With strips from my torn jacket
I bound my arm and thigh,
And I headed back o’er the leafy track
With hope and spirits high.
And as I sped with leaping heart
All Nature seemed to sing;
And my legs ran red where trickling bled
The head of the Jungle King.
The purring tree-tops called me--
The fleecy clouds rolled by--
And the forest green was a sun-shot sheen,
And the sky was a laughing sky.
And only night could halt me,
And the stars in their proud parade,
They bade me look to the path before
That led to the kampong maid.
Bleeding and torn, spent and worn,
At last I reached the hill,
Whence each hearth-light in the falling night
Was a welcome bright and still.
For each hearth-light in the falling night
Cut clear through the growing gloam--
Of all brave things the best that brings
The weary Wanderer home.
But the waiting watchers spied me,
And met me as I ran;
And they saw the head of the chieftain,
And they hailed me man and man.
But through the heart-whole greetings
I felt the anxious gaze,
And over my brain like a pall was lain
The weight of the Doubter’s craze.
And I begged them to tell me quickly--
For I quailed at the story stayed--
And I asked them if aught had happened
To the head of the kampong maid.
And there in the leafy gloaming--
Where the stars lit one by one,
They told me the tale at my homing--
And I felt the passions run--
Hate as the white-hot flame jet--
Shame as the burning bar--
Grief as the poisoned arrow--
Revenge as the salted scar:
Rankling--roaring--blinding--
Rising and ebbing low;
Till overhead the skies burst red,
And I tottered beneath the blow.
For they told of a White Man’s coming,
And the weapon that carries far;
And his love for the Maid--but over it laid
The hush of the falling star.
Faithlessness--treachery--cunning--
Weakness and love and fear--
Oh very old was the tale they told,
Though born year by year.
And I drew my blade and I leapt away--
But they sprang and held me fast:
And they promised me there by the dead chief’s hair,
My hate should be filled to the last.
And they showed me him bound and knotted
To the base of a splintered tree,
Stripped to the sun and spat upon
And taunted--awaiting me.
And I saw _her_ in the shadows--
But ... I might not know her, then--
A sneer for the kampong women--
And a jest for the kampong men.
* * * * *
And thus in the days of my strength and pride,
From over the distant sea,
The White Man came in his open shame
And stole my love from me.
V
The next morn at the rising sun
The tom-toms roared their fill,
And echoed like rolling thunder
From hill to farthest hill.
And the birds of the jungle fluttered
And lifted and soared away,
And we dragged the fettered prisoner forth
To blink at the blinding day.
Full length and naked on the ground
We staked him foot and hand,
And we laughed in glee as we watched to see
The pest of the jungle-land.
Oh we laughed in glee as we watched to see
The little leeches swing,
End on end till they reached the flesh
Of the prostrate, struggling Thing.
Like river flies in the summer rains
They covered the White Man o’er--
Body and legs and arms and face,
Till the whole was a bleeding sore.
And the red streams ran from the crusted pools
And crimsoned the leafy ground,
And the scent of gore but brought the more
As the smell of game to the hound.
Hour by hour I watched him die,
Slowly day by day,
Hour by hour I watched the flesh
Sinking and turning gray:
Hour by hour I heard him shriek
To the skies and the White Man’s God--
But only the gluttons came again
And reddened the reeking sod.
Weeping, writhing, groaning--
Paled to an ashen dun--
And the clotted blood turned black as mud
And stunk in the midday sun.
(Bones where stretched the tautening flesh--
A shining, yellow sheen--
And the flies that helped the leeches work
In the stagnant pools between.)
* * * * *
Till the fourth day broke in a blaze of gold--
And I knew the end was nigh--
And I called the tribes from near and far,
To watch the White Man die.
From every kampong of the south
Where the broad Barito winds--
From every kampong of the east
The murmuring hill-wind finds--
From every kampong of the west
Where the Djoeloi falls and leaps--
From every kampong of the north
Where the great Mohakkam sweeps--
From east and west and south and north
The mighty warriors came,
To prove the weight of the Dyak hate
And the shame of the naked shame.
In noiseless scorn and wonder
They scanned the victim there,
Except that when an Elder spake
To mock at his despair.
Or when from out the long-house--
Where loosened footboards creaked--
A woman leaned in frenzy
And tore her hair and shrieked.
And from the wooded hill-tops
The answering echoes came,
Till all our far-flung wilderness
Stooped down to curse his name.
In sullen, savage silence
They watched the streamlets flow:
In savage, sullen silence--
The war-lords--row on row--
Ranged around by rank and years,
Oh goodly was the sight,
Square shouldered--spare--with muscles bare
Coiled in their knotted might--
And little serpent eyes that gleamed
In glittering, primal hate,
Like adders, that beneath the leaves
The coming foot falls wait.
The shrunken heads about their belts
Stared with senseless grin,
As though in voiceless mummery
They mocked him in his sin.
As though in sightless greeting--
To make his entry good
To th’ lost and leering legion
Of the martyred brotherhood.
* * * * *
We rubbed his lips with costly salt--
(You know how far it comes)--
And when he called for drink--we laughed--
And rolled the Sick-man’s Drums.
* * * * *
They beckoned me unto his side--
The blood-stench filled the dell--
They asked me--“Ye are satisfied?”
And I answered--“It is well.”
The final glaze was settling fast--
The weary struggles ceased--
And on his breath was the moan of death
That prayed for life released.
So we propped his mouth wide open
With a knob of rotten vine,
And the leeches entered greedily
As white men to their wine.
Palate and roof and tongue and gums,
They gushed in rivers gay--
And gasping--his own blood choked him--
And his Spirit passed away.
_This is the tale the old chief tells
When the western gold-belt dies,
And the jungle trees in the evening breeze
Tower against the skies,
And the good-wife bakes the greasy cakes
Where the kampong hearth-fires rise._