My Malay syce came close up to the veranda and touched his brown
forehead with the back of his open hand.
"Tuan" (Lord), he said, "have got oil for harness, two one-half
cents; black oil for cudah's (horse) feet, three cents; oil, one cent
one-half for bits; oil, seven cents for cretah (carriage). Fourteen
cents, Tuan."
I put my hands into the pockets of my white duck jacket and drew out
a roll of big Borneo coppers.
The syce counted out the desired amount, and handed back what was left
through the bamboo chicks, or curtains, that reduced the blinding
glare of the sky to a soft, translucent gray. I closed my eyes and
stretched back in my long chair, wondering vaguely at the occasion
that called for such an outlay in oils, when I heard once more the
quiet, insistent "Tuan!" I opened my eyes.
"No got red, white, blue ribbon for whip."
"Sudah chukup!" (Stop talking) I commanded angrily. The syce shrugged
his bare shoulders and gave a hitch to his cotton sarong.
"Tuan, to-morrow New Year Day. Tuan, mem (lady) drive to
Esplanade. Governor, general, all white tuans and mems there. Tuan
Consul's carriage not nice. Shall syce buy ribbons?"
"Yes," I answered, tossing him the rest of the coppers, "and get a
new one for your arm."
I had forgotten for the moment that it was the 31st of December. The
syce touched his hand to his forehead and salaamed.
Through the spaces of the protecting chicks I caught glimpses of
my Malay kebun, or gardener, squatting on his bare feet, with his
bare knees drawn up under his armpits, hacking with a heavy knife at
the short grass. The mottled crotons, the yellow allamanda and pink
hibiscus bushes, the clump of Eucharist lilies, the great trailing
masses of orchids that hung among the red flowers of the stately
flamboyant tree by the green hedge, joined to make me forget the
midwinter date on the calendar. The time seemed in my half-dream July
in New York or August in Washington.
Ah Minga, the "boy" in flowing pantalets and stiffly starched blouse,
came silently along the wide veranda, with a cup of tea and a plate
of opened mangosteens. I roused myself, and the dreams of sleighbells
and ice on window-panes, that had been fleeting through my mind at
the first mention of New Year's Day by the syce, vanished.
Ah Minga, too, mentioned, as he placed the cool, pellucid globes
before me, "To-mollow New Year Dlay, Tuan!"
On Christmas Day, Ah Minga had presented the mistress with the gilded
counterfeit presentment of a Joss. The servants, one and all, from Zim,
the cookee, to the wretched Kling dhobie (wash-man), had brought some
little remembrance of their Christian master's great holiday.
In respecting our customs, they had taken occasion to establish one of
their own. They had adopted New Year's as the day when their masters
should return their presents and good will in solid cash.
At midnight we were awakened by a regular Fourth of July
pandemonium. Whistles from the factories, salvos from Fort Canning,
bells from the churches, Chinese tom-toms, Malay horns, rent the
air from that hour until dawn with all the discords of the Orient
and a few from Europe. By daylight the thousands of natives from all
quarters of the peninsula and neighboring islands had gathered along
the broad Ocean Esplanade of Singapore in front of the Cricket Club
House, to take part in or watch the native sports by land and sea.
The inevitable Chinaman was there, the Kling, the Madrasman, the Sikh,
the Arab, the Jew, the Chitty, or Indian money-lender,--they were all
there, many times multiplied, unconsciously furnishing a background
of extraordinary variety and picturesqueness.
At ten o'clock the favored representatives of the Anglo-Saxon race
took their place on the great veranda of the Cricket Club, and gave
the signal that we would condescend to be amused for ten hours. Then
the show commenced. There were not over two hundred white people to
represent law and civilization amid the teeming native population.
In the centre of the beautiful esplanade or playground rose the heroic
statue of Sir Stamford Raffles, the English governor who made Singapore
possible. To my right, on the veranda, stood a modest, gray-haired
little man who cleared the seas of piracy and insured Singapore's
commercial ascendency, Sir Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak. A little
farther on, surrounded by a brilliant suite of Malay princes, was
the Sultan of Johore, whose father sold the island of Singapore to
the British.
The first of the sports was a series of foot-races between Malay and
Kling boys, almost invariably won by the Malays, who are the North
American Indians of Malaysia--the old-time kings of the soil. They are
never, like the Chinese, mere beasts of burden, or great merchants,
nor do they descend to petty trade, like the Indians or Bengalese. If
they must work they become horsemen.
Next came a jockey race, in which a dozen long-limbed Malays took
each a five-year-old child astride his shoulders, and raced for
seventy-five yards. There were sack-races and greased-pole climbing
and pig-catching.
Now came a singular contest--an eating match. Two dozen little Malay,
Kling, Tamil, and Chinese boys were seated at regular intervals about
an open circle by one of the governor's aids. Not one could touch the
others in any way. Each had a dry, hard ship-biscuit before him. A
pistol shot and two dozen pairs of little brown fists went pit-a-pat
on the two dozen hard biscuits, and in an instant the crackers were
broken to powder.
Then commenced the difficult task of forcing the powdered pulp down
the little throats. Both hands were called into full play during the
operation, one for crowding in, the other for grinding the residue
and patting the stomach and throat. Each little competitor would shyly
rub into the warm earth, or hide away in the folds of his many-colored
sarong, as much as possible, or when a rival was looking the other way,
would snap a good-sized piece across to him.
The little brown fellow who won the fifty-cent piece by finishing
his biscuit first simply put into his mouth a certain quantity of the
crushed biscuit, and with little or no mastication pushed the whole
mass down his throat by sheer force.
The minute the contest was decided, all the participants, and
many other boys, rushed to a great tub of molasses to duck for
half-dollars. One after another their heads would disappear into
the sticky, blinding mass, as they fished with their teeth for the
shining prizes at the bottom.
Successful or otherwise, after their powers were exhausted they would
suddenly pull out their heads, reeking with the molasses, and make
for the ocean, unmindful of the crowds of natives in holiday attire
who blocked their way.
Then came a jinrikisha race, with Chinese coolies pulling Malay
passengers around a half-mile course. Letting go the handles of their
wagons as they crossed the line, the coolies threw their unfortunate
passengers over backward.
Tugs of war, wrestling matches, and boxing bouts on the turf finished
the land sports, and we all adjourned to the yachts to witness those
of the sea. There were races between men-of-war cutters, European
yachts, rowing shells, Chinese sampans, and Malay colehs with great,
dart-like sails, so wide-spreading that ropes were attached to the
top of the masts, and a dozen naked natives hung far out over the
side of the slender boat to keep it from blowing over. In making the
circle of the harbor they would spring from side to side of the boat,
sometimes lost to our view in the spray, often missing their footholds,
and dragging through the tepid water.
Between times, while watching the races, we amused ourselves
throwing coppers to a fleet of native boys in small dugouts beneath
our bows. Every time a penny dropped into the water, a dozen little
bronze forms would flash in the sunlight, and nine times out of ten
the coin never reached the bottom.
Last of all came the trooping of the English colors on the magnificent
esplanade, within the shadow of the cathedral; the march past of the
sturdy British artillery and engineers, with their native allies, the
Sikhs and Sepoys; then the feu-de-joie, and New Year's was officially
recognized by the guns of the fort.
That night we danced at Government House,--we exiles of the Temperate
Zone,--keeping up to the last the fiction that New Year's Day under
a tropic sky and within sound of the tiger's wail was really January
first. But every remembrance and association was, in our homesick
thoughts, grouped about an open arch fire, with the sharp, crisp
creak of sleigh-runners outside, in a frozen land fourteen thousand
miles away.