples pushed themselves
across the floor till they could sit with their backs against the wall,
leaving two rows of prayer-carpets to occupy the middle of the room. I
had asked some question which, in a roundabout way, led to the telling
of this tale.
“I remember all about it,” said a man, sitting in the corner; “he was
a stranger, a man of Sumatra, called Nakhôdah Ma’win, and he gave the
girl a love-potion that drove her mad. He was a trader from Bâtu Bâra,
and he had been selling the famous silks of his country in the villages
up our river. Having exhausted his stock and collected his money,
he embarked in his boat and made his way to the mouth of the river.
Every boat going to sea had to take water on board, and there were two
places where you could get it; one was at Teluk Bâtu on our coast, and
the other was on an island hard by. But, in those days, the strait
between the coast and the island was a favourite haunt of pirates,
and Nakhôdah Ma’win made for Teluk Bâtu to get his supply of fresh
water. He was in no hurry, a week or a month then made no difference;
so he first called on the chief of the place, a man of importance,
styled Toh Permâtang, and then he began to think about getting the
water. Now it happened that Toh Permâtang had four daughters, and the
youngest but one, a girl called Ra’ûnah, was very beautiful. When
there is a girl of uncommon beauty in a place, people talk about it,
and no doubt the Nakhôdah, idling about, heard the report and managed
to get sight of Ra’ûnah. At once he fell in love with her, and set
about thinking how he could win her, though she was already promised
in marriage to another. These Sumatra people know other things besides
making silks and daggers, and Nakhôdah Ma’win had a love-philtre of
the most potent kind. It was made from the tears of the sea-woman whom
we call _dûyong_. I know the creature. I have seen it. It is bigger
than a man, and something like a porpoise. It comes out of the sea to
eat grass, and, if you lie in wait for it, you can catch it and take
the tears. Some people eat the flesh, it is red like the flesh of a
buffalo; and the tears are red, and if you mix them with rice they
make the rice red; at least, people say so. Anyhow, Nakhôdah Ma’win
had the philtre, and he got an old woman to needle the way for him,
as one always does, and she managed to mix the dûyong’s tears with
Ra’ûnah’s rice, and, when the girl had eaten it, she was mad with
love for the Nakhôdah. He stayed at Teluk Bâtu for a month, making
excuses, but all to be with Ra’ûnah; and he saw her every day--with
the help of the old woman, of course. You can’t go on like that
for long without some one suspecting something, and, though I never
heard for certain that there was anything really wrong, the girl was
mad and reckless, and the Nakhôdah took fright. She was a chief’s
daughter, while he was a trader and a stranger, and he knew they would
kill him without an instant’s hesitation if Toh Permâtang so much as
suspected what was going on. Therefore, having got the water on board,
the Nakhôdah put to sea, saying nothing to any one. In a little place
people talk of little things, and some one said, in the hearing of
Ra’ûnah, that the Bâtu Bâra trader had sailed away. With a cry of
agony the girl dashed from the house, her sisters after her; and seeing
the boat sailing away, but still at no great distance, for there was
little breeze, she rushed into the sea and made frantic efforts to
tear herself from the restraining arms of her sisters, who could barely
prevent her from drowning herself. At the noise of all this uproar a
number of men ran down to the shore, and, when they saw and heard what
was the matter, they shouted to the Nakhôdah to put back again. He knew
better than to thrust his neck into the noose, and, though they pursued
his boat, they failed to catch him.
“When Ra’ûnah saw that she could not get to her lover, and that each
moment was carrying him farther away, she cried to him to return, and
bursting into sobs, she bemoaned her abandonment, and told her tale of
love in words of endearment and despair that passed into a song, which
to this day is known as Ra’ûnah’s Lament.
“Yes, I can remember the verses, and will repeat them if it does not
weary you. The Nakhôdah never returned.
“‘Oh, shelter! my dear shelter! the palm stands in the plain.
The fruit of the nutmeg falls to the ground and lies there.
Thine is thy sister, small but comely,
Thy diamond! the light of Permâtang Guntong.
Oh, my shelter! I hear the measured splash of the oars;
I see the drift-weed caught in the rudder.
Thou art above, my protecting shelter;
I am beneath, in lowly worship.
Oh, my shelter! ’twas the hour of evening prayer when thou
settest sail;
The oars are straining and the boat reels along.
God’s mercy is great, His promise sure;
By His blessing we shall meet in the Garden of Paradise.