I have said that the Malays, taken by and large, have no bowels. The story I am about to tell, illustrates 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 Râja, 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 Pĕn-jâra 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 Râja 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 Pĕn-jâra 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 space between the floor and the ground, and the interval which separates the cells from the surrounding fence, is one seething, living mass 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 Pĕr-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 class 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 Pĕr-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 circumstances, 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 passed 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 bloody 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 space, 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? Maimûnah! 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 sĕlâdang'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 passed 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 kâleh. It means insensibility, such as few can imagine or understand, and which is so bestial, that it reduces a feeling thinking human being to the level of an ape.

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 Pĕr-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 Pĕr-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 passed about his waist, and to rings around his ankles. The fetters galled him, prevented him from lying at ease in any attitude, 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 Compassionate. The bestial 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 kâleh.

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 SĔMANGS

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 Pêrak 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 grasses of the jungle, and all things were assuming a single sombre shade of black, the trees and underwood becoming merged into one monstrous shapeless mass, 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 Sĕmang, who alone inhabit these woods, guard their camps jealously, for, until lately, they were often raided by slave-hunting bands of Malays and Sâkai. 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 Sĕmang 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-glass. 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 sturdily 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 assail 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 Sĕmang 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 coarse Chinese rock salt, and bade the Sĕmang 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 coarse 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 Sĕmang the power to take in abnormally large quantities 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?'

I produced some coarse Japanese tobacco which I had brought with me for the purpose, and when cigarettes had been rolled, with green leaves for wrappers, we all squatted around the fire, for the night was chilly up here in the foothills, and the silence of sated appetite and rested limbs fell gently upon us.

The eyes of one who dwells in the untrodden places of the earth are apt to grow careless of the picturesque aspect of his surroundings. He is often too busy following the track beneath his feet, or observing some other such thing, which is important for his immediate well-being, to more than glance at the beauties which surround him. Often, too, his heart is so sick for a sight of the murky fogs, and drizzle-damped pavements of London, or for the ordered green fields and hedgerows of the pleasant English country, that he does not readily spare more than a grudging tribute of admiration to the scenes which surround him in his exile. To-night, however, as I sat and lay by the crackling logs, I longed, as I had often done before, to possess that power which transfers the sights we see to paper or to canvas. Around us the forest rose black and impenetrable, the shadows deepened by the firelight of the camp. In the clear sky overhead the glorious Eastern stars were shining steadfastly, and at our feet a tiny stream pattered busily on the pebbles of its bed. Around the fire, and reddened by its light, sat or lay my three Malays, bare to the waist, but clothed in their bright sârongs and loose short trousers. The Sĕmang, of both sexes and all ages, coal black, save where the gleams of the fire painted them a dull red, and nude, save for a narrow strip of coarse bark cloth twisted round their loins, lay on their stomachs with their chins propped upon their elbows, or squatted on their hams, smoking placidly. A curious group to look upon we must have been could any one have seen us: I, the European, the white man, belonging to one of the most civilised races in the Old World; the Malays, civilised too, but after the fashion of unchanging Asia, which differs so widely from the restless progressive civilisation of the West; and, lastly, the Sĕmangs, squalid savages, nursing no ambitions save those prompted by their empty stomachs, with no hope of change or improvement in their lot, and yet representing one of the oldest races in the world—a race which, though it first possessed the East, with all its possibilities and riches, could utilise none of them, and whose members carry in their eyes the melancholy look of dumb animals, which, when seen on the human countenance, denotes a people who are doomed to speedy extinction, and who, never since time began, have had their day or have played a part in human history.

Tobacco upon the mind of man has much the same effect as that which hot water has upon tea-leaves, or, indeed, as that which that beverage itself has on the majority of women. It calls out much that, without its aid, would remain latent and undeveloped. For human beings this means words, and, while we dignify our own speech over our tobacco by the name of conversation, we are apt to dispose of that of the ladies round a tea-table by labelling it gossip. Among a primitive people conversation means either broken remarks about the material things of life—the food which is sorely needed and is hard to come by, the boat which is to be built, or the weapon which is to be fashioned—or else it takes the form of a monologue, in which the speaker tells some tale of his own or another's experiences to those who sit and listen. Thus it was that upon this evening, as we clustered round the fire in this camp of the Sĕmangs, the aged patriarch, who had praised the 'sweetness' of my salt, lifted up his voice and spoke in this wise.

'The jungles are growing empty now, Tûan, and many things are changed since the days when I was a boy roaming through the woods of the Plus valley with my father and my two brothers. Now we live in these poor jungles of the Upper Pêrak valley, where the yams and roots are less sweet and less plentiful than in our former home, and where the fish-traps are often empty, and the game wild and scarce. Does the Tûan ask why then we quitted the valley of the Plus, and the hills of Lĕgap, where once our camps were pitched? The Tûan knows many things, and he has visited the forests of which I speak, why then does he ask our reason? It was not for love of these poor hunting grounds that we quitted the Plus valley, but because we loved our women-folk and our little ones. The Tûan knows the tribe of Sâkai who have their homes in the Plus, but does he not know also that they entered into a compact with the Malays of Lâsak to aid in hunting us through the woods and selling all of our people whom they could catch into slavery? We of the forests had little fear of the Malays, for we could make blind trails that they could never follow, and could hide our camps in the shady places, where they could never find them. The Malays were wont, when they could trace us, to surround our camps at nightfall, and attack when the dawn was about to break, but many and many a time, when we were so surrounded, we made shift by night to escape from the circle which hemmed us in. How did we win out? What then are the trees made for? Has the Tûan never heard of the bridges of the forest people that the Malays call tâli tĕnau? When darkness was over the forest, the young men would ascend the trees, and stretch lines of rattan from bough to bough, over the places where the trees were too far apart for a woman to leap, and when all was ready, we would climb into the branches, carrying our cooking-pots and all that we possessed, the women bearing their babies at their breasts, and the little children following at their mothers' heels. Thus, treading shrewdly on the lines of rattan, we would pass from tree to tree, and so escape from our enemies. What does the Tûan say? That it is difficult and hazardous to walk by night on slender lines stretched among the tree-tops? No, the matter was easy. Where there is room to set a foot, why need a man fear to fall? And thus we baffled the Malays, and won our freedom. But when the Sâkai dogs aided the Malays, matters were changed indeed. They would sit in the tree-tops, the whole night through, calling one to another when we tried to break away; and, by day, they would track our foot-prints through places where no Malay might follow; and no trail was so blind but that the Sâkai could see the way it tended. Men said that they served the Malays in this manner that thereby they might preserve their own women-folk from captivity. But I know not. The Sâkai live in houses, and plant growing things—like the Malays. They know much of the lore of the forest, but many secrets of the jungle which are well known to us are hidden from their eyes. Yea, even though the fair valley of the Plus is now possessed by them, and the mountain of Korbu is now their home as it was once our own, the spirits of the hills and streams are still our friends, and they teach not their secrets to the strangers. How should it not be so? Our tribe springs from the mountain of Korbu, and the hills of Lĕgap; theirs from the broad forests towards the rising sun, beyond the Kinta valley. No tribe but ours knows of the forests at the back of Gûnong Korbu, nor of the doom, which, in the fulness of time, will fall upon the Sâkai. Beyond that great peak, in the depths of the silent forest places, there lives a tribe of women, fair of face and form, taller than men, paler in colour, stronger, bolder. This is the tribe that is to avenge us upon those who have won our hunting grounds. These women know not men; but when the moon is at the full they dance naked, in the grassy places near the salt-licks, where the passing to-and-fro of much game has thinned the forest. The Evening Wind is their only spouse, and through Him they conceive and bear children. Yearly are born to them offspring, mostly women-folk whom they cherish even as we do our young; but if, perchance, they bear a manchild, the mother slays it ere it is well-nigh born. Thus live they, and thrive they, ever increasing and multiplying, and their bows and blow-pipes are sometimes found by us in the deep hollows of the woods. Larger are they than those we use, more beautifully carved, and, moreover, they are of a truer aim. But woe to the man who meets these women, or who dares to penetrate into the woods in which they dwell, for he will surely die unless the ghosts give speed to his flight. Of all this tribe, I alone have seen these women, and that when I was a young hunter, many many moons agone. I and two others, my brothers, when hunting through the forest, passed beyond the limits of our own woods, following the halting tracks of a wounded stag. After much walking, and eager following of the trail, for the camp was hungry lacking meat, we found the stag lying near a brook, killed by a larger arrow than the bow we carry throws, and, at the same moment, we heard a loud, threatening cry in a strange tongue. Then I, looking up, beheld a gigantic form, as of a pale-skinned woman, breaking through the jungle, some two hundred elbow-lengths away, and, at the same moment, my elder brother fell pierced by an arrow. I stayed to see no more, but ran, with all my young blood tingling with fear, leaving my brothers and the slaughtered stag, tearing through the thickets of thorn, but never feeling them rend my skin, nor ever stopped to catch my breath or drink, until, all wounded and breathless, covered with blood and sweat-like foam, I half fell, half staggered to the camp of mine own people. Thereafter, for long days, I lay 'twixt life and death, screaming in fear of the dreadful form I ever fancied was pursuing me. My brothers never again returned to camp, and I alone am left to tell the tale.'

The old man ceased his weird story, the fear of what he thought he had seen still apparently strong upon him. He certainly believed what he said, as also did every person present, with the exception of my own sceptical self, and I have often tried to find some reasonable explanation for the story. I have not succeeded, for, even in the wildest parts of the Peninsula, the aborigines do not shoot one another on sight, whatever they may do to bands of marauding Malays, nor do serious quarrels ever arise between them over the division of a little fresh meat. Judging by the scared look in his eyes, as he told the story, the old Sĕmang had felt the fear of imminent death very close at hand that day long ago in the quiet forests at the back of Gûnong Korbu. His brethren, too, must undoubtedly have been killed by some one or something, and perhaps the old-world tradition of the Amazons, furnished to the mind of the survivor the most natural explanation of the catastrophe.

A dozen years and more have slipped away since I heard this tale, told in the fire-light of the Sĕmang camp, in the Upper Pêrak valley, and now there is a trigonometrical survey station on the summit of Korbu. It is true that the surveyors employed there have made no mention in their reports of the Amazons of the neighbourhood, and the Sâkai are still living in prosperity, in spite of the impending doom, which the old Sĕmang foretold for them. None the less, however, I hold to the belief that my informant actually did see something weird and uncanny at the back of Gûnong Korbu; and that the keen eyes of a jungle-dwelling Sĕmang should not be able to clearly recognise anything their owner could encounter in the forests of the Peninsula, is, in itself, a miracle.

'HIS HEART'S DESIRE'

Where and when these things happened does not signify at all. The East Coast is a long one, and the manners of the Malay Râjas who dwell thereon have suffered but little change for centuries. Thus, both in the matter of time and of space, there is a wide choice, and plenty of exercise may be given to the imagination. The facts anyway are true, and they were related, in the watches of the night, to a White Man—whose name does not matter—by two people, with whose identity you also have no concern. One of the latter was a man whom I will call Âwang Îtam, and the other was a woman whose name was Bêdah, or something like it. The place in which the tale was told was an empty sailing boat which lay beached upon a sandbank in the centre of a Malay river, and, as soon as the White Man had scrambled up the side, the dug-out, which had brought him, sheered off and left him.

He had come to this place by appointment, but he did not know precisely whom he was to meet, as the assignation had been made in the secret native fashion, which is as different from the invitation card of Europe as most things in the East are different from white men's gear. Twice that day his attention had been very pointedly called to this deserted sailing boat; once by an old crone who was selling sweetstuff from door to door, and once by a young chief who had stopped to speak to him, while passing up the street of the native town. By both of these some reference had been made to the moon-rise and to 'a precious thing'; and this was enough to show the White Man that something was to be learned, seen, or experienced by going to the deserted sailing boat at the rising of the moon.

The Malays who were with him feared a trap, and implored him not to go alone; but the White Man did not fancy that treachery was likely just then, and, in any case, he was anxious for the adventure, and could not afford to let his people think that he was afraid. The man who, dwelling alone among Malays in an unsettled country, shows the slightest trace of fear, signs his own death-warrant. No people are more susceptible to 'bluff,' and, given a truculent bearing, and a sufficiency of bravado, a coward may pass for a brave man in many a Malay State.

The decks of the boat were wet with dew and drizzle, and she smelt abominably of ancient fish cargoes which she had carried before she was beached. A light rain was falling, and the White Man crept along the side until he reached the stern, which was covered with a roofing of rotten palm-leaf mats. Through the rents at the stern he could see the moon rising like a great red ball, throwing a broad wave of dancing light along the reaches of the river. Then he squatted down, rolled a cigarette, and awaited developments.

Presently the soft splish, whisp! splash, whisp! of a single paddle came to his listening ear; and, a moment later, a girl's form, standing erect on the vessel's side, showed distinctly in the growing moonlight. She called softly to know if anybody was aboard, and the White Man answered equally cautiously. She then turned and whispered to some unseen person in a boat moored alongside, and, after some seconds, she came towards the White Man and said:

'There is one who would speak with thee, Tûan, but he cannot climb up the ship's side. He is like a dead man—unless one lifts him, how can he move? Will the Tûan, therefore, aid him to ascend into the ship?'

The White Man loosened his pistol in its holster, covertly, that she might not see, and stepped cautiously to the place where the boat appeared to be moored, for he, too, began to fear a trap. What he saw over the side reassured him. The dug-out was of the smallest, and it had only one occupant. He was a man who, even in the dim moonlight, showed the sharp angles of his bones. He had a peculiarly drawn and shrunken look, and the skin was stretched across his hollow cheeks like the goat-hide on a drum-face. The White Man leaped down into the boat, and, aided by the girl, he lifted the man on board. Then, painfully and very slowly, the latter crept aft, going on all fours like some unclean animal, until he had reached the shelter in the stern. The girl and the White Man followed, and they all three squatted down on the creaking bamboo decking. The man sat, all of a heap, moaning at short intervals, as Malays moan when the fever holds them. The girl sat unconcernedly preparing a quid of betel-nut from its four ingredients, and the White Man inhaled his cigarette and waited for them to speak. He was trying to get the hang of the business, and to guess what had caused two people, whom he did not know, to seek an interview with him in this weird place, at such an untimely hour.

The girl, the moonlight told him, was pretty. She had a small, perfectly shaped head, a wide smooth forehead, neat, glossy hair, bright, laughing eyes, with eyebrows arched and well-defined, 'like the artificial spur of a fighting cock,' and the pretty little hands and feet which are so common among all well-born Malay women. The man was hideous. His shrunken and twitching face with its taut skin, and his utterly broken, degraded, and decrepit appearance were indescribably horrible, and the flickering of the moonlight, through the torn mat overhead, only added to the grotesqueness of his figure.

At length the girl looked up at the White Man, and spoke:

'The Tûan knows Âwang Îtam?' she asked. Yes, the White Man knew him well, but had not seen him for some months.

'This is he,' she said, pointing to the abject figure by her side, and her listener felt as though she had struck him across the face. When last he had seen Âwang Îtam, he was one of the best favoured of the King's Youths, a fine, upstanding youngster, dressed in many-coloured silks, and with an amount of side and swagger about him, which would have amply sufficed for a regiment of Her Majesty's Guards. Now he half lay, half sat, on the damp decking, the most pitiful wreck of humanity that the White Man had ever seen. What had befallen him to cause so fearful a change? I will tell you the tale, in my own words, as the White Man learned it from him and Bêdah, as they sat talking during the watches of that long night.

In every Independent Malay State, there is a gang of fighting men, which watches over the person of the King and acts as his bodyguard. It is recruited from the sons of the chiefs, nobles, and men of the well-bred classes; and its members follow at the heels of the King whenever he goes abroad, paddle his boat, join with him in the chase, gamble unceasingly, do much evil in the King's name, slay all who chance to offend him, and flirt lasciviously with the girls within the palace. They are always ready for anything from 'pitch-and-toss to manslaughter,' and no Malay king has to ask twice in their hearing 'Will nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?' Their one aim in life is to gain the favour of their master, and, having won it, to freely abuse their position. As the Malay proverb has it, they carry their master's work upon their heads, and their own under their arms, and woe betide those who are not themselves under the immediate protection of the King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of irregular police force, levying chantage from those whom they detect in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own price. They are known as the Bûdak Râja—or King's Youths—and are greatly feared by the people, for they are as reckless, as unscrupulous, as truculent, and withal as gaily dressed and well born a gang of young ruffians, as one would be like to meet in a long summer's cruise.

Âwang Îtam had served the King for several years as one of the Bûdak Râja, but his immediate chief was Saiyid Üsmân, a youngster who was also one of the King's Youths, and was usually spoken of as Tûan Bângau. Âwang had been born and bred in the house of which Tûan Bângau's father was the head, and, though in accordance with the immutable Malay custom, Âwang always spoke of himself as 'thy servant' when he addressed Tûan Bângau, the relations which subsisted between them more nearly resembled those of brothers, than those which we recognise as being proper to master and servant. They had crawled about the floor of the women's apartments in company, until they were old enough to play in the open air; they had played pôrok and tûju lûbang, and all the games known to Malay children, still in company; they had splashed about in the river together, cooling their little brown bodies in the running water; they had often eaten from the same plate, and had slept side by side on the same mat spread in the verandah. Later, they had been circumcised on the same day, and, having thus entered upon man's estate, they had together begun to participate in the life of dissipation which every court-bred Malay boy regards as his birth-right. Thus they had gone astraying after strange women, gambling and quarelling with the other youths, but still in company, and with their old love for one another unaltered. They had been duly entered as members of the King's Youths, and had proved themselves not to be the least reckless and truculent of those who form that ruffianly gang, but they had chiefly used their position to carry on their love intrigues with greater freedom and daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay around it, who cast loving eyes upon them. Âwang, however, cared little for this, for, by the irony of that Fate which always directs that men should fall in love with the wrong women, and vice versâ, his heart was eaten up with a fiery desire for a girl who was a jâmah-jâmah-an, or casual concubine of the King, and who resolutely declined to have ought to do with him. Nevertheless, the moth still fluttered around the candle, and Âwang never missed an opportunity of catching a passing glimpse of the object of his longing. It was an evil day for both Âwang Îtam and Tûan Bângau, however, when, as they swaggered past the palace-fence, seeking to peep at this girl, they were seen by the King's daughter, Tŭngku Ûteh, and a desire was straightway born in her breast for the young and handsome Saiyid.

In the East, love affairs develop quickly; and that very day Âwang Îtam again saw Iang Mûnah, the girl whom he had loved so long and so hopelessly, and by a flash of an eye-lid was informed that she had that to tell him which it concerned him to know. When both parties desire a secret interview many difficulties may be overcome, and that evening Âwang whispered into the ear of Tûan Bângau that 'the moon was about to fall into his lap.'

'I dreamed not long since,' said Tûan Bângau, 'that I was bitten by a very venomous snake!' And then Âwang knew that his friend was ready for any adventure.

To dream of a snake bite, among any of the people of the Far East, means that ere long the dreamer will receive generous favours from some lady who is either of exalted rank, or of most surpassing beauty. The greater the venom of the snake, the brighter, it is believed, are the qualities with which the dreamer's future mistress is endowed. It is not only in Europe, that venom enters into the soul of a man by reason of a woman, and this is, perhaps, the explanation of how this dream comes to bear this peculiar interpretation.

Tûan Bângau's position was a curious one. He did not desire Tŭngku Ûteh for herself; she was his King's daughter, and the wife of a royal husband; and his duty and his interest alike forbade him to accept her advances. If his intrigue with her was discovered, he was a ruined, if not a dead man, and, moreover, he was at this time devoted to another girl, whom he had recently married. The challenge which had been conveyed to him, however, was one which, in spite of all these things, his code of honour made it impossible for him to refuse. The extreme danger, which lay in such an intrigue, gave him no choice but to accept it. That was his point of view, 'His honour rooted in dishonour stood,' and no self-respecting Malay, brought up in the poisonous atmosphere of an Independent Malay State, could admit of any other opinion.

With Âwang Îtam things were different. I have already said that he was passionately in love with Iang Mûnah, and he knew that he would at length win his Heart's Desire. He would accompany his chief on his nocturnal visits to the palace, and, while Tûan Bângau wooed the Princess, the handmaiden would give herself to him. He felt the 'blood run redder in every vein' at the bare thought, and he was the eager and impatient lover when the twain crept into the palace in the noon of the night.

They effected their entrance by a way known only to themselves, and left by the same means before the breaking of the dawn, passing to their quarters in the guard-house, through the slumbering town, and lay sleeping far into the day. For more than a month they paid their secret visits unobserved by any save those whom they sought, and by the old crone who unbarred the door for them to enter; but, upon a certain night, they narrowly escaped detection. The King, like many Malay Râjas, kept curious hours. Sometimes, he slept all day, sometimes he slept all night; some days he went to rest at noon, to awake at midnight; and, on such occasions, he often wandered about the palace alone, pouncing upon ill-doers, like the lion which seeketh whom it may devour. In this way he chanced upon Tûan Bângau and Âwang Îtam, but they had fled from the palace before he had learned who they were, and who were the girls whom they had come to seek.

After this the meetings ceased for a space, but Tŭngku Ûteh was not to be so easily baulked, and a taunting message soon brought Tûan Bângau once more to her feet. The meetings, however, no longer took place within the palace itself, the lovers meeting and passing the night in a wood-shed within the fence of the royal enclosure.

Things had gone on in this way for some time when Tŭngku Ûteh began to weary of the lack of excitement attending the intrigue. Like many Malay women she regarded it as a reproach to a girl if no man desired her, and the longing became greater and greater to show her partner and her immediate entourage that she also was wooed and loved. She had an affection for Tûan Bângau, and admired him as a lover and a man, but even this could not restrain the growing longing for notoriety. Perhaps she hardly realised how grave would be the consequences; perhaps she struggled against the impulse; who can say? The fact remains that her lover was sacrificed, as many a man has been before and since, upon the altar of a woman's ungovernable vanity.

One night, when the yellow dawn was splashing the gray in the East, and the thin smoke-like clouds were hurrying across the sky, like great night fowls winging their homeward way, Tûan Bângau awoke and found Ûteh sitting beside him with his kris and girdle in her hands. She had taken them from his pillow as he slept, and no persuasions on his part could induce her to return them. While he yet sought to coax her into foregoing her resolve, she leaped to her feet, and, with a sweet little laugh, disappeared in the palace, and Tûan Bângau returned homeward with Âwang Îtam, each knowing that now indeed their hour was come.

Once inside her own apartments, Tŭngku Ûteh placed the kris ostentatiously at the head of her sleeping mat, and then composed herself calmly to enjoy the tranquil slumber, which in the West is erroneously supposed to be the peculiar privilege of the just. Next day, the kris had been seen and recognised, but her father and mother received nothing but taunts from Ûteh in reply to their inquiries. What her object was is difficult for the European mind to appreciate, for it must be distinctly remembered that she had no quarrel with Tûan Bângau. A Malay woman, however, is very far from regarding the possession of a lover as a disgrace: in this case, Ûteh's vanity was gratified by the intrigue becoming known. To obtain this even the sacrifice of her lover did not seem too heavy a price to pay.

The King's anger knew no bounds when he heard of what had occurred, and physical punishment was, of course, the only means of covering his shame, which occurred to his primitive and unoriginal imagination. His position, however, was a difficult one. Tûan Bângau was a member of a very powerful clan; he was also a Saiyid, and the King feared that the fanaticism of his people would be aroused if he openly slew a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Âwang Îtam, whose intrigue had also become known, was arrested, carried into the palace, and all trace was lost of him for months. Iang Mûnah also disappeared from among the women; but to Tûan Bângau not a word was said, and never by sign or gesture was he allowed to guess that his crime was known to the King.

One day the King went a hunting, and took his way up a small stream which was totally uninhabited. Tûan Bângau was of the party, and those who went with them were all men selected for their discretion, and their unwavering loyalty to the King. The hunting party travelled in boats, of which there were two, the King going in one, and his son Tŭngku Saleh in the other. In the latter boat sat Tûan Bângau, and about a dozen of the King's Youths. Arrived at a certain place, the King's boat went on round the point, and Tŭngku Saleh's boat tied up in mid-stream, while the Prince ate some sweatmeats which had been brought for the purpose.

When he had eaten his fill, he bade Tûan Bângau and one or two other Saiyids, who were among his followers, fall to on what remained, and it was while Tûan Bângau was washing his mouth over the side of the boat after eating, that Tŭngku Saleh gave the signal which heralded his death. A man who was behind him stabbed him in the shoulder with a spear, and another blow given almost simultaneously knocked him into the river. Tûan Bângau dived, and swam until he had reached the shallow water near the bank. Here he rose to his feet, drew his kris, and called to those within the boat to come and fight him one at a time if they dared. The only answer was a spear which wounded him in the neck, and a bullet from a gun which penetrated to his heart. In a moment all that remained of Tûan Bângau was a shapeless heap of useless flesh, lying in the shallow water, with the eddies playing around and in and out of the brilliant silk garments, which had made him so brave a sight when alive. Those who had slain him, buried him; where, no man knoweth; the report that he had strayed and been lost, was diligently spread, and, though generally disbelieved, was found to be impossible of disproof. But Bêdah, his wife who had loved him, had learnt these things, and now told all to the White Man, hoping that thus her husband's murder might be avenged, and thereby she risked the life which his death had temporarily made desolate.

Compared with that of Âwang Îtam, however, Tûan Bângau's fate was a happy one. When the former disappeared from the sight of men, he was the victim of nameless tortures. As he told the tale of what he had suffered on the night that followed his arrest; of the ghastly tortures and mutilations which had wrecked his manhood, and left him the pitiable ruin he then was, the White Man writhed in sympathy, and was filled with a horror that made him sick.

'Better it were to die,' said he, 'than to live the life which is no life, and to suffer these nameless torments.'

'It is true,' said Âwang Îtam, 'it is true. But readily would I bear it over again, Tûan, if thereby for a little space I might be what I have been, and my Heart's Desire could once more be satisfied!'

These were the last words spoken while the dawn was breaking, as the White Man clambered over the side and wended his way homeward; and, therefore, I have called this tale the story of 'His Heart's Desire.'

A NIGHT OF TERROR