In Court and Kampong Part 9

Muda Long and Bayan both desired the same girl, and she, it would seem, preferred the Paroquet to the young Chieftain. Perhaps, his good voice, and the skill with which he sang the Song of the Burong agot, turned the balance in his favour, for Malay women love to be amused, and often favour those who are willing and able to amuse them. The girl was well born, and had many relatives, so To' Muda Long could not make an open scandal by attempting to seize her by force, but his desire for her was hot in his breast, and he decided that Bayan the Paroquet should die.

It only remained to seek a pretext for a quarrel, and this was easily found. In the afternoon the _Raja's_ followers were accustomed to play _sepak raga_,--a game which consists in kicking a round basket-work ball, made of rattan, from one to the other, without letting it fall to the ground. When it became dark, the players adjourned to the _Raja's balai_ or hall, and some of them forgot to let down their trousers, which had been hitched up above their knees to leave their legs free while playing. Bayan was one of the older men among the _Raja's_ followers, and he, therefore, checked these youths; for, to enter a _Raja's balai_ with bared knees is an act of rudeness. To' Muda Long knew the custom, and, of course, his knees were covered, but when Bayan spoke he leapt up and said:

'Arrogant one! Dost thou alone know the custom of kings? Thou art over clever at teaching men!'

And, drawing his _kris_ he made a murderous a.s.sault on Bayan. The latter whipped his _kris_ out, too, and it would have gone ill with To' Muda Long, for Bayan was a strong man and knew the use of his weapon, had not the older men, who were present, interfered to separate the combatants.

Next morning, Bayan arose betimes, and, taking the long bamboos, in which water is stored and carried, he went down to the river to have his morning bath, and to fetch water for his house. He must have attached but little importance to the incident of the previous afternoon, for he went to the river unarmed, which was unusual in those days even for men who had no especial cause of quarrel. A Malay often judges the courage of his fellows by whether or no they are careful to be never separated from their weapons, and Europeans who, in humble imitation of Gordon, prefer to go about unarmed, make a great mistake, since a Malay is apt to interpret such action as being dictated by cowardice. Bayan bathed in the river, filled his bamboos, and began to carry them to his house; but To' Muda Long had been watching his opportunity, and he and two of his followers, all fully armed, had taken up a position in the middle of the path, by which Bayan must pa.s.s back to his house.

'Thou wast over arrogant to me last night,' said To' Muda Long as Bayan approached, 'and now I will repay thee!'

'Have patience, To' Muda, have patience,' said Bayan. 'Thy servant did not speak to thee; it was the boys who were unmannerly, and thy servant, being an old man, did reprove them!'

'It is not for the like of thee to reprove men, and the said boys are my people, the sons of my loins. I will cover their shame!' said To' Muda Long, for the wolf was determined to pick a quarrel with the lamb, bleat he never so wisely.

'Have patience, To' Muda!' again cried poor Bayan, but the words were hardly out of his mouth before To' Muda Long struck at him with his spear, but missed him. Then, as Bayan retreated step by step, defending himself with the clumsy bamboo from the deft spear thrusts, no more words pa.s.sed between them.

At last the spear went home. '_Basah! Basah!_ I have wetted thee!' cried To' Muda Long, and he went in at his enemy, _kris_ in hand, Bayan beating him about the head with the now empty bamboo. When he got to close quarters, the deed was soon done, and the body of Bayan the Paroquet, with seventeen rending wounds upon it, lay stark and hideously staring at the pure morning sky.

There was loud talk of blood-money, and equally loud talk of reprisals, but nothing came of it; and though I often meet To' Muda Long, who is as soft spoken and as gentle in his manners as ever, Bayan's death was never revenged, and the fact that he ever lived and sang is now well-nigh forgotten, even by those who knew him, and loved to hear his tales.

A TALE OF A THEFT

The voice of your complaining At the little ills you know, The crumpled leaf that's paining, At the soil that's yours to sow, At the exile from your caste-mates, At the toil, the sweat, the heat, Bears down our cry against the Fates!

We suff'rers round your feet!

To us the hardest lot you bear, Ere you pa.s.s Home again, Were free and happy, bright and fair, If scaled against _our_ pain.

We toil while others reap the fruit, We suffer nameless ills; Our lives are withered to the root, By cruelty that kills.

Our very homes are not our own; Our children and our wives Are riven from us, while we moan And labour out our lives.

They prison us in filthy sties Would shame your Christian h.e.l.l; No ear there is to heed our cries, No tongue our pains to tell.

_The Very Bitter Cry of the Unprotected._

I have said that the Malays, taken by and large, have no bowels. The story I am about to tell, ill.u.s.trates this somewhat forcibly. The incident related happened on the East Coast, and I know it to be a fact. It is not a pleasant story, and any one who has a proud stomach, would do well not to read it, as it is calculated to make the gorge rise rebelliously.

In one of the States on the East Coast, there lived a _Raja_, who, though he was not the ruler of the country, was a man of standing, and was possessed of considerable power. This man owned much land, many cattle, several wives, and a number of slave-debtors, and his reputation for kindness and good-nature stood high among the people. It must be remembered, however, that the standard by which he was judged differs considerably from our own, otherwise, the things I am about to tell, would appear to accord but ill with the character he bore.

Upon a certain day a _kris_ was stolen from him, and suspicion fastened upon one of his slave-debtors named Talib. The man was innocent of the theft, but his protestations were not believed, and he was forthwith consigned to the _Pen-jara_ or local gaol. The tedious formality of a trial was dispensed with, and nothing in the nature of the sifting of evidence was considered necessary. The stolen _kris_ was the property of a Prince. That was enough; and Talib went to gaol forthwith, the Raja issuing an order--a sort of _lettre de cachet_--for his admittance. To European ears this does not sound very terrible. Miscarriages of justice, even in civilised lands, are not unknown, and in semi-barbarous countries they are, of course, all in the day's march. Unfortunately, however, an inspection of the gaols of Europe and of the Protected Native States, does not enable one to form a picture of the _Pen-jara_ in Independent Malaya; and imprisonment in the former is not altogether the same thing as incarceration in the latter.

The gaol in which Talib was confined was situated in one of the most crowded portions of the native town. It consisted of two rows of cages, placed back to back, each one measuring some six feet in length, two feet in width, and five feet in height. These cages were formed of heavy slabs of wood, with intervals of some two inches in every eight, for the admission of light and air. The floors, which were also made of wooden bars, were raised about six inches from the ground; and the cages, which were twelve in number, were surrounded, at a distance of about two feet, by a solid wall, formed of slabs of wood joined closely one to another.

Prisoners placed in these cells are never allowed to come out again, until the money payment has been made in satisfaction of the claim against them, or until kindly Death puts forth his hand to deliver them from worse pains than his.

Even this represents little to the European mind. Natives may perhaps live in a cage from necessity much as they often live in a boat from choice, and those who have never visited the prisoners in their captivity may think that no great suffering is inflicted upon them by such confinement. To fill in the picture one has to remember many things. No sanitary appliances of any kind are provided; no one ever cleans out the cages, or takes any steps to prevent the condition of the captives from being such as would disgrace that of a wild beast in a small travelling menagerie. The s.p.a.ce between the floor and the ground, and the interval which separates the cells from the surrounding fence, is one seething, living ma.s.s of stinking putrefaction. Here in the tropics, under a brazen sun, all unclean things turn to putrid filthy life within the hour; and in a native gaol the atmosphere is heavy with the fumes and rottenness of the offal of years, and the reeking pungency of offal that is new. No ventilation can penetrate into the fetid airless cells, nor could the veriest hurricane purge the odours bred by such surroundings.

This then was the wretched life to which Talib was now condemned; nor did his agonies end here, for the gnawing pangs of hunger were added to his pains. He was handed over to the gentle care of the _Per-tanda_ or Executioner--an official who, in the Unprotected States, unites the kindly office of life-taker and torturer, with the hardly more humane post of gaoler. This man, like all his fellows, had been chosen for his physical strength, and his indifference to the sight of pain; and the calling, which he had pursued for years, had rendered the natural ferocity of his character abnormally brutal. He was, moreover, an Oriental official,--a cla.s.s of worthies who require more supervision to restrain them from thieving, than do even the Chinese coolies in a gold mine, where the precious metal winks at one in the flickering candle-light. Needless to say, no attempt of any kind was made by the higher State officials to control the action of the _Per-tanda_. During the months of the year in which the river was accessible to native crafts, he had the right to collect dues of rice and fish from all boats approaching the coast; but, during the close season of the north-east monsoon, no allowance of any kind was made to him for the board of the prisoners in his charge. Under these circ.u.mstances, perhaps, he was not greatly to blame if he perverted to his own use, and sold to all comers, the collections which he made during the open season, so that his household might not be without rice and raiment, during the dreary months when the hatches were down for the monsoon. Naturally, death, from slow and lingering starvation, was not an altogether uncommon incident in these dens of captivity, and one of Talib's first experiences was to witness the last agonies of a fellow prisoner in an adjoining cage. Talib himself was fed by a girl, who had been his sweetheart before his trouble fell upon him; and, though the pangs of hunger could not be completely allayed by the slender doles, which she daily saved from her own ration of rice and fish, he was not, for the time, exposed to actual danger of death from want.

The prisoner in the cage to his left was little more than a skeleton when Talib first entered the prison. He lay huddled up in a corner, with his hands pressed to his empty stomach and the sharp angles of his bones peeping through his bed-sores, motionless, miserable, but, let us hope, only half conscious of his misery. Talib saved a small portion of his own insufficient meal for this man, but the poor wretch was already too far gone for any such tardy aid to avail to save him. It was with difficulty that he could swallow the rice which Talib pa.s.sed to him, in grudging handfuls, through the bars of his cell. When at last the food, by a superhuman effort, had been forced down his shrunken gullet, his enfeebled stomach refused to receive it, and violent spasms and vomiting followed, which seemed to rend his stricken frame, as a fierce wind rips through the palm-leaf sail of a native fishing-smack. In a day or two he became wildly delirious, and Talib then witnessed a terrible sight. A raving maniac in a well-ordered asylum, where padded walls and careful tendance do much to save the poor disordered soul from tearing its way through the frail casing of diseased flesh and bone, is a sight to shudder at, not to see! But in the vile cage in which this poor victim was confined, nothing prevented the maddened sufferer from doing himself any injury that it is possible for a demented wretch to do. With the strength of frenzy he dashed his head and body relentlessly against the unyielding bars of the cage. He fell back crushed and bleeding, foaming at the mouth with a b.l.o.o.d.y froth, and making inarticulate beast noises in his throat. Then, as the madness again took hold of him, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat, he flung himself once more at the bars, and, after another fearful paroxysm, fell back inert upon the floor. For hours he lay exhausted, but wildly restless, too spent to struggle and too demented and tortured to be still. He moaned, he groaned, he cursed with horrid filthy words and phrases, bit as a dog bites in his madness, strove to gnaw the loathsome rags which had long ceased to cover his nakedness, and then again was still, save for the incessant rolling of his restless head, and the wilder motion of his eyes which glistened and flashed with fever. Just before dawn, when the chill air was making itself felt even in the fetid atmosphere of the place, his reason came back to him for a s.p.a.ce, and he spoke to Talib in a thin, far-away voice, and with many gasps and sighs and pauses:

'Little Brother,' he said, 'Dost thou also watch? For not long now shall thy elder brother bear these pains. Hast thou any water? I thirst sore. No matter, it is the fate to which I was born. Brother, I stole five dollars from a Chief. I did it because my wife was very fair, and she abused me, saying that I gave her neither ornaments nor raiment. Brother, I was detected. I knew not then that it was my wife who gave the knowledge of my theft to the Chief,--he in whose household I was born and bred. He desired her, and she loved him, and now he has taken her to wife, I being as one already dead, and my wife being legally divorced from me. While she was yet bound to me, she sent to me food, by one of the Chief's slaves, and from him I learned the plot which had undone me. Brother, hast thou any water? I thirst sore, Little Brother. My mouth is hard and rough as the skin of the skate, and it is dry as the fish that has been smoked above the fire.

Hast thou no water? Maimunah! My wife! Water, I pray thee! Water!

Water!--O mother! O mother! O mother of mine! Water, mother! Water! I die! I die! Mother! * * *'

His voice died away into inarticulate moaning, and, in an hour, he was dead.

Next morning his body was carried out for burial, and for a time his cage remained unoccupied.

In the cage on Talib's right, there was a man, so haggard, meagre, filthy, diseased, and brutal in his habits, that it was difficult to believe that he was altogether human. His hair fell in long, tangled, matted, vermin-infested shocks, almost to his waist. His eyes,--two burning pits of fierce fire,--were sunk deep into his yellow, parchment-coloured face. The cheek-bones were so prominent that they resembled the sharp edges of a _seladang's_[11] skull, and his temples stood out like the bosses on the forehead of a fighting ram. The dirt of ages clung in the thousand wrinkles and creases of his skin; and he hardly moved save to scratch himself fiercely, as a monkey tears at his flea-infested hide. A small ration of rice and fish was brought to him daily by an old and wrinkled hag,--his wife of other years,--who made a meagre living for him and for herself, by selling sweet-stuff from door to door. She came to him twice daily, and he tore ravenously at the food, eating it with horrible noises of animal satisfaction, while she cooed at him, through toothless gums, with many endearing terms, such as Malay women use to little children. Not even his misery and degradation had been able to kill her love, though its wretched object had long ceased to understand it, or to recognise her, save as the giver of the food he loved and longed for. He had been ten years in these cages, and had pa.s.sed through the entire range of feeling, of which a captive in a Malay prison is capable. From acute misery to despair, from despair to stupid indifference, he had at length reached the stage which the Malays call _kaleh_. It means insensibility, such as few can imagine or understand, and which is so b.e.s.t.i.a.l, that it reduces a feeling thinking human being to the level of an ape.

[Footnote 11: _Seladang_ = wild buffalo of the Peninsula.]

Talib himself had as yet reached only the first stage of his suffering, and the craving for one breath of fresh air grew and grew and gathered strength, until it became an overmastering longing that day and night cried out to be satisfied. At last he could restrain the desire no longer, and, reckless of the consequences, he told the _Per-tanda_ that, if he could be taken to a place a day's journey up the river, he could set his hand upon the missing _kris_ which he had hidden there. He was perfectly aware that the _kris_ was not, and never had been, buried in that place, for he knew as little of it as the _Per-tanda_ himself. He could forsee that his failure to find it would be followed by worse tortures, but he heeded not. He would breathe the free fresh air once more, would look again up on the clear blue vault of heaven overhead, would hear the murmur of running water, the sighing of the wind through the fruit trees, and would see, smell, hear, and feel, all the sights, the scents, the sounds, and the surroundings that he loved and longed for so keenly.

On a certain day he was taken up river, to the place he had named, but the stinking reek of the cell seemed to cling about him, and the fresh air was to him made foul by it. The search was fruitless of course, he was beaten by the boatmen, who had had their toil for nothing, and sore and bleeding he was placed once more in his hated cage, with the added pain of heavy irons to complete his sufferings. An iron collar was riveted about his neck, and attached by heavy links to chains pa.s.sed about his waist, and to rings around his ankles. The fetters galled him, prevented him from lying at ease in any att.i.tude, and doubled the number of his bed-sores. The filthy bloated flies buzzed around him now in larger numbers, feasting horribly on his rottenness, and he himself was sunk in stupid, wide-eyed despair.

A Chinese lunatic had been placed in the vacant cage on his left, a poor mindless wretch, who cried out to all who visited the prison, that he had become a Muhammadan, vainly hoping thereby to meet with some small pity from the worshippers of Allah, the Merciful, the Compa.s.sionate. The b.e.s.t.i.a.l habits of this wretched creature, whose madness was intensified by his misery, and by his surroundings, made Talib's life more keenly horrible than ever; but he himself was now fast sinking into the stolid, animal indifference of his right-hand neighbour. I saw him, exactly as I have described him, some two years ago, and, unless kindly death has set him free, he has now, I do not doubt, reached the happy condition of _kaleh_.

If the men suffer thus, what are the pains endured by tender women and by little children? It makes one sick to think of it! And yet, all these things happened and are happening to-day, within shouting distance of Singapore, with its churches, and its ballrooms, its societies for the prevention of cruelty, its missionaries, its discontented exiled Europeans, its high standards, its poor practice, its loud talk, and its boasted civilisation.

IN A CAMP OF THE SEMANGS

The paths are rough, the trails are blind The Jungle People tread; The yams are scarce and hard to find With which our folk are fed.

We suffer yet a little s.p.a.ce Until we pa.s.s away, The relics of an ancient race That ne'er has had its day.

_The Song of the Last Semangs._

The night was closing in apace as I and my three Malay companions pushed our way through the underwood which overgrew the narrow wood path. We were marching through the wide jungles of the Upper Perak valley, which are nearer to the centre of the Malay Peninsula than any point to which most men are likely to penetrate. Already the noisy crickets and tree beetles were humming in the boughs above our heads, and the voices of the bird folk had died down one by one until now the monotonous note of the night-jar alone smote upon our ears. The colour was dying out of the leaves and gra.s.ses of the jungle, and all things were a.s.suming a single sombre shade of black, the trees and underwood becoming merged into one monstrous shapeless ma.s.s, bulking big in the gathering darkness.

We had been delayed all day, by constantly going astray on the innumerable faint tracks, which, in this part of the country, begin nowhere in particular, and end nowhere at all. The jungle-dwelling tribes of Semang, who alone inhabit these woods, guard their camps jealously, for, until lately, they were often raided by slave-hunting bands of Malays and Sakai. To this end they do all that woodcraft can suggest to confuse the trails which lead to their camps, making a very maze of footpaths, which serve but as a faint guide to strangers in these forests.

The Semang are the survivors of a very ancient race of negrits, remnants of which are still to be found scattered over Eastern Asia, and may be supposed to be the first family of our human stock that ever possessed these glorious lands. In appearance they are like African negroes seen through the reverse end of a field-gla.s.s. They are sooty black in colour; their hair is short and woolly, clinging to the scalp in little crisp curls; their noses are flat, their lips protrude, and their features are those of the pure negroid type. They are st.u.r.dily built, and well set upon their legs, but they are in stature little better than dwarfs. They live by hunting, and have no permanent dwellings, camping in little family groups, wherever, for the moment, game is most plentiful, or least difficult to come by.

It was a fire from the camp of a band of these little people, which presently showed red in the darkness a few yards away from us, just when we were despairing of finding either a shelter for the night or a meal with which to satisfy the pangs of hunger, that a twelve hours' march had caused to a.s.sail us. We pushed on more rapidly when the gleam of welcome light showed us that men were at hand, and presently we emerged upon a tiny opening in the forest, in the centre of which the Semang camp was pitched. The shelters of these people were rough enough to deserve no better name. They consisted of three or four lean-to huts, formed of plaited palm leaves, propped crazily on rudely trimmed uprights, and round the fire, in the centre of the camp, a dozen squalid aborigines were huddled together. We approached very cautiously, and when I had been seen and recognised, for I was well known in these parts, the sudden panic, which our presence had occasioned, subsided quickly, and we were made free of the encampment and all that it contained.

Hunger is a good sauce, and I ate with a satisfaction which has often been lacking at a dinner table at home, of the rude meal set before me.

A cool green leaf of the wild banana was spread for me, and on it were laid smoking yams and other mealy jungle roots, which fill one, as young turkeys are filled during their rearing; a few fish, fresh caught in the stream and cooked over the fire in the cleft of a split stick, and the meat of some nameless animal--monkey I feared--which had been dried in the sun until it was as hard as a board, eked out the curious meal. I did full justice to the roots and fish, but prudently left the doubtful meat alone, and when the cravings of my hunger were appeased, I began to make advances to my hosts.

First I produced a palm-leaf bag holding about four pounds of coa.r.s.e Chinese rock salt, and bade the Semang gather round and partake. The whole contents of the bag were emptied out on to a leaf with minute care lest one precious grain should be lost, and then the naked aborigines gathered round and feasted. These jungle dwellers lack salt in their daily food, and look upon it as a luxury, much as a child regards the contents of a _bon-bon_ box. With eager fingers they clutched the salt, and conveyed it to their mouths in handfuls. This coa.r.s.e stuff would take the skin off the tongues of most human beings who attempted to eat it in this way, but I suppose that nature gives the Semang the power to take in abnormally large quant.i.ties of salt at one time, because his opportunities of eating it in small daily instalments are few and far between. In an incredibly short time the four pounds of salt had disappeared, and when the leaf had been divided up, and licked in solemn silence, the Chief of the family, an aged, scarred, and deeply wrinkled negrit, turned to me with a sigh and said--

'It is very sweet, this salt that thou hast given us. Hast thou tobacco also, that we may smoke and rest?'