THE FLIGHT OF CHÊP, THE BIRD

In a large Sâkai camp on the Jĕlai river, at a point some miles above the last of the scattered Malay villages, the annual Harvest Home was being held one autumn night in the Year of Grace 1893. The occasion of the feast was the same as that which all tillers of the soil are wont to celebrate with bucolic rejoicings, and the name, which I have applied to it, calls up in the mind of the exile many a well-loved scene in the quiet country land at Home. Again he sees the loaded farm carts labouring over the grass or rolling down the leafy lanes, again the smell of the hay is in his nostrils, and the soft English gloaming is stealing over the land. The more or less intoxicated reapers astride upon the load exchange their barbarous badinage with those who follow on foot; the pleasant glow of health, that follows upon a long day of hard work in the open air, warms the blood; and in the eyes of all is the light of expectation, born of a memory of the good red meat, and the lashings of sound ale and sour cider, awaiting them at the farmhouse two miles across the meadows.

But in the distant Sâkai country the Harvest Home has little in common with such scenes as these. The pâdi planted in the clearing, hard by the spot in which the camp is pitched, has been reaped painfully and laboriously in the native fashion, each ripe ear being severed from its stalk separately and by hand. Then, after many days, the grain has at last been stored in the big bark boxes, under cover of the palm leaf thatch, and the Sâkai women, who have already performed the lion's share of the work, are set to husk some portions of it for the evening meal. This they do with clumsy wooden pestles, held as they stand erect round a sort of trough, the ding-dong-ding of the pounders carrying far and wide through the forest, and, at the sound, all wanderers from the camp turn their faces homeward with the eagerness born of empty stomachs and the prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo, for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from the liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by that name in the sweltering tropics, and the cooked grain is eaten ravenously, and in incredible quantities by the hungry, squalid creatures in a Sâkai camp. These poor wretches know that, in a day or two, the Malays will come up stream to 'barter' with them, and that the priceless rice will be taken from them, almost by force, in exchange for a few axe-heads and native wood knives. Therefore, the Sâkai eat while there is yet time, and while distended stomachs will still bear the strain of a few additional mouthfuls.

Thus is the harvest home supper devoured in a Sâkai camp, with gluttony and beast noises of satisfaction, while the darkness is falling over the land; but, when the meal has been completed, the sleep of repletion may not fall upon the people. The Spirits of the Woods and of the Streams, and the Demons of the grain must be thanked for their gifts, and propitiated for such evil as has been done them. The forests have been felled to make the clearing, the crop has been reaped, and the rice stored by the tribe. Clearly the Spirits stand in need of comfort for the loss they have sustained, and the Sâkai customs provide for such emergencies. The house of the Chief or the Medicine Man—the largest hut in the camp—is filled to the roof with the sodden green growths of the jungle. The Sâkai have trespassed on the domains of the Spirits, and now the Demons of the Woods are invited to share the dwellings of men. Then, when night has fallen, the Sâkai, men, women, and little children, creep into the house, stark naked and entirely unarmed, and sitting huddled together in the darkness, under the shelter of the leaves and branches with which the place is crammed, raise their voices in a weird chant, which peals skyward till the dawn has come again.

No man can say how ancient is this custom, nor yet the beginnings in which it had its origin. Does it date back to a period when huts and garments, even of bark, were newly acquired things, and when the Sâkai suffered both ungladly after the manner of all wild jungle creatures? Did they, in those days, cast aside their bark loin clothes, and revel once more in pristine nakedness, and in the green things of the forest, on all occasions of rejoicing? We can only speculate, and none can tell us whether we guess aright. But year after year, in a hundred camps throughout the broad Sâkai country, the same ceremony is performed, and the same ancient chant goes up through the still night air, on the day which marks the bringing home of the harvest. The Malays call this practice bĕr-jĕrmun, because they trace a not altogether fanciful resemblance between the sheds stuffed with jungle and the jĕrmun or nest-like huts which wild boars construct for their shelter and comfort. But although the Malays, as a race, despise the Sâkai, and all their heathenish ways, on the occasion of which I write, Kria, a man of their nation, was present, and taking an active part in the demon-worship of the Infidels.

What was he doing here, in the remote Sâkai camp, herding naked among the green stuff with the chanting jungle people? He was a Malay of the Malays, a Muhammadan, who, in his sane moments, hated all who prayed to devils, or bowed down to stocks and stones, but, for the moment, he was mad. He had come up stream a few weeks before to barter with the forest dwellers, and the flashing glance from a pair of bright eyes, set in the pale yellow face of a slender Sâkai girl, had blinded him, and bereft him of reason. Life no longer seemed to hold anything of good for him unless Chêp, the Bird, as her people called her, might be his. In the abstract he despised the Sâkai as heartily as ever, but, for the sake of this girl, he smothered his feelings, dwelt among her people as one of themselves, losing thereby the last atom of his self-respect, and finally consented to risk his soul's salvation by joining in their superstitious ceremonies. Yet all this sacrifice had hitherto been unavailing, for Chêp was the wife of a Sâkai named Ku-îsh, or the Porcupine, who guarded her jealously, and gave Kria no opportunity of prosecuting his intimacy with the girl.

On her side, she had quickly divined that Kria had fallen a victim to her charms, and, as he was younger than Ku-îsh, richer, and, moreover, a Malay, a man of a superior race, she was both pleased and flattered. No one who knows what a Sâkai's life is, nor of the purely haphazard manner in which they are allowed to grow up, would dream of looking for principle in a Sâkai woman, or would expect her to resist a temptation. The idea of right and wrong, as we understand it, never probably occurred to Chêp, and all she waited for was a fitting time at which to elope with her Malay lover.

Their chance came on the night of the Harvest Home. In the darkness Kria crept close to Chêp, and, when the chant was at its loudest, he whispered in her ear that his dug-out lay ready by the river bank, and that he loved her. Together they stole out of the hut, unobserved by the Sâkai folk, who sang and grovelled in the darkness. The boat was found, and the lovers, stepping into it, pushed noiselessly out into the stream. The river at this point runs furiously over a sloping bed of shingle, and the roar of its waters soon drowned the splashing of the paddles. Chêp held the steering oar, and Kria, squatting in the bows, propelled the boat with quick strong strokes. Thus they journeyed on in silence, save for an occasional word of endearment from one to the other, until the dawn had broken, and a few hours later they found themselves at the Malay village at which Kria lived. They had come down on a half freshet, and that, in the far upper country, where the streams tear over their pebbly or rocky beds through the gorges formed by the high banks, means travelling at a rushing headlong pace. When the fugitives finally halted at Kria's home, fifty miles separated them from the Sâkai camp, and they felt themselves safe from pursuit.

To understand this, you must realise what the Sâkai of the interior is. Men of his race who have lived for years surrounded by Malay villages are as different from him, as the fallow-deer in an English park from the Sambhur of the jungles. Sâkai who have spent all their lives among Malays, who have learned to wear clothes, and to count up to ten, or may be twenty, are hardly to be distinguished from their neighbours, the other ignorant up country natives. They are not afraid to wander through the villages, they do not rush into the jungle or hide behind trees at the approach of strangers, a water-buffalo does not inspire them with as much terror as a tiger, and they do not hesitate to make, comparatively speaking, long journeys from their homes if occasion requires. In all this they differ widely from the semi-wild Sâkai of the centre of the Peninsula. These men trade with the Malays, it is true, but the trade has to be carried on by visitors who penetrate into the Sâkai country for the purpose. Most of them have learned to speak Malay, though many know only their own primitive language, and when their three numerals, na-nu, nar, and nê—one, two, and three—have been used, fall back for further expression of arithmetical ideas on the word Kĕrpn, which means 'many.' For clothes they wear, the narrow loin cloth, fashioned from the bark of certain trees, which only partially covers their nakedness; they are as shy as the beasts of the forest, and never willingly do they quit that portion of the country which is still exclusively inhabited by the aboriginal tribes. It was to semi-wild Sâkai such as these that Chêp and her people belonged.

There are tribes of other and more savage jungle-dwellers living in the forests of the broad Sâkai country, men who fly to the jungles even when approached by the tamer tribesmen. Their camps may be seen, on a clear day, far up the hillsides on the jungle-covered uplands of the remote interior; their tracks are occasionally to be met with mixed with those of the bison and the rhinoceros, the deer and the wild swine, but the people themselves are but rarely encountered. The tamer Sâkai trade with them, depositing the articles of barter at certain spots in the forest, whence they are removed by the wild men and replaced by various kinds of jungle produce. Of these, the most valued are the long straight reeds, found only in the most distant fastnesses of the forest, which are used by the tamer tribes to form the inner casing of their blow-pipes.

Chêp had the traditions of her people, and her great love for Kria had alone served to nerve her to leave her tribe, and the forest country that she knew. A great fear fell upon her when, the familiar jungles being left far behind, she found herself floating down stream through cluster after cluster of straggling Malay villages. The knowledge that Kria was at hand to protect her tended to reassure her, but the instinct of her race was strong upon her, and her heart beat violently, like that of some wild bird held in a human hand. All her life the Malays, who preyed upon her people, had been spoken of with fear and terror by the simple Sâkai at night time round the fires in their squalid camps. Now she found herself alone in the very heart—so it seemed to her—of the Malay country. Kria, while he lived among her people as one of themselves, had seemed to her merely a superior kind of Sâkai. Now she realised that he was in truth a Malay, one of the dominant foreign race, and her spirit sank within her. None the less, it never occurred to her to fear pursuit. She knew how much her tribesmen dreaded the Malays, and how strongly averse they were to quitting the forest lands with which they were familiar, and Kria, who had recently acquired a considerable knowledge of the Sâkai ways and customs, felt as confident as she.

So Chêp and her lover halted at the latter's village, and took up their abode in his house. The girl was delighted with her new home, which, in her eyes, seemed a veritable palace, when compared with the miserable dwelling places of her own people; and the number and variety of the cooking pots, and the large stock of household stores filled her woman's soul with delight. Also, Kria was kind to her, and she eat good boiled rice daily, which was a new and a pleasant experience. Sooner or later the importunate longing for the jungle, which is born in the hearts of all forest dwellers, would rise up and drive her back to her own people, but of this she knew nothing, and for the time she was happy.

In the Sâkai camp it was not until day had dawned that the demon-worshippers, looking at one another through heavy sleepless eyes, set in pallid faces, among the draggled greenery in the house, noted that two of their number were missing. The quick sight of the jungle people soon spied the trail of a man and a woman, and, following it, they crowded down to the place where the boat had been moored. Here they squatted on the ground and began to smoke. 'Rĕj-ă-rŏj!'—'She is lost!'—they said laconically, in the barbarous jargon of the jungle people, and then relapsed into silence.

'May they be devoured by a tiger!' snarled Ku-îsh, the Porcupine, deep down in his throat, and, at the word, all his hearers shuddered. The curse is the most dreadful that the jungle people know, and if you shared your home with the great cats, as they do, you would regard it with equal fear and respect. Ku-îsh said little more, but he went back to the camp and unslung an exceedingly ancient match-lock, which hung from a beam of the roof in the Chief's hut. It was the only gun in the camp, and was the most precious possession of the tribe, but no man asked him what he was doing, or tried to stay him when he presently plunged into the jungle heading down stream.

Two days later, in the cool of the afternoon, Kria left Chêp in the house busy with the evening's rice, and, accompanied by a small boy, his son by a former marriage, he went to seek for fish in one of the swamps at the back of the village. These marshy places, which are to be found in the neighbourhood of many Malay Kampongs, are ready-made rice fields, but since the cultivation of a pâdi swamp requires more exacting labour than most Malays are prepared to bestow upon it, they are often left to lie fallow, while crops are grown in clearings on the neighbouring hills. In dry weather the cracked, parched earth, upon which no vegetation sprouts, alone marks the places which, in the rainy season, are pools of stagnant water, but so sure as there is a pond, there also are the little muddy fish which the Malays call rûan and sĕpat. Where they vanish to when the water in which they live is licked up by the sunrays, or how they support life during a long season of drought, no man clearly knows, but it is believed that they burrow deep into the earth, and live in the moist mud underfoot until better times come with the heavy tropic rain.

Kria carried two long jôran, or native fishing rods, over his shoulder, and his little naked son pattered along at his heels, holding a tin containing bait in his tiny hands. The boy crooned to himself, after the manner of native children, but his father walked along in silence. Arrived at the swamp, which was now a broad pool of water, with here and there a tuft of rank rushes showing above the surface, Kria and his child each took a rod and began patiently angling for the little fish. The sun crept lower and lower down the western sky, till its slanting rays painted the surface of the pool to the crimson hue of blood. The clouds were dyed with a thousand gorgeous tints, and the soft light of the sunset hour mellowed all the land. Kria had seen the same sight many a hundred times before, and he looked on it with the utter indifference to the beauties of nature, which is one of the least attractive characteristics of Malays. If the reddened pool at his feet suggested anything to him, it was only that the day was waning, and that it was time to be wending his way homeward.

He began to gather up his fishing tackle, while his son, squatting on the ground, passed a rattan cord through the fishes' gills to their mouths, so that the take might be carried with greater ease. While they were so engaged, a slight rustle in the high grass behind them caused both father and son to start and look round. Not a breath of wind was blowing, but, none the less, a few feet away from them, the tops of the grass moved slightly, as though the stalks were brushed against by the passage of some wild animal.

'Hasten, little one,' said Kria, uneasily; 'it is a tiger.'

But, as he spoke the words, the grass was parted by human hands, and Kria found himself looking into the wild and angry eyes of Ku-îsh, the Porcupine, along the length of an ancient gun barrel. He had time to note the rust upon the dulled metal, the fantastic shape of the clumsy sight, and the blue tatoo marks on the nose and forehead of his enemy. All these things he saw mechanically, in an instant of time, but before he had moved hand or foot the world seemed to break in fragments around him, to the sound of a furious deafening explosion, and he lay dead upon the sward with his skull shattered to atoms, and the bloody, mucous strings of brain flecking the fresh green grass.

At the sight, Kria's son fled screaming along the edge of the pool, but Ku-îsh's blood was up, and he started in pursuit. The child threw himself down in the long grass, and, raising his little arms above his cowering head, shrieked for mercy in his pure shrill treble voice. Ku-îsh, for answer, plunged his spear again and again through the little writhing body, and, at the second blow, the expression of horror and fear faded from the tender rounded face, and was replaced by that look of perfect rest and peace which is only to be seen in the countenance of a sleeping child.

Ku-îsh gathered up the fish, and took all the tobacco he could find on Kria's body, for a Sâkai rarely loses sight completely of those cravings of appetite, which, with him, are never wholly satisfied. Then, when the darkness had shut down over the land, he crept to Kria's house, and bade Chêp follow him. She came without a word, for women whose ancestors have been slaves for generations have very little will of their own. She wept furtively when Ku-îsh told her, in a few passionless sentences, that he had killed Kria and his son, and she bewailed herself aloud when, at their first halting-place, she received the severe chastisement, which Ku-îsh dealt out to her with no grudging hand, as her share in the general punishment. But, when the thrashing was over, she followed him meekly, with the tears still wet upon her cheeks, making no attempt to escape. Thus Ku-îsh, the Porcupine, and Chêp, the Bird, made their way through the strange forests, until they had once more regained the familiar Sâkai country, and were safe among their own people.

Pursuit into such a place is impossible, for a Sâkai comes and goes like a shadow, and can efface himself utterly when he desires to do so. Thus, though Kria's relatives clamoured for vengeance, little could be done. I was myself at that time in charge of the district in which these things occurred, and it was only by the most solemn promises that no evil should befall them, that I induced the various Sâkai chiefs to meet me near the limits of their country. My request that Ku-îsh should be handed over for trial was received by the assembled elders as a demand which was manifestly ridiculous. Ku-îsh was in the jungle, and they knew that pursuit would be useless, unless his own people aided in the chase. This they were determined not to do, and I, being bound by promises not to harm the Chiefs, was powerless to force them to come to my assistance.

At length, a very aged man, the principal headman present, a wrinkled old savage, scarred by encounters with wild beasts, and mottled with skin disease and dirt, lifted up his voice and spoke, shaking his straggling mop of frowsy grizzled hair in time to the words he uttered.

'There is a custom, Tûan, when such things occur. The Porcupine has killed the Gob (Malay), and our tribe must repay sevenfold. Seven lives for a life. It is the custom.'

The proposal sounded generous, and I was inclined to jump at it, until, on inquiry, I discovered what the ancient chief really intended. His suggestion was that the blood-money should take the form of seven human beings, who were to be duly delivered to the relations of the murdered man as slaves. These seven creatures were not to be members of his or Ku-îsh's tribe, but were to be captured by them from among the really wild people of the hills, who had had no share in the ill-doing which it was my object to punish. The Porcupine and his brethren, he explained, would run some risk, and be put to a considerable amount of trouble, before the seven wild men could be caught, and this was to be the measure of their punishment. The old Chief went on to tell me that the wild Sâkai only pursued a raiding party until they came to a spot where a spear had been left sticking upright in the ground. This custom, he said, was well known to the marauders, who took care to avail themselves of it, so soon as their captives had been secured. My informant said that the wild men would never venture past a spear left in this manner, but he was unable to explain the reason, and did not profess to understand the superstition with which this spear is probably connected in the minds of the jungle dwellers.

Blood-money in past times, I was assured both by Malays and Sâkai, had always been paid in this manner by the semi-wild tribes of the interior. It was the custom, and Kria's relatives were eager in their prayers to me to accept the proposal. Instead, I exacted a heavy fine of jungle produce from the tribe to which Ku-îsh, the Porcupine, belonged, and thus I gave complete dissatisfaction to all parties concerned. The Sâkai disliked the decision because they found the fine more difficult to pay, while the Malays thought the blood-money paid hopelessly inadequate, when compared with the value of seven slaves. But, as the Indian Proverb says, 'an order is an order until one is strong enough to disobey it.' Therefore the fine was paid by the Sâkai and accepted by the Malays with grumblings, of which I only heard the echoes.

So ends the story of the Flight of Chêp, the Bird, and of the deed whereby Ku-îsh, the Porcupine, cleansed his honour from the shame that had been put upon him. The murder was a brutal act, savagely done, and the ruthless manner in which the Porcupine killed the little defenceless child, who had done no evil to him or his, makes one's blood boil. None the less, when one remembers the heavy debt of vengeance, for long years of grinding cruelty and wicked wrong, which the Sâkai owes to the Malay, one can find it in one's heart to forgive much that he may do when the savage lust of blood is upon him, and when, for a space, his enemies of the hated race are delivered into his hand.

THE VAULTING AMBITION

When the Portuguese Filibusters descended upon the Peninsula, they employed—so says the native tradition—the time-worn stratagem of the Pious Æneas; and, having obtained, by purchase, as much land as could be enclosed by the hide of a bull, from the Sultân of Malacca, they cut the skin up into such cunning strips that a space large enough to build a formidable fort was won by them. This they erected in the very heart of the capital, which, at that time, was the head and front of the Malay Kingdoms of the Peninsula. Thence they speedily overran the State of Malacca, and, though the secret of making gunpowder, and rude match-locks, was known to the Malays, native skill and valour was of no avail when opposed to the discipline and the bravery of the mail-clad Europeans. Thus, the country was soon subdued, and, in 1511, Sultân Muhammad, with most of his relations and a few faithful followers, fled to Pahang, which, at that time, was a dependency of Malacca. Here he founded a new Dynasty, his descendants assuming the title of Bĕndăhâra, and doing homage and owing allegiance to the Sultân of Daik, whose kingdom, in its turn, has since fallen to the portion of the Dutch.

The people of Pahang were ever lawless, warlike folk, and the Malacca Râjas, who seem to have been a mild enough set of people while in their own country, speedily caught the infection from their surroundings. Thus, from one generation to another, various rival claimants to the throne strove for the mastery during successive centuries. The land was always more or less on the rack of civil war, and so to-day the largest State in the Peninsula carries a population of only some four human beings to the square mile.

War was lulled, and peace fell upon Pahang when Bĕndahâra Äli, the father of the present Sultân, came to the throne; but, when he died in his palace among the cocoa-nut trees, across the river opposite to the Pĕkan of to-day, civil war broke out once more with redoubled fury. During the years that he was a fugitive from the land of his birth, Che’ Wan Âhmad, who now bears the high-sounding title of Sultân Âhmad Maätham, Shah of Pahang, made numerous efforts to seize the throne from his brother and nephew, but it was not until the fifth attempt that he was finally successful.

During one of those pauses which occurred in the war game, when Âhmad had once more been driven into exile, and his brother's son Bĕndăhâra Korish reigned in Pahang, the ambitions of Wan Bong of Jĕlai brought him who had cherished them to an untimely and ignoble death.

The Jĕlai valley has, from time immemorial, been ruled over by a race of Chiefs, who, though they are regarded by the other natives of Pahang as ranking merely as nobles, are treated by the people of their own district with semi-royal honours. The Chief of the Clan, the Dâto’ Mahrâja Pĕrba Jĕlai, commonly known as To’ Râja, is addressed as Ungku, which means 'Your Highness,' by his own people. Homage too is done to him by them, hands being lifted up in salutation, with the palms pressed together, as in the attitude of Christian prayer, but the tips of the thumbs are not suffered to ascend beyond the base of the chin. In saluting a real Râja, the hands are carried higher and higher, according to the prince's rank, until, for the Sultân, the tips of the thumbs are on a level with the forehead. Little details, such as these, are of immense importance in the eyes of the Malays, and not without reason, seeing that, in an Independent Native State, many a man has come by his death for carelessness in their observance. A wrongly given salute may raise the ire of a Râja, which is no pleasant thing to encounter; or if it flatter him by giving him more than his due, the fact may be whispered in the ears of his superiors, who will not be slow to resent the usurpation and to punish the delinquent.

At the time of which I write, the then To’ Râja of Jĕlai was an aged man, cursed by the possession of many sons, arrogant folk, who loved war. The eldest, the most arrogant, the most warlike, the most ambitious, and the most evil of these, was Wan Bong. He, the people of the Jĕlai called Che’ Âki, which means 'Sir Father,' because he was the heir of their Dâto’, or Chief, which word in the vernacular literally means a grandfather. He was a man of about thirty-five years of age, of a handsome presence, and an aristocratic bearing. He wore his fine black hair long, so that it hung about his waist, and he dressed with the profusion of coloured silks, and went armed with the priceless weapons, that are only to be seen in perfection on the person of a Malay prince. Into the mind of this man there entered, on a certain day, an idea at once daring and original. Ever since the death of Bĕndăhâra Äli, nearly a decade earlier, Pahang had been racked by war and rumours of war, and, wherever men congregated, tales were told of the brave deeds done by the rival Râjas, each of whom was seeking to win the throne for himself and for his posterity. It was the memory of these things that probably suggested his project to Wan Bong. Che’ Wan Âhmad had fled the country after his last defeat, and Bĕndăhâre Korish, with his sons Che’ Wan Âhman, and Che’ Wan Da, ruled at Pĕkan. To none of the latter did Wan Bong cherish any feeling but hatred, and it occurred to him that now, while they were still suffering from the effects of their fierce struggle with Che’ Wan Âhmad, it would be possible, by a bold stroke, to upset their dynasty, and to secure the broad valleys of Pahang as an inheritance for his father, To’ Râja, for himself, and for their heirs for ever.

Every man in Pahang was, at that time, a soldier; and the people of Jĕlai and Lĭpis were among the most warlike of the inhabitants of the country. All the people of the interior followed Wan Bong like sheep, and he speedily found himself at the head of a following of many thousands of men. For a noble to rise up against his sovereign, with the object of placing his own family upon the throne, was an altogether unheard of thing among the natives of the Peninsula; but the very originality of Wan Bong's plan served to impress the people with the probability of its success. The Râjas at Pĕkan were very far away, while Wan Bong, with unlimited power in his hands, was at their very doors. Therefore the natives of the upper country had no hesitation in selecting the side to which it was most politic for them to adhere.

Wan Bong installed his father as Bĕndăhâra of Pahang with much state, and many ceremonial observances. All the insignia of royalty were hastily fashioned by the goldsmiths of Pĕnjum, and, whenever To’ Râja or Wan Bong appeared in public, they were accompanied by pages bearing betel boxes, swords, and silken umbrellas, as is the manner of Malay kings.

To’ Râja remained in his village of Bûkit Bĕtong, on the banks of the Jĕlai river, and Wan Bong, with his army, speedily conquered the whole of Pahang as far as Kuâla Sĕmantan. Thus more than half the country was his, almost without a struggle; and Wan Bong, flustered with victory, returned up river to receive the congratulations of his friends, leaving Pănglîma Râja Sĕbîdi, his principal General, in charge of the conquered districts.

The Râjas at Pĕkan, however, were meanwhile mustering their men, and, when Wan Bong reached Kuâla Tĕmbĕling, he received the unwelcome intelligence that his forces had fallen back some sixty miles to Tanjong Gâtal, before an army under the command of Che’ Wan Âhman and Che’ Wan Da. At Tanjong Gâtal a battle was fought, and the royal forces were routed with great slaughter, as casualties are reckoned in Malay warfare, nearly a score of men being killed. But Che’ Wan Âhman knew that many Pahang battles had been won without the aid of gunpowder or bullets, or even kris and spear. He sent secretly to Pănglîma Râja Sĭbîdi, and, by promises of favours to come, and by gifts of no small value, he had but little difficulty in persuading him to turn traitor. The Pănglîma was engaged in a war against the ruler of the country, the Khalîfah, the earthly representative of the Prophet on Pahang soil, and the feeling that he was thus warring against God, as well as against man, probably made him the more ready to enrich himself by making peace with the princes to whom he rightly owed allegiance. Be this how it may, certain it is that Pănglîma Râja Sĕbîdi went to Wan Bong, where he lay camped at Kuâla Tĕmbĕling, and assured him that after the defeat at Tanjong Gâtal, the royal forces had dispersed, and that the Pĕkan Râjas were now in full flight.

'Pahang is now thine, O Prince!' he concluded, 'so be pleased to return to the Jĕlai, and I, thy servant, will keep watch and ward over the conquered land, until such time as thou bringest thy father with thee, to sit upon the throne which thy valour has won for him, and for his seed for ever!'

So Wan Bong set off on a triumphal progress up river to Bûkit Bĕtong, disbanding his army as he went. But scarcely had he reached his home, than he learned, to his dismay, that Che’ Wan Âhman and Che’ Wan Da, with a large force, were only a few miles behind him at Bâtu Nĕring. Pănglîma Râja Sĭbîdi, with all his people, had made common cause with the enemy, whose ranks were further swelled by the very men who had so lately been disbanded by Wan Bong on his journey up river. The Pĕkan Râjas had carefully collected them man by man as they followed in the wake of the dispersing army, and Wan Bong thus found himself deprived, in an instant, not only of all that he had believed himself to have won, but even of such poor following as had been his in the days before his ambitious schemes were hatched.

But before the royal forces began their invasion of the upper country, it became evident to them that Che’ Jahya, the Chief who had been left in charge of the Tĕmbĕling River by Wan Bong, must be disposed of. This man had followed Wan Bong's fortunes from the first, and it was known in the royal camp that no attempt to buy his loyalty would be likely to prove successful. Wan Bong had started up the Jĕlai on his triumphal progress, and it was important that no news should reach him, that might cause him to stay the dispersal of his men. So Che’ Jahya's fate was sealed. About the second day after Wan Bong's departure for Bûkit Bĕtong, Che’ Jahya was seated in the cool interior of his house at Kuâla Âtok, on the Tĕmbĕling River. The sun was hot overhead, and the squeaking low of a cow-buffalo, calling to its calf, came to his ears. The fowls clucked and scratched about the ground beneath the flooring, and the women-folk in the cook-house chattered happily. All spoke of peace. The war was over, and Che’ Jahya sat dreaming of the good things which would be his in the days that were coming. He had stood by Wan Bong when bullets were flying, and had camped on the bare earth when his armies had taken the field. His aid and his counsel had had no small share in his chief's success. Che’ Jahya's heart was filled with peace, and the gladness of one whose toils are over, and who sees his rewards well within his grasp. Already, in imagination, he was acting as the new Bĕndăhâras deputy, having power over men, a harem full of fair women, and wealth to gild his ease. And yet, as he sat there dreaming, his death was ever drawing nearer to him, unfeared and unsuspected.

Shortly before sunset, at the hour when the kine go down to water, a party of Râwa men came to Che’ Jahya's house. These people are a race of Sumatran Malays, and members of their tribe have been mercenaries and hired bravos in the Peninsula, beyond the memory of man. They came to Che’ Jahya, they said, to offer their services to him; and, in their coming, he saw the first evidence of that authority over men and things, of which he had sat dreaming through the hot hours of the day. He received them courteously, and had rice and spiced viands placed before them, inviting them to eat, and, in doing so, he almost unconsciously assumed the tone and manners of a great chief. All partook of the meal in heartiness and good fellowship, for the Râwa people have no fine feelings about abusing hospitality, and a meal, come by it how you may, is a meal, and as such is welcome. When the food had been disposed of, and quids of betel nut and cigarettes were being discussed, the talk naturally turned upon the war, which had so recently closed. Che’ Jahya, still living in his Fool's Paradise, and intoxicated by his new honours and importance, was blind to any suspicions of treachery, which, at another time, might have presented themselves to him. He spoke condescendingly to his guests, still aping the manners of a great chief. He dropped a passing hint or two of his own prowess in the war, and when Băginda Sutan, the Headman of the Râwa gang, craved leave to examine the beauties of his kris, he handed his weapon to him, without hesitation, and with the air of one who confers a favour upon his subordinate.

This was the psychological moment for which his guests had been waiting. So long as Che’ Jahya was armed, it was possible that he might be able to do one of them a hurt, which was opposed to the principles upon which the Râwa men were accustomed to work; but as soon as he had parted with his kris, all the necessary conditions had been complied with. At a sign from their Chief, three of the Râwa men snatched up their guns, and a moment later Che’ Jahya rolled over dead, with three gaping holes drilled through his body. There he lay, motionless, in an ever-widening pool of blood, on the very spot where, so few hours before, he had dreamed those dreams of power and greatness—dreams that had then soared so high, and now lay as low as he, crushed and obliterated from the living world, as though they had never been.

Sutan Băginda hacked off Che’ Jahya's head, salted it, for obvious reasons, stained it a ghastly yellow with turmeric, as a further act of dishonour, and, when the house and village had been looted, carried his ghastly trophy with him down river to the camp of Che’ Wan Âhman. Then it was fastened to a boat pole, fixed upright in the sand of Pâsir Tambang, at the mouth of the Tĕmbĕling River, where it dangled with all the horror of set teeth, and staring eyeballs—the fixity of the face of one who has died a violent death—until, in the fulness of time, the waters rose and swept pole and head away with them. Thus was a plain lesson taught, by Che’ Wan Âhman to the people of Pahang, as a warning to dreamers of dreams.

But to return to Wan Bong, whose high hopes had all been shattered as completely, and almost as rudely, as those of poor Che’ Jahya. When the evil news of the approach of Che’ Wan Âhman and his people reached him, Wan Bong's scant following dwindled rapidly, and, at length, he was forced to seek refuge in the jungles of the Jĕlai, with only three or four of his closest adherents still following his fallen fortunes. As he lay on his bed of boughs, under a hastily improvised shelter of plaited palm leaves, with the fear of imminent death staring him in the eyes; when through the long day every snapping twig and every falling fruit, in those still forests, must have sounded to his ears like the footfall of his pursuers, Wan Bong must have had ample time to contrast his past position with that in which he then found himself. A few days before, he had returned to Jĕlai, a conqueror flushed with triumph. All Pahang, he had then imagined, lay at his feet, and he alone, of all the nobles of the Peninsula, had in a few months upset an old-world dynasty, and placed himself upon a royal throne. Then, in an instant of time, the vision had been shattered to fragments, and here he lay, like a hunted beast in the jungles, quaking at every sound that broke the stillness, an outlaw, a ruined man, with a price set upon his head.

The jungles, for a fugitive from his enemies, are not a pleasant refuge. The constant dampness, which clings to anything in the dark recesses of the forest, breeds boils and skin irritation of all sorts on the bodies of those who dare not come out into the open places. Faces, on which the sunlight never falls, become strangely pallid, and the constant agony of mind scores deep lines on cheek and forehead. The food, too, is bad. Rice the fugitive must have, or the loathsome dropsical swellings, called bâsal, soon cripple the strongest limbs; but a Malay cannot live on rice alone, and the sour jungle fruits, and other vegetable growths, with which he ekes out his scanty meals, wring his weakened stomach with constant pangs and aches. All these things Wan Bong now experienced, as he daily shifted his camp, from one miserable halting-place to another; but a greater pain than all the rest was soon to be added to his cup of bitterness. He was an opium smoker, and his hoarded store of the precious drug began to run very low. At last the day came on which it was exhausted, and Wan Bong was driven to desperation. For some twenty-four hours he strove against the overpowering longing for that subtle drug that leads the strongest will captive, but the struggle was all in vain. When, at length, the physical pain had become so intense that Wan Bong could neither stand, nor sit, nor lie down for more than a minute at a time, nor yet could still the moans which the restless torture drew from him, he despatched one of his boys to seek for the supply of opium, which alone could assuage his sufferings.

The boy left him, and his two other companions, in a patch of the high grass, which the Malays call rĕsam, that chanced to grow at the edge of the forest near Bâtu Nĕring. He promised to return to him as soon as the opium should have been procured. But Che’ Wan Âhman's people had anticipated that Wan Bong would, sooner or later, be forced to purchase opium, and no sooner had the messenger presented himself at the shop of the Chinese trader, who sold the drug, than he found himself bound hand and foot. He was carried before Che’ Wan Âhman's representative, and interrogated. He denied all knowledge of Wan Bong's hiding-place; but Malays have methods of making people speak the truth on occasion. They are grim, ghastly, blood-curdling methods, that need not be here described in detail; suffice it to say that the boy spoke.

That evening, as the short twilight was going out in the sky, and the flakes of scarlet-dyed clouds were paling overhead, a body of men crept, with noiseless feet, through the clump of long grass in which Wan Bong was hiding. They saw him sitting on the earth, bent double over his folded arms, rocking his body to and fro, in the agony of the opium smoker, when the unsatisfied craving for the drug is strong upon him. There was a rustle in the grass behind him, the sharp fierce clang of a rifle rang out through the forest, and a bullet through Wan Bong's back ended his pains for ever. The Headman of the pursuing band was Che’ Bûrok of Pûlau Tâwar, but he was a prudent person who kept well in the rear until the deed had been done. Then he came forward rapidly, and unstringing the purse-belt from around his waist, he gave it to the man who had fired the shot, in exchange for a promise that not he, but Che’ Bûrok, should have the credit which is due to one who has slain the enemies of the King. Thus it was that Che’ Bûrok was credited, for a time, with the deed, and reaped fair rewards from the Bĕndăhâra and his sons. But murder will out, and Che’ Bûrok died some years later, a discredited liar, in disgrace with his former masters, and shorn of all his honours and possessions.

Wan Bong's head was sawn off at the neck, and was carried into camp, by that splendid shock of luxuriant black hair, which had been his pride when he was alive. It was clotted with blood now, and matted with the dirt from the lairs where he had slept in the jungle, but it served well enough as a handle by which to hold his dissevered head, and there was no need, therefore, to make a puncture under his chin, whence to pass a rattan cord through to his mouth, as is the custom when there is no natural handle by which such trophies can be carried.

On Che’ Bûrok's arrival in camp, the head was salted, as Che’ Jahya's had been, and, like his, it was also smeared with turmeric. Then, when the dawn had broken, it was fastened, still by its luxuriant hair, to the horizontal bar which supports the forward portion of the punting platform on a Malay boat, and the prâhu, with its ghastly burden, started down river to Pĕkan, to the sound of beating drums, and clanging gongs, and to the joyous shouts of the men at the paddles. For two hundred odd miles they bore this present to their King, down all the glorious reaches of river, glistening in the sunlight, that wind through the length of the Pahang valley. The people of the villages came out upon the river banks, and watched the procession file past them with silent, unmoved countenances, and all the long way the distorted head of him, whose eyes had looked with longing on a throne, shook gently from side to side, with the motion of the boat, as though he still was musing sadly on the schemes which had brought him to his bloody death.

'ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE'