"So died my ancestor one hundred years later. I will tell you of it,
that you may write his name in your histories by the side of the name
of the murdered Sultan of Mexico."
The eyes of the little man flashed, and he looked squarely into mine
for the first time. Possibly he may have detected a smile on my face,
at the thought of placing this leader of a band of pirates side by
side in history with the once ruler of the richest empire in the New
World, for he paused in the midst of his narrative and said rapidly:--
"Must I tell you what your own writers tell of the rulers of our
country, to make you credit my tale? It is all here," he said,
pointing to his head. "Everything that relates to my home I know. King
Emmanuel of Portugal wrote to his High Kadi at Rome, that his general,
the cruel Albuquerque, had sailed to the Aurea Chersonese, called
by the natives Malacca, and found an enormous city of twenty-five
thousand houses, that abounded in spices, gold, pearls, and precious
stones. Was Montezuma's capital greater?" he triumphantly asked.
"It was as great then as Singapore is today. Albuquerque captured it,
and built a fortress at the mouth of the river, making the walls
fifteen feet thick, all from the ruins of our mosques. This was
in 1513."
"Forgive me," I said hastily, "if I have seemed to cast doubt on the
relative importance of your country."
There was a Malay kampong, or village, to our right. Under the
heavy green and yellow fronds of a cocoanut grove were a half-dozen
picturesque palm-thatched houses. They were built up on posts six
feet from the ground, and a dozen men and children scampered down
their rickety ladders, as a shrill blast from our whistle aroused
them from their slumbers. Pressed against the wooden bars of their
low, narrow windows, we could make out the comely, brown faces
of the women. The punghulo, or chief, walked sedately out to the
beach, and touched his forehead to the ground as he recognized his
superior. The sunlight broke through the enwrapping cocoanuts, and
brought out dazzling white splotches on the sandy floor before the
houses. We passed a little space of wiry lallang grass, which was
waving in the faint breeze, and radiating long, irregular lines of
heat, that under our glasses resembled the marking of watered silk,
and were once more abreast the green walls of the impenetrable jungle.
"The Dato Mamat captured a Portuguese ship within a man's voice from
the harbor of Malacca. On it was the foreign Governor's daughter. She
was dark, almost as dark as my people. Her eyes were black as night,
with long, drooping lashes, and her hair fell about her shapely neck,
a mass of waving curls. She was tall and stately, and her bearing was
haughty. The mighty Laksamana, who had fought a hundred battles, and
had a hundred wives picked from the princesses of the kingdom,--for
there were none so noble but felt honored in his smiles,--loved this
dark-skinned foreigner. It was pitiful!
"His great fleet, which was to have swept the very name of the
Portuguese from the face of the earth, lay idle before the harbor. Its
captains were burning with ambition, but the Admiral would not give
the command, and they dare not disobey.
"Day after day went by while the great man hung like a pariah dog
on the words of his haughty captive. She scorned his words of love,
laughed at his prayers, and sneered at his devotion. Day after day the
sun beat down on the burnished decks of the war praus. Night after
night the evening gun in the besieged fort sent forth its mocking
challenge: still the Dato made no motion. Oh, but it was pitiful! One
by one the praus slipped away,--first those from Acheen, and then
those from Johore,--but the valiant Laksamana saw them not. He was
blind to all save one. Then she spoke: 'If thou lovest me as thou
boastest, and would win my smiles, send me to my father; then go
and bring me of this gold of Ophir,--for the Dato had laid his heart
bare before her,--enough to sink yon boat. The daughter of a Braganza
does not unite herself with a pauper. When the moon is full again,
I will expect you.'
"So did the Laksamana, to the everlasting shame of Islam. When the
moon was full he returned in his shining prau before the walls of
Malacca, He brought from Ophir, of gold more than enough; of the
pearls of Ceylon he brought a chupah full to the brim. He robbed
his great palace, that he might lay at the feet of the Portuguese a
fortune such as Solomon only ever saw. And yet the captains of his
fleet cared not for the gold, so long as the mighty Dato saved his
honor. When he left for the quay, on which stood the Governor, his
daughter, and the priests of their religion, they said not a word,
for he passed by with averted face; but each man grasped the jewelled
handle of his kris, and swore to Allah under his breath that should
but one hair of the mighty Admiral's head be lacking when he returned,
they would cut the false heart from the woman and feed it to the dogs.
"So spoke the captains; but ere the breath had passed their lips their
chief was a prisoner, and the guns from the fort hurled defiance at
the betrayed.
"It was pitiful! Allah was avenged.
"Fiercely raged the battle, and when there was a breach in the walls,
and the captain besar had ordered the attack, the Portuguese held
the mighty Laksamana over the walls, and reviled the allied fleets
with words of derision.
"Not one moved, and all was still. Suddenly the Admiral raised his
head, and gazed out and down at his followers. Then he spoke, and the
sound of his voice reached far out to the most distant prau that lay
becalmed within the shadow of casuarina-shaded Puli.
"'Allah il Allah, I have sinned, and I must die. No more shall my
name be known in the land. I am no longer laksamana; neither am I a
dato. Allah is just. Tuan Allah Suka!'
"A foreigner smote him in the mouth, and a great cry arose from
without the walls.
"The war went on; but day after day did the Governor send a message
to the Laksamana in the dungeon. 'Reveal the spot where thy gold is
hidden, and thy life and liberty are granted.'
"Day by day the Dato replied, 'My life is a pollution in the nostrils
of Allah. Take it.'
"So they laid the great chief on the stones of his cell, bound hand
and foot, and one by one did they break the joints of his toes,
his fingers, and then the joints of his legs and arms. When they had
finished, and he still lived, the woman came to him and mocked him,
but the Admiral closed his eyes and prayed. 'O Allah, the all-merciful
and the loving kind, forgive me for my erring heart. Thou knowest that
it goes out to this woman still. Let not my country suffer for my
deeds. I gave unto thy servant Solomon of the gold that has made us
great. If thou canst, thou wilt whisper the secret of our nation to
one of thy chosen people, that they may have means whereby to fight
thy battles.'
"And then the woman raised her hand, and with one stroke of the axe an
attendant severed from his body the head of the once mighty Laksamana
of the fleets of Johore, Acheen and Maur.
"So died the secret of Ophir. So fell Malacca forever into the hands
of the foreigner."
The Tuan Hakim's voice trembled as he closed. During the tragic recital
he had dropped into the soft, melodious chant of his nation. At times
he would lapse into Malay, and the boatmen would push forward and
listen with unconcealed excitement. Then, as he returned to English,
they would drop back into their places, but never take their eyes off
the face of the speaker. Only our China "boys" took no interest in
the past of Maur. It was tiffin time, and they were anxious to set
before us our lunch of rice curry, gula Malacca, whiskey and soda.
The sun was directly above us, and the fierce, steely glare of the
Malayan sky and water dazzled our eyes. Mount Ophir looked as far
ahead as ever. The winding course of the river seemed at times to
take us directly away from it.
Just as we had finished our meal, and had lighted our manilas, the
steersman turned the little launch sharply about, and headed directly
for the shore. In a moment we had shot under and through the deep
fringe of mangrove trees, and had emerged into the jungle. On all
sides the trees rose, columnar and straight, and the ground was firm,
although densely covered with ferns and vines.
The launch stopped, and the chief turned to me. "Now for the climb. We
have thirty miles to the base of the mountain. We will push on ten
miles, and spend the night at a Malay village. The next day we will
try and reach the base of the mountain."
I looked about me. We might have been surrounded by prison walls,
for all hope there seemed to be of our getting an inch into the jungle.
Our servants gathered up our rather extensive impedimenta, and sprang
into the water. We were forced to follow suit, and begin our day's
march with wet feet. A few steps up the stream we came upon an old
elephant track and plunged boldly in,--and it was in! For three
miles we labored through a series of the most elaborate mud-holes
that I have ever seen. The elephants in breaking a path through the
jungle are extremely timid in their boldness. The second one always
steps in the footprints of the first. Year after year it is the same,
until in course of time the path is marked by a series of pitfalls,
often two feet in depth; and as it rains nearly every day they become
a seething, slimy paste of mud.
Our heavy cloth shoes and stockings did not protect us from the
attacks of innumerable leeches; for when we at last reached an open
bit of forest and sat down to rest, we found dozens of them attached
to our legs and even on our bodies. They were small, and beautifully
marked with stripes of bright yellow.
It was twilight when we neared the welcome kampong. We had sent a
runner ahead to notify the punghulo of our arrival, and as we finished
our struggle with the last thorny rattan, and tripped over the last
rubber-vine, we could hear the shouting of men and the barking of
dogs. Evidently we were expected.
The kampong might have been any other in the kingdom, and the little
old weazened punghulo, who came bowing and smiling forward, might
have been at the head of any one of a hundred other kampongs,--they
were all so much alike. A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under a
cocoanut grove, all facing toward a central plaza; a score of dogs for
each bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls scratching and wallowing
beneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children playing with a rattan
ball within the light of a central fire,--made up the details of a
little picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar to
me within the last three years.
Our servants at once set about preparing supper before the fire,
while we for politeness' sake compounded a mouthful of betel-nut and
syrah leaf from the punghulo's state box.
The next morning we set out for our twenty miles' tramp, along a narrow
jungle path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom my
companion had retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was a
long, tiresome journey, and we were heartily glad when it was ended,
and we were encamped on the rocky banks of a fern-hid stream.
Twice during our day's march had we crossed deep, ragged depressions in
the earth, which were overgrown with a jungle that seemed to be coequal
in age with the surrounding trees. We did not pause to examine them,
although our natives pointed them out with the expressive word mas
(gold). We promised to do that at a later date. On the border of the
creek I found some gold-bearing rock, and while the Tuan Hakim was
engaged in securing some superb specimens of the great atlas moth,
I sat down and crushed some fragments of it, and obtained enough gold
to satisfy me that the rock would run four ounces to the ton.
It was a beautiful night. We lay under our mosquito netting, and gazed
up through the interlacing branches of the trees at the star-strewn
sky, and smoked our manilas in weary content. The long, full "coo-ee"
of the stealthy argus pheasant sounded at intervals in distant parts
of the forest. It might have been the call of the orang-utan, or the
wild hillmen of the country, for they have imitated the call of this
most glorious of birds.
The shrill, never ceasing whir of the cicada hardly attracted our
attention; while the whistle and crash of a monkey that was inspecting
us from his perch among the trees above caused me to peer upward,
in hopes of catching a glimpse of his grayish outlines.
I had not had an opportunity of asking my companion for the details
of his tragic story. I turned to him, and found him watching me
attentively. "Were you listening to the call of the coo-ee?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered.
"It is the queen of birds. I will get you one. I have never shot
one. They only come out at night, and then only to disappear, but we
can trap them. It will die in captivity. That is why Solomon could
not keep them, and sent for new ones every three years."
"What became of the woman?" I asked.
"The body of the Laksamana was thrown over the walls by the
Portuguese," he said moodily. "It was embalmed and laid away. Two
months from that day the woman was walking outside the walls. The war
was over. There was no more gold. Three of my people sprang upon her
and the Portuguese she was to marry." He paused for a moment and looked
up at the stars, then went on in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. "They
were lashed to the headless body of the man they had murdered, and
thrown into the royal tiger-cage, by order of his Highness, Ali,
Sultan of Maur."
I raised my curtain and threw the stub of my cigar out into the
darkness, a smothered exclamation of horror escaping my lips.
"It was the will of Allah. Good night."
It was nearly nine o'clock the next morning before we started. Our
Malays had gone on at daybreak, to cut a path up the base of the
mountain to where the open forest began.
We ascended steadily up a moderate slope for several miles, keeping
the ravine on our left. It was comparatively easy work after we had
left the jungle behind. After crossing a level plateau we once more
found ourselves in a forest so dense that our men had to use their
parangs again. The heat of the jungle was intense, and we suffered
severely from the stings of a fly that is not unlike a cicada in shape.
From the jungle we emerged into an immense stone field,--padang-batu,
the Malays called it. It extended along the mountain side as far
as we could see, in places quite bare, at others deeply fissured
and covered with a most luxuriant vegetation. We tramped at times
waist deep through ferns, some green, some dark red, and some lined
with yellow, clumps of the splendid Dipteris Horsfieldi and Matonia
pectinala, with their slender stems and wide-spreading palmate fronds
towering two feet above our heads. The delicate maidenhair lay like a
rich carpet beneath our feet, while hundreds of magnificent climbing
pitcher-plants doused us with water as we knocked against them. Our
sympiesometer showed us that we were twenty-eight hundred feet above
the sea.
Beyond the padang-batu we entered a forest of almost Alpine character,
dwarfed and stunted. For several hours we worked along ridges,
descended into valleys, and ascended almost precipitous ledges, until
we finally reached a peak that was separated from the true mountain
by a deep, forbidding canon.
Several of the older men of the party gave out, and we were forced
to leave them with half our baggage and what water was left: there
was a spring, they told us, near the summit.
The scramble down the one side of the canon, and up the other, was a
hard hour's work. Its rocky, almost perpendicular sides were covered
with a bushy vegetation on top of a foundation of mosses and dead
leaves, so that it afforded us more hindrance than help.
Just below the summit we came to where a projecting rock gave us
shelter, and a natural basin contained flowing water. Dropping my load,
and hardly waiting to catch my breath, I was on my way up the fifty
feet that lay between us and the top. In another moment I had mounted
the small, rocky, rhododendron-covered platform, and stood, the first
of my party, on the summit of Mount Ophir. The little American flag
that I had brought with me I waved frantically above my head, much
to the amusement of my attendants.
Four thousand feet below, to the east, stretched the silver sheen of
the Indian Ocean. The smoke of a passing steamer lay like a dark stain
on the blue and white of the sky. Close into the shore was the little
capital town of Bander Maharani, connecting itself with us by a long,
snake-like ribbon of shimmering light,--the great river Maur.
To the north and west successive ranges of hill and valley, divided
by the glistening river, and all covered by an interminable jungle
of vivid green, fell away until lost in the cloudless horizon.
For a moment I stood and gazed out over the vast expanse that lay
before me, my mind filled with the wild, unwritten poetry of its
jungles and its people; then I turned to my companion.
"It is beautiful!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"But not equal to the view from our own Mount Washington."
"Then why take so much trouble to secure it? Mount Pulei is as high,
and there is a good road to its top."