In Court and Kampong Part 4

'He is,' said abas laconically.

'Then make known to him that I would have speech with him.'

'My father is sick,' said abas in a surly tone, and at the word a tremor of excitement ran through Penghulu Mat Saleh's followers.

'What is that patch of blood in the _lalang_ before the house?' asked the Penghulu conversationally, after a short pause.

'We slew a goat yesternight,' replied abas.

'Hast thou the skin, O abas?' asked the Penghulu, 'for I am renewing the faces of my drums, and would fain purchase it.'

'The skin was mangy, and we cast it into the river,' said abas.

'What ails thy father, abas?' asked the Penghulu returning to the charge.

'He is sick,' said suddenly a voice from the curtained doorway, which led to the inner apartment. It was the elder son abdulrahman who spoke.

He held a sword in his hand, and his face wore an ugly look as his words came harshly and gratingly with the foreign accent of the Korinchi people. He went on, still standing, near the doorway, 'He is sick, O Penghulu, and the noise of your words disturbs him. He would slumber and be still. Descend out of the house, he cannot see thee, Penghulu. Listen to these my words!'

abdulrahman's manner, and the words he spoke, were at once so rough and defiant that the Penghulu saw that he must choose between a scuffle, which would mean bloodshed, and a hasty retreat. He was a mild old man, and he drew a monthly salary from the Perak Government. Moreover, he knew that the white men, who guided the destinies of Perak, were averse to bloodshed and homicide, even if the person slain was a wizard, or the son of a wizard. Therefore he decided upon retreat.

As they clambered down the steps of the door-ladder, Mat Tahir, one of the Penghulu's men, plucked him by the sleeve, and pointed to a spot beneath the house. Just below the place, in the inner apartment, where Haji ali might be supposed to lie stretched upon the mat of sickness, the ground was stained a dim red for a s.p.a.ce of several inches in circ.u.mference. Malay floors are made of laths of wood or of bamboo laid parallel to one another, with s.p.a.ces between each one of them. This is convenient, as the whole of the ground beneath the house can thus be used as a slop-pail, waste-basket, and rubbish heap. The red stain lying where it did had the look of blood, blood moreover from some one within the house, whose wound had very recently been washed and dressed.

It might also have been the red juice of the betel-nut, but its stains are but rarely seen in such large patches. Whatever it may have been the Penghulu and his people had no opportunity of examining it more closely, for abdulrahman and abas followed them out of the compound, and barred the door against them.

Then the Penghulu set off to tell his tale to the District Officer, the white man under whose charge the Slim Valley had been placed. He went with many misgivings, for Europeans are sceptical concerning such tales, and when he returned, more or less dissatisfied, some five days later, he found that Haji ali and his sons had disappeared. They had fled down river on a dark night, without a soul being made aware of their intended departure. They had neither stayed to reap their crops, which now stood ripening in the fields; to sell their house and compound, which had been bought with good money,--'dollars of the whitest,' as the Malay phrase has it,--nor yet to collect their debts. This is a fact; and to one who knows the pa.s.sion for wealth and for property, which is to be found in the breast of every Sumatran Malay, it is perhaps the strangest circ.u.mstance of all the weird events, which go to make up the drama of the Were-Tiger of Slim.

There is, to the European mind, only one possible explanation. Haji ali and his sons had been the victims of foul play. They had been killed by the simple villagers of Slim, and a c.o.c.k-and-bull story trumped up to account for their disappearance. This is a very good, and withal a very astute explanation, showing as it does a profound knowledge of human nature, and I should be more than half inclined to accept it as the correct one, but for the fact that Haji ali and his sons turned up in quite another part of the Peninsula some months later. They have nothing out of the way about them to mark them from their fellows, except that Haji ali goes lame on his right leg.

THE AMOK OF DaTO KaYA BiJI DERJA

I have done for ever with all these things, --Deeds that were joyous to knights and kings, In the days that with song were cherish'd.

The songs are ended, the deeds are done, There's none shall gladden me now, not one, There is nothing good for me under the sun, But to perish as these things perish'd.

_The Rhyme of the Joyous Garde._

The average stay-at-home Englishman knows very little about the Malay, and cares less. Any fragmentary ideas that he may have concerning him are, for the most part, vague and hopelessly wrong. When he thinks of him at all, which is not often, he conjures up the figure of a wild-eyed, long-haired, blood-smeared, howling and naked savage, armed with what Tennyson calls the 'cursed Malayan crease,' who spends all his spare time running _amok_. As a matter of fact, _amok_ are not as common as people suppose, but false ideas on the subject, and more especially concerning the reasons which lead a Malay to run _amok_, are not confined to those Europeans who know nothing about the natives of the Peninsula. White men, in the East and out of it, are apt to attribute _amok_ running to madness pure and simple, and, as such, to regard it as a form of disease, to which any Malay is liable, and which is as involuntary on his part as an attack of smallpox. This, I venture to think, is a mistaken view of the matter. It is true that some _amok_ are caused by madness, but such acts are not peculiar to the Malays. Given a lunatic who has arms always within his reach, and the result is likely to be the same, no matter what the land in which he lives, or the race to which he belongs. In independent Malay States everybody goes about armed; and weapons, therefore, are always available. As a consequence, madmen often run _amok_, but such cases are not typical, and do not present any of the characteristic features which distinguish the _amok_ among Malays, from similar acts committed by people of other nationalities. By far the greater number of Malay _amok_ results from a condition of mind which is described in the vernacular by the term _sakit hati_--sickness of liver--that organ, and not the heart, being regarded as the centre of sensibility. The states of feeling which are described by this phrase are numerous, complex, and differ widely in degree, but they all imply some measure of anger, excitement, and mental irritation. A Malay loses something he values; he has a bad night in the gambling houses; some of his property is wantonly damaged; he has a quarrel with one whom he loves; his father dies; or his mistress proves unfaithful; any one of these things causes him 'sickness of liver.' In the year 1888, I spent two nights awake by the side of Raja Haji Hamid, with difficulty restraining him from running _amok_ in the streets of Pekan, because his father had died a natural death in Selangor. He had no quarrel with the people of Pahang, but his 'liver was sick,' and to run _amok_ was, in his opinion, the natural remedy. This is merely one instance of many which might be cited, and serves to ill.u.s.trate my contention that _amok_ is caused, in most cases, by a condition of mind, which may result from either serious or comparatively trivial causes, but which, while it lasts, makes a native weary of life. At such times, he is doubtless to some extent a madman--just as all suicides are more or less insane--but the state of feeling which drives a European to take his own life makes a Malay run _amok_. All Malays have the greatest horror of suicide, and I know of no properly authenticated case in which a male Malay has committed such an act, but I have known several who ran _amok_ when a white man, under similar circ.u.mstances, would not improbably have taken his own life. Often enough something trivial begins the trouble, and, in the heat of the moment, a blow is struck by a man against one whom he holds dear, and the hatred of self which results, causes him to long for death, and to seek it in the only way which occurs to a Malay--namely, by running _amok_. A man who runs _amok_, too, almost always kills his wife. He is anxious to die himself, and he sees no reason why his wife should survive him, and, in a little s.p.a.ce, become the property of some other man. He also frequently destroys his most valued possessions, as they have become useless to him, since he cannot take them with him to that bourne whence no traveller returns. The following story, for the truth of which I can vouch in every particular, ill.u.s.trates all that I have said:

In writing of the natives of the East Coast, I have mentioned that the people of Trengganu are, first and foremost, men of peace. This must be borne in mind in reading what follows, for I doubt whether things could have fallen out as they did in any other Native State, and, at the time when these events occurred, the want of courage and skill shown by the Trengganu people made them the laughing stock of the whole of the East Coast. To this day no Trengganu man likes to be chaffed about the doings of his countrymen at the _amok_ of Biji Derja, and any reference to it, gives as much offence as does the whisper of the magic words 'Rusty buckles' in the ears of the men of a certain cavalry regiment.

When Baginda umar ruled in Trengganu there was a Chief named To' Bentara Haji, who was one of the monarch's adopted sons, and early in the present reign the eldest son of this Chief was given the t.i.tle of Dato'

Kaya Biji Derja. At this, the minds of the good people of Trengganu were not a little exercised, for the t.i.tle is one which it is not usual to confer upon a commoner, and Jusup, the man now selected to bear It, was both young and untried. He was of no particular birth, he possessed no book-learning--such as the Trengganu people love--and was not even skilled in the warrior's lore which is so highly prized by the ruder natives of Pahang. The new To' Kaya was fully sensible of his unfitness for the post, and determined to do all that in him lay to remedy his deficiencies. He probably knew that, as a student, he could never hope to excel; so he set his heart on acquiring the _elemu hulubalang_ or occult sciences, which it behoves a fighting man to possess. In Trengganu there were few warriors to teach him the lore he desired to learn, though he was a pupil of Tungku Long Pendekar, who was skilled in fencing and other kindred arts. At night-time, therefore, he took to haunting graveyards, in the hope that the ghosts of the mighty dead--the warriors of ancient times--would appear to him and instruct him in the sciences which had died with them.

Women are notoriously perverse, and To' Kaya's wife persisted in misunderstanding the motives which kept him abroad far into the night.

She attributed his absences to the blandishments of some unknown lady, and she refused to be pacified by his explanations, just as other wives, in more civilised communities, have obstinately disregarded the excuses of their husbands, when the latter have pleaded that 'business' has detained them.

At length, for the sake of peace and quietness, To' Kaya abandoned his nocturnal prowls among the graves, and settled down to live the orderly domestic life for which he was best fitted, and which he had only temporarily forsaken when the Sultan's ill-advised selection of him to fill a high post, and to bear a great name, had interrupted the even tenor of his ways.

One day, his father, To' Bentara Haji, fell sick, and was removed to the house of one Che' ali, a medicine man of some repute. To' Kaya was a dutiful son, and he paid many visits to his father in his sickness, tending him unceasingly, and consequently he did not return to his home until late at night. I have said that this was an old cause of offence, and angry recriminations pa.s.sed between him and his wife, which were only made more bitter because To' Kaya mistook a stringy piece of egg, in his wife's sweetmeats, for a human hair. To a European, this does not sound a very important matter, but To' Kaya, in common with many Malays, believed that a hair in his food betokened that the dish was poisoned, and he refused to touch it, hinting that his wife desired his death.

Next night he was also absent until a late hour, tending his father in his sickness, and, on his return, his wife again abused him for infidelity to her. He cried to her to unbar the door, which, at length, she did, using many injurious words the while, and he, in his anger, replied that he would shortly have to stab her to teach her better manners.

At this she flew into a perfect fury of rage, 'Hei! Stab then! Stab!'

she cried, and, as she shouted the words, she made a gesture which is the grossest insult that a Malay woman can put upon a man. At this To'

Kaya lost both his head and his temper, and, hardly knowing what he did, he drew his dagger clear and she took the point in her breast, their baby, who was on her arm, being also slightly wounded. Dropping the child upon the verandah, she rushed past her husband, and took refuge in the house of a neighbour named Che' Long. To' Kaya followed her, and cried to those within the house to unbar the door. Che' Long's daughter esah ran to comply with his bidding; but, before she could do so, To'

Kaya had crept under the house, and he stabbed at her savagely through the interstices of the bamboo flooring, wounding her in the hip. The girl's father, hearing the noise, ran out of the house, and was greeted by To' Kaya with a spear thrust in the stomach which doubled him up, and, like Abner Dean of Angel's, 'the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.' Meanwhile, To' Kaya's wife had rushed out of the house, and returned to her home. Her husband pursued her, overtook her on the verandah, and stabbed her through the breast, killing her on the spot.

He then entered his house, which was still tenanted by his son, and his mother-in-law, and set fire to the bed curtains with a box of matches.

Now, the people of Kuala Trengganu dread fire more than anything in the world; for, their houses, which are made of very inflammable material, jostle one another on every foot of available ground. When a Trengganu man deliberately sets fire to his own house, he has reached the highest pitch of desperation, and is 'burning his ships' in sober earnest. At the sight of the flames, To' Kaya's son, a boy of about twelve years of age, made a rush at the curtains, pulled them down, and stamped the fire out. To' Kaya's mother-in-law, meanwhile, had rushed out of the house, seized the baby who still lay on the verandah, and set off at a run. The sight of his mother-in-law in full flight was too much for To' Kaya, who probably owed her many grudges, and he at once gave chase, overtook her, and stabbed her through the shoulder. She, however, succeeded in making good her escape, carrying the baby with her. To' Kaya then returned to his house, whence his son had also fled, and set it afire once more, and this time it blazed up bravely.

As he stood looking at the flames, a Kelantan man named abdul Rahman came up and asked him how the house had caught fire.

'I know not,' said To' Kaya.

'Let us try to save some of the property,' said abdul Rahman, for, like many Kelantan natives, he was a thief by trade, and knew that a fire gave him a good opportunity of practising his profession.

'Good!' said To' Kaya, 'Mount thee into the house, and lift the boxes, while I wait here and receive them.'

Nothing loth, abdul Rahman climbed into the house, and presently appeared with a large box in his arms. As he leaned over the verandah, in the act of handing it down to To' Kaya, the latter stabbed him shrewdly in the vitals, and box and man came to the ground with a crash.

abdul Rahman picked himself up, and ran as far as the big stone mosque, where he collapsed and died. To' Kaya did not pursue him, but stood looking at the leaping flames.

The next man to arrive on the scene was Pa' Pek, a Trengganu native, who, with his wife Ma' Pek, had tended To' Kaya when he was little.

'Wo',' he said, for he spoke to To' Kaya as though the latter was his son, 'Wo', what has caused this fire?'

'I know not,' said To' Kaya.

'Where are thy children, Wo'?' asked Pa' Pek.

'They are still within the house,' said To' Kaya.

'Then suffer me to save them,' said Pa' Pek.

'Do so, Pa' Pek,' said To' Kaya, and, as the old man climbed into the house, he stabbed him in the ribs, and Pa' Pek ran away towards the mosque till he tripped over the prostrate body of abdul Rahman, fell, and eventually died where he lay.

Presently, Ma' Pek came to look for her husband, and asked To' Kaya about the fire, and where the children were.

'They are still in the house,' said To' Kaya, 'but I cannot be bothered to take them out of it.'

'Let me fetch them,' said Ma' Pek.

'Do so, by all means,' said To' Kaya, and, as she scrambled up, he stabbed her as he had done her husband, and she, running away, tripped over the two other bodies, and gave up the ghost.

Then a Trengganu boy named Jusup came up, armed with a spear, and To'

Kaya tried to kill him, but he hid behind a tree. To' Kaya at first emptied his revolver at Jusup, missing with all six chambers, and then, throwing away the pistol, he stabbed at him with his spear, but in the darkness he struck the tree. 'Thou art invulnerable!' he cried, thinking that the tree was Jusup's chest, and, a panic seizing him, he promptly turned and fled. Jusup, meanwhile, made off in the opposite direction as fast as his frightened legs would carry him.

Seeing that he was not pursued, To' Kaya returned, and went to Tungku Long Pendekar's house. At the alarm of fire, all the men in the house--Tungku Long, Tungku itam, Tungku Pa, Tungku Chik, and Che' Mat Tukang--had rushed out, but all of them had gone back again to remove their effects, with the exception of Tungku Long himself, who stood looking at the flames. He was armed with a rattan-work shield, and an ancient and very pliable native sword. As he stood gazing upwards, quite unaware that any trouble, other than that involved by the conflagration, was toward, To' Kaya rushed upon him and stabbed him with his spear in the ribs. For a long time they fought, Tungku Long lashing To' Kaya with his little pliable sword, but only succeeding in bruising him. At length, To' Kaya was wounded in the left hand, and almost at the same moment he struck Tungku Long with such force in the centre of the shield that he knocked him down. He then jumped upon his chest, and, stabbing downwards, as one stabs fish with a spear, pinned him through the neck. Tungku itam, who had been watching the struggle as men watch a c.o.c.k-fight, without taking any part in it, then ran away. To' Kaya pa.s.sed out of the compound, and Che' Mat Tukang, running out of the house, climbed up the fence and threw a spear at To' Kaya, striking him in the back. Che' Mat then very prudently ran away too.