Tales of the Malayan Coast

 From Penang to the Philippines

 By

 Rounsevelle Wildman

 Consul General of the United States at Hong Kong

 Illustrated by Henry Sandham

 Boston

 Lothrop Publishing Company

 Copyright, 1899, By

 Lothrop Publishing Company. 

 Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. --Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U. S. A. 

 To Our Hero And my friend Admiral George Dewey, U. S. N. I Dedicate this Book

 Flagship Olympia, Manila, 21 Sept. , 1898. 

 My Dear Wildman:--

 Yours of 12th instant is at hand. I am much flattered by your request to dedicate your book to me, and would be pleased to have you do so. 

 With kindest regards, I am, Very truly yours, George Dewey. 

PREFACE

These stories are the result of nine years' residence and experienceon the Malayan coast--that land of romance and adventure which theancients knew as the Golden Chersonesus, and which, in modern times, has been brought again into the atmosphere of valor and performanceby Rajah Brooke of Sarawak, the hero of English expansion, andAdmiral George Dewey of the Asiatic squadron, the hero of Americanachievement. The author, in his official duties as Special Commissionerof the United States for the Straits Settlement and Siam, and, later, as Consul General of the United States at Hong Kong, has mingled withand studied the diverse people of the Malayan coast, from the Sultanof Johore and Aguinaldo the Filipino to the lowest Eurasian and "Chinaboy" of that wonderful Oriental land. These stories are based on hisexperiences afloat and ashore, and are offered to the American publicat this time when all glimpses of the land that Columbus sailed tofind are of especial interest to the modern possessors of the landhe really did discover. 

CONTENTS

 Page Baboo's Good Tiger 9 Baboo's Pirates 28 How we Played Robinson Crusoe 47 The Sarong 66 The Kris 74 The White Rajah of Borneo 81 Amok! 101 Lepas's Revenge 130 King Solomon's Mines 147 Busuk 181 A Crocodile Hunt 200 A New Year's Day in Malaya 219 In the Burst of the Southwest Monsoon 230 A Pig Hunt on Mount Ophir 254 In the Court of Johore 270 In the Golden Chersonese 293 A Fight with Illanum Pirates 321

TALES OF THE MALAYAN COASTFROM PENANG TO THE PHILIPPINES

BABOO'S GOOD TIGER

A Tale of the Malacca Jungle

Aboo Din's first-born, Baboo, was only four years old when he hadhis famous adventure with the tiger he had found sleeping in thehot lallang grass within the distance of a child's voice from AbooDin's bungalow. 

For a long time before that hardly a day had passed but Aboo-Din, who was our syce, or groom, and wore the American colors proudly onhis right arm, came in from the servants' quarters with an anxiouslook on his kindly brown face and asked respectfully for the tuan(lord) or mem (lady). 

"What is it, Aboo Din?" the mistress would inquire, as visions ofBaboo drowned in the great Shanghai jar, or of Baboo lying crushedby a boa among the yellow bamboos beyond the hedge, passed swiftlythrough her mind. 

"Mem see Baboo?" came the inevitable question. 

It was unnecessary to say more. At once Ah Minga, the "boy"; Zim, thecook; the kebuns (gardeners); the tukanayer (water-boy), and even thesleek Hindu dirzee, who sat sewing, dozing, and chewing betel-nut, on the shady side of the veranda, turned out with one accord andcommenced a systematic search for the missing Baboo. 

Sometimes he was no farther off than the protecting screen of the"compound" hedge, or the cool, green shadows beneath the bungalow. Butoftener the government Sikhs had to be appealed to, and Kampong Glamin Singapore searched from the great market to the courtyards ofSultan Ali. It was useless to whip him, for whippings seemed onlyto make Baboo grow. He would lisp serenely as Aboo Din took downthe rattan withe from above the door, "Baboo baniak jahat!" (Baboovery bad!) and there was something so charmingly impersonal in allhis mischief, that we came between his own brown body and the rod, time and again. There was nothing distinctive in Baboo's features orform. To the casual observer he might have been any one of a half-dozenof his playmates. Like them, he went about perfectly naked, his soft, brown skin shining like polished rosewood in the fierce Malayan sun. 

His hair was black, straight, and short, and his eyes as black ascoals. Like his companions, he stood as straight as an arrow, andcould carry a pail of water on his head without spilling a drop. 

He, too, ate rice three times a day. It puffed him up like a littleold man, which added to his grotesqueness and gave him a certainair of dignity that went well with his features when they were inrepose. Around his waist he wore a silver chain with a silver heartsuspended from it. Its purpose was to keep off the evil spirits. 

There was always an atmosphere of sandalwood and Arab essence aboutBaboo that reminded me of the holds of the old sailing-ships that usedto come into Boston harbor from the Indies. I think his mother musthave rubbed the perfumes into his hair as the one way of declaring tothe world her affection for him. She could not give him clothes, orornaments, or toys: such was not the fashion of Baboo's race. Neitherwas he old enough to wear the silk sarong that his Aunt Fatima hadwoven for him on her loom. 

Baboo had been well trained, and however lordly he might be in thequarters, he was marked in his respect to the mistress. He wouldtouch his forehead to the red earth when I drove away of a morning tothe office; though the next moment I might catch him blowing a tinyball of clay from his sumpitan into the ear of his father, the syce, as he stood majestically on the step behind me. 

Baboo went to school for two hours every day to a fat old Arabpenager, or teacher, whose schoolroom was an open stall, and whoseonly furniture a bench, on which he sat cross-legged, and flourisheda whip in one hand and a chapter of the Koran in the other. 

There were a dozen little fellows in the school; all naked. Theystood up in line, and in a soft musical treble chanted in chorus theglorious promises of the Koran, even while their eyes wandered fromthe dusky corner where a cheko lizard was struggling with an atlasmoth, to the frantic gesticulations of a naked Hindu who was callinghis meek-eyed bullocks hard names because they insisted on lying downin the middle of the road for their noonday siesta. 

Baboo's father, Aboo Din, was a Hadji, for he had been to Mecca. Whennothing else could make Baboo forget the effects of the green durianhe had eaten, Aboo Din would take the child on his knees and singto him of his trip to Mecca, in a quaint, monotonous voice, full ofsorrowful quavers. Baboo believed he himself could have left Singaporeany day and found Mecca in the dark. 

We had been living some weeks in a government bungalow, fourteen milesfrom Singapore, across the island that looks out on the Straits ofMalacca. The fishing and hunting were excellent. I had shot wild pig, deer, tapirs, and for some days had been getting ready to track downa tiger that had been prowling in the jungle about the bungalow. 

But of a morning, as we lay lazily chatting in our long chairs behindthe bamboo chicks, the cries of "Harimau! Harimau!" and "Baboo"came up to us from the servants' quarters. 

Aboo Din sprang over the railing of the veranda, and without stoppingeven to touch the back of his hand to his forehead, cried, --

"Tuan Consul, tiger have eat chow dog and got Baboo!"

Then he rushed into the dining room, snatched up my Winchester andcartridge-belt, and handed them to me with a "Lekas (quick)! Come!"

He sprang back off the veranda and ran to his quarters where the menwere arming themselves with ugly krises and heavy parangs. 

I had not much hope of finding the tiger, much less of rescuing Baboo, dead or alive. The jungle loomed up like an impassable wall on allthree sides of the compound, so dense, compact, and interwoven, thata bird could not fly through it. Still I knew that my men, if theyhad the courage, could follow where the tiger led, and could cut apath for me. 

Aboo Din unloosed a half-dozen pariah dogs that we kept for wild pig, and led them to the spot where the tiger had last lain. In an instantthe entire pack sent up a doleful howl and slunk back to their kennels. 

Aboo Din lashed them mercilessly and drove them into the jungle, where he followed on his hands and knees. I only waited to don mygreen kaki suit and canvas shooting hat and despatch a man to theneighboring kampong, or village, to ask the punghulo (chief) to sendme his shikaris, or hunters. Then I plunged into the jungle paththat my kebuns had cut with their keen parangs, or jungle-knives. Tenfeet within the confines of the forest the metallic glare of the sunand the pitiless reflections of the China Sea were lost in a dim, green twilight. Far ahead I could hear the half-hearted snarls ofthe cowardly, deserting curs, and Aboo Din's angry voice rapidlyexhausting the curses of the Koran on their heads. 

My men, who were naked save for a cotton sarong wound around theirwaists, slashed here a rubber-vine, there a thorny rattan, and againa mass of creepers that were as tenacious as iron ropes, all the timepressing forward at a rapid walk. Ofttimes the trail led from thesolid ground through a swamp where grew great sago palms, and outof which a black, sluggish stream flowed toward the straits. Grayiguanas and pendants of dove orchids hung from the limbs above, and green and gold lizards scuttled up the trees at our approach. 

At the first plot of wet ground Aboo Din sent up a shout, and awaitedmy coming. I found him on his hands and knees, gazing stupidly atthe prints in the moist earth. 

"Tuan, " he shouted, "see Baboo's feet, one--two--three--more! Praisebe to Allah!"

I dropped down among the lily-pads and pitcher-plants beside him. There, sure enough, close by the catlike footmarks of the tiger, wasthe perfect impression of one of Baboo's bare feet. Farther on was theimprint of another, and then a third. Wonderful! The intervals betweenthe several footmarks were far enough apart for the stride of a man!

"Apa?" (What does it mean?) I said. 

Aboo Din tore his hair and called upon Allah and the assembled Malaysto witness that he was the father of this Baboo, but that, in thesight of Mohammed, he was innocent of this witchcraft. He had strivenfrom Hari Rahmadan to Hari Rahmanan to bring this four-year-old up inthe light of the Koran, but here he was striding through the jungle, three feet and more at a step, holding to a tiger's tail!

I shouted with laughter as the truth dawned upon me. It must beso, --Baboo was alive. His footprints were before me. He was beingdragged through the jungle by a full-grown Malayan tiger! How elseexplain his impossible strides, overlapping the beast's marks!

Aboo Din turned his face toward Mecca, and his lips moved in prayer. 

"May Allah be kind to this tiger!" he mumbled. "He is in the handsof a witch. We shall find him as harmless as an old cat. Baboo willbreak out his teeth with a club of billion wood and bite off hisclaws with his own teeth. Allah is merciful!"

We pushed on for half an hour over a dry, foliage-cushioned stripof ground that left no trace of the pursued. At the second wet spotwe dashed forward eagerly and scanned the trail for signs of Baboo, but only the pads of the tiger marred the surface of the slime. 

Aboo Din squatted at the root of a huge mangrove and broke forthinto loud lamentations, while the last remaining cur took advantageof his preoccupation to sneak back on the homeward trail. 

"Aboo, " I commanded sarcastically, "pergie! (move on!) Baboo is aman and a witch. He is tired of walking, and is riding on the backof the tiger!"

Aboo gazed into my face incredulously for a moment; then, picking uphis parang and tightening his sarong, strode on ahead without a word. 

At noon we came upon a sandy stretch of soil that containeda few diseased cocoanut palms, fringed by a sluggish lagoon, and a great banian tree whose trunk was hardly more than a massof interlaced roots. A troop of long-armed wah-wah monkeys werescolding and whistling within its dense foliage with surprisingintensity. Occasionally one would drop from an outreaching limb toone of the pendulous roots, and then, with a shrill whistle of fright, spring back to the protection of his mates. 

A Malay silenced them by throwing a half-ripe cocoanut into themidst of the tree, and we moved on to the shade of the sturdiestpalm. There we sat down to rest and eat some biscuits softened inthe milk of a cocoanut. 

"There is a boa in the roots of the banian, Aboo, " I said, lookinglongingly toward its deep shadow. 

He nodded his head, and drew from the pouch in the knot in his saronga few broken fragments of areca nut. These he wrapped in a lemon leafwell smeared with lime, and tucked the entire mass into the cornerof his mouth. 

In a moment a brilliant red juice dyed his lips, and he closed hiseyes in happy contentment, oblivious, for the time, of the sand andfallen trunks that seemed to dance in the parching rays of the sun, oblivious, even, of the loss of his first-born. 

I was revolving in my mind whether there was any use in continuingthe chase, which I would have given up long before, had I not knownthat a tiger who has eaten to repletion is both timid and lazy. Thisone had certainly breakfasted on a dog or on some animal beforeencountering Baboo. 

I had hoped that possibly the barking of the curs might have causedhim to drop the child, and make off where pursuit would be impossible;but so far we had, after those footprints, found neither traces ofBaboo alive, nor the blood which should have been seen had the tigerkilled the child. 

Suddenly a long, pear-shaped mangrove-pod struck me full in thebreast. I sprang up in surprise, for I was under a cocoanut tree, and there was no mangrove nearer than the lagoon. 

A Malay looked up sleepily, and pointed toward the wide-spreadingbanian. 

"Monkey, Tuan!"

My eyes followed the direction indicated, and could just distinguish agrinning face among the interlacing roots at the base of the tree. SoI picked up the green, dartlike end of the pod, and took careful aimat the brown face and milk-white teeth. 

Then it struck me as peculiar that a monkey, after all the evidenceof fright we had so lately witnessed, should seek a hiding-place thatmust be within easy reach of its greatest enemy, the boa-constrictor. 

Aboo Din had aroused himself, and was looking intently in the samedirection. Before I could take a step toward the tree he had leapedto his feet, and was bounding across the little space, shouting, "Baboo! Baboo!"

The small brown face instantly disappeared, and we were left staringblankly at a dark opening into the heart of the woody maze. Then weheard the small, well-known voice of Baboo:--

"Tabek (greeting), Tuan! Greeting, Aboo Din! Tuan Consul no whip, Baboo come out. "

Aboo Din ran his long, naked arm into the opening in pursuit of hisfirst-born--the audacious boy who would make terms with his whitemaster!

"Is it not enough before Allah that this son should cause me, a Hadji, to curse daily, but now he must bewitch tigers and dictate terms tothe Tuan and to me, his father? He shall feel the strength of my wrist;I will--O Allah!"

Aboo snatched forth his arm with a howl of pain. One of his fingerswas bleeding profusely, and the marks of tiny teeth showed plainlywhere Baboo had closed them on the offending hand. 

"Biak, Baboo, mari!" (Good, come forth!) I said. 

First the round, soft face of the small miscreant appeared; thenthe head, and then the naked little body. Aboo Din grasped him inhis arms, regardless of his former threats, or of the blood that wasflowing from his wounds. Then, amid caresses and promises to Allahto kill fire-fighting cocks, the father hugged and kissed Baboo untilhe cried out with pain. 

After each Malay had taken the little fellow in his arms, I turnedto Baboo and said, while I tried to be severe, --

"Baboo, where is tiger?"

"Sudah mati (dead), Tuan, " he answered with dignity. "Tiger over there, Tuan. Sladang kill. I hid here and wait for Aboo Din!"

He touched his forehead with the back of his brown palm. There wasnothing, either in the little fellow's bearing or words, that betrayedfear or bravado. It was only one mishap more or less to him. 

We followed Baboo's lead to the edge of the jungle, and there, stretched out in the hot sand, lay the great, tawny beast, stampedand pawed until he was almost unrecognizable. 

All about him were the hoof-marks of the great sladang, the fiercestand wildest animal of the peninsula--the Malayan bull that will chargea tiger, a black lion, a boa, and even a crocodile, on sight. Hunterswill go miles to avoid one of them, and a herd of elephants will gotrumpeting away in fear at their approach. 

"Kuching besar (big cat) eat Baboo's chow dog, then sleep inlallang grass, "--this was the child's story. "Baboo find, and say, 'Bagus kuching (pretty kitty), see Baboo's doll?' Kuching no likeBaboo's doll mem consul give. Kuching run away. Baboo catch tail, run too. Kuching go long ways. Baboo 'fraid Aboo Din whip and tellkuching must go back. Kuching pick Baboo up in mouth when Baboo let go. 

"Kuching hurt Baboo. Baboo stick fingers in kuching's eye. Kuchingno more hurt Baboo. Kuching stop under banian tree and sleep. Bigsladang come, fight kuching. Baboo sorry for good kuching. Baboo hidfrom sladang, --Aboo Din no whip Baboo?"

His voice dropped to a pathetic little quaver, and he put up hishands with an appealing gesture; but his brown legs were drawn backready to flee should Aboo Din make one hostile move. 

"Baboo, " I said, "you are a hero!"

Baboo opened his little black eyes, but did not dispute me. 

"You shall go to Mecca when you grow up, and become a Hadji, and whenyou come back the high kadi shall take you in the mosque and makea kateeb of you, " said I. "Now put your forehead to the ground andthank the good Allah that the kuching had eaten dog before he got you. "

Baboo did as he was told, but I think that in his heart he was moregrateful that for once he had evaded a whipping than for his remarkableescape. A little later the punghulo came up with a half-dozen shikaris, or hunters, and a pack of hunting dogs. The men skinned the mutilatedcarcass of the only "good tiger" I met during my three years' huntingin the jungles of this strange old peninsula. 

BABOO'S PIRATES

An Adventure in the Pahang River

There was a scuffle in the outer office, and a thin, piping voicewas calling down all the curses of the Koran on the heads of my greattop-heavy Hindu guards. 

"Sons of dogs, " I heard in the most withering contempt, "I will seethe Tuan Consul. Know he is my father. "

A tall Sikh, with his great red turban awry and his brown kaki uniformtorn and soiled, pushed through the bamboo chicks and into my presence. 

He was dragging a small bit of naked humanity by the folds of itsfaded cotton sarong. 

The powerful soldier was hot and flushed, and a little stream ofblood trickling from his finger tips showed where they had come incontact with his captive's teeth. It was as though an elephant hadbeen worried by a pariah cur. 

"Your Excellency, " he said, salaaming and gasping for breath. 

"It is Baboo, the Harimau-Anak!"

Baboo wrenched from the guard's grasp and glided up to my desk. Theback of his open palm went to his forehead, and his big brown eyeslooked up appealingly into mine. 

"What is it, Tiger-Child?" I asked, bestowing on him the title theMalays of Kampong Glam had given him as a perpetual reminder of hisfamous adventure. 

Dimples came into either tear-stained cheek. He smoothed out the rentsin his small sarong, and without deigning to notice his late captor, said in a soft sing-song voice:--

"Tuan Consul, Baboo want to go with the Heaven-Born to Pahang. Baboo six years old, --can fight pirates like Aboo Din, the father. MayMohammed make Tuan as odorous as musk!"

"You are a boaster before Allah, Baboo, " I said, smiling. 

Baboo dropped his head in perfectly simulated contrition. 

"I have thought much, Tuan. "

News had come to me that an American merchant ship had been wreckednear the mouth of the Pahang River, and that the Malays, who were atthe time in revolt against the English Resident, had taken possessionof its cargo of petroleum and made prisoners of the crew. 

I had asked the colonial governor for a guard of five Sikhs and alaunch, that I might steam up the coast and investigate the allegedoutrage before appealing officially to the British government. 

Of course Baboo went, much to the disgust of Aboo Din, the syce. 

I never was able to refuse the little fellow anything, and I knew ifI left him behind he would be revenged by running away. 

I had vowed again and again that Baboo should stay lost the nexttime he indulged in his periodical vanishing act, but each time whennight came and Aboo Din, the syce, and Fatima, the mother, creptpathetically along the veranda to where I was smoking and steelingmy heart against the little rascal, I would snatch up my cork helmetand spring into my cart, which Aboo Din had kept waiting inside thestables for the moment when I should relent. 

Since Baboo had become a hero and earned the appellation of theHarimau-Anak, his vanity directed his footsteps toward Kampong Glam, the Malay quarter of Singapore. Here he was generally to be found, seated on a richly hued Indian rug, with his feet drawn up under him, amid a circle of admiring shopkeepers, syces, kebuns, and fishermen, narrating for the hundredth time how he had been caught at Changhiby a tiger, carried through the jungle on its back until he came toa great banian tree, into which he had crawled while the tiger slept, how a sladang (wild bull) came out of the lagoon and killed the tiger, and how Tuan Consul and Aboo Din, the father, had found him and kissedhim many times. 

Often he enlarged on the well-known story and repeated longconversations that he had carried on with the tiger while they werejourneying through the jungle. 

A brass lamp hung above his head in which the cocoanut oil sputteredand burned and cast a fitful half-light about the box-like stall. 

Only the eager faces of the listeners stood out clear and distinctagainst the shadowy background of tapestries from Madras and Bokhara, soft rich rugs from Afghanistan and Persia, curiously wrought fingerbowls of brass and copper from Delhi and Siam, and piles of cunninglypainted sarongs from Java. 

Close against a naked fisherman sat the owner of the bazaar in tall, conical silk-plaited hat and flowing robes, ministering to the wantsof the little actor, as the soft, monotonous voice paused for a briefinstant for the tiny cups of black coffee. 

I never had the heart to interrupt him in the midst of one of thesedramatic recitals, but would stand respectfully without the circleof light until he had finished the last sentence. 

He was not frightened when I thrust the squatting natives rightand left, and he did not forget to arise and touch the back of hisopen palm to his forehead, with a calm and reverent, "Tabek, Tuan"(Greeting, my lord). 

So Baboo went with us to fight pirates. 

He unrolled his mat out on the bow where every dash of warm saltwater wet his brown skin, and where he could watch the flying fishdash across our way. 

He was very quiet during the two days of the trip, as though he werefully conscious of the heavy responsibility that rested upon his youngshoulders. I had called him a boaster and it had cut him to the quick. 

We found the wreck of the Bunker Hill on a sunken coral reef near themouth of the Pahang River, but every vestige of her cargo and storeswas gone, even to the glass in her cabin windows and the brasses onher rails. 

We worked in along the shore and kept a lookout for camps or signals, but found none. 

I decided to go up the river as far as possible in the launch inhope of coming across some trace of the missing crew, although Iwas satisfied that they had been captured by the noted rebel chief, the Orang Kayah of Semantan, or by his more famous lieutenant, thecrafty Panglima Muda of Jempol, and were being held for ransom. 

It was late in the afternoon when we entered the mouth of the SungiPahang. 

Aboo Din advised a delay until the next morning. 

"The Orang Kayah's Malays are pirates, Tuan, " he said, with a sinistershrug of his bare shoulders, "he has many men and swift praus; theDutch, at Rio, have sold them guns, and they have their krises, --theyare cowards in the day. "

I smiled at the syce's fears. 

I knew that the days of piracy in the Straits of Malacca, save foran occasional outbreak of high-sea petty larceny on a Chinese lumberjunk or a native trader's tonkang, were past, and I did not believethat the rebels would have the hardihood to attack, day or night, a boat, however unprotected, bearing the American flag. 

For an hour or more we ran along between the mangrove-bordered shoresagainst a swiftly flowing, muddy current. 

The great tangled roots of these trees stood up out of the water likea fretwork of lace, and the interwoven branches above our heads shutout the glassy glare of the sun. We pushed on until the dim twilightfaded out, and only a phosphorescent glow on the water remained toreveal the snags that marked our course. 

The launch was anchored for the night close under the bank, wherethe maze of mangroves was beginning to give place to the solid groundand the jungle. 

Myriads of fireflies settled down on us and hung from the low limbsof the overhanging trees, relieving the hot, murky darkness withtheir thousands of throbbing lamps. 

From time to time a crocodile splashed in the water as he slid heavilydown the clayey bank at the bow. 

In the trees and rubber-vines all about us a colony of long-armedwah-wah monkeys whistled and chattered, and farther away the sharp, rasping note of a cicada kept up a continuous protest at our invasion. 

At intervals the long, quivering yell of a tiger frightened thegarrulous monkeys into silence, and made us peer apprehensively towardthe impenetrable blackness of the jungle. 

Aboo Din came to me as I was arranging my mosquito curtains forthe night. He was casting quick, timid glances over his shoulder ashe talked. 

"Tuan, I no like this place. Too close bank. Ten boat-lengths downstream better. Baboo swear by Allah he see faces behind trees, --once, twice. Baboo good eyes. "

I shook off the uncanny feeling that the place was beginning to castover me, and turned fiercely on the faithful Aboo Din. 

He slunk away with a low salaam, muttering something about theHeaven-Born being all wise, and later I saw him in deep converse withhis first-born under a palm-thatched cadjang on the bow. 

I was half inclined to take Aboo Din's advice and drop down thestream. Then it occurred to me that I might better face an imaginaryfoe than the whirlpools and sunken snags of the Pahang. 

I posted sentinels fore and aft and lay down and closed my eyes tothe legion of fireflies that made the night luminous, and my earsto the low, musical chant that arose fitfully from among my Malayservants on the stern. 

The Sikhs were big, massive fellows, fully six feet tall, with toweringred turbans that accentuated their height fully a foot. 

They were regular artillery-men from Fort Canning, and had seenservice all over India. 

They had not been in Singapore long enough to become acquaintedwith the Malay language or character, but they knew their duty, and I trusted to their military training rather than to my Malay'ssuperior knowledge for our safety during the night. 

I found out later that the cunning in Baboo's small brown finger wasworth all the precision and drill in the Sikh sergeant's great body. 

I fell asleep at last, lulled by the tenderly crooned promises ofthe Koran, and the drowsy, intermittent prattle of the monkeys amongthe varnished leaves above. The night was intensely hot; not a breathof air could stir within our living-cabin, and the cooling moisturewhich always comes with nightfall on the equator was lapped up by thethirsty fronds above our heads, so that I had not slept many hoursbefore I awoke dripping with perspiration, and faint. 

There was an impression in my mind that I had been awakened by thefalling of glass. 

The Sikh saluted silently as I stepped out on the deck. 

It lacked some hours of daylight, and there was nothing to do but goback to my bed, vowing never again to camp for the night along thesteaming shores of a jungle-covered stream. 

I slept but indifferently; I missed the cooling swish of the punkah, and all through my dreams the crackle and breaking of glass seemedto mingle with the insistent buzz of the tiger-gnats. 

Baboo's diminutive form kept flitting between me and the fireflies. 

The first half-lights of morning were struggling down through thegreen canopy above when I was brought to my feet by the discharge ofa Winchester and a long, shrill cry of fright and pain. 

Before I could disentangle myself from the meshes of the mosquito netI could see dimly a dozen naked forms drop lightly on to the deckfrom the obscurity of the bank, followed in each case by a long, piercing scream of pain. 

I snatched up my revolver and rushed out on to the deck in my barefeet. 

Some one grasped me by the shoulder and shouted:--

"Jaga biak, biak, Tuan (be careful, Tuan), pirates!"

I recognized Aboo Din's voice, and I checked myself just as my feetcame in contact with a broken beer bottle. 

The entire surface of the little deck was strewn with glitteringstar-shaped points that corresponded with the fragments before me. 

I had not a moment to investigate, however, for in the gloom, wherethe bow of the launch touched the foliage-meshed bank, a scene ofwild confusion was taking place. 

Shadowy forms were leaping, one after another, from the branches aboveon to the deck. I slowly cocked my revolver, doubting my senses, for each time one of the invaders reached the deck he sprang intothe air with the long, thrilling cry of pain that had awakened me, and with another bound was on the bulwarks and over the side of thelaunch, clinging to the railing. 

With each cry, Baboo's mocking voice came out, shrill and exultant, from behind a pile of life-preservers. "O Allah, judge the dogs. Theywould kris the great Tuan as he slept--the pariahs!--but they forgotso mean a thing as Baboo!"

The smell of warm blood filled the air, and a low snarl among therubber-vines revealed the presence of a tiger. 

I felt Aboo Din's hand tremble on my shoulder. 

The five Sikhs were drawn up in battle array before the cabin door, waiting for the word of command. I glanced at them and hesitated. 

"Tid 'apa, Tuan" (never mind), Aboo Din whispered with a proud ringin his voice. 

"Baboo blow Orang Kayah's men away with the breath of his mouth. "

As he spoke the branches above the bow were thrust aside and a darkform hung for an instant as though in doubt, then shot straight downupon the corrugated surface of the deck. 

As before, a shriek of agony heralded the descent, followed byBaboo's laugh, then the dim shape sprang wildly upon the bulwark, lost its hold, and went over with a great splash among the labyrinthof snakelike mangrove roots. 

There was the rushing of many heavy forms through the red mud, a snapping of great jaws, and there was no mistaking the almostmortal cry that arose from out the darkness. I had often heard itwhen paddling softly up one of the wild Malayan rivers. 

It was the death cry of a wah-wah monkey facing the cruel jaws ofa crocodile. 

I plunged my fingers into my ears to smother the sound. I understoodit all now. Baboo's pirates, the dreaded Orang Kayah's rebels, were thetroop of monkeys we had heard the night before in the tambusa trees. 

"Baboo, " I shouted, "come here! What does this all mean?"

The Tiger-Child glided from behind the protecting pile, and cameclose up to my legs. 

"Tuan, " he whimpered, "Baboo see many faces behind trees. Baboo 'fraidfor Tuan, --Tuan great and good, --save Baboo from tiger, --Baboo breakup all glass bottles--old bottles--Tuan no want old bottle--Babooand Aboo Din, the father, put them on deck so when Orang Kayah's mencome out of jungle and drop from trees on deck they cut their feeton glass. Baboo is through talking, --Tuan no whip Baboo!"

There was the pathetic little quaver in his voice that I knew so well. 

"But they were monkeys, Baboo, not pirates. "

Baboo shrugged his brown shoulders and kept his eyes on my feet. 

"Allah is good!" he muttered. 

Allah was good; they might have been pirates. 

The snarl of the tiger was growing more insistent and near. I gavethe order, and the boat backed out into mid-stream. 

As the sun was reducing the gloom of the sylvan tunnel to a translucenttwilight, we floated down the swift current toward the ocean. 

I had given up all hope of finding the shipwrecked men, and decidedto ask the government to send a gunboat to demand their release. 

As the bow of the launch passed the wreck of the Bunker Hill andresponded to the long even swell of the Pacific, Baboo beckonedsheepishly to Aboo Din, and together they swept all trace of hisadventure into the green waters. 

Among the souvenirs of my sojourn in Golden Chersonese is a bitof amber-colored glass bearing the world-renowned name of a Londonbrewer. There is a dark stain on one side of it that came from thehairy foot of one of Baboo's "pirates. "

HOW WE PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE

In the Straits of Malacca

Two hours' steam south from Singapore, out into the famous Straits ofMalacca, or one day's steam north from the equator, stands Raffles'sLighthouse. Sir Stamford Raffles, the man from whom it took its name, rests in Westminster Abbey, and a heroic-sized bronze statue of himgraces the centre of the beautiful ocean esplanade of Singapore, the city he founded. 

It was on the rocky island on which stands this light, that we--themistress and I--played Robinson Crusoe, or, to be nearer the truth, Swiss Family Robinson. 

It was hard to imagine, I confess, that the beautiful steam launchthat brought us was a wreck; that our half-dozen Chinese servants weremembers of the family; that the ton of impedimenta was the flotsam ofthe sea; that the Eurasian keeper and his attendants were cannibals;but we closed our eyes to all disturbing elements, and only rememberedthat we were alone on a sunlit rock in the midst of a sunlit sea, and that the dreams of our childhood were, to some extent, realized. 

What live American boy has not had the desire, possibly buthalf-admitted, to some day be like his hero, dear old Crusoe, on atropical island, monarch of all, hampered by no dictates of societyor fashion? I admit my desire, and, further, that it did not leaveme as I grew older. 

We had just time to inspect our little island home before the sunwent down, far out in the Indian Ocean. 

Originally the island had been but a barren, uneven rock, theresting-place for gulls; but now its summit has been made flat by acoating of concrete. There is just enough earth between the concreteand the rocky edges of the island to support a circle of cocoanuttrees, a great almond tree, and a queer-looking banian tree, whosewide-spreading arms extend over nearly half the little plaza. Belowthe lighthouse, and set back like caves into the side of the island, are the kitchen and the servants' quarters, a covered passagewayconnecting them with the rotunda of the tower, in which we have setour dining table. 

Ah Ming, our "China boy, " seemed to be inveterate in his determinationto spoil our Swiss Family Robinson illusion. We were hardly settledbefore he came to us. 

"Mem" (mistress), "no have got ice-e-blox. Ice-e all glow away. "

"Very well, Ming. Dig a hole in the ground, and put the ice in it. "

"How can dig? Glound all same, hard like ice-e. "

"Well, let the ice melt, " I replied. "Robinson Crusoe had no ice. "

In a half-hour Jim, the cook, came up to speak to the "Mem. " Helowered his cue, brushed the creases out of his spotless shirt, drew his face down, and commenced:--

"Mem, no have got chocolate, how can make puddlin'?"

I laughed outright. Jim looked hurt. 

"Jim, did you ever hear of one Crusoe?"

"No, Tuan!" (Lord. )

"Well, he was a Tuan who lived for thirty years without once eatingchocolate 'puddlin'. ' We'll not eat any for ten days. Sabe?"

Jim retired, mortified and astonished. 

Inside of another half-hour, the Tukang Ayer, or water-carrier, arrivedon the scene. He was simply dressed in a pair of knee-breeches. Hecomplained of a lack of silver polish, and was told to pound up astone for the knives, and let the silver alone. 

We are really in the heart of a small archipelago. All about us areverdure-covered islands. They are now the homes of native fishermen, but a century ago they were hiding-places for the fierce Malayanpirates whose sanguinary deeds made the peninsula a byword in themouths of Europeans. 

A rocky beach extends about the island proper, contracting andexpanding as the tide rises and falls. On this beach a hundred and onevarieties of shells glisten in the salt water, exposing their delicateshades of coloring to the rays of the sun. Coral formations of endlessdesign and shape come to view through the limpid spectrum, forminga perfect submarine garden of wondrous beauty. Through the shrubs, branches, ferns, and sponges of coral, the brilliantly colored fishof the Southern seas sport like goldfish in some immense aquarium. 

We draw out our chairs within the protection of the almond tree, andwatch the sun sink slowly to a level with the masts of a bark that isbound for Java and the Bornean coasts. The black, dead lava of ourisland becomes molten for the time, and the flakes of salt left onthe coral reef by the outgoing tide are filled with suggestions ofthe gold of the days of '49. A faint breeze rustles among the long, fan-like leaves of the palm, and brings out the rich yellow tintswith their background of green. A clear, sweet aroma comes from outthe almond tree. The red sun and the white sheets of the bark sailaway together for the Spice Islands of the South Pacific. 

We sleep in a room in the heart of the lighthouse. The stairwayleading to it is so steep that we find it necessary to hold on to aknotted rope as we ascend. Hundreds of little birds, no larger thansparrows, dash by the windows, flying into the face of the gale thatrages during the night, keeping up all the time a sharp, high notethat sounds like wind blowing on telegraph wires. 

Every morning, at six o'clock, Ah Ming clambers up the perpendicularstairway, with tea and toast. We swallow it hurriedly, wrap a sarongabout us, and take a dip in the sea, the while keeping our eyes openfor sharks. Often, after a bath, while stretched out in a long chair, we see the black fins of a man-eater cruising just outside the reef. Ido not know that I ever hit one, but I have used a good deal of leadfiring at them. 

One morning we started on an exploring expedition, in the keeper'sjolly-boat. It was only a short distance to the first island, a smallrocky one, with a bit of sandy beach, along which were scatteredthe charred embers of past fires. From under our feet darted thegrotesque little robber-crabs, with their stolen shell houses on theirbacks. A great white jellyfish, looking like a big tapioca pudding, had been washed up with the tide out of the reach of the sea, and asmall colony of ants was feasting on it. We did not try to explorethe interior of the islet. We named it Fir Island from its crown offir-like casuarina trees, which sent out on every breeze a balsamicodor that was charged with far-away New England recollections. 

The next island was a large one. The keeper said it was called PuloSeneng, or Island of Leisure, and held a little kampong, or village ofMalays, under an old punghulo, or chief, named Wahpering. We found, on nearing the verdure-covered island, that it looked much largerthan it really was. The woods grew out into the sea for a quarterof a mile. We entered the wood by a narrow walled inlet, and foundourselves for the first time in a mangrove swamp. The trees all seemedto be growing on stilts. A perfect labyrinth of roots stood up out ofthe water, like a rough scaffold, on which rested the tree trunks, high and dry above the flood. From the limbs of the trees hung theseed pods, two feet in length, sharp-pointed at the lower end, while onthe upper end, next to the tree, was a russet pear-shaped growth. Theyare so nicely balanced that when in their maturity they drop from thebranches, they fall upright in the mud, literally planting themselves. 

The punghulo's house, or bungalow, stood at the head of the inlet. Theold man--he must have been sixty--donned his best clothes, relieved hismouth of a great red quid of betel, and came out to welcome us. Hegracefully touched his forehead with the back of his open palm, and mumbled the Malay greeting:--

"Tabek, Tuan?" (How are you, my lord?)

When the keeper gave him our cards, and announced us in floridlanguage, the genial old fellow touched his forehead again, and inhis best Bugis Malay begged the great Rajah and Ranee to enter hishumble home. 

The only way of entering a Malay home is by a rickety ladder six feethigh, and through a four-foot opening. I am afraid that the great"Rajah and Ranee" lost some of their lately acquired dignity inaccepting the invitation. 

Wahpering's bungalow, other than being larger and roomier thanthe ordinary bungalow, was exactly like all others in style andarchitecture. 

It was built close to the water's edge, on palm posts six feet abovethe ground. This was for protection from the tiger, from thieves, fromthe water, and for sanitary reasons. Within the house we could juststand upright. The floor was of split bamboo, and was elastic to thefoot, causing a sensation which at first made us step carefully. Theopen places left by the crossing of the bamboo slats were a greatconvenience to the punghulo's wives, as they could sweep all the refuseof the house through them; they might also be a great accommodation tothe punghulo's enemies, if he had any, for they could easily ascertainthe exact mat on which he slept, and stab him with their keen krisesfrom beneath. 

In one corner of the room was the hand-loom on which the punghulo'sold wife was weaving the universal article of dress, the sarong. 

The weaving of a sarong represents the labor of twenty days, andwhen we gave the dried-up old worker two dollars and a half for one, her syrah-stained gums broke forth from between her bright-red lipsin a ghastly grin of pleasure. 

There must have been the representatives of at least four generationsunder the punghulo's hospitable roof. Men and women, alike, weredressed in the skirt-like sarong which fell from the waist down; abovethat some of the older women wore another garment called a kabaya. Themarried women were easily distinguishable by their swollen gums andfiled teeth. 

The roof and sides of the house were of attap. This is made fromthe long, arrow-like leaves of the nipah palm. Unlike its brotherpalms--the cocoa, the sago, the gamooty, and the areca--the nipah isshort, and more like a giant cactus in growth. Its leaves are strippedoff by the natives, then bent over a bamboo rod and sewed together withfibres of the same palm. When dry they become glazed and waterproof. 

The tall, slender areca palm, which stands about every kampong, supplies the natives with their great luxury--an acorn, known as thebetel-nut, which, when crushed and mixed with lime leaves, takes theplace of our chewing tobacco. In fact, the bright-red juice seen oozingfrom the corners of a Malay's mouth is as much a part of himself asis his sarong or kris. Betel-nut chewing holds its own against theopium of the Chinese and the tobacco of the European. 

As soon as we shook hands ceremoniously with the punghulo's oldestwife, and tabeked to the rest of his big family, the old man scrambleddown the ladder, and sent a boy up a cocoanut tree for some freshnuts. In a moment half a dozen of the great, oval, green nuts camepounding down into the sand. Another little fellow snatched them up, and with a sharp parang, or hatchet-like knife, cut away the soft shuckuntil the cocoanut took the form of a pyramid, at the apex of whichhe bored a hole, and a stream of delicious, cool milk gurgled out. Weneeded no second invitation to apply our lips to the hole. The meatinside was so soft that we could eat it with a spoon. The cocoanutof commerce contains hardly a suggestion of the tender, fleshy pulpof a freshly picked nut. 

We left the punghulo's house with the old chief in the bow of ourboat--he insisted upon seeing that we were properly announced to hissubjects--and proceeded along the coast for half a mile, and then upa swampy lagoon to its head. 

The tall tops of the palms wrapped everything in a cool, greentwilight. The waters of the lagoon were filled with little bronzeforms, swimming and sporting about in its tepid depths regardless ofthe cruel eyes that gleamed at them from great log-like forms amongthe mangrove roots. 

Dozens of naked children fled up the rickety ladders of their homesas we approached. Ring-doves flew through the trees, and tame monkeyschattered at us from every corner. The men came out to meet us, anddid the hospitalities of their village; and when we left, our boatwas loaded down with presents of fish and fruit. 

Almost every day after that did we visit the kampong, and were alwayswelcomed in the same cordial manner. 

Wahpering was tireless in his attentions. He kept his Sampan Besar, or big boat, with its crew at our disposal day after day. 

One day I showed him the American flag. He gazed at it thoughtfully andsaid, "Biak!" (Good. ) "How big your country?" I tried to explain. Helistened for a moment. "Big as Negri Blanda?" (Holland. ) I laughed. "Athousand times larger!" The old fellow shook his head sadly, andlooked at me reproachfully. 

"Tidah! Tidah!" (No, no. ) "Rajah, Orang Blanda (Dutchman) show mechart of the world. Holland all red. Take almost all the world. Restof country small, small. All in one little corner. How can Rajah sayhis country big?"

There was no denying the old man's knowledge; I, too, had seen oneof these Dutch maps of the world, which are circulated in Java tomake the natives think that Holland is the greatest nation on earth. 

One day glided into another with surprising rapidity. We could swim, explore, or lie out in our long chairs and read and listlesslydream. All about our little island the silver sheen of the seawas checkered with sails. These strange native craft held for mea lasting fascination. I gazed out at them as they glided by andsaw in them some of the rose-colored visions of my youth. Piracy, Indian Rajahs, and spice islands seemed to live in their queer redsails and palm-matting roofs. At night a soft, warm breeze blew fromoff shore and lulled us to sleep ere we were aware. 

One morning the old chief made us a visit before we were up. Heannounced his approach by a salute from a muzzle-loading musket. Ireturned it by a discharge from my revolver. He had come overwith the morning tide to ask us to spend the day, as his guests, wild-pig hunting. Of course we accepted with alacrity. I am notgoing to tell you how we found all the able-bodied men and dogs onthe island awaiting us, how they beat the jungle with frantic yellsand shouts while we waited on the opposite side, or even how manypigs we shot. It would all take too long. 

We went fishing every day. The many-colored and many-shaped fish wecaught were a constant wonderment to us. One was bottle-green, withsky-blue fins and tail, and striped with lines of gold. Its skinwas stiff and firm as patent leather. Another was pale blue, witha bright-red proboscis two inches long. We caught cuttle-fish withgreat lustrous eyes, long jelly feelers, and a plentiful supply ofblack fluid; squibs, prawns, mullets, crabs, and devil-fish. Theselast are considered great delicacies by the natives. We had onefried. Its meat was perfectly white, and tasted like a tallow candle. 

The day on which we were to leave, Wahpering brought us some fruit andfish and a pair of ring-doves. Motioning me to one side, he whispered, the while looking shyly at the mistress, "Ranee very beautiful! Howmuch you pay?" I was staggered for the moment, and made him repeat hisquestion. This time I could not mistake him. "How much you pay forwife?" He gave his thumb a jerk in the direction of the mistress. Isaw that he was really serious, so I collected my senses, and witha practical, businesslike air answered, "Two hundred dollars. " Theold fellow sighed. 

"The great Rajah very rich! I pay fifty for best wife. "

I have not tried to tell you all we did on our tropical island playingRobinson Crusoe. I have only tried to convey some little impressionof a happy ten days that will ever be remembered as one more ofthose glorious, Oriental chapters in our lives which are filled withthe gorgeous colors of crimson and gold, the delicate perfumes ofspice-laden breezes, and with imperishable visions of a strange, old-world life. 

They are chapters that we can read over and over again with an everincreasing interest as the years roll by. 

THE SARONG

The Malay's Chief Garment

No one knows who invented the sarong. When the great Sir FrancisDrake skirted the beautiful jungle-bound shores of that strange Asianpeninsula which seems forever to be pointing a wondering finger intothe very heart of the greatest archipelago in the world, he foundits inhabitants wearing the sarong. After a lapse of three centuriesthey still wear it, --neither Hindu invasion, Mohammedan conversion, Chinese immigration, nor European conquest has ever taken from themtheir national dress. Civilization has introduced many articles ofclothing; but no matter how many of these are adopted, the Malay, from his Highness the Sultan of Johore, to the poorest fisherman ofa squalid kampong on the muddy banks of a mangrove-hidden stream, religiously wears the sarong. 

It is only an oblong cloth, this fashion-surviving garb, from twoto four feet in width and some two yards long; sewn together at theends. It looks like a gingham bag with the bottom out. The wearersteps into it, and with two or three ingenious twists tightens itround the waist, thus forming a skirt and, at the same time, a beltin which he carries the kris, or snake-like dagger, the inevitablepouch of areca nut for chewing, and the few copper cents that he daresnot trust in his unlocked hut. The man's skirt falls to his knees, and among the poor class forms his only article of dress, while thewoman's reaches to her ankles and is worn in connection with anothersarong that is thrown over her head as a veil, so that when she isabroad and meets one of the opposite sex she can, Moslem-like, drawit about her face in the form of a long, narrow slit, showing onlyher coal-black eyes and thinly pencilled eyebrows. 

In style or design the sarong never changes. Like the tartan of theHighlanders, which it greatly resembles, it is invariably a checkof gay colors. They are all woven of silk or cotton, or of silk andcotton mixed, by the native women, and no attap-thatched home iscomplete without its hand-loom. 

One day we crawled up the narrow, rickety ladder that led into thetwo by four opening of old Wahpering's palm-shaded home. The littlepunghulo or chief, touched his forehead with the back of his openpalm as we advanced cautiously over the open bamboo floor toward hisold wife, who was seated in one corner by a low, horizontal window, weaving a sarong on a hand-loom. She looked up pleasantly with a soft"Tabek" (Greeting), and went on throwing her shuttle deftly through thebrilliantly colored threads. The sharp bang of the dark, kamooning-woodbar drove the thread in place and left room for another. Back andforth flew the shuttle, and thread after thread was added to thefabric, yet no perceptible addition seemed to be made. 

"How long does it take to finish it?" I asked in Malay. 

"Twenty days, " she answered, with a broad smile, showing her black, filed teeth and syrah-stained lips. 

The red and brown sarong which she wore twisted tightly up under herarmpits had cost her almost a month's work; the green and yellow oneher chief wore about his waist, a month more; the ones she used asscreens to divide the interior into rooms, and those of the bevyof sons and daughters of all ages that crowded about us each costa month's more; and yet the labor and material combined in eachrepresented less than two dollars of our money at the Bazaar inSingapore. 

I had not the heart to take the one that she offered the mistress, but insisted on giving in exchange a pearl-handled penknife, whichthe chief took, with many a touch of his forehead, "as a remembranceof the condescension of the Orang American Rajah. "

Wahpering's wife was not dressed to receive us, for we had come swiftlyup the dim lagoon, over which her home was built, and had landedon the sandy beach unannounced. Had she known that we were coming, she would have been dressed as became the wife of the Punghulo ofPulo Seneng (Island of Leisure). The long, black hair would have beenwashed beautifully clean with the juice of limes, and twisted up as acrown on the top of her head. In it would have been stuck pins of thedeep-red gold from Mt. Ophir, and sprays of jasmine and chumpaka. Underher silken sarong would have been an inner garment of white cotton, about her waist a zone of beaded cloth held in front by an oval plate, and over all would have been thrown a long, loose dressing-gown, calledthe kabaya, falling to her knees and fastened down the front to thesilver girdle with golden brooches. Her toes would have been coveredwith sandals cunningly embroidered in colored beads and gold tinsel. 

Wahpering, too, might have added to his sarong a thin vest, buttonedclose up to the neck, a light dimity baju, or jacket, and a pair ofloose silk drawers. They made no apology for their appearance, butdid the honors of the house with a native grace, regaling us withthe cool, fresh milk of the cocoanut, and the delicious globes ofthe mangosteens. 

The glare of the noonday sun, here on the equator, is inconceivable. Itbeats down in bald, irregular waves of heat that seem to stifleevery living being and to burn the foliage to a cinder. Even thesharp, insistent whir of the cicada ceases when the thermometer onthe sunny side of our palm-thatched bungalow reaches 155°. If I amforced to go outside, I don my cork helmet, and hold a paper umbrellaabove it. Even then, after I have gone a half-hour, I feel dizzy andsick. I pass native after native, whose only head covering, if theyhave any at all save their short-cut black hair, is a handkerchief, stiffened, and tied with a peculiar twist on the head, or a rimlesscap with possibly a text of the Koran embroidered on its front. It isonly when they are on the sea from early morning to sunset, that theythink it worth while to protect their heads with an umbrella-shaped, cane-worked head frame like those worn by the natives of Siam andChina. The women I meet simply draw their sarongs more closely abouttheir heads as the sun ascends higher and higher into the heavens, andgo clattering off down the road in their wooden pattens, unconsciousof my envy or wonderment. 

The sarong is more to the Malay than is the kilt to the Scotchman. Itis his dress by day and his covering at night. He uses it as a sailwhen far out from land in his cockle-shell boat, or as a bag in whichto carry his provisions when following an elephant path through thedense jungle. 

The checks, in its design, although indistinguishable to the European, differ according to his tribe or clan, and serve him as a means ofidentification wherever he may be on the peninsula. 

The sarong and kris are distinctly and solely Malayan; they are sharedwith no other country; they are to be placed side by side with thegreen turban of the Moslem pilgrim and the cimeter of the Prophet. 

A history of one, like the history of the other, embraces all thatis tragical or romantic in Malayan story. 

THE KRIS

And how the Malays use it

In an old dog-eared copy of Monteith's Geography, I remember apicture of a half-dozen pirate prahus attacking a merchantman off ajungle-bordered shore. A blazing sun hung high in the heavens above thefated ship, and, to my youthful imagination, seemed to beat down on thetropical scene with a fierce, remorseless intensity. The wedge-shapedtops of some palm-thatched and palm-shaded huts could just be seen, set well back from the shore. 

I used to think that if I were a boy on that ship, I would slip quietlyoverboard, swim ashore, and while the pirates were busy fighting, I would set fire to their homes and so deliver the ship from theirclutches. Little did I know then of the acres of bewildering mangroveswamps filled with the treacherous crocodiles that lie between thelow-water line and the firm ground of the coast. 

But always the most striking thing in the little woodcut to me werethe curious, snake-like knives that the naked natives held in theirhands. I had never seen anything like them before. I went to theencyclopædia and found that the name of the knife was spelled krisand pronounced creese. 

The day-dreams which seemed impossible in the days of Monteith'sGeography have since been realized. I am living, perhaps, withinsight of the very place where the scene of the picture was laid;for it was supposed to be illustrative of the Malay Peninsula;and, as I write, one of those snake-like krises lies on the tablebefore me. It is a handsomer kris than those used by the actors inthat much-studied picture of my youth. The sheath and handle are ofsolid gold--a rich yellow gold, mined at the foot of Mount Ophir, the very same mountain so famous in Bible history, from which KingSolomon brought "gold, peacocks' feathers, and monkeys. " The wavy, flame-like blade is veined with gold, and its dull silvery surface isdamascened with as much care as was ever taken with the old swordsof Damascus. It is only an inch in width and a foot in length anddoes not look half as dangerous as a Turkish cimeter; yet it has ahistory that would put that of the tomahawk or the scalping-knifeto shame. Many a fat Chinaman, trading between the Java islands andAmoy, has felt its keen edge at his throat and seen his rich cargoof spices and bird's-nests rifled, his beloved Joss thrown overboard, and his queer old junk burnt before his eyes. Many a Dutch and Englishmerchantman sailed from Batavia and Bombay in the days of the old EastIndia Company and has never more been heard of until some mutilatedsurvivor returned with a harrowing tale of Malay piracy and of thelightning-like work of the dreaded kris. 

I do not know whether my kris has ever taken life or not. Had it doneso, I do not think the Sultan would have given it to me, for a krisbecomes almost priceless after its baptism of blood. It is handeddown from generation to generation, and its sanguine history becomesa part of the education of the young. Next to his Koran the krisis the most sacred thing the Malay possesses. He regards it with analmost superstitious reverence. My kris is dear to me, not from anysuperstitious reasons, but because it was given me by his Highness, the Sultan of Johore, the only independent sovereign on the peninsula, and because the gold of its sheath came from the jungle-covered slopesof Mount Ophir. 

The maker of the kris is a person of importance among the Malays, and ofttimes he is made by his grateful Rajah a Dato, or Lord, forhis skill. Like the blades of the sturdy armorers of the Crusades, his blades are considered, as he fashions them from well-hammered andwell-tempered Celebes iron, works of art and models for futurity. Heis exceedingly punctilious in regard to their shape, size, and generalformation, and the process of giving them their beautiful water linesis quite a ceremony. First the razor-like edges are covered with athin coating of wax to protect them from the action of the acids;then a mixture of boiled rice, sulphur, and salt is put on the bladeand left for seven days until a film of rust rises to the surface. Theblade is then immersed in the water of a young cocoanut or the juiceof a pineapple and left seven days longer. It is next brushed withthe juice of a lemon until all the rust is cleared away, and thenrubbed with arsenic dissolved in lime-juice and washed with coldspring water. Finally it is anointed with cocoanut oil, and as aconcluding test of its fineness and temper, it is said that in theold days its owner would rush out into the kampong, or village, and stab the first person he met. 

The sheath of the kris is generally made of kamooning wood, but oftenof ivory, gold, or silver. The handle, while more frequently of woodor buffalo horn, is sometimes of gold studded with precious stones andworth more than all the other possessions of its owner put together. 

The kris, too, has its etiquette. It is always worn on the left sidestuck into the folds of the sarong, or skirt, the national dress ofthe Malay. During an interview it is considered respectful to concealit; and its handle is turned with its point close to the body of thewearer, if the wearer be friendly. If, however, there is ill bloodexisting, and the wearer is angry, the kris is exposed, and the pointof the handle turned the reverse way. 

The kris as a weapon of offence and defence is now almost a thingof the past. It is rapidly going the way of the tomahawk and theboomerang--into the collector's cabinet. There is a law in Singaporethat forbids its being worn, and outside of Johore and the nativestates it is seldom seen. It is still used as an executioner's knifeby the protected Sultan of Selangor, its keen point being driveninto the heart of the victim; but in a few years that practice, too, will be abolished by the humane intervention of the English government. 

It is to be hoped that the record of the kris is not as bad as ithas been painted by some, and that at times in its bloody career ithas been on the side of justice and right. The part it took in thepiracy that once made the East Indian seas so famous was not alwaysdone for the sake of gain, but often for revenge and for independence. 

THE WHITE RAJAH OF BORNEO

The Founding of Sarawak

In the East Indian seas, by Europeans and natives alike, two namesare revered with a singleness and devotion that place them side byside with the national heroes of all countries. 

The men that bear the names are Englishmen, yet the countless islandsof the vast Malayan archipelago are populated by a hundred European, African, and Asiatic races. 

Sir Stamford Raffles founded the great city of Singapore, and SirJames Brooke, the "White Rajah, " carved out of a tropical wildernessjust across the equator, in Borneo, the kingdom of Sarawak. 

There is no one man in all history with whom you may compare RajahBrooke. His career was the score of a hero of the footlights or ofthe dime novel rather than the life of an actual history-maker inthis prosaic nineteenth century. What is true of him is also true ina less degree of his famous nephew and successor, Sir Charles Brooke, G. C. M. C. , the present Rajah. 

One morning in Singapore, as I sipped my tea and broke open one cool, delicious mangosteen after another, I was reading in the daily StraitsTimes an account of the descent of a band of head-hunting Dyaks fromthe jungles of the Rejang River in Borneo on an isolated fishingkampong, or village, --of how they killed men, women, and children, and carried their heads back to their strongholds in triumph, and ofhow, in the midst of their feasting and ceremonies, Rajah Brooke, with a little company of fierce native soldiery, had surprised andexterminated them to the last man; and just then the sound of heavycannonading in the harbor below caused me to drop my paper. 

In a moment the great guns from Fort Canning answered. Icounted--seventeen--and turned inquiringly to the naked punkah-wallah, who stood just outside in the shade of the wide veranda, listlesslypulling the rattan rope that moved the stiff fan above me. 

His brown, open palm went respectfully to his forehead. 

"His Highness, the Rajah of Sarawak, " he answered proudly in Malay. "Hecome in gunboat Raneé to the Gymkhana races, --bring gold cup forprizes and fast runners. Come every year, Tuan. "

I had forgotten that it was the first day of the long-looked-forGymkhana races. A few hours later I met this remarkable man, whosethrilling exploits had commanded my earliest boyish admiration. 

The kindly old Sultan of Johore, the old rebel Sultan of Pahang, the Sultan of Lingae, in all the finery of their native silks andjewels, the nobles of their courts, and a dozen other dignitaries, were on the grandstand and in the paddock as we entered, yet noone but a modest, gray-haired little man by the side of the Englishgovernor had any place in my thoughts. We knew his history. It wasas romantic as the wild careers of Pizarro and Cortez; as charmingas those of Robinson Crusoe and the dear old Swiss Family Robinson;as tragic as Captain Kidd's or Morgan's; and withal, it was modelledafter our own Washington. In him I saw the full realization of everyboy's wildest dreams, --a king of a tropical island. 

The bell above the judges' pavilion sounded, and a little whirlwindof running griffins dashed by amid the yells of a thousand nativesin a dozen different tongues. The Rajah leaned out over the gaylydecorated railing with the eagerness of a boy, as he watched his owncolors in the thick of the race. 

The surging mass of nakedness below caught sight of him, and anotheryell rent the air, quite distinct from the first, for Malayan andKling, Tamil and Siamese, Dyak and Javanese, Hindu, Bugis, Burmese, and Lascar, recognized the famous White Rajah of Borneo, the man who, all unaided, had broken the power of the savage head-hunting Dyaks, and driven from the seas the fierce Malayan pirates. The yell wasnot a cheer. It was a tribute that a tiger might make to his tamer. 

The Rajah understood. He was used to such sinister outbursts ofadmiration, for he never took his eyes from the course. He was secureon his throne now, but I could not but wonder if that yell, which senta strange thrill through me, did not bring up recollections of one ofthe hundred sanguinary scenes through which he and his great uncle, theelder Rajah Brooke, had gone when fighting for their lives and kingdom. 

The Sultan of Johore's griffin won, and the Rajah stepped back tocongratulate him. I, too, passed over to where he stood, and thekindly old Sultan took me by the hand. 

"I have a very tender spot in my heart for all Americans, " the Rajahreplied to his Highness's introduction. "It was your great republicthat first recognized the independence of Sarawak. "

As we chatted over the triumph of Gladstone, the silver bill, the tariff, and a dozen topics of the day, I was thinking of thehead-hunters of whom I had read in the morning paper. I was thinking, too, of how this man's uncle had, years before, with a boat's crewof English boys, carved out of an unknown island a principalitylarger than the state of New York, reduced its savage populationto orderly tax-paying citizens, cleared the Borneo and Java seasof their thousands of pirate praus, and in their place built up amerchant fleet and a commerce of nearly five millions of dollars ayear. The younger Rajah, too, had done his share in the making ofthe state. In his light tweed suit and black English derby, he didnot look the strange, impossible hero of romance I had painted him;but there was something in his quiet, clear, well-bred English accent, and the strong, deep lines about his eyes and mouth, that impressedone with a consciousness of tremendous reserve force. He spoke alwaysslowly, as though wearied by early years of fighting and exposure inthe searching heat of the Bornean sun. 

We became better acquainted later at balls and dinners, and he wasnever tired of thanking me for my country's kindness. 

In 1819, when the English took Malacca and the Malay peninsula fromthe Dutch, they agreed to surrender all claims to the islands southof the pirate-infested Straits of Malacca. 

The Dutch, contented with the fabulously rich island of Java and itstwenty-six millions of mild-mannered natives, left the great islandsof Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua to the savage rulers and savage nationsthat held them. 

The son of an English clergyman, on a little schooner, with a friend ortwo and a dozen sailors, sailed into these little known and dangerouswaters one day nineteen years later. His mind was filled with dreams ofan East-Indian empire; he was burning to emulate Cortez and Pizarro, without practising their abuses. He had entered the English army andhad been so dangerously wounded while leading a charge in India afterhis superiors had fallen that he had been retired on a pension beforehis twenty-first year. While regaining his health, he had travelledthrough India, Malaya, and China, and had written a journal of hiswanderings. During this period his ambitions were crowding him on toan enterprise that was as foolhardy as the first voyage of Columbus. 

He had spied those great tropical islands that touched the equator, and he coveted them. 

After his father's death he invested his little fortune in a schooner, and in spite of all the protests and prayers of his family and friends, he sailed for Singapore, and thence across to the northwest coast ofBorneo, landing at Kuching, on the Sarawak River, in 1838. 

He had no clearly outlined plan of operations, --he was simply waitinghis chance. The province of Sarawak, a dependency of the Sultan ofBorneo, was governed by an old native rajah, whose authority wasmenaced by the fierce, head-hunting Dyaks of the interior. Brooke'schance had come. He boldly offered to put down the rebellion if theRajah would make him his general and second to the throne. The Rajahcunningly accepted the offer, eager to let the hair-brained younginfidel annoy his foes, but with no intention of keeping his promise. 

After days of marching with his little crew and a small army ofnatives, through the almost impenetrable rubber jungles, after adozen hard-fought battles and deeds of personal heroism, any oneof which would make a story, the head-hunters were crushed and somekind of order restored. He refused to allow the Rajah to torture theprisoners, --thereby winning their gratitude, --and he refused to bedismissed from his office. He had won his rank, and he appealed tothe Sultan. The wily Sultan recognized that in this stranger he hadfound a man who would be able to collect his revenue, and much toBrooke's surprise, a courier entered Kuching, the capital, one dayand summarily dismissed the native Rajah and proclaimed the youngEnglishman Rajah of Sarawak. 

Brooke was a king at last. His empire was before him, but he wasonly king because the reigning Sultan relinquished a part of hisdominions that he was unable to control. The tasks to be accomplishedbefore he could make his word law were ones that England, Holland, and the navies of Europe had shirked. His so-called subjects werethe most notorious and daring pirates in the history of the world;they were head-hunters, they practised slavery, and they were crueland blood-thirsty on land and sea. Out of such elements this boy kingbuilt his kingdom. How he did it would furnish tales that would outdoVerne, Kingston, and Stevenson. 

He abolished military marauding and every form of slavery, establishedcourts, missions, and school houses, and waged war, single-handed, against head-hunting and piracy. 

Head-hunting is to the Dyaks what amok is to the Malays or scalping tothe American Indians. It is even more. No Dyak woman would marry a manwho could not decorate their home with at least one human head. Oftenbands of Dyaks, numbering from five to seven thousand, would sallyforth from their fortifications and cruise along the coast four orfive hundred miles, to surprise a village and carry the inhabitants'heads back in triumph. 

To-day head-hunting is practically stamped out, as is running amokamong the Malays, although cases of each occur from time to time. 

As his subjects in the jungles were head-hunters, so those of thecoast were pirates. Every harbor was a pirate haven. They livedin big towns, possessed forts and cannon, and acknowledged neitherthe suzerainty of the Sultan or the domination of the Dutch. Theywere stronger than the native rulers, and no European nation wouldgo to the great expense of life and treasure needed to break theirpower. Brooke knew that his title would be but a mockery as long asthe pirates commanded the mouths of all his rivers. 

With his little schooner, armed with three small guns and manned bya crew of white companions and Dyak sailors, he gave battle firstto the weaker strongholds, gradually attaching the defeated to hisstandard. He found himself at the end of nine years their master anda king in something more than name. Combined with the qualities ofa fearless fighter, he had the faculty of winning the good will andadmiration of his foes. 

The fierce Suloos and Illanums became his fast friends. He left theirchiefs in power, but punished every outbreak with a merciless hand. 

One of the many incidents of his checkered career shows that his spiritwas all-powerful among them. He had invited the Chinese from Amoy totake up their residence at his capital, Kuching. They were tradersand merchants, and soon built up a commerce. They became so numerousin time that they believed they could seize the government. The plotwas successful, and during a night attack they overcame the Rajah'ssmall guard, and he escaped to the river in his pajamas without asingle follower. 

Sir Charles told me one day, as we conversed on the broad verandaof the consulate, that that night was the darkest in all his greatuncle's stormy life. The hopes and work of years were shattered ata single blow, and he was an outcast with a price on his head. 

The homeless king knelt in the bottom of the prau and prayed forstrength, and then took up the oars and pulled silently towardthe ocean. Near morning he was abreast of one of the largest Sulooforts--the home of his bitterest and bravest foes. 

He turned the head of his boat to the shore and landed unarmed andundressed among the pirates. He surrendered his life, his throne, and his honor, into their keeping. 

They listened silently, and then their scarred old chief steppedforward and placed a naked kris in the white man's hand and kissedhis feet. 

Before the sun went down that day the White Rajah was on his throneagain, and ten thousand grim, fierce Suloos were hunting the Chineselike a pack of bloodhounds. 

In 1848 Rajah Brooke decided to visit his old home in England, andask his countrymen for teachers and missions. His fame had precededhim. All England was alive to his great deeds. There were greetings byenthusiastic crowds wherever he appeared, banquets by boards of trade, and gifts of freedom of cities. He was lodged in Balmoral Castle, knighted by the Queen, made Consul-General of Borneo, Governor ofLabuan, Doctor of Laws by Oxford, and was the lion of the hour. 

He returned to Sarawak, accompanied by European officers and friends, to carry on his great work of civilization, and to make of his littletropical kingdom a recognized power. 

He died in 1868, and was carried back to England for burial, and Ipredict that at no distant day a grateful people will rise up andask of England his body, that it may be laid to rest in the yellowsands under the graceful palms of the unknown nation of which he wasthe Washington. 

His nephew, Sir Charles Brooke, who had also been his faithfulcompanion for many years, succeeded him. 

Sarawak has to-day a coast-line of over four hundred miles, with anarea of fifty thousand square miles, and a population of three hundredthousand souls. The country produces gold, silver, diamonds, antimony, quicksilver, coal, gutta-percha, rubber, canes, rattan, camphor, beeswax, edible bird's-nests, sago, tapioca, pepper, and tobacco, allof which find their way to Singapore, and thence to Europe and America. 

The Rajah is absolute head of the state; but he is advised bya legislative council composed of two Europeans and five nativechiefs. He has a navy of a number of small but effective gunboats, and a well-trained and officered army of several hundred men, who lookafter the wild tribes of the interior of Borneo and guard the greatcoast-line from piratical excursions; otherwise they would be useless, as his rule is almost fatherly, and he is dearly beloved by his people. 

It is impossible in one short sketch to relate a tenth of the daringdeeds and startling adventures of these two white rajahs. Their liveshave been written in two bulky volumes, and the American boy who lovesstories that rival his favorite authors of adventure will find them bygoing to the library and asking for the "Life of the Rajah of Sarawak. "

There is much in this "Life" that might be read by our statesmenand philanthropists with profit; for the building of a kingdom in ajungle of savage men and savage beasts places the name of Brooke ofBorneo among those of the world's great men, as it does among thoseof the heroes of adventure. 

One evening we were pacing back and forth on the deck of the Rajah'smagnificent gunboat, the Raneé. A soft tropical breeze was blowing offshore. Thousands of lights from running rickshas and bullock cartswere dancing along the wide esplanade that separates the city ofSingapore from the sea. The strange old-world cries from the nativescame out to us in a babel of sound. 

Chinese in sampans and Malays in praus were gliding about our bows andback and forth between the great foreign men-of-war that overshadowedus. The Orient was on every hand, and I looked wonderingly at theslightly built, gray-haired man at my side, with a feeling that hehad stepped from out some wild South Sea tale. 

"Your Highness, " I said, as we chatted, "tell me how you made subjectsout of pirates and head-hunters, when our great nation, with all itspower and gold, has only been able after one hundred years to makepaupers out of our Indians. "

"Do you see that man?" he replied, pointing to a stalwart, brown-facedDyak, who in the blue and gold uniform of Sarawak was leaning idlyagainst the bulwarks. "That is the Dato (Lord) Imaum, Judge of theSupreme Court of Sarawak. He was one of the most redoubtable ofthe Suloo pirates. My uncle fought him for eight years. In all thattime he never broke his word in battle or in truce. When Sir Jameswas driven from his throne by the Chinese, the Dato Imaum fought toreinstate him as his master. 

"Civilization is only skin deep, and so is barbarism. Had your countrynever broken its word and been as just as it is powerful, your redmen would have been to-day where our brown men are--our equals. "

An hour later I stepped into my launch, which was lying alongside. TheAmerican flag at the peak came down, and the guns of the Raneé belchedforth the consular salute. 

I instinctively raised my hat as we glided over the phosphorescentwaters of the harbor, for in my thoughts I was still in the presenceof one of the great ones of the earth. 

AMOK!

A Malayan Story

If you run amok in Malaya, you may perhaps kill your enemy or woundyour dearest friend, but you may be certain that in the end you willbe krissed like a pariah dog. Every man, woman, and child will turnhis or her hand against you, from the mother who bore you to theoutcast you have befriended. The laws are as immutable as fate. 

Just where the great river Maur empties its vast volume of red wateracross a shifting bar into the Straits of Malacca, stands the kampongof Bander Maharani. 

The Sultan Abubaker named the village in honor of his dead Sultana, and here, close down to the bank, was the palace of his nephew--theGovernor, Prince Sulliman. 

A wide, red, well-paved road separated the village of thatch andgrass from the palace grounds, and ended at a wharf, up to which asteam-launch would dash from time to time, startling the half-growncrocodiles that slept beneath the rickety timbers. 

Sometimes the little Prince Mat, the son of the Governor, came down tothe wharf and played with the children of the captain of the launch, while his Tuan Penager, or Teacher, dozed beneath his yellow umbrella;and often, at their play, his Excellency would pause and watch them, smiling kindly. 

At such times, the captain of the launch would fall upon his face, andthank the Prophet that he had lived to see that day. "For, " he wouldsay, "some day he may speak to me, and ask me for the wish I treasure. "

Then he would go back to his work, polishing the brass on the railingsof his boat, regardless of the watchful eyes that blinked at him fromthe mud beneath the wharf. 

He smiled contentedly, for his mind was made up. He would not ask tobe made master of the Sultan's marvellous yacht, that was sent outfrom Liverpool, --although the possibility made him catch his breath:he would ask nothing for himself, --he would ask that his Excellencylet his son Noa go to Mecca, that he might become a hadji and thensome day--who knows--Noa might become a kateeb in the attap-thatchedmosque back of the palace. 

And Noa, unmindful of his father's dreaming, played with the littlePrince, kicking the ragga ball, or sailing miniature praus out intothe river, and off toward the shimmering straits. But often theysat cross-legged and dropped bits of chicken and fruit between thepalm sleepers of the wharf to the birch-colored crocodiles below, who snapped them up, one after another, never taking their small, cruel eyes off the brown faces that peered down at them. 

Child-life is measured by a few short years in Malaya. The hot, moist air and the fierce rays of the equatorial sun fall upon childand plant alike, and they grow so fast that you can almost hear them!

The little Prince soon forgot his childhood companions in the gorgeouscourt of his Highness, the Sultan of Johore, and Noa took the placeof his father on the launch, while the old man silently mourned as heleaned back in its stern, and alternately watched the sunlight thatplayed along the carefully polished rails, and the deepening shadowsthat bound the black labyrinth of mangrove roots on the oppositeshore. The Governor had never noted his repeated protestations anddeep-drawn sighs. 

"But who cares, " he thought. "It is the will of Allah! The Princewill surely remember us when he returns. "

On the very edge of Bander Maharani, just where the almost endlessmiles of betel-nut palms shut from view the yellow turrets of thepalace, stood the palm-thatched bungalow in which Anak grew, in afew short years, from childhood to womanhood. The hot, sandy soil allabout was covered with the flaxen burs of the betel, and the littlesunlight that found its way down through the green and yellow frondsdrew rambling checks on the steaming earth, that reminded Anak ofthe plaid on the silken sarong that Noa's father had given her theday she was betrothed to his son. 

Up the bamboo ladder and into the little door, --so low that even Anak, with her scant twelve years, was forced to stoop, --she would dart whenshe espied Noa coming sedately down the long aisle of palms that ledaway to the fungus-covered canal that separated her little world fromthe life of the capital city. 

There was coquetry in every glance, as she watched him, from behindthe carved bars of her low window, drop contentedly down on the benchbeneath a scarred old cocoanut that stood directly before the door. Shethought almost angrily that he ought to have searched a little for her:she would have repaid him with her arms about his neck. 

From the cool darkness of the bungalow came the regular click of hermother's loom. She could see the worker's head surrounded by a fainthalo of broken twilight. Her mind filled in the details that werehidden by the green shadows--the drawn, stooping figure, the scantblack hair, the swollen gums, the syrah-stained teeth, and sunkenneck. She impulsively ran her soft brown fingers over her own warm, plump face, through the luxuriant tresses of her heavy hair, and thengazed out at the recumbent figure on the bench, waiting patientlyfor her coming. 

"Soon my teeth, which the American lady that was visiting hisExcellency said were so strong and beautiful, will be filed andblackened, and I will be weaving sarongs for Noa. "

She shuddered, she knew not why, and went slowly across the elasticbamboo strips of the floor and down the ladder. 

Noa watched the trim little figure with its single covering of cotton, the straight, graceful body, and perfectly poised head and delicateneck, the bare feet and ankles, the sweet, comely face with its freshyoung lips, free from the red stains of the syrah leaf, and its bigbrown eyes that looked from beneath heavy silken lashes. He smiled, but did not stir as she came to him. He was proud of her afterthe manner of his kind. Her beauty appealed to him unconsciously, although he had never been taught to consider beauty, or even seekit. He would have married her without a question, if she had been ashideous as his sister, who was scarred with the small-pox. He wouldnever have complained if, according to Malayan custom, he had notbeen permitted to have seen her until the marriage day. He must marrysome one, now that the Prince had gone to Johore, and his father hadgiven up all hope of seeing him a hadji; and besides, the captain ofthe launch and the old punghulo, or chief, Anak's father, were fastfriends. The marriage meant little more to the man. 

But to Anak, --once the Prince Mat had told her she was pretty, whenshe had come down to the wharf to beg a small crocodile to buryunderneath her grandmother's bungalow to keep off white ants, andher cheeks glowed yet under her brown skin at the remembrance. Noahad never told her she was beautiful!

A featherless hen was scratching in the yellow sand at her feet, and abrood of featherless chicks were following each cluck with an intensityof interest that left them no time to watch the actions of the lovers. 

"Why did you come?" she asked in the soft liquid accents of her people. 

There was an eagerness in the question that suggested its own answer. 

"To bring a message to the punghulo, " he replied, not noticing thecoquetry of the look. 

"Oh! then you are in haste. Why do you wait? My father is at thecanal. "

"It is about you, " he went on, his face glowing. "The Prince is comingback, and we are to be married. My father, the captain, made boldto ask his Excellency to let the Prince be present, and he grantedour prayer. "

She turned away to hide her disappointment. It was the thought ofthe honor that was his in the eyes of the province, and not thathe was to marry her, that set the lights dancing in his eyes! Shehated him then for his very love; it was so sure and confident inits right to overlook hers in this petty attention from a mere boy, who had once condescended to praise her girlish beauty. 

"When is the Prince coming?" she questioned, ignoring his clumsyattempt to take her hand. 

"During the feast of Hari Raya Hadji, " he replied, smiling. 

She kicked some sand with her bare toes, amongst the garrulouschickens. 

"Tell me about the Prince. "

Her mood had changed. Her eyes were wide open, and her faceall aglow. She was wondering if he would notice her above thebridesmaids, --if it was not for her sake he was coming?

And then her lover told her of the gossip of the palace, --of thePrince's life in the Sultan's court, --of his wit and grace, --of howhe had learned English, and was soon to go to London, where he wouldbe entertained by the Queen. 

Above their heads the wind played with the tattered flags of the palms, leaving openings here and there that exposed the steely-white glareof the sky, and showed, far away to the northward, the denuded reddome of Mount Ophir. 

The girl noted the clusters of berries showing redly against thedark green of some pepper-vines that clambered up the black nebongposts of her home; she wondered vaguely as he talked if she were togo on through life seeing pepper-vines and betel-nut trees, and hotsand and featherless hens, and never get beyond the shadow of themysterious mountains. 

Possibly it was the sight of the white ladies from Singapore, possiblyit was the few light words dropped by the half-grown Prince, possiblyit was something within herself, --something inherited from ancestorswho had lived when the fleets of Solomon and Hiram sought for goldand ivory at the base of the distant mountains, --that drove her torevolt, and led her to question the right of this marriage that wasto seal her forever to the attap bungalow, and the narrow, colorlesslife that awaited her on the banks of the Maur. She turned fiercelyon her wooer, and her brown eyes flashed. 

"You have never asked me whether I love!"

The Malay half rose from his seat. The look of surprise and perplexitythat had filled his face gave place to one of almost childish wonder. 

"Of course you love me. Is it not so written in the Koran, --a wifeshall reverence her husband?"

"Why?" she questioned angrily. 

He paused a moment, trying dimly to comprehend the question, and thenanswered slowly, --

"Because it is written. "

She did not draw away when he took her hand; he had chosen his answerbetter than he knew. 

"Because it is written, " that was all. Her own feeble revolt was butas a breath of air among the yellow fronds above their heads. 

When Noa had gone, the girl drew herself wearily up the ladder, anddropped on a cool palm mat near the never ceasing loom. For almostthe first time in her short, uneventful life she fell to thinkingof herself. She wondered if the white ladies in Singapore marriedbecause all had been arranged by a father who forgot you the momentyou disappeared within the door of your own house, --if they loved oneman better than another, --if they could always marry the one theyliked best. She wondered why every one must be married, --why couldshe not go on and live just as she had, --she could weave and sew?

A gray lizard darted from out its hiding-place in the attap at agreat atlas moth which worked its brilliant wings; clumsily it toretheir delicate network until the air was full of a golden dust. 

"I am the moth, " she said softly, and raised her hand too late tosave it from its enemy. 

The Sultan's own yacht, the Pante, brought the Prince back to Maur, and as it was low tide, the Governor's launch went out beyond thebar and met him. 

The band played the national anthem when he landed on the pier, and Inchi Mohammed, the Tuan Hakim, or Chief Justice, made a speech. 

The red gravel walk from the landing to the palace gate was strewnwith hibiscus and alamander and yellow convolvulus flowers, andbordered with the delicate maidenhair fern. 

Johore and British flags hung in great festoons from the deepverandas of the palace, and the brass guns from the fort gave forththe royal salute. 

Anak was in the crowd with her father, the old chief, and heraffianced, Noa. She had put on her silk sarong and kabaya, and somecurious gold brooches that were her mother's. In her coal-black hairshe had stuck some sprays of the sweet-smelling chumpaka flower. On herslender bare feet were sandals cunningly wrought in colored beads. Hersoft brown eyes glowed with excitement, and she edged away from thepunghulo's side until she stood close up in front, so near that shecould almost touch the sarong of the Tuan Hakim as he read. 

The Prince had grown so since he left that she scarcely knew him, and save for the narrow silk sarong about his waist, he was dressedin the English clothes of a Lieutenant of his Highness's artillery. Inthe front of his rimless cap shone the arms of Johore set in diamonds, exactly as his father, the Governor, wore them. He paused and smiledas he thanked the cringing Tuan Hakim. 

The blood rushed to the girl's cheeks, and she nearly fell down athis feet. She realized but dimly that Noa was plucking at her kabaya, wishing her to go with him to see the bungalow that his father wasbuilding for them. 

"The posts are to be of polished nebong" he was saying, "the wood-workof maranti wood from Pahang; and there is to be a cote, ever socunningly woven of green and yellow bamboo, for your ring-doves, under the attap of the great eaves above the door. "

She turned wearily toward her lover, and the bright look faded fromher comely face. With a half-uttered sigh she drew off her sandalsand tucked them carefully beneath the silver zone that held her sarongin place. 

"Anak, " he said softly, as they left the hot, red streets, filledwith lumbering bullock-carts and omnipresent rickshas, "why do youlook away when I talk of our marriage? Is it because the Koran teachesmodesty in woman, or is it because you are over-proud of your husbandwhen you see him among other men?"

But the girl was not listening. 

He looked at her keenly, and as he saw the red blood mantle her cheek, he smiled and went on:--

"It was good of you to wear the sarong I gave you, and your bestkabaya and the flowers I like in your hair. I heard more than onesay that it showed you would make a good wife in spite of our knowingone another before marriage. "

"You think that it was for you that I put on all this bravery?" sheasked, looking him straight in the face. "Am I not to be your wife? CanI not dress in honor of the young Prince and--Allah?"

He turned to stammer a reply. The hot blood mounted to his temples, and he grasped the girl's arm so that she cried out with pain. 

"You are to be my wife, and I your master. It is my wish that youshould ever dress in honor of our rulers and our Allah, for in showinghonor to those above you, you honor your husband. I do not understandyou at all times, but I intend that you shall understand me. Sudah!"

"Tuan Allah Suka!" (The Lord Allah has willed it), she murmured, and they plodded on through the hot sand in silence. 

After his return they saw the Prince often, and once when Anak camedown to the wharf to bring a durian to the captain of the launchfrom her father, the old punghulo, she met him face to face, and hetouched her cheek with his jewelled fingers, and said she had grownmuch prettier since he left. 

Noa was not angry at the Prince, rather he was proud of his notice, but a sinister light burned in his eyes as he saw the flushed faceand drooping head of the girl. 

And once the Prince passed by the punghulo's home on his way intothe jungle in search of a tiger, and inquired for his daughter. Anaktreasured the remembrance of these little attentions, and ponderedover them day after day, as she worked by her mother's side at theloom, or sat outside in the sand, picking the flossy burs from thebetel-nuts, watching the flickering shadows that every breeze in theleaves above scattered in prodigal wastefulness about and over her. 

She told herself over and over, as she followed with dreamy eyes thevain endeavors of a chameleon to change his color, as the shadowspainted the sand beneath him first green and then white, that her ownhopes and strivings were just as futile; and yet when Noa would sitbeside her and try to take her hand, she would fly into a passion, and run sobbing up the ladder of her home. Noa became moody inturn. His father saw it and his mates chaffed him, but no one guessedthe cause. That it should be for the sake of a woman would have beenbeyond belief; for did not the Koran say, "If thy wife displease thee, beat her until she see the sin of her ways"? One day, as he thought, it occurred to him, "She does not want to marry me!" and he asked her, as though it made any difference. There were tears in her eyes, butshe only threw back her head and laughed, and replied as she should:--

"That is no concern of ours. Is your father, the captain, displeasedwith my father's, the punghulo's, dowry?"

And yet Noa felt that Anak knew what he would have said. 

He went away angry, but with a gnawing at his heart that frightenedhim, --a strange, new sickness, that seemed to drive him from despairto a longing for revenge, with the coming and going of each quickbreath. He had been trying to make love in a blind, stumbling way;he did not know it, --why should he? Marriage was but a bargain inMalaya. But Anak with her finer instincts felt it, and instead offanning this tiny, unknown spark, she was driving it into other andbaser channels. 

In spite of her better nature she was slowly making a demon out of alover, --a lover to whom but a few months before she would have givenfreely all her love for a smile or the lightest of compliments. 

From that day until the day of the marriage she never spoke to herlover save in the presence of her elders, --for such was the law ofher race. 

She submitted to the tire-women who were to prepare her for theceremony, uttering no protest as they filed off her beautiful whiteteeth and blackened them with lime, nor when they painted the palms ofher hands and the nails of her fingers and toes red with henna. Sheshowed no interest in the arranging of her glossy black hair withjewelled pins and chumpaka flowers, or in the draping of her sarongand kabaya. Only her lacerated gums ached until one tear after anotherforced its way from between her blackened lids down her rouged cheeks. 

There had been feasting all day outside under the palms, and theyouths, her many cousins, had kicked the ragga ball, while the elderssat about and watched and talked and chewed betel-nut. There weregreat rice curries on brass plates, with forty sambuls> within easyreach of all, luscious mangosteens, creamy durians and mangoes, andbetel-nuts with lemon leaves and lime and spices. Fires burned aboutamong the graceful palms at night, and lit up the silken sarongs andpolished kris handles of the men, and gold-run kabayas of the women. 

The Prince came as he promised, just as the old Kadi had pronouncedthe couple man and wife, and laid at Anak's feet a wide gold braceletset with sapphires, and engraven with the arms of Johore. He droppedhis eyes to conceal the look of pity and abhorrence that her swollengums and disfigured features inspired, and as he passed across themats on the bamboo floor he inwardly cursed the customs of his peoplethat destroyed the beauty of its women. He had lived among the Englishof Singapore, and dined at the English Governor's table. 

A groan escaped the girl's lips as she dropped back among the cushionsof her tinsel throne. Noa saw the little tragedy, and for the firsttime understood its full import. He ground his teeth together, andhis hand worked uneasily along the scabbard of his kris. 

In another moment the room was empty, and the bride and groom were leftside by side on the gaudily bedecked platform, to mix and partake oftheir first betel-nut together. Mechanically Noa picked the brokenfragments of the nut from its brass cup, from another a syrah leafsmeared with lime, added a clove, a cardamom, and a scraping of mace, and handed it to his bride. She took it without raising her eyes, andplaced it against her bleeding gums. In a moment a bright red juiceoozed from between her lips and ran down the corner of her distortedmouth. Noa extended his hand, and she gave him the half-masticatedmass. He raised it to his own mouth, and then for the first timelooked the girl full in the face. 

There was no love-light in the drooping brown eyes before him. Thesyrah-stained lips were slightly parted, exposing the feverish gums, and short, black teeth. Her hands hung listlessly by her side, andonly for the color that came and went beneath the rouge of her browncheeks, she might have been dead to this last sacred act of theirmarriage vows. 

"Anak!" he said slowly, drawing closer to her side. "Anak, I will bea true husband to you. You shall be my only wife--"

He paused, expecting some response, but she only gazed stolidly upat the smoke-begrimed attap of the roof. 

"Anak--" he repeated, and then a shudder passed through him, and hiseyes lit up with a wild, frenzied gleam, A moment he paused irresolute, and then with a spring he grasped thegolden handle of his kris and with one bound was across the floor, and on the sand below among the revellers. 

For an instant the snake-like blade of the kris shone dully in thefirelight above his head, and then with a yell that echoed far outamong the palms, it descended straight into the heart of the nearestMalay. 

The hot life-blood spurted out over his hand and naked arm, and dyedthe creamy silk of his wedding baju a dark red. 

Once more he struck, as he chanted a promise from the Koran, and theshrill, agonized cry of a woman broke upon the ears of the astonishedguests. 

Then the fierce sinister yell of "Amok! amok!" drowned the woman'smoans, and sent every Malay's hand to the handle of his kris. 

"Amok!" sprang from every man's lips, while women and children, andthose too aged to take part in the wild saturnalia of blood that wasto follow, scattered like doves before a hawk. 

With the rapidity of a Malayan tiger, the crazed man leaped fromone to another, dealing deadly strokes with his merciless weapon, right and left. There was no gleam of pity or recognition in hisinsane glance when he struck down the sister he had played with fromchildhood, neither did he note that his father's hand had dealt theblow that dropped his right arm helpless to his side. Only a cry ofbaffled rage and hate escaped his lips, as he snatched his fallingknife with his left hand. Another blow, and his father fell acrossthe quivering body of his sister. 

"O Allah, the all-merciful and loving kind!" he sang, as the blowsrained upon his face and breast. "O Allah, the compassionate. "

The golden handle of his kris shone like a dying coal in the centreof a circle of flamelike knives; then with one wild plunge forward, into the midst of the gleaming points, it went out. 

"Sudah!--It is finished, " and a Malay raised his steel-bladed limbingto thrust it into the bare breast of the dying man. 

The young Prince stepped out into the firelight and raised hishand. The long, shrill wail of a tiger from far off toward MountOphir seemed to pulsate and quiver on the weird stillness of the night. 

Noa opened his eyes. They were the eyes of a child, and a faint, sweet smile flickered across the ghastly features and died away ina spasm of pain. 

A picture of their childhood days flashed through the mind of thePrince and softened the haughty lines of his young face. He saw, through it all, the wharf below the palace grounds, --the fat oldpenager dozing in the sun, --the raft they built together, and thebirch-colored crocodiles that lay among the sinuous mangrove roots. 

"Noa, " he whispered, as he imperiously motioned the crowd back. 

The dying man's lips moved. The Prince bent lower. 

"She--loved--you. Yes--" Noa muttered, striving to hold hisfailing breath, --"love is from--Allah. But not for--me;--forEnglish--and--Princes. "

They threw his body without the circle of the fires. 

The tense feline growl of the tiger grew more distinct. The Prince'shand sought the jewelled handle of his kris. There was a swift rushin the darkness, a crashing among the rubber-vines, a short, quicksnarl, and then all was still. 

If you run amok in Malaya, you may kill your enemy or your dearestfriend, but you will be krissed in the end like a pariah dog. Everyman, woman, and child will turn his hand against you, from the motherwho bore you to the outcast you have befriended. 

The laws are as immutable as fate. 

LEPAS'S REVENGE

The Tale of a Monkey

There were many monkeys--I came near saying there were hundreds--inthe little clump of jungle trees back of the bungalow. We could liein our long chairs, any afternoon, when the sun was on the oppositeside of the house, and watch them from behind the bamboo "chicks"swinging and playing in the maze of rubber-vines. 

They played tag and high-spy, and a variety of other games. Whenthey were tired of playing, they fell to quarrelling, scolding, and chasing each other among the stiff, varnished leaves, making somuch noise that I could not get my afternoon nap, and often had tocall to the syce to throw a stone into the branches. Then they wouldscuttle away to the topmost parts of the great trees and there joinin giving me a rating that ought to have made me ashamed forever tolook another monkey in the face. 

One day, I went out and threw a stick at them myself, and the nextday I found my shoes, which the Chinese "boy" had pipe-clayed andput out in the sun to dry, missing; and the day after I found thenetting of my mosquito house torn from top to bottom. 

So I was not in the best of humors when I was awakened, one afternoon, by the whistling of a monkey close to my chair. I reached out quicklyfor my cork helmet which I had thrown down by my side. As it was there, I looked up in surprise to see what had become of my visitor. 

There he sat up against the railing of the veranda with his legscramped up under him, ready to flee if I made a threatening gesture. His face was turned toward me, with the thin, hairless skin of itsupper lip drawn back, showing a perfect row of milk-white teeth thatwere chattering in deadly terror. The whole expression of his facewas one of conciliation and entreaty. 

I knew that it was all make-believe, so I half closed my eyes anddid not move. The chattering stopped. The little fellow looked aboutcuriously, drew his mouth up into a pucker, whistled once or twiceto make sure I was not awake, and reached out his bony arm for a fewcrumbs of cake that had fallen near. 

He was not more than a foot in height. His diminutive body seemedto have been fitted into a badly worn skin that was two sizes toolarge for him, and the scalp of his forehead moved about like anovergrown wig. 

He was the most ordinary kind of gray, jungle monkey, not even awah-wah or spider face. 

"Well, " I said, after we had thoroughly inspected each other, "whereare my shoes?"

Like a flash the whistling ceased, and with a pathetic trembling ofhis thin upper lip he commenced to beg with his mouth, and to put uphis homely little hands in mute appeal. 

For a moment I feared he would go into convulsions, but I soondiscovered that my sympathy, had been wasted. 

Then I noticed, for the first time, that there was a leather straparound his body just in front of his back legs, and that a string wasattached to it, which ran through the railings and off the veranda. Ilooked over, and there, squatting on his sandalled feet, was a Malay, with the other end of the string in his hand. 

He arose, smiling, touched his forehead with the back of his brownpalm, and asked blandly:--

"Tuan, want to buy?"

The calm assurance of the man amused me. 

"What, that miserable little monkey?" I said. "Do you take me for atourist? Look up in those trees and you will see monkeys that knowboiled rice from padi. "

The man grinned and showed his brilliantly red teeth and gums. 

"Tuan see. This monkey very wise, " and he made a motion with hisstick. The little fellow sprang from the railing to his bare head, and sat holding on to his long black hair. 

"See, Tuan, " and he made another motion, and the monkey leaped tothe ground and commenced to run around his master, hopping firston one foot and then on the other, raising his arms over his headlike a ballet dancer. After every revolution he would stop and turna handspring. 

The Malay all the time kept up a droning kind of a song in his nativetongue, improvising as he went along. 

The tenor of it was that one Hamat, a poor Malay, but a goodMohammedan, who had never been to Mecca, wanted to go to become aHadji. He had no money but he had a good monkey that was very dearto him. He had found it in a distant jungle, beyond Johore, when alittle baby; had brought it up like one of his own children and hadtaught it to dance and salaam. 

Now he must sell the monkey to the great Tuan, or Lord, that themoney might help take him to Mecca. The monkey must dance well andplease the mighty Tuan. 

As the little fellow danced, he kept one eye on me as though heunderstood it all. 

"How old is he?" I asked, becoming interested. 

"Just as old as your Excellency would like, " he replied, bowing. 

"Is he a year old?"

"If the Tuan please. "

"Well, how much do you want for him?"

"What your Excellency can give. "

"Twenty-five dollars?" I asked. 

His face lit up from chin to forehead. He hitched nervously at thefolds of his sarong, and changed the quid of red betel-nut from onecorner of his mouth to the other. 

"Here, Hamat, " I said, laughing, "here is five dollars; take it;when you come back from Mecca with a green turban come and see me. IfI am sick of the monkey, you can have him back. "

So commenced our acquaintance with Lepas. We got into the habitof calling him Lepas, because it was the Malay for "let go, " whichdefinition we broadened until it became a term of correction for everyform of mischief. He was such a restless, active little imp, withhands into everything and upon everything, that it was "Lepas!" frommorning to night. 

He soon learned the word's twofold meaning. If we said "Lepas" sternly, he subsided at once; but when we called it pleasantly he came runningacross the room and leaped into our laps. 

It did not take Lepas as long to forget his former master as it didto forget his former habits. In truth, his civilization was nevermore than skin deep. 

He would sit for hours cuddled up in the mistress's lap, playingwith her work and making deft slaps at passing flies, until hehad thoroughly convinced her of his perfect trustworthiness. Then, the moment her back was turned, he would slip away to her bureau, and such a mess as he would make of her ribbons and laces!

I think he liked the servants better than he did us. He would danceand turn handsprings and salaam for them, but never for the mistressor myself. Such tricks, he seemed to think, were beneath his newposition in society. 

He had a standing grudge against me, however, for insisting on hisbath in the big Shanghai jar every day, and took delight in rollingin the red dust of the road the moment he was through. 

It was not long before he had a feud with the monkeys in the trees, back of the house. He would stand on the ground, within easy reachof the house, and as saucily as you please, till they were worked upinto a white heat of rage over his remarks. 

Once he caught a baby monkey that had become entangled in the wirylallang grass under the trees, and dragged it screeching into thehouse. Before we could get to him he had nearly drowned it by treatingit to a bath, --an act, I suppose, intended to convey to me his opinionof my humane efforts to keep him clean. 

I expected as a matter of course to lose another pair of shoesor something, in payment for this unneighborly behavior, but thecolony in the trees seemed to know that I was innocent. It was notlong before they caught the true culprit, and gave him such a beatingthat he was quiet and subdued for days. 

But Lepas was a lovable little fellow with all his mischief. Everyafternoon when I came home from the office, tired out with the heatand the fierce glare of the sun, he would hop over to my chair, whistle soothingly, and make funny little chirrups with his lips, until I noticed him. 

Then he would crawl quietly up the legs of the chair until he reachedmy shoulder, where he would commence with his cool little fingers toinspect my eyes and nose, and to pick over carefully each hair of mymustache and head. 

So we forgave him when he pulled all the feathers out of a ring-dovethat was a valued present from an old native rajah; when he turnedlamp-oil into the ice cream, and when he broke a rare Satsuma bowlin trying to catch a lizard. He was always so penitent after eachmisadventure!

We had heard that Hamat had sailed for Jedda with a shipload ofpilgrims and were therefore expecting him back soon; but we haddecided not to give up Lepas. He had become a sort of necessity aboutthe house. 

Next door to us, lived a high official of the English service. He wasa sour, cross old man and did not like pets. Even the monkeys in thetrees knew better than to go into his "compound, " or inclosure. 

But Lepas started off on a voyage of discovery one day, and not onlyinvaded his compound, but actually entered his house. The officialcaught him in the act of hiding his shaving-set between the palmthatch of the roof and the cheese-cloth ceiling. Recognizing Lepas, he did not kill him, but took him by his leathern girdle and sousedhim in his bath-tub, until he was so near dead that it took him hoursto crawl home. 

Lepas went around with a sad, injured expression on his wrinkledlittle face, for days. Not even a mangosteen sprinkled with sugarcould awaken his enthusiasm. 

He went so far as to make up with the monkeys in the trees, and onceor twice I caught him condescending to have a game of leap-frog withthem. I made up my mind that he had determined to turn over a new leaf, but the syce shook his head knowingly and said:--

"Lepas all the time thinking. He thinks bad things. "

And so it proved. 

One night the mistress gave a very big dinner party. The high officialfrom next door was there. So were several other high officials ofSingapore, the general commanding her Majesty's troops, and theforeign consuls and members of Legislative Council. 

It was a hot night, and the punkah-wallah outside kept the punkah, ormechanical fan, switching back and forth over our heads with a rapiditythat made us fear its ropes would break, as very often happened. 

Suddenly there was a crash, and a champagne glass struck squarely inthe high official's soup and spattered it all over his white expanseof shirt front. We all looked up at the punkah. At the same instanta big, soft mango smashed in the high official's face and changedits ruddy red color to a sickly yellow. 

The women screamed, and the men jumped up from the table. Then begana regular fusillade of wine glasses and tropical fruits. 

Sometimes they hit the high official from next door, at whom they allseemed to be aimed, but more often they fell upon the table, amongthe glass and dishes. In a moment everything was in wild confusion, and the mistress's beautifully decorated table looked as though abomb had exploded on it. 

The Chinese "boys" made a rush for the end of the room, and there, up on the sideboard, among the glass, pelting his enemy, the highofficial, as fast as he could throw, was Lepas. 

A finger bowl struck the butler full in the face, and gave the monkeytime to make his escape out into the darkness through the wide-opendoors. 

We saw nothing more of Lepas for a week or more; we had, indeed, aboutgiven him up, wondering as to his whereabouts, when one afternoon, as Iwas taking my usual post-tiffin siesta on the cool side of the great, wide-spreading veranda, I heard a timid whistle, and looked up to seeLepas seated on the railing, as sad and humble as any truant schoolboy. 

His hair was matted and faded and his face was dirty. His form hadlost some of the plumpness that had come to it with good living, but there was the same wicked twinkle in his eyes, and the samehypocritical deceit in his bearing as of old. 

I reached out my hand to take him, but he hopped a few feet away andbegan to beg with his teeth. 

"Lepas, " I said, "you have a bad heart. I wash my hands of you. WhenHamat comes back you can go to him and be an ordinary, low castemonkey. Now go! I never want to see you again!"

Lepas puckered up his lips and whistled mournfully for a few moments, but seeing no sign of forgiveness in my face he jumped down and beganto turn handsprings and dance with the most demure grace. 

I took no notice of him, and after a few vain efforts to attractmy attention, he hopped dejectedly off the veranda across the lawn, and disappeared among the timboso trees and rubber-vines. 

Two weeks later Hamat returned from Mecca. He paid me a visit instate--white robe and green turban. I shook hands and called him byhis new title of nobility, Tuan Hadji, but he did not refer to Lepas. 

Before many minutes he commenced to look wistfully about. I pointedto the trees back of the house. He went out under them and calledtwo or three times. 

There was a great chattering among the rubber-vines, and in a momentdown came Lepas and sprang to his old master's shoulder as happy asa lover. 

I never saw Lepas but once again, and that was one evening on the oceanesplanade. He was in the centre of an admiring circle of half-nudeMalay and Hindu boys, going through his quaint antics, while Hamatsquatted before him beating on a crocodile-hide drum and singing aplaintive, monotonous song. 

When it was finished, Lepas took an empty cocoanut shell and wentout into the crowd to collect pennies. 

I threw in a dollar. Lepas salaamed low as he snatched it out and bitit to test its genuineness. It was his latest accomplishment. Thenhe hid himself among the laughing crowd. 

That Lepas knew me, I could tell by the droop in his eye and thequick glance he gave to the right and left, to see if there was roomto escape in case I made an effort to avenge my wrongs. 

I had no desire, however, to renew the acquaintance, and was quitewilling to let by-gones be by-gones. 

KING SOLOMON'S MINES

Being an Account of an Ascent of Mount Ophir in Malaya, by HisExcellency, the Tuan Hakim of Maur, and the Writer

 "And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon. "--1 Kings IX. 28. 

 "For the King's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram; every three years once came the ships of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks. " --2 Chronicles VIII. 21. 

The rose tints of a tropical sunrise had broken through the heavybamboo chicks that jealously guarded the rapidly fleeting half-lightsof my room: there came three deferential taps at the door, and thesmiling, olive-tinted face of Ah Minga appeared at the opening. "Tabek, Tuan, " he saluted, as he raised the mosquito curtains, and placed atray of tea and mangosteens on a table by my side. 

I sprang to the floor and across the heavily rugged room, and pulledup the offending chick. 

Across the palace grounds, fresh from their morning bath, across thebroad river Maur, for the nonce black in the shadow of the jungle, across the gilded tops of the jungle, forty miles away as the crowflies, rested the serrated peak of Mount Ophir. 

Directly below me, a soldier in a uniform of duck and a rimless capwith a gold band was pacing up and down the gravelled walk. A littlefarther on a bevy of women and children were bathing in the tepidwaters of the river, while a man in an unpainted prau was keepingwatch for a possible crocodile. 

The sun was rising directly behind the peak, a ball of liquid fire. Idrew in a long draught of the warm morning air. 

A Malay in a soft silken sarong, which fell about his legs like awoman's skirt, stood in the door. 

"The Prince is awaiting the Tuan Consul, " he said, with a gracefulsalaam. 

I hurriedly donned my suit of white, drank my tea, and followed himalong the grand salon, down a broad flight of steps, through a marblecourt, and into the dining room. 

A great white punkah was lazily vibrating over the heavy rosewoodtable. 

Unko Sulliman, the Prince Governor of Maur, came forward and gave mehis hand. 

"It will be a hard climb and a hard day's work?" he said, pleasantly, in good English. 

"I have done worse, " I answered. 

"But not under a Malayan sky. However, it is your wish, and hisHighness the Sultan has granted it. The Chief Justice will accompanyyou, and now you had better start before the sun is high. "

I turned to the Tuan Hakim, or Chief Justice, with a gesture ofunconcealed pleasure. We had shot crocodiles the day previous alongthe banks of the Maur, and I had found him a good shot and an agreeablecompanion. While not as handsome a man or as striking a representativeof his race as the Unko, or Prince, he was a scholar, and could aid memore than any one else in my exploration of the ancient gold workingsabout the base of the famous mountain. 

The launch was awaiting us at the pier in front of the Residency, and we took our places in the bow, and arranged our guns as ourhalf-naked crew worked her slowly into mid-stream. We hoped to getsome snap shots at the crocodiles that lined the banks as we steamedswiftly up the river. 

"I am inclined to agree with Josephus, that yonder mountain is theMount Ophir of Solomon, when I look at this river. It is equal toour Hudson, and could easily carry ships twice the size of any he orHuram ever floated. "

The Tuan Hakim nodded, and kept his eyes fastened on the nearest shore. 

The course of the great river seemed to stretch out before us in anendless line of majestic circles. From shore to shore, at high tide, it was a mile in breadth, and so deep that his Highness's yacht, thePante, of three hundred tons' burden, could run up full fifty miles. 

For a moment we caught a view of the wooden minarets of the littlemosque at Bander Maharani; then we dashed on into the heart of anothergreat curve. 

"What is it your Koran says that the wise king's ships brought fromOphir?" he asked, never taking his eyes off the mangrove-bound shore. 

"Gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks, " I replied, quotingliterally from Chronicles. 

"Biak (good)! Gold and silver we have plenty. Your English companiesare taking it out of the land by the pikul In the old days, before thePortuguese came, the handle of every warrior's kris was of ivory. Nowour elephants are dying before the rifle of the sportsman. Soon ourjungles will know them no more. Apes--" and he pointed at the top ofa giant marbow, where a troop of silver wah-wahs were swinging fromlimb to limb. "The glorious argus pheasant you have seen. "

"Boyah, Tuan!" the man at the wheel sung out. 

I grasped my Winchester Express. Just ahead, half hidden by a blacklabyrinth of scaffold-like mangrove roots, lay the huge, mud-coveredform of a crocodile. 

The Tuan Hakim raised his hand, and the launch slowed down and ranin under the bank. 

"Now!" he whispered, and our rifles exploded in unison. 

A great splash of slimy red mud fell full on the front of my spotlesswhite jacket, another struck in the water close by the side of theboat. The wounded crocodile had sprung into the air from his tail up, and dropped back into his wallow with a resounding thud. In anotherinstant he was off the slippery bank and within the security of themud-colored water. 

I saw that my companion had more to tell me, possibly a nativetradition of the fabled riches that were concealed within the heartof the historic mountain that was for the moment framed in a settingof green, directly ahead. I put a fresh cartridge into the barrel, and leaned back in my deck chair. 

The Chief Justice extracted a manila from his case and handed it to me. 

"In the days when Tunku Ali III. Ruled over Maur, from Malacca tothe confines of Johore, the Portuguese came, and Albuquerque withhis ships of war and soldiers in iron armor sought to wrest from ourpeople their cities and their riches. My ancestor was a dato, --ourlaksamana, high admiral, of his Highness's fleet. His galley was builtof burnished teak, the lining of its cabin was of sandalwood, --algumwood your Koran calls it, --and the turret in its stern was coveredwith plates of solid gold. You will find record of it to this day inthe state papers of Acheen. 

"For fully a hundred and forty years did the Emperor of Johoreand his valiant allies, the King of Acheen and the Sultan of Maur, seek to retake Malacca from the Portuguese. The Dato Mamat was thelast laksamana of the fleet. With him died the war and the secret ofMount Ophir. "

"The secret!" I questioned, as the Tuan Hakim paused. 

"For one hundred and forty years were we at war with theinvaders. Three generations were born and died with arms in theirhands. No work was done on the land, save by women and children. Stillwe had plenty of gold with which to fit out fleet after fleet, withwhich to arm our soldiers and feed our people. 

"It came from yonder mountain. Not even the Sultan knew itshiding-place. That was only trusted to one family, and handed fromfather to son by word of mouth. 

"Long before the days of Solomon the Wise did my family hold thatsecret for the state. It was one of them that gave the four hundredand twenty talents to the laksamana of Huram's fleet. Your Koran hasmade record of the gift. He did not know from whence it came. He asked, and we told him from the Ophirs, which means from the gold mines. Thenit was that he called the mountain that raised its head four thousandfeet above the sea, and was the first object his lookout saw as theyneared the coast, 'Mount Ophir. '

"No man, however so bold, ventured within a radius of fifteen milesaround the foot of the mountain. It was haunted by evil spirits. Noman save the laksamana, who went twice a year and brought away to hisprau, which was moored on the bank of the Maur thirty miles from themountains, ten great loads of pure gold, each time over one hundredbugels. I know not as to the truth, but it is told that there wasone tribe consecrated to the mining of the gold, not one of whom hadever been outside the shadow of the mountain: that when the greatadmiral ceased to come, they blocked up the entrance to the mines, planted trees about the spot, and waited. One after another died, until not one was left. 

"Such is the tradition of my family, Tuan. "

"But the great laksamana?" I asked. "I know of the ancient riches ofMalacca. Barbosa tells us that gold was so common that it was reckonedby the bhar of four hundred weight. "

My companion contemplated the end of his manila. "Do you know howdied his Highness, Montezuma of Mexico, Tuan?"

I bowed. 

"So died my ancestor one hundred years later. I will tell you of it, that you may write his name in your histories by the side of the nameof the murdered Sultan of Mexico. "

The eyes of the little man flashed, and he looked squarely into minefor the first time. Possibly he may have detected a smile on my face, at the thought of placing this leader of a band of pirates side byside in history with the once ruler of the richest empire in the NewWorld, for he paused in the midst of his narrative and said rapidly:--

"Must I tell you what your own writers tell of the rulers of ourcountry, to make you credit my tale? It is all here, " he said, pointing to his head. "Everything that relates to my home I know. KingEmmanuel of Portugal wrote to his High Kadi at Rome, that his general, the cruel Albuquerque, had sailed to the Aurea Chersonese, calledby the natives Malacca, and found an enormous city of twenty-fivethousand houses, that abounded in spices, gold, pearls, and preciousstones. Was Montezuma's capital greater?" he triumphantly asked. 

"It was as great then as Singapore is today. Albuquerque captured it, and built a fortress at the mouth of the river, making the wallsfifteen feet thick, all from the ruins of our mosques. This wasin 1513. "

"Forgive me, " I said hastily, "if I have seemed to cast doubt on therelative importance of your country. "

There was a Malay kampong, or village, to our right. Under theheavy green and yellow fronds of a cocoanut grove were a half-dozenpicturesque palm-thatched houses. They were built up on posts sixfeet from the ground, and a dozen men and children scampered downtheir rickety ladders, as a shrill blast from our whistle arousedthem from their slumbers. Pressed against the wooden bars of theirlow, narrow windows, we could make out the comely, brown facesof the women. The punghulo, or chief, walked sedately out to thebeach, and touched his forehead to the ground as he recognized hissuperior. The sunlight broke through the enwrapping cocoanuts, andbrought out dazzling white splotches on the sandy floor before thehouses. We passed a little space of wiry lallang grass, which waswaving in the faint breeze, and radiating long, irregular lines ofheat, that under our glasses resembled the marking of watered silk, and were once more abreast the green walls of the impenetrable jungle. 

"The Dato Mamat captured a Portuguese ship within a man's voice fromthe harbor of Malacca. On it was the foreign Governor's daughter. Shewas dark, almost as dark as my people. Her eyes were black as night, with long, drooping lashes, and her hair fell about her shapely neck, a mass of waving curls. She was tall and stately, and her bearing washaughty. The mighty Laksamana, who had fought a hundred battles, andhad a hundred wives picked from the princesses of the kingdom, --forthere were none so noble but felt honored in his smiles, --loved thisdark-skinned foreigner. It was pitiful!

"His great fleet, which was to have swept the very name of thePortuguese from the face of the earth, lay idle before the harbor. Itscaptains were burning with ambition, but the Admiral would not givethe command, and they dare not disobey. 

"Day after day went by while the great man hung like a pariah dogon the words of his haughty captive. She scorned his words of love, laughed at his prayers, and sneered at his devotion. Day after day thesun beat down on the burnished decks of the war praus. Night afternight the evening gun in the besieged fort sent forth its mockingchallenge: still the Dato made no motion. Oh, but it was pitiful! Oneby one the praus slipped away, --first those from Acheen, and thenthose from Johore, --but the valiant Laksamana saw them not. He wasblind to all save one. Then she spoke: 'If thou lovest me as thouboastest, and would win my smiles, send me to my father; then goand bring me of this gold of Ophir, --for the Dato had laid his heartbare before her, --enough to sink yon boat. The daughter of a Braganzadoes not unite herself with a pauper. When the moon is full again, I will expect you. '

"So did the Laksamana, to the everlasting shame of Islam. When themoon was full he returned in his shining prau before the walls ofMalacca, He brought from Ophir, of gold more than enough; of thepearls of Ceylon he brought a chupah full to the brim. He robbedhis great palace, that he might lay at the feet of the Portuguese afortune such as Solomon only ever saw. And yet the captains of hisfleet cared not for the gold, so long as the mighty Dato saved hishonor. When he left for the quay, on which stood the Governor, hisdaughter, and the priests of their religion, they said not a word, for he passed by with averted face; but each man grasped the jewelledhandle of his kris, and swore to Allah under his breath that shouldbut one hair of the mighty Admiral's head be lacking when he returned, they would cut the false heart from the woman and feed it to the dogs. 

"So spoke the captains; but ere the breath had passed their lips theirchief was a prisoner, and the guns from the fort hurled defiance atthe betrayed. 

"It was pitiful! Allah was avenged. 

"Fiercely raged the battle, and when there was a breach in the walls, and the captain besar had ordered the attack, the Portuguese heldthe mighty Laksamana over the walls, and reviled the allied fleetswith words of derision. 

"Not one moved, and all was still. Suddenly the Admiral raised hishead, and gazed out and down at his followers. Then he spoke, and thesound of his voice reached far out to the most distant prau that laybecalmed within the shadow of casuarina-shaded Puli. 

"'Allah il Allah, I have sinned, and I must die. No more shall myname be known in the land. I am no longer laksamana; neither am I adato. Allah is just. Tuan Allah Suka!'

"A foreigner smote him in the mouth, and a great cry arose fromwithout the walls. 

"The war went on; but day after day did the Governor send a messageto the Laksamana in the dungeon. 'Reveal the spot where thy gold ishidden, and thy life and liberty are granted. '

"Day by day the Dato replied, 'My life is a pollution in the nostrilsof Allah. Take it. '

"So they laid the great chief on the stones of his cell, bound handand foot, and one by one did they break the joints of his toes, his fingers, and then the joints of his legs and arms. When they hadfinished, and he still lived, the woman came to him and mocked him, but the Admiral closed his eyes and prayed. 'O Allah, the all-mercifuland the loving kind, forgive me for my erring heart. Thou knowest thatit goes out to this woman still. Let not my country suffer for mydeeds. I gave unto thy servant Solomon of the gold that has made usgreat. If thou canst, thou wilt whisper the secret of our nation toone of thy chosen people, that they may have means whereby to fightthy battles. '

"And then the woman raised her hand, and with one stroke of the axe anattendant severed from his body the head of the once mighty Laksamanaof the fleets of Johore, Acheen and Maur. 

"So died the secret of Ophir. So fell Malacca forever into the handsof the foreigner. "

The Tuan Hakim's voice trembled as he closed. During the tragic recitalhe had dropped into the soft, melodious chant of his nation. At timeshe would lapse into Malay, and the boatmen would push forward andlisten with unconcealed excitement. Then, as he returned to English, they would drop back into their places, but never take their eyes offthe face of the speaker. Only our China "boys" took no interest inthe past of Maur. It was tiffin time, and they were anxious to setbefore us our lunch of rice curry, gula Malacca, whiskey and soda. 

The sun was directly above us, and the fierce, steely glare of theMalayan sky and water dazzled our eyes. Mount Ophir looked as farahead as ever. The winding course of the river seemed at times totake us directly away from it. 

Just as we had finished our meal, and had lighted our manilas, thesteersman turned the little launch sharply about, and headed directlyfor the shore. In a moment we had shot under and through the deepfringe of mangrove trees, and had emerged into the jungle. On allsides the trees rose, columnar and straight, and the ground was firm, although densely covered with ferns and vines. 

The launch stopped, and the chief turned to me. "Now for the climb. Wehave thirty miles to the base of the mountain. We will push on tenmiles, and spend the night at a Malay village. The next day we willtry and reach the base of the mountain. "

I looked about me. We might have been surrounded by prison walls, for all hope there seemed to be of our getting an inch into the jungle. 

Our servants gathered up our rather extensive impedimenta, and spranginto the water. We were forced to follow suit, and begin our day'smarch with wet feet. A few steps up the stream we came upon an oldelephant track and plunged boldly in, --and it was in! For threemiles we labored through a series of the most elaborate mud-holesthat I have ever seen. The elephants in breaking a path through thejungle are extremely timid in their boldness. The second one alwayssteps in the footprints of the first. Year after year it is the same, until in course of time the path is marked by a series of pitfalls, often two feet in depth; and as it rains nearly every day they becomea seething, slimy paste of mud. 

Our heavy cloth shoes and stockings did not protect us from theattacks of innumerable leeches; for when we at last reached an openbit of forest and sat down to rest, we found dozens of them attachedto our legs and even on our bodies. They were small, and beautifullymarked with stripes of bright yellow. 

It was twilight when we neared the welcome kampong. We had sent arunner ahead to notify the punghulo of our arrival, and as we finishedour struggle with the last thorny rattan, and tripped over the lastrubber-vine, we could hear the shouting of men and the barking ofdogs. Evidently we were expected. 

The kampong might have been any other in the kingdom, and the littleold weazened punghulo, who came bowing and smiling forward, mighthave been at the head of any one of a hundred other kampongs, --theywere all so much alike. A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under acocoanut grove, all facing toward a central plaza; a score of dogs foreach bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls scratching and wallowingbeneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children playing with a rattanball within the light of a central fire, --made up the details of alittle picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar tome within the last three years. 

Our servants at once set about preparing supper before the fire, while we for politeness' sake compounded a mouthful of betel-nut andsyrah leaf from the punghulo's state box. 

The next morning we set out for our twenty miles' tramp, along a narrowjungle path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom mycompanion had retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was along, tiresome journey, and we were heartily glad when it was ended, and we were encamped on the rocky banks of a fern-hid stream. 

Twice during our day's march had we crossed deep, ragged depressions inthe earth, which were overgrown with a jungle that seemed to be coequalin age with the surrounding trees. We did not pause to examine them, although our natives pointed them out with the expressive word mas(gold). We promised to do that at a later date. On the border of thecreek I found some gold-bearing rock, and while the Tuan Hakim wasengaged in securing some superb specimens of the great atlas moth, I sat down and crushed some fragments of it, and obtained enough goldto satisfy me that the rock would run four ounces to the ton. 

It was a beautiful night. We lay under our mosquito netting, and gazedup through the interlacing branches of the trees at the star-strewnsky, and smoked our manilas in weary content. The long, full "coo-ee"of the stealthy argus pheasant sounded at intervals in distant partsof the forest. It might have been the call of the orang-utan, or thewild hillmen of the country, for they have imitated the call of thismost glorious of birds. 

The shrill, never ceasing whir of the cicada hardly attracted ourattention; while the whistle and crash of a monkey that was inspectingus from his perch among the trees above caused me to peer upward, in hopes of catching a glimpse of his grayish outlines. 

I had not had an opportunity of asking my companion for the detailsof his tragic story. I turned to him, and found him watching meattentively. "Were you listening to the call of the coo-ee?" he asked. 

"Yes, " I answered. 

"It is the queen of birds. I will get you one. I have never shotone. They only come out at night, and then only to disappear, but wecan trap them. It will die in captivity. That is why Solomon couldnot keep them, and sent for new ones every three years. "

"What became of the woman?" I asked. 

"The body of the Laksamana was thrown over the walls by thePortuguese, " he said moodily. "It was embalmed and laid away. Twomonths from that day the woman was walking outside the walls. The warwas over. There was no more gold. Three of my people sprang upon herand the Portuguese she was to marry. " He paused for a moment and lookedup at the stars, then went on in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. "Theywere lashed to the headless body of the man they had murdered, andthrown into the royal tiger-cage, by order of his Highness, Ali, Sultan of Maur. "

I raised my curtain and threw the stub of my cigar out into thedarkness, a smothered exclamation of horror escaping my lips. 

"It was the will of Allah. Good night. "

It was nearly nine o'clock the next morning before we started. OurMalays had gone on at daybreak, to cut a path up the base of themountain to where the open forest began. 

We ascended steadily up a moderate slope for several miles, keepingthe ravine on our left. It was comparatively easy work after we hadleft the jungle behind. After crossing a level plateau we once morefound ourselves in a forest so dense that our men had to use theirparangs again. The heat of the jungle was intense, and we sufferedseverely from the stings of a fly that is not unlike a cicada in shape. 

From the jungle we emerged into an immense stone field, --padang-batu, the Malays called it. It extended along the mountain side as faras we could see, in places quite bare, at others deeply fissuredand covered with a most luxuriant vegetation. We tramped at timeswaist deep through ferns, some green, some dark red, and some linedwith yellow, clumps of the splendid Dipteris Horsfieldi and Matoniapectinala, with their slender stems and wide-spreading palmate frondstowering two feet above our heads. The delicate maidenhair lay like arich carpet beneath our feet, while hundreds of magnificent climbingpitcher-plants doused us with water as we knocked against them. Oursympiesometer showed us that we were twenty-eight hundred feet abovethe sea. 

Beyond the padang-batu we entered a forest of almost Alpine character, dwarfed and stunted. For several hours we worked along ridges, descended into valleys, and ascended almost precipitous ledges, untilwe finally reached a peak that was separated from the true mountainby a deep, forbidding cañon. 

Several of the older men of the party gave out, and we were forcedto leave them with half our baggage and what water was left: therewas a spring, they told us, near the summit. 

The scramble down the one side of the cañon, and up the other, was ahard hour's work. Its rocky, almost perpendicular sides were coveredwith a bushy vegetation on top of a foundation of mosses and deadleaves, so that it afforded us more hindrance than help. 

Just below the summit we came to where a projecting rock gave usshelter, and a natural basin contained flowing water. Dropping my load, and hardly waiting to catch my breath, I was on my way up the fiftyfeet that lay between us and the top. In another moment I had mountedthe small, rocky, rhododendron-covered platform, and stood, the firstof my party, on the summit of Mount Ophir. The little American flagthat I had brought with me I waved frantically above my head, muchto the amusement of my attendants. 

Four thousand feet below, to the east, stretched the silver sheen ofthe Indian Ocean. The smoke of a passing steamer lay like a dark stainon the blue and white of the sky. Close into the shore was the littlecapital town of Bander Maharani, connecting itself with us by a long, snake-like ribbon of shimmering light, --the great river Maur. 

To the north and west successive ranges of hill and valley, dividedby the glistening river, and all covered by an interminable jungleof vivid green, fell away until lost in the cloudless horizon. 

For a moment I stood and gazed out over the vast expanse that laybefore me, my mind filled with the wild, unwritten poetry of itsjungles and its people; then I turned to my companion. 

"It is beautiful!"

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"But not equal to the view from our own Mount Washington. "

"Then why take so much trouble to secure it? Mount Pulei is as high, and there is a good road to its top. "

I laughed. "Mount Pulei or Mount Washington is not Ophir. "

"True!" he answered, opening his eyes in surprise at the seemingabsurdity of my statement. "He that told you they were speaketh a lie. "

We spent the night on the summit, and watched the sun drop into themidst of the sea, away to the west. It was cool and delightful afterthe moist, heat-laden atmosphere of the lowlands, and a strong breezefreed us from the swarm of tiger mosquitoes that we had learned toexpect as the darkness came on. 

Where the Ophir of the Bible really is, will ever be a question ofdoubt. To my mind it embraces the entire East--the Malay Peninsula, Ceylon, India, and even China, --Ophir being merely a comprehensiveterm, possibly taken from this Mount Ophir of Johore, whichsignified the most central point of the region to which Solomon'sships sailed. For all ages the gold of the Malay Peninsula has beenknown; from the earliest times there has been intercourse between theArabians and the Malays, while the Malayan was the very first of thefar Eastern countries to adopt the Mohammedan religion and customs. 

All the articles mentioned in the Biblical account of Mount Ophirare found in and about Malacca in abundance, while on the coast ofAfrica two of them, peacocks and silver, are missing. 

If the Hebrew word thukyim is translated peacocks, and not parrots, then Solomon's ships must have turned east after passing the Straitsof Bab-el-Mandeb, and not south along the coast of Africa towardSofala. For peacocks are only found in India and Malaya. 

It is a singular fact that in the language of the Orang Bennu, oraborigines of the Malay Peninsula, that word "peacocks, " which in themodern Malay is marrak, is in the aboriginal chim marak, which is theexact termination of the Hebrew tuchim. Their word for bird is tchem, another surprising similarity. 

The morning sun brought us to our feet long before it was light inthe vast spaces beneath our eyes. The jungle held its reddening raysfor a moment; they flamed along the course of a half-hidden river;we stood out clear and distinct in their glorious effulgence, andthen the broken, denuded crags and ragged ravines of the padang-batuabsorbed them in its black fastnesses. 

The gold of Mount Ophir was all about us. The air, the stones, thevery trees, seemed to have been transformed into the glorious metalthat the little fleets of Solomon and Huram sailed so far to seek. TheAurea Chersonese was a breathing, pulsating reality. 

BUSUK

The Story of a Malayan Girlhood

They called her Busuk, or "the youngest" at her birth. Her father, the old punghulo, or chief, of the little kampong, or village, ofPassir Panjang, whispered the soft Allah Akbar, the prayer to Allah, in her small brown ear. 

The subjects of the punghulo brought presents of sarongs run with goldthread, and not larger than a handkerchief, for Busuk to wear abouther waist. They also brought gifts of rice in baskets of cunninglywoven cocoanut fibre; of bananas, a hundred on a bunch; of durians, that filled the bungalow with so strong an odor that Busuk drew upher wrinkled, tiny face into a quaint frown; and of cocoanuts intheir great green, oval shucks. 

Busuk's old aunt, who lived far away up the river Maur, near the footof Mount Ophir, sent a yellow gold pin for the hair; her husband, the Hadji Mat, had washed the gold from the bed of the stream thatrushed by their bungalow. 

Busuk's brother, who was a sergeant in his Highness's the Sultan'sartillery at Johore, brought a tiny pair of sandals all worked inmany-colored beads. Never had such presents been seen at the birthof any other of Punghulo Sahak's children. 

Two days later the Imam Paduka Tuan sent Busuk's father a lettersewn up in a yellow bag. It contained a blessing for Busuk. Busukkept the letter all her life, for it was a great thing for the highpriest to do. 

On the seventh day Busuk's head was shaven and she was named Fatima;but they called her Busuk in the kampong, and some even called herInchi Busuk, the princess. 

From the low-barred window of Busuk's home she could look out on theshimmering, sunlit waters of the Straits of Malacca. The loom on whichBusuk's mother wove the sarongs for the punghulo and for her sonsstood by the side of the window, and Busuk, from the sling in whichshe sat on her mother's side, could see the fishing praus glide by, and also the big lumber tonkangs, and at rare intervals one of hisHighness's launches. 

Sometimes she blinked her eyes as a vagrant shaft of sunlight straggleddown through the great green and yellow fronds of the cocoanut palmsthat stood about the bungalow; sometimes she kept her little blackeyes fixed gravely on the flying shuttle which her mother threw deftlyback and forth through the many-colored threads; but best of all didshe love to watch the little gray lizards that ran about on the palmsides of the house after the flies and moths. 

She was soon able to answer the lizards' call of "gecho, gecho, " andonce she laughed outright when one, in fright of her baby-fingers, dropped its tail and went wiggling away like a boat without arudder. But most of the time she swung and crowed in her wicker cradleunder the low rafters. 

When Busuk grew older, she was carried every day down the ladder of thehouse and put on the warm white sand with the other children. They wereall naked, save for a little chintz bib that was tied to their necks;so it made no difference how many mudpies they made on the beach norhow wet they got in the tepid waters of the ocean. They had only tolook out carefully for the crocodiles that glided noiselessly amongthe mangrove roots. 

One day one of Busuk's playmates was caught in the cruel jaws ofa crocodile, and lost its hand. The men from the village went outinto the labyrinth of roots that stood up above the flood like ahuge scaffolding, and caught the man-eater with ropes of the gamootypalm. They dragged it up the beach and put out its eyes with red-hotspikes of the hard billion wood. 

Although the varnished leaves of the cocoanuts kept almost every rayof sunlight out of the little village, and though the children couldplay in the airy spaces under their own houses, their heads and faceswere painted with a paste of flour and water to keep their tenderskins from chafing in the hot, moist air. 

At evening, when the fierce sun went down behind the great baniantree that nearly hid Mount Pulei, the kateeb would sound the call toprayer on a hollow log that hung up before the little palm-thatchedmosque. Then Busuk and her playmates would fall on their faces, while the holy man sang in a soft, monotonous voice the promisesof the Koran, the men of the kampong answering. "Allah il Allah, "he would sing, and "Mohammed is his prophet, " they would answer. 

Every night Busuk would lie down on a mat on the floor of the housewith a little wooden pillow under her neck, and when she dared shewould peep down through the open spaces in the bamboo floor intothe darkness beneath. Once she heard a low growl, and a great darkform stood right below her. She could see its tail lashing its sideswith short, whip-like movements. Then all the dogs in the kampongbegan to bark, and the men rushed down their ladders screaming, "Harimau! Harimau!" (A tiger! A tiger!) The next morning she foundthat her pet dog, Fatima, named after herself, had been killed by onestroke of the great beast's paw. Once a monster python swung from acocoanut tree through the window of her home, and wound itself roundand round the post of her mother's loom. It took a dozen men to tiea rope to the serpent's tail, and pull it out. 

Busuk went everywhere astride the punghulo's broad shoulders as hecollected the taxes and settled the disputes in the little village. Shewent out into the straits in the big prau that floated the star andcrescent of Johore over its stern, to look at the fishing-stakes, and was nearly wrecked by a great water-spout that burst within afew feet of them. 

Then she went twice to Johore, and gazed in open-eyed wonder atthe palaces of the Sultan and at the fort in which her uncle wasan officer. 

"Some day, " she thought, "I may see his Highness, and he may notice meand smile. " For had not his Highness spoken twice to her father andcalled him a good man? So whenever she went to Johore she put on herbest sarong and kabaya> and in her jetty black hair she put the pinher aunt had given her, with a spray of sweet-smelling chumpaka flower. 

When she was four years old she went to the penager to learn to readand write. In a few months she could outstrip any one in the classin tracing Arabic characters on the sand-sprinkled floor, and sheknew whole chapters in the Koran. 

So the days were passed in the little kampong under the gently swayingcocoanuts, and the little Malayan girl grew up like her companions, free and wild, with little thought beyond the morrow. That some dayshe was to be married, she knew; for since her first birthday she hadbeen engaged to Mamat, the son of her father's friend, the punghuloof Bander Bahru. 

She had never seen Mamat, nor he her; for it was not proper that aMalay should see his intended before marriage. She had heard thathe was strong and lithe of limb, and could beat all his fellows atthe game called ragga. When the wicker ball was in the air he neverlet it touch the ground; for he was as quick with his head and feet, shoulders, hips, and breast, as with his hands. He could swim and box, and had once gone with his father to the seaports on New Year's Dayat Singapore, and his own prau had won the short-distance race. 

Mamat was three years older than Busuk, and they were to be marriedwhen she was fifteen. 

At first she cried a little, for she was sad at the thought of givingup her playmates. But then the older women told her that she couldchew betel when she was married, and her mother showed her a littleset of betel-nut boxes, for which she had sent to Singapore. Each cupwas of silver, and the box was cunningly inlaid with storks and cherryblossoms. It had cost her mother a month's hard labor on the loom. 

Then Mamat was not to take her back to his father's bungalow. Hehad built a little one of his own, raised up on palm posts six feetfrom the ground, so that she need not fear tigers or snakes or whiteants. Its sides were of plaited palm leaves, every other one coloreddifferently, and its roof was of the choicest attap, each leaf bentcarefully over a rod of rattan, and stitched so evenly that not adrop of rain could get through. 

Inside there was a room especially for her, with its sides hungwith sarongs, and by the window was a loom made of kamooning wood, finer than her mother's. Outside, under the eaves, was a house ofbent rattan for her ring-doves, and a shelf where her silver-hairedmonkey could sun himself. 

So Busuk forgot her grief, and she watched with ill-concealed eagernessthe coming of Mamat's friends with presents of tobacco and rice andbone-tipped krises. Then for the first time she was permitted to openthe camphor-wood chest and gaze upon all the beautiful things thatshe was to wear for the one great day. 

Her mother and elder sisters had been married in them, and theirchildren would, one after another, be married in them after her. 

There was a sarong of silk, run with threads of gold and silver, thatwas large enough to go around her body twice and wide enough to hangfrom her waist to her ankles; a belt of silver, with a gold platein front, to hold the sarong in place; a kabaya, or outer garment, that looked like a dressing-gown, and was fastened down the front withgolden brooches of curious Malayan workmanship; a pair of red-tippedsandals; and a black lace scarf to wear about her black hair. Therewere earrings and a necklace of colored glass, and armlets, bangles, and gold pins. They all dazzled Busuk, and she could hardly wait totry them on. 

A buffalo was sacrificed on the day of the ceremony. The animal was"without blemish or disease. " The men were careful not to break itsfore or hind leg or its spine, after death, for such was the law. Itslegs were bound and its head was fastened, and water was poured uponit while the kadi prayed. Then he divided its windpipe. When it wascooked, one half of it was given to the priests and the other halfto the people. 

All the guests, and there were many, brought offerings of cooked ricein the fresh green leaves of the plantain, and baskets of deliciousmangosteens, and pink mangoes and great jack-fruits. A curry was madefrom the rice that had forty sambuls to mix with it. There were thepods of the moringa tree, chilies and capsicums, prawns and decayedfish, chutneys and onions, ducks' eggs and fish roes, peppers andcucumbers and grated cocoanuts. 

It was a wonderful curry, made by one of the Sultan's own cooks;for the Punghulo Sahak spared no expense in the marriage of this, his last daughter, and a great feast is exceedingly honorable in theeyes of the guests. 

Busuk's long black hair had to be done up in a marvellous chignon onthe top of her head. First, her maids washed it beautifully cleanwith the juice of the lime and the lather of the soap-nut; then itwas combed and brushed until every hair glistened like ebony; next itwas twisted up and stuck full of the quaint golden and tortoise-shellbodkins, with here and there a spray of jasmine and chumpaka. 

Busuk's milky-white teeth had to be filed off more than a fourth. Sheput her head down on the lap of the woman and closed her eyes tightto keep back the hot tears that would fall, but after the pain wasover and her teeth were blackened, she looked in the mirror at herswollen gums and thought that she was very beautiful. Now she couldchew the betel-nut from the box her mother had given her!

The palms of her hands and the nails of her fingers and toes werepainted red with henna, and the lids of her eyes touched up withantimony. When all was finished, they led her out into the great room, which was decorated with mats of colored palm, masses of sweet-smellingflowers and maidenhair fern. There they placed her in the chair ofstate to receive her relatives and friends. 

She trembled a little for fear Mamat would not think her beautiful, but when, last of all, he came up and smiled and claimed the bit ofbetel-nut that she was chewing for the first time, and placed it inhis mouth, she smiled back and was very happy. 

Then the kadi pronounced them man and wife in the presence of all, for is it not written, "Written deeds may be forged, destroyed, oraltered; but the memory of what is transacted in the presence of athousand witnesses must remain sacred? Allah il Allah!" And all thepeople answered, "Suka! Suka!" (We wish it! We wish it!)

Then Mamat took his seat on the dais beside the bride, and the punghulopassed about the betel-box. First, Busuk took out a syrah leaf smearedwith lime and placed in it some broken fragments of the betel-nut, and chewed it until a bright red liquid oozed from the corners ofher mouth. The others did the same. 

Then the women brought garlands of flowers--red allamandas, yellowconvolvulus, and pink hibiscus--and hung them about Busuk and Mamat, while the musicians outside beat their crocodile-hide drums infrantic haste. 

The great feast began out in the sandy plaza before the houses. Therewas cock-fighting and kicking the ragga ball, wrestling and boxing, and some gambling among the elders. 

Toward night Busuk was put in a rattan chair and carried by theyoung men, while Mamat and the girls walked by her side, a mile away, where her husband's big cadjang-covered prau lay moored. It was totake them to his bungalow at Bander Bahru. The band went, too, andthe boys shot off guns and fire-crackers all the way, until Busuk'shead swam, and she was so happy that the tears came into her eyesand trickled down through the rouge on her cheeks. 

So ended Busuk's childhood. She was not quite fifteen when she becamemistress of her own little palm-thatched home. But it was not playhousekeeping with her; for she must weave the sarongs for Mamat andherself for clothes and for spreads at night, and the weaving ofeach cost her twenty days' hard labor. If she could weave an extraone from time to time, Mamat would take it up to Singapore and tradeit at the bazaar for a pin for the hair or a sunshade with a whitefringe about it. 

Then there were the shell-fish and prawns on the sea-shore to befound, greens to be sought out in the jungle, and the padi, or rice, to be weeded. She must keep a plentiful supply of betel-nut and lemonleaves for Mamat and herself, and one day there was a little boy tolook after and make tiny sarongs for. 

So, long before the time that our American girls are out of school, andabout the time they are putting on long dresses, Busuk was a woman. Hershoulders were bent, her face wrinkled, her teeth decayed and fallingout from the use of the syrah leaf. She had settled the engagementof her oldest boy to a little girl of two years in a neighboringkampong, and was dusting out the things in the camphor-wood chest, preparatory to the great occasion. 

I used to wonder, as I wandered through one of these secluded littleMalay villages that line the shores of the peninsula and are scatteredover its interior, if the little girl mothers who were carrying waterand weaving mats did not sometimes long to get down on the warm, whitesands and have a regular romp among themselves, --playing "Cat-a-corner"or "I spy"; for none of them were over seventeen or eighteen!

Still their lives are not unhappy. Their husbands are kind and sober, and they are never destitute. They have their families about them, and hear laughter and merriment from one sunny year to another. 

Busuk's father-in-law is dead now, and the last time I visited BanderBahru to shoot wild pig, Mamat was punghulo, collecting the taxesand administering the laws. 

He raised the back of his open palm to his forehead with a quietdignity when I left, after the day's sport, and said, "Tabek! TuanConsul. Do not forget Mamat's humble bungalow. " And Busuk came down theladder with little Mamat astride her bare shoulders, with a pleasant"Tabek! Tuan! (Good-by, my lord. ) May Allah's smile be ever with you. "

A CROCODILE HUNT

At the foot of Mount Ophir

The little pleasant-faced Malay captain of his Highness's three-hundredton yacht Pante called softly, close to my ear, "Tuan--Tuan Consul, Gunong Ladang!" I sprang to my feet, rubbed my eyes, and gazed inthe direction indicated by the brown hand. 

I saw not five miles off the low jungle-bound coast of the peninsula, and above it a great bank of vaporous clouds, pierced by the moltenrays of the early morning sun. As I looked around inquiringly, thecaptain, bowing, said: "Tuan, " and I raised my eyes. Again I saw thelofty mountain peak surmounting the cushion of clouds, standing outbold and clear against the almost fierce azure of the Malayan sky. 

"Mount Ophir!" burst from my lips. The captain smiled and wentforward to listen to the linesman's "two fathoms, sir, two and onehalf fathoms, sir, two fathoms, sir"; for we were crossing the shallowbar that protects the mouth of the great river Maur from the ocean. 

The tide was running out like a mill-race. The Pante was backing fromside to side, and then pushing carefully ahead, trying to get intothe deep water beyond, before low tide. 

Suddenly there was a soft, grating sound and the captain came to meand touched his hat. 

"We are on the bar, sir. Will you send a despatch by the steam-cutterto Prince Suliman, asking for the launch? We cannot get off untilthe night tide. "

The Pante had so swung around that we could plainly see the bigred istana, or palace, of Prince Suliman close to the sandy shore, surrounded by a grove of graceful palms. With the aid of our glassesthe white and red blur farther up the river resolved itself into thestreets and quays of the little city of Bander Maharani, the capitalof the province of Maur in dominions of his Highness Abubaker, Sultanof Johore. Above and overshadowing all both in beauty and historicalinterest was the famous old mountain where King Solomon sent hisdiminutive ships for "gold, silver, peacocks, and apes. "

By the time the ladies were astir, the mists had vanished and GunongLadang, or as it is styled in Holy Writ Mount Ophir, presented toour admiring gaze its massive outlines, set in a frame of green andblue. The dense jungle crept halfway up its sides and at the pointwhere the cloud stratum had rested but an hour before, it merged intoa tangled network of vines and shrubs which in their turn gave placeto the black, red rock that shone like burnished brass. 

If our minds wandered away from visions of future crocodile-shootingto dreams of the past wealth that had been taken from the ancientmines that honeycombed the base of the mountain, it is hardly tobe wondered at. If Dato or "Lord" Garlands told us queer stories ofwoods and masonry that antedated the written history of the country, stories of mines and workings that were overgrown with a jungle thatlooked as primeval as the mountain itself, he was to be excused onthe plea that we, waiting on a sandy bar with the metallic glare ofthe sea in our eyes, were glad of any subject to distract our thoughts. 

The Resident's launch brought out Prince Mat and the Chief Justice, both of whom spoke English with an easy familiarity. Both had been inEurope and Prince Mat had dined with Queen Victoria. One night at tablehe related the incidents of that dinner with a delightful exactnessthat might have pleased her Britannic Majesty could she have listened. 

I waited only long enough to see the ladies installed in a suite ofrooms in the Residency, then donned a suit of white duck, steppedinto a river launch in company with Inchi Mohamed, the Chief Justice, and steamed out into the broad waters of the Maur. 

The southernmost kingdom of the great continent of Asia is the littleSultanate of Johore, ruled over by one of the most enlightened Princesof the East. Fourteen miles from Singapore, just across the notoriousold Straits of Malacca, is his capital and the palace of the Sultan. 

We had been guests of the State for the past two weeks. Its ruler, among other kind attentions to us, had suggested a visit to his outprovince Maur and a crocodile hunt along the banks of the broad riverthat wound about the foot of Mount Ophir. 

Fifteen hours' steam in his beautiful yacht along the picturesqueshores of Johore brought us to the realization of a long-cherisheddream, --the seeing for ourselves the mountain whose exact locationhad been a subject of conjecture for so many centuries. Were I ascholar and explorer and not a sportsman, I might again and moreexplicitly set forth facts which I consider indubitable proof thatthe Mount Ophir of Asia and not the Mount Ophir of Africa is, as Ihave already claimed, the Mount Ophir of the Bible. But here, I wishonly to narrate the record of a few pleasant days spent at its foot. 

The Maur River, at its mouth, is a mile across; it is so deep that onecan run close up to its muddy banks and peer in under the labyrinth ofmangrove roots that stand like a rustic scaffold beneath its trunks, protecting them from the highest flood-tides. 

It was some time before I could pick out a crocodile as he laysleeping in his muddy bath, showing nothing above the slime exceptthe serrated line of his great back, which was so incrusted that, but for its regularity, it might pass for the limb of a tree or somefantastically shaped root. 

"There you are!" said the Chief Justice, pointing at the bank almostbefore we had reached the opposite side. I strained my eyes and raisedthe hammer of my "50 x 110" Winchester; for I was to have a shot atmy first live crocodile. 

We drew nearer and nearer the shore and yet I failed to see anythingthat resembled an animal of any sort. The little launch slowed downand the crew all pointed toward the bank. I cannot now imagine whatI expected then to see, but something must have been in my mind'seye that blinded my bodily sight; for there, right before me, was alittle fellow not over three feet long. 

He had just come up from the river, and his hide was clean andalmost a dark birch color. His head was raised and he was regardingus suspiciously from his small green eyes. 

I put down my rifle in disgust, and took up my revolver. I had noidea of wasting a hundred and ten grains of powder on a baby. I tookcareful aim and fired. The revolver was a self-cocker, and yet beforeI could fire again, he had whirled about and was out of reach. He wasgone and I drew a long breath. The Malays said I struck him. If I did, I had no means of proving it. 

The only way to bag crocodiles is to kill them outright or nearlyso. If they have strength enough to crawl into the river and die, they will come to the surface again two days later; but the chancesare that they will get under a root, or that in some way you willlose them. Out of forty or fifty big and small ones that we hit onlyfive floated down past the Residency. 

I also soon found out that my hundred and ten grain cartridges werenone too large for even the smaller crocodiles. As for those eighteenand twenty feet long, it was necessary that the Chief Justice and Ishould fire at the same time and at the same spot in order to arrestthe big saurians in their wild scramble for the water. 

We had tried some half-dozen good shots at small fellows, varying fromtwo to five feet in length, when I began to lose interest in the sport;so I turned to watch a colony of little gray, jungle monkeys, thatwere swinging and chattering and scolding among the mangrove trees. 

One of them picked a long dart-shaped fruit off the tree and essayedto drop it on the head of his mate below. I was about to call mycompanion's attention to it, when I heard a crash among the rootsnear where the missile had fallen, and a crocodile, so large that Idistrusted my senses, turned his great log-like head to one side andgazed up at the frightened monkeys. I raised my hand, and the launchpaused not over twenty yards from where he lay patiently waiting forone of the monkeys to drop within reach of his great jaws. 

The sun had dried the mud on his back until the entire surface remindedme of the beach of a muddy mill-pond that I used to frequent as a boy. 

"Boyah besar!" (A royal crocodile) repeated our Malays under theirbreaths. 

The Chief Justice and I fired at the same time, and the massive fellowwho, but a moment before, had looked to be as stiff and clumsy asa bar of pig iron, now seemed to be made of india-rubber and steelsprings. I should not have been more surprised had the great timbosotree, beside which he lay, arisen and danced a jig. He seemed tospring from the middle up into the air without the aid of eitherhis head or his tail. Then he brought his tail around in a circleand struck the skeleton roots of the mangrove with such force as todislodge a small monkey in its top, which fell whistling with frightinto the lower limbs, while the crocodile's great jaws, which seemedto measure a third of his length, opened and shut viciously, snappingoff limbs and roots like straws. 

"He sick!" shouted the Chief Justice. "Fire quick. "

I threw the cartridge from the magazine into the barrel, and raisedthe gun to my shoulder just as the huge saurian struck the water. Mybullet caught him underneath, near the back legs. My companion's musthave had more effect, for the crocodile stopped as though stunned. Ihad time to drop my gun and snatch up my revolver. 

It was an easy shot. The bullet sped true to its mark and entered oneof the small fiery eyes. The huge frame seemed to quiver as thougha charge of electricity had gone through it and then stiffenedout, --dead. 

Our Malay boys got a rope of tough gamooty fibres around the greathead, and we towed our prize out into the stream just as the Resident'slaunch, bearing the Prince and the ladies, steamed up the river towatch the sport. 

A crowd of servants got the crocodile up on the bank near the palacegrounds and drew it two hundred yards to their quarters. Now comesthe strangest part of the story. 

My servants had half completed the task of skinning him, for I wishedto send his hide to the Smithsonian, when the muezzin sounded the callto prayers from the little mosque near by. In an instant the devoutMohammedans were on their faces and the crocodile in his half-skinnedstate was left until a more convenient time. At six o'clock the nextmorning I was awakened by a knock at my door:--

"Tuan, Tuan Consul, come see boyah (crocodile). "

I got up, wrapped a sarong about me, put my feet into a pair of grassslippers, and followed my guide out of the palace, through the courtsto where the crocodile had been the night before, but no crocodilewas to be seen. My guide grinned and pointed to a heavy trail thatlooked like the track of a stone-boat drawn by a yoke of oxen. 

We followed it for a hundred yards in the direction of the river, and came upon the crocodile, covered with blood and mud. His ownhide hung about him like a dress, and his one eye opened and shut atthe throng of wondering natives about. It was not until he had beenput out of his misery and his hide taken entirely off that we feltconfident of his bona fide demise. 

One day I had a real adventure while out shooting, which, like manyreal adventures, was made up principally of the things I thought andsuffered rather than of the things I did. Hence I hardly know howto write it out so that it will look like an "adventure" and not amere mishap. 

My companion had told me of a trail some thirty miles up the river thatled into the jungle about three miles, to some old gold workings thatdate back beyond the written records of the State. So one day we drewour little launch close up under the bank of the river, and I sprangashore, bent on seeing for myself the prehistoric remains. Contraryto the advice of the Chief Justice, I only took a heavy hunting-knifewith me, and it was more for slashing away thorns and rattans thanfor protection. 

It was the heat of the day, and the dense jungle was like afurnace. Before I had gone a mile I began to regret my enthusiasm. Ifound the path, but it was so overgrown with creepers, parasites, and rubber-vines that I had almost to cut a new one. Had it not beenfor the company of a small English terrier, Lekas, --the Malay for"make haste, "--I believe I should have turned back. 

However, I found the old workings, and spent several hours makingcalculations as to their depth and course, taking notes as to thecountry formation, and assaying some bits of refuse quartz. Ratherthan struggle back by the path, I determined to follow the course ofa stream that went through the mines and on toward the coast. So Iwhistled for Lekas and started on. 

For the first half-hour everything went smoothly. Then the streamwidened out and its clay bottom gave place to one of mud, which madethe walking much more difficult. At last I struck the mangrove belt, which always warns you that you are approaching the coast. 

As long as I kept in the centre of the channel, I was out of the wayof the network of roots; but now the channel was getting deeper and myprogress becoming more labored. It was impossible to reach the bank, for the mangroves on either side had grown so thick and dense as tobe impenetrable. 

When I had perhaps achieved half the distance, the thought suddenlycrossed my mind--how very awkward it would be to meet a crocodile insuch a place! One couldn't run, that was certain, and as for fighting, that would be a lost cause from the first. 

Right in the midst of these unpleasant cogitations I heard a quietsplash in the water, not far behind, that sent my heart into mymouth. In a moment I had scrambled on to a mangrove root and hadturned to look for the cause of my fears. 

For perhaps a minute I saw nothing, and was trying to convince myselfthat my previous thoughts had made me fanciful, when, not many yardsoff, I saw distinctly the form of a huge crocodile swimming rapidlytoward me. I needed no second look, but dashed away over the roots. 

Before I had gone half a dozen yards I was down sprawling in themud. I got entangled, and my terror made me totally unable to actwith any judgment. Despair nerved me and I turned at bay with my longhunting-knife in my hand. How I longed for even my revolver!

Whatever the issue, it could not be long delayed. The uncouth, hideous form, which as yet I had only seen dimly, was plain now. Itook my stand on one of the largest roots, steadied myself by claspinganother with my left hand, and waited. 

My chances, if it did not seem a mockery to call them such, were smallindeed. I might, by singular good luck, deprive my adversary of sight;but hemmed in as I was by a tangled mass of roots, I felt that eventhen I should be but little better off. 

All manner of thoughts came unbidden to my mind. I could see InchiMohamed propped up on cushions in the launch reading "A Little Book ofProfitable Tales" that had just been sent me by its author. I startedto smile at the tale of The Clycopeedy. Then I caught sight of thepeak of Mount Ophir through a notch in the jungle and all sorts ofabsurd hypotheses in regard to its authenticity flashed through mymind. All this takes time to relate, but those who have stood inmortal peril will know how short a time it takes to think. 

From the moment I left the water, but a few seconds had elapsed and thesaurian was not two yards from me. The abject horror and hopelessnessof that moment was something I can never forget. Suddenly Lekas camefloundering through the mud; a second more, and he perceived my enemywhen almost within reach of his jaws. 

Barking furiously, Lekas began to back away. One breathless moment, and the reptile turned to follow this new prey. I sank down amongthe roots regardless of the slime and watched the crocodile crawldeliberately away, with the gallant little dog retreating before him, keeping up a succession of angry barks. 

When I arrived at the mouth of the creek, weak, faint, and coveredfrom head to foot with mud, I found the Chief Justice awaiting me. Thebarking of the dog had attracted his attention and he had steamed upto see what was the matter. 

I had not strength left to stroke the head of the brave little fellowwho had thus twice done me a most welcome service. I had, indeed, butjust strength enough to spring in, throw myself down on the cushions, and let my "boys" pull off my clothes and bring me a suit of cleanpajamas and cool grass slippers. 

A NEW YEAR'S DAY IN MALAYA

And some of its Picturesque Customs

My Malay syce came close up to the veranda and touched his brownforehead with the back of his open hand. 

"Tuan" (Lord), he said, "have got oil for harness, two one-halfcents; black oil for cudah's (horse) feet, three cents; oil, one centone-half for bits; oil, seven cents for cretah (carriage). Fourteencents, Tuan. "

I put my hands into the pockets of my white duck jacket and drew outa roll of big Borneo coppers. 

The syce counted out the desired amount, and handed back what was leftthrough the bamboo chicks, or curtains, that reduced the blindingglare of the sky to a soft, translucent gray. I closed my eyes andstretched back in my long chair, wondering vaguely at the occasionthat called for such an outlay in oils, when I heard once more thequiet, insistent "Tuan!" I opened my eyes. 

"No got red, white, blue ribbon for whip. "

"Sudah chukup!" (Stop talking) I commanded angrily. The syce shruggedhis bare shoulders and gave a hitch to his cotton sarong. 

"Tuan, to-morrow New Year Day. Tuan, mem (lady) drive toEsplanade. Governor, general, all white tuans and mems there. TuanConsul's carriage not nice. Shall syce buy ribbons?"

"Yes, " I answered, tossing him the rest of the coppers, "and get anew one for your arm. "

I had forgotten for the moment that it was the 31st of December. Thesyce touched his hand to his forehead and salaamed. 

Through the spaces of the protecting chicks I caught glimpses ofmy Malay kebun, or gardener, squatting on his bare feet, with hisbare knees drawn up under his armpits, hacking with a heavy knife atthe short grass. The mottled crotons, the yellow allamanda and pinkhibiscus bushes, the clump of Eucharist lilies, the great trailingmasses of orchids that hung among the red flowers of the statelyflamboyant tree by the green hedge, joined to make me forget themidwinter date on the calendar. The time seemed in my half-dream Julyin New York or August in Washington. 

Ah Minga, the "boy" in flowing pantalets and stiffly starched blouse, came silently along the wide veranda, with a cup of tea and a plateof opened mangosteens. I roused myself, and the dreams of sleighbellsand ice on window-panes, that had been fleeting through my mind atthe first mention of New Year's Day by the syce, vanished. 

Ah Minga, too, mentioned, as he placed the cool, pellucid globesbefore me, "To-mollow New Year Dlay, Tuan!"

On Christmas Day, Ah Minga had presented the mistress with the gildedcounterfeit presentment of a Joss. The servants, one and all, from Zim, the cookee, to the wretched Kling dhobie (wash-man), had brought somelittle remembrance of their Christian master's great holiday. 

In respecting our customs, they had taken occasion to establish one oftheir own. They had adopted New Year's as the day when their mastersshould return their presents and good will in solid cash. 

At midnight we were awakened by a regular Fourth of Julypandemonium. Whistles from the factories, salvos from Fort Canning, bells from the churches, Chinese tom-toms, Malay horns, rent theair from that hour until dawn with all the discords of the Orientand a few from Europe. By daylight the thousands of natives from allquarters of the peninsula and neighboring islands had gathered alongthe broad Ocean Esplanade of Singapore in front of the Cricket ClubHouse, to take part in or watch the native sports by land and sea. 

The inevitable Chinaman was there, the Kling, the Madrasman, the Sikh, the Arab, the Jew, the Chitty, or Indian money-lender, --they were allthere, many times multiplied, unconsciously furnishing a backgroundof extraordinary variety and picturesqueness. 

At ten o'clock the favored representatives of the Anglo-Saxon racetook their place on the great veranda of the Cricket Club, and gavethe signal that we would condescend to be amused for ten hours. Thenthe show commenced. There were not over two hundred white people torepresent law and civilization amid the teeming native population. 

In the centre of the beautiful esplanade or playground rose the heroicstatue of Sir Stamford Raffles, the English governor who made Singaporepossible. To my right, on the veranda, stood a modest, gray-hairedlittle man who cleared the seas of piracy and insured Singapore'scommercial ascendency, Sir Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak. A littlefarther on, surrounded by a brilliant suite of Malay princes, wasthe Sultan of Johore, whose father sold the island of Singapore tothe British. 

The first of the sports was a series of foot-races between Malay andKling boys, almost invariably won by the Malays, who are the NorthAmerican Indians of Malaysia--the old-time kings of the soil. They arenever, like the Chinese, mere beasts of burden, or great merchants, nor do they descend to petty trade, like the Indians or Bengalese. Ifthey must work they become horsemen. 

Next came a jockey race, in which a dozen long-limbed Malays tookeach a five-year-old child astride his shoulders, and raced forseventy-five yards. There were sack-races and greased-pole climbingand pig-catching. 

Now came a singular contest--an eating match. Two dozen little Malay, Kling, Tamil, and Chinese boys were seated at regular intervals aboutan open circle by one of the governor's aids. Not one could touch theothers in any way. Each had a dry, hard ship-biscuit before him. Apistol shot and two dozen pairs of little brown fists went pit-a-paton the two dozen hard biscuits, and in an instant the crackers werebroken to powder. 

Then commenced the difficult task of forcing the powdered pulp downthe little throats. Both hands were called into full play during theoperation, one for crowding in, the other for grinding the residueand patting the stomach and throat. Each little competitor would shylyrub into the warm earth, or hide away in the folds of his many-coloredsarong, as much as possible, or when a rival was looking the other way, would snap a good-sized piece across to him. 

The little brown fellow who won the fifty-cent piece by finishinghis biscuit first simply put into his mouth a certain quantity of thecrushed biscuit, and with little or no mastication pushed the wholemass down his throat by sheer force. 

The minute the contest was decided, all the participants, andmany other boys, rushed to a great tub of molasses to duck forhalf-dollars. One after another their heads would disappear intothe sticky, blinding mass, as they fished with their teeth for theshining prizes at the bottom. 

Successful or otherwise, after their powers were exhausted they wouldsuddenly pull out their heads, reeking with the molasses, and makefor the ocean, unmindful of the crowds of natives in holiday attirewho blocked their way. 

Then came a jinrikisha race, with Chinese coolies pulling Malaypassengers around a half-mile course. Letting go the handles of theirwagons as they crossed the line, the coolies threw their unfortunatepassengers over backward. 

Tugs of war, wrestling matches, and boxing bouts on the turf finishedthe land sports, and we all adjourned to the yachts to witness thoseof the sea. There were races between men-of-war cutters, Europeanyachts, rowing shells, Chinese sampans, and Malay colehs with great, dart-like sails, so wide-spreading that ropes were attached to thetop of the masts, and a dozen naked natives hung far out over theside of the slender boat to keep it from blowing over. In making thecircle of the harbor they would spring from side to side of the boat, sometimes lost to our view in the spray, often missing their footholds, and dragging through the tepid water. 

Between times, while watching the races, we amused ourselvesthrowing coppers to a fleet of native boys in small dugouts beneathour bows. Every time a penny dropped into the water, a dozen littlebronze forms would flash in the sunlight, and nine times out of tenthe coin never reached the bottom. 

Last of all came the trooping of the English colors on the magnificentesplanade, within the shadow of the cathedral; the march past of thesturdy British artillery and engineers, with their native allies, theSikhs and Sepoys; then the feu-de-joie, and New Year's was officiallyrecognized by the guns of the fort. 

That night we danced at Government House, --we exiles of the TemperateZone, --keeping up to the last the fiction that New Year's Day undera tropic sky and within sound of the tiger's wail was really Januaryfirst. But every remembrance and association was, in our homesickthoughts, grouped about an open arch fire, with the sharp, crispcreak of sleigh-runners outside, in a frozen land fourteen thousandmiles away. 

IN THE BURST OF THE SOUTHWEST MONSOON

A Tale of Changhi Bungalow

We had been out all day from Singapore on a wild-pig hunt. There wereeight of us, including three young officers of the Royal Artillery, besides somewhere between seventy and a hundred native beaters. Theday had been unusually hot, even for a country whose regular recordon the thermometer reads 150 degrees in the sun. 

We had tramped and shot through jungle and lallang grass, until, whennight came on, I was too tired to make the fourteen miles back acrossthe island, and so decided to push on a mile farther to a government"rest bungalow. " I said good-by to my companions and the game, andaccompanied only by a Hindu guide, struck out across some ploughedlands for the jungle road that led to and ended at Changhi. 

Changhi was one of three rest bungalows, or summer resorts, ifone can be permitted to mention summer in this land of perpetualsummer. They were owned and kept open by the Singapore Government forthe convenience of travellers, and as places to which its own officialscan flee from the cares of office and the demands of society. I hadstopped at Changhi Bungalow once for some weeks when my wife and aparty of friends and all our servants were with me. It was lonelyeven then, with the black impenetrable jungle crowding down on threesides, and a strip of the blinding, dazzling waters of the uncannyold Straits of Malacca in front. 

There were tigers and snakes in the jungle, and crocodiles and sharksin the Straits, and lizards and other things in the bungalow. I thoughtof all this in a disjointed kind of a way, and half wished that Ihad stayed with my party. Then I noticed uneasily that some thickoily-looking clouds were blotting out the yellow haze left by the sunover on the Johore side. A few big hot drops of rain splashed down intomy face, as I climbed wearily up the dozen cement steps of the house. 

The bamboo chicks were all down, and the shutter-doors securely lockedfrom the inside, but there was a long rattan chair within reach, and I dropped into it with a sigh of satisfaction, while my guidewent out toward the servant-quarters to arouse the Malay mandor, orhead gardener, whom H. B. M. 's Government trusted with this portionof her East Indian possessions. 

As might have been expected, that high functionary was not to befound, and I was forced to content myself, while my guide went on toa neighboring native police station to make inquiries. I unbuttonedmy stiff kaki shooting-jacket, lit a manila, which my mouth was toodry to smoke, and gazed up at the ceiling in silence. 

It was stiflingly hot. Even the cicadas in the great jungle tree, thattowered a hundred and fifty feet above the house, were quiet. Everybreath I took seemed to scorch me, and the balls of my eyes ached. Thesky had changed to a dull cartridge color. 

A breeze came across the hot, glaring surface of the Straits, andstirred the tops of a little clump of palms, and died away. It broughtwith it the smell of rain. 

For a moment there was a dead stillness, --not even a lizard cluckedon the wall back of me; then all at once the thermometer dropped downtwo or three degrees, and a tearing wind struck the bamboo curtainsand stretched them out straight; the tops of the massive jungle treesbent and creaked; there was a blinding flash and a roar of thunder, and all distance was lost in darkness and rain. It was one of thequick, fierce bursts of the southwest monsoon. 

I did not move, although wet to the skin. 

Presently I could make out three blurred figures fighting their wayslowly against the storm across the compound. One was the guide;the second was the mandor, naked save for a cotton sarong around hiswaist; the third was a stranger. 

The trio came up on the veranda--the stranger hanging behind, with anapologetic droop of his head. He was a white man, in a suit of dirty, ragged linen. It took but one look to place him. I had seen hundreds ofthem "on the beach" in Singapore, --there could be no mistake. "Loafer"was written all over him--from his ragged, matted hair to the fringeon the bottom of his trousers. He held a broken cork helmet, that hadnot seen pipe-clay for many a month, in his grimy hands, and scrapedone foot and ducked his dripping head, as I turned toward him witha gruff, --

"Well?"

"Beg pardon, sir, " he said, in a harsh, rasping voice, "but I heardthat the American Consul was here. I am an American. "

He looked up with a watery leer in his eyes. 

"Go on, " I said, without offering to take the hand of myfellow-countryman. 

He let his arm fall to his side. 

"I ain't got any passport; that went with the rest, and I never hadthe heart to ask for another. "

He gave a bad imitation of a sob. 

"Never mind the side play, " I commented, as he began to rumble inthe bottomless pocket of his coat. "I will supply all that as you goalong. What is it you want?"

He withdrew his hand and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. 

"Come in out of the rain and you won't need to do that, " I said, amused at this show of feeling. 

"I thought as how you might give a countryman a lift, " he whined. 

I smiled and stepped to the door. 

"Boy, bring the gentleman a whiskey and soda. "

The "boy" brought the liquor, while I commenced to unstrap and drymy Winchester. 

My fellow-countryman did not move, but stood nervously tottering fromone leg to the other, as I went on with my task. He coughed once ortwice to attract my attention. 

"Beg pardon, sir, but I meant work--good, honest work. Work was whatI wanted, to earn this very glass of whiskey for my little gal. She'ssick, sir, sick--sick in a hut at the station. "

"Your little what?" I asked in amazement. 

"My little gal, sir. She's all that's left me. If you'll trust mewith the glass, I'll take it to her. Can't give you no security, I'm afraid, only the word of a broken-down old father, who has gota little gal what he loves better than life!"

My long experience with tramps and beach-combers was at fault. Nowords can convey an idea of the pathos and humility he threw intohis tone and actions. The yearning of the voice, the almost divineair of self-abnegation, the subdued flash of pride here and therethat suggested better days, the hopeless droop of the arms, and theirresolute tremble of the corners of his mouth would have appealedto the heart of a heathen idol. That one of his caste should refusea glass of "Usher's Best, " and be willing to brave the burst of asouthwest monsoon to take it to any one--child, mother, or wife--wasincredible. 

"Drink it, " I said roughly. "You will need it before you get to thestation. Boy, bring me my waterproof and an umbrella. Now out yougo. We'll see whether this 'little gal' is male or female, --sevenor seventy. "

The loafer snatched up his helmet with an avidity that admitted ofno question as to his earnestness. 

We made a wild rush down across the oozing compound, through a littlestrip of dripping jungle, over a swaying foot-bridge that spannedthe muddy Sonji Changhi, and along the sandy floor of a cocoanutgrove. On the outskirts of a station we came upon a deserted bungalow, that was trembling in the storm on its rotten supports. 

We went up its rickety ladder and across its open bamboo floor, tothe darkest corner, where, on an old mat under the only dry spot inthe hut, lay a bundle of rags. 

My companion dropped down among the decayed stumps of pineapples andcocoanut refuse, and commenced to croon in a hoarse voice, "Daddycome, --Daddy come, --poor dearie, " and made a motion as though to putthe bottle to a small, dirty white face that I could just make outamong the rags. 

I pushed him aside and gathered the unconscious little burden up intomy arms. There was no time for sentiment. Every minute I expectedthe miserable old shelter would go over. 

We made our way as best we could back through the darkness anddriving blasts of rain. The loafer followed with a long series of "Godbless you's. " He essayed once or twice to hold the umbrella over his"little gal's" head, but each time the wind turned it inside out, andhe gave it up with an air of feeble inconsequence that characterizedall his movements. 

I put my burden down on a couch in the dining room, and chafed herhands and feet, while the boy brought a beer bottle filled withhot water. 

It was a sweet little face, pinched and drawn, with big hazel eyes, that looked up into mine as my efforts sent the blood coursing throughher veins. She was between five and six years old. A mass of darkbrown hair, unkempt and matted, fell about her face and shoulders. 

I wrapped a rug about her. She was asleep almost before I had finished. 

A little later I roused her, and she nestled her damp little headagainst my shoulder as I gave her some soup; but her eyelids wereheavy, and it seemed almost cruel to keep her awake, even for thefood she so badly needed. The father had shuffled about uneasilyduring my motherly attentions, and seemed relieved when I was through. 

While the boy brought a steaming hot curry and a goodly supply ofwhiskey and soda, I turned the self-confessed father of the big hazeleyes into the bath-room. 

With the grime and dirt off his face he was pale and haggard. Therewere big blue marks under his shifting gray eyes and his hair hungragged and singed about his ears. 

He had discarded his dirty linen for a blue-flannel bathing-suit thatsome former high official of H. B. M. Service had left behind. Therewere traces of starvation or dissipation in every movement. His handtrembled as he conveyed the hot soup to his blue lips. 

Gradually the color came back to his sunken cheeks, and by the timehe had laid in the second plate of curry and drank two whiskey andsodas he looked comparatively sleek and respectable. Even his anxietyfor the little sleeper seemed to fade out of his weak face. 

I had been watching him narrowly during the meal. I could not makeup my mind whether he was a clever actor or only an unfortunate;he might be the latter, and still be what I was certain of, --a scamp. 

The wind whistled and roared about the great verandas and into theglassless windows with all the vehemence of a New England snowstorm. Itcaught our well-protected punkah-lamps, and turned their broad flamesinto spiral columns of smoke. Ever and again a flash of lightningflared in our eyes, and revealed the water of the narrow straitslashed into a white fury. 

I should have been thankful for the company of even a dog on such anight, and think the loafer felt it, for I could see that he was moreat ease with every crash of thunder. I tiptoed over to the "littlegal, " and noted her soft, regular breathing and healthful sleep, undisturbed by the fierce storm outside. 

I lit a manila, and handed one to my companion. We puffed a momentin silence, while the boy replenished our glasses. 

"Now, " I said, tipping my chair back against the wall, "tell meyour story. "

My guest's face at once assumed the expression of the professionalloafer. My faith in him began to wane. 

"I am an American, " he began glibly enough under the combined effectsof the whiskey and dinner, "an old soldier. I fought with Grant inthe Wilderness, and--"

"Of course, " I interrupted, "and with Sherman in Georgia. I have heardit all by a hundred better talkers than you. Suppose you skip it. "

I did not look up, but I was perfectly familiar with the expressionof injured innocence that was mantling his face. 

He began again in a few minutes, but his voice had lost some of itsengaging frankness. 

"I am the son of a kind and indulgent mother, --God bless her. Myfather died before I knew him--"

I moved uneasily in my chair. 

He hurried on:--

"I fell in bad ways in spite of her saintly love, and ran away to sea. "

"Look here, my friend, " I said, "I am sorry to spoil your little tale, but it is an old one. Can't you give me something new? Now try again. "

He looked at me unsteadily under his thin eyebrows, shuffled restlesslyin his seat, and said with something like a sob in his voice:--

"Well, sir, I will. You have been kind to me and taken my little galin; you saved her life, and, for a change, I'll tell you the truth. "

He drew himself up a little too ostentatiously, threw his head back, and said proudly:--

"I am a gentleman born. "

"Good, " I laughed. "Now you are on the right track, and besides youlook it. "

"Ah! you may sneer, " he retorted, "but I tell you the truth. "

His face flushed and his lip quivered. He brought his fist down onthe table. 

"I tell you my father, --ah! but never mind my father. " His voicefailed him. 

"Certainly, " I replied. "Only get on with your story. "

"I came out to India from Boston as a young man, " he continued, "either in '66 or '68, I forget which. "

"Try '67, " I suggested. 

"It was not '67, " he exclaimed angrily, "it was either '66 or '68. "

"Or some other date. However, that's but a detail. Proceed. "

"Sir, you can make sport of me, but what I am telling you is God'struth. May I be struck dead if one lie passes my lips. I came out toplant coffee; I thought, like many others, that I had only to cut downthe jungle and put in coffee plants, and make my everlasting fortune. "

"And didn't you?" I asked, glancing at his dilapidated old helmetthat hung over the corner of the sideboard. 

"Look at me!" he burst forth, springing upon his feet, his breastheaving under his blue pajamas. 

"Pardon the question, " I answered. "Go on, you are doing bravely. "

He sank back into his chair with a commendable air of dignity. 

"I had a little money of my own, " he continued, "and opened up anestate. It promised well, but I soon came to the end of my smallcapital. I thought I could go to Calcutta and Bombay and Simla, and cultivate my mind by travel and society, while the bushes weregrowing. Well it ended in the same old way. I got into the chitties'hands--they are worse than Jews--at two per cent a month on a mortgageon my estate. Then I went back to it with a determination to pay upmy debt, make my estate a success, and after that to see the world. I worked, sir, like a nigger, and for a time was able to meet my nakedcreditor, from month to month, hoping all the time against hope fora bumper crop. "

"I understand, " I said. "Your bumper crop did not come, and yourchitty did. Where does she come in?" I nodded in the direction ofthe little sleeper. 

He glanced uneasily in the same direction, and a tear gathered inhis eye. 

"I married on credit, sir, the daughter of an English army officer. Itwas infernal. But, sir, you would have done likewise. Live under theburning sun of India for four years, struggle against impossibilitiesand hope against hope, and then have a pair of great hazel eyes looklovingly into yours and a pair of red lips turned up to yours, --andtell me if you would not have closed your eyes to the future, andaccepted this precious gift as though it were sent from above?"

The pale, shrunken face of the speaker glowed, and his faded eyeslit up with the light of love. 

"We were happy for a time, and the little gal was born, but thebumper crop did not come. Then, sir, I sold farm tools and my horse, and sent the wife to a hill station for her health. I kept the littlegal. I stayed to work, as none of my natives ever worked. It was agay station to which she went. You know the rest, --she never cameback. That ended the struggle. I would have shot myself but for thelittle one. I took her and we wandered here and there, doing odd jobsfor a few months at a time. I drifted down to Singapore, hoping tobetter myself, but, sir, I am about used up. It's hard--hard. "

He buried his head in his long, thin fingers, and sat perfectly still. 

There was a sound outside above the roar of the wind and the rain. Atfirst faint and intermittent, it grew louder, and continuous, andcame close. There was no mistaking it, --the march of booted men. 

"What's that?" asked my companion, with a start. 

"Tommy Atkins, " I replied, "the clang of the ammunition boot as bigas life. "

His face grew ashy white, and he looked furtively around the room. 

"What's the matter?" I exclaimed, but as I asked, I knew. 

I opened the bath-room door and shoved him in. 

"Go in there" I said, "and compose some more fairy tales. "

He was scarcely out of sight when the front door was thrown open, and a corporal's guard, wet yet happy, marched into the room. 

The corporal stood with his back to the door, and gave himselfmental words of command, --"Eyes left, eyes right, "--then, as a lastresource, --"eyes under the table. " He had not noticed the little bundlein the dark corner. He drew himself up and gave the military salute. 

"Beg pardon, sir, but we are out for a deserter from the 58th, --BillHulish, --we 'ave tracked him 'ere, and with the compliments of thecommanding hofficer, we'll search the 'ouse. "

"Search away, " I answered, as I heard the outside bath-room door openand close softly. 

They returned empty-handed, but not greatly disappointed. 

"Wet night, corporal, " I ventured. 

"One of the worst as ever I knew, sir, " he replied, eying the whiskeybottle and the two half-drained glasses. 

"'Ad a long march, sir, fourteen miles. "

I pushed the bottle toward him, and with a deprecatory salute heturned out a stiff drink. 

"'Ere's to yer 'ealth, sir, an' may ye always 'ave an extra glassready for a visitor. "

I smiled, and motioned for his men to do likewise, and then, becausehe was a man of sweet composure and had not asked any questions asto the extra glass and chair, told him that his bird had flown. 

"Bad 'cess to him, sir, 'e's led us a pretty chase for these lastfour weeks. If 'e was only a deserter I wouldn't mind, but 'e's akidnapper. Leastways, Tommy Loud's young'n turned up missin' the dayhe skipped, an' we ain't seen nothin' of 'er since. "

"Is this she?" I asked, leading him to the cot. 

Hardly looking at the child, he raised her in his arms and kissed her. 

"God be praised, sir, " he said with a show of feeling. "We 'ave gother back. I think her mother would 'ave died if we 'ad come back againwithout her, --but, O my little darlin', you look cruel bad. Drugged, sir, that's what she is. Drugged to keep 'er quiet and save food. Theblag'ard!"

"But what did he take her for?" I asked. 

"Bless you, sir, " replied the corporal, "she was his stock in trade. Ireckon she's drawn many dibs out of other people's pockets that would'ave been nestlin' there to-day if it 'adn't 'a' bin for 'er. "

Then a broad grin broke over his ruddy features, and he looked atme quizzically. 

"But 'e was a great play hactor, sir. "

"And a poet, " I added enthusiastically. 

"'E could beat Kipling romancin', sir. " He checked himself, as thoughashamed of awarding such meed of praise to his ex-colleague. 

"But we must be goin'; orders strict. With your permission, sir, I will leave her with a guard of one man for to-night, and send theambulance for her in the morning. "

He drew up his little file, saluted, and marched out into the rainand wind, with all the cheerfulness of a duck. 

I could hear them singing as they crossed the compound and struckinto the jungle road:--

 "Oh, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, go away'; But it's 'Thank you, Mister Atkins, ' when the band begins to play, The band begins to--"

A peal of thunder that shook the bungalow from its attap roof to itsnebong pillars drowned the melody and drove me inside. 

A PIG HUNT

In the Malayan Jungle

The thermometer stood at 155 degrees in the sun. The dry lallang grasscrackled and glowed and returned long irregular waves of heat to thequivering metallic dome above. 

The sensitive mimosa, at our feet, had long since surrendered to thefierce wooing of the sun-god, submissively folding its leaves andthen its branches and putting aside its morning dress of green forone more in keeping with the color of the earth and sky. Even theclamorous cicada had hushed its insistent whir. 

We were dressed in brown kaki suits. Wide-spreading cork helmetswere filled with the stiff varnished leaves of the mango, and wethandkerchiefs were draped from underneath their rims; yet, after anhour of exposure, our flesh ached--it was tender to the touch. Thebarrel of my Express scorched my hand, and I wrapped my camerabunaabout it. But then it was no hotter than any other day. In fact, we never gave a thought to the weather. 

We were formed in a line, perhaps two miles in length, in adeserted pepper plantation, fronting a jungle of timboso treesand rubber-vines. I squatted patiently under the checkered shadeof a neglected coffee tree and kept my eyes fixed on the seeminglyimpenetrable walls of the jungle. A hundred feet to the right and theleft, under like protection, were two of my companions, determinedlike myself to be successful in three points, --to have the first shotat the pigs, to avoid getting shot, or shooting a neighbor. But ourminds rose above mental cautions with the first faint halloos of theHindu shikaris on the opposite side of the jungle. In another momentthe babel gave place to a confusion of shrieks, howls, yells, laughs, barking of dogs, beating of tins, blowing of horns, explosions ofcrackers, and a din that represents all that is wild and untamablein three nations. It is a weird, almost appalling prologue. Thoselaughs!--they are a study--they fairly chill the blood--they would makethe fortune of a comic actor--so intense, thrilling, surprising, andseemingly filled with a ghoulish glee. Over and over they would breakout clear and distinct above the tintamarre. I have never been ableto find out whether it belongs to the Malay or the Kling or the Tamil. 

The yelling became more distinct. A troop of brown and silver wah-wahsswung with their long arms out to the very edge of the jungle and thenup to the tops of the highest trees, the while uttering the full, clear note from which they take their name; followed by a troop ofgray little jungle monkeys, whistling and scolding at the unwonteddisturbance. A colony of cicadas on the limbs of a great gutta treeawoke into life and pierced our ears with buzz-saw strains. 

In an instant we were all alert, --the heat was forgotten. At any minutea herd of pigs might dart out and on to us, or possibly our driversmight rouse a tiger. The screaming ascended to a delirious pitch--thepigs were discovered! I threw my cartridge from the magazine into thebarrel. It was a 50×95 Express and I had perfect confidence that oneball to a pig was sufficient. 

The yelling grew nearer until, with a sudden deploy, one hundredKlings and Malays dashed out into the open, close on the heels of adozen wild pigs. We could just see their black backs above the grass, as they broke down a little ravine in single file, led by a big, hoary boar with tusks. They were three hundred yards off, but I couldnot resist the temptation. I brought my rifle to my shoulder and firedtwice in rapid succession. Two or three more shots were heard beyond. Ithrew out the shells as the herd lunged on me. It was so sudden thatI was dazed, but fortunately so were the pigs, with the exception ofa wary old leader, who made into the jungle behind, almost between mylegs. One little fellow threw himself on his haunches for an instantand stared at me. I came to my senses first and put a ball into hiswondering eyes. My second shot was so near that it tore away a poundof meat from his shoulder and killed him instantly. 

The firing had opened up all along the line. The drivers werepushing in nearer and nearer, beating the grass and clumps of bushes, seemingly regardless of the widely flying balls. I suspect they heldour prowess in contempt. I know they looked it, when it was discoveredthat out of the dozen pigs they had raised, we had allowed over halfto escape. Then, too, their lives were insured, in a way; for theyknew that their deaths would cost us twenty big Mexican dollars. 

Pig-hunting is the one big-game hunt that can be indulged in on theMalay Peninsula without great preparation and danger. Deer and tapirsare scarce. Tigers, or harimau as the Malays call them, abound, butlive in the depths of the almost inaccessible jungle, and come forthonly at rare intervals, except in the case of the man-eaters, whoare usually ignominiously caught in pitfalls, very seldom affordingtrue sport. Elephants are still hunted in the native states northof Singapore, but the sport is too expensive for the generality ofsportsmen. One of the peculiar attributes of the Malayan tiger is hisdecided penchant for Chinese flesh, repeatedly striking down Chinesecoolies in the fields to the exclusion of the Malays or Europeans whoare working by their side. Perhaps once a month, a tiger or his skinwill be brought into the city by natives, and several times at nightI have heard them in the jungle; but to my knowledge only three havebeen shot by European sportsmen during my residence in the island. Sowild pigs really remain the one item of big game. 

The pigs live in the jungle bordering plantations in which they canrange for pineapples, sweet potatoes, and tapioca root. They arethe ordinary wild hog, black in color, and fleet of foot. The olderones have good-sized tusks and show fight when cornered. The lonesportsman has very little chance of obtaining a shot, so they arehunted in large companies of from five to fifteen guns. Such partiesgenerally organize a hunt at least once a week and leave Singaporeearly in the morning for an all-day shoot. 

The pig hunts organized by the officers of the Royal Artillery arethe largest, and as a description of one is a description of all, I will take one up in regular order, rather than quote from many. 

We left Singapore at six o'clock in the morning in a four-horsedray. As the sun had not reached the tops of the trees, theatmosphere was mild and pleasant. A half-hour took us outside thegreat cosmopolitan city, of three hundred thousand inhabitants. Thelow, cool bungalows with their wide-spreading lawns gave place tothe grass-thatched huts of the Chinese coolies, and the omnipresenteating-stalls. A hard-packed road carried us through almost endlesscocoanut groves. At intervals a Malay kampong, or village, wasrevealed in the heart of the grove, its queer attap-thatched housesraised a man's height from the ground, and connected with it by ricketyladders. Dozens of nude little children played under the shadow of thepalms, while the comely faces and syrah-stained teeth of their motherspeeped at us from behind low barred windows. The cocoanut groves weresuperseded by tapioca, pepper, and coffee plantations. At regulardistances were neat stations, manned by Malay and Sikh police. Theroads over which we dashed were in perfect repair. In another hourwe were nine miles from Singapore and near our first "beat. "

Major Rich had sent his shikaris on the night before to collectbeaters, so that when we arrived we were welcomed by a smallarmy of Klings, Tamils, and Malays, and the usual sprinkling ofpariah dogs. A wild, strange set are these beaters. They toil not, neither do they spin. Their wives do that occasionally, making afew sarongs for home use and an odd one for the market. Cocoanuts, pineapples, a little patch of paddy with a dozen half-wild chickens, and perchance, if they are not Mohammedans, a pig with its litter, afford them sustenance. For their day's beating they were to receivefifteen cents apiece. They were all ranged in line and counted, after which we took up our march through a plantation of tapioca, the brush standing about level with our heads. Chinese coolieswere working about its roots keeping down the great pest of Malayanfarmers, --lallang grass. The tapioca was broken in places by a fewacres of pepper vines and again by neglected coffee shrubs. 

Our procession was truly formidable. Fifty or more natives went onahead making a path. Then we followed, fifteen in number, each witha native to carry his gun. The rear was brought up by twoscore moreand half as many dogs. Three-quarters of an hour's walk brought usto our first beat. The head shikaris placed us in an open position, from fifty to one hundred yards apart, facing the jungle. The beaters, in the meantime, had gone by a long detour around the jungle to drivewhatever it contained within reach of our guns. 

In the second of these beats (I described the first in the opening ofthis chapter) a deer ran out far in advance of the pigs. We caughtbut a fleeting glimpse of it above the grass. My gun and that of myneighbor went off simultaneously. The deer disappeared. We rushedto the spot and found the leaves dyed with blood. Then commenced achase, which, although fruitless, was well worth the exertion. Allthe panorama of tropical life seemed to lay in our tracks. Foran half-hour we traversed the rolling plain with its burden ofgrass. Some smoker dropped a match in it, and in an instant it wasall ablaze, spreading away like a whirlwind, burning only the verytips, toward a distant jungle. Then we dove into a bosky wood bya narrow winding path, and through a stream of water. The path waslike a tunnel, the dense foliage shutting it in on both sides andabove. The thorns of the rattans reached down and tore our clothes, and long trailing rubber-vines caught up our helmets and held ourfeet. In a marshy bit of jungle, a small colony of unwieldy sagopalms found root, while pitcher-plants and orchids hung from almostevery limb. Clumsy gray iguanas and long-tailed lizards of a brilliantgreen rushed up the trunks of lichen-covered trees. Troops of monkeyswent scattering away on all sides, and black squirrels chattered on inthe perfect security of the dim obscurity. In a bit of sandy bottom, a silken-haired, zebra-striped tapir scuttled away ere we were halfalive to his presence. 

Outside was the metallic glare of the Malayan sun once more, now at itsheight, and another march was before us, over the burning hot mésa. Atone o'clock we came upon a half-neglected plantation. The bloody trailof the deer led through it. In the centre of the plantation we founda huge wedge-shaped attap house for drying pepper, and there we rested. 

Our tiffin baskets were six miles away in the dray, and sending afterthem was out of the question. So we foraged for eatables. Cocoanutswere easily obtained from trees all about, and a little whiskeymixed with its milk made a very refreshing drink. Pineapples, smalloranges, limes, papayas, custard apples, and bananas were in largequantities. Our drivers added to this bill of fare by roasting thesweet-potato-like roots of the tapioca. After this impromptu lunchthey compounded their quids of areca-nut and lime, and were readyonce more to beat up an adjacent jungle for deer, pig, or tiger. 

As before, we were soon in position in the open before the jungleand the beaters were yelling at the top of their voices. 

I was half dozing in the sun, trying to smoke a Manila cigar thatmy mouth was too dry to draw, when I was aroused by my neighbor, who called my attention to a file of pigs at the extreme end of theline. I could just see what was going on from the knoll on which Iwas standing. They were received by Major Rich, one of his subalterns, and his Hindu gun-carrier. One of the file fell at the first volley, two more broke through the line, and the remaining six or seven, led by a fierce old fellow, from whose long tusks the foam dripped, turned up the line and charged point-blank on the next gunner, whofired and missed, but succeeded in keeping them between the line andthe jungle. The fourth gun brought down the second pig and wounded theboar in the shoulder. Frantic with rage and pain, the old fellow toreup the ground and grass with his tusks and then, seeming to give upall idea of escape, wheeled sharply around and with his back bristlesstanding erect and his mouth open, charged directly on to the fifth, who was in the act of throwing the cartridge into the barrel. Takencompletely by surprise, the officer gave one lusty yell and startedto run in line with the gun on his right. The boar was gaining onhim at every step when he tripped and fell. The report of No. 6'sWinchester Express rang out almost simultaneously. For an instant weheld our breaths, wondering whether the man or boar had been hit. Itwas a splendid shot and took a steady hand. The boar's shoulder wasshattered and his heart reached. Two or three angry grunts and he layquiet. He weighed close to three hundred pounds. The bristles on hisback were white with age. All in all, he was not nice to look at. 

As half of our beaters were Mohammedans and so forbidden to touch pork, the burden of carrying our pigs the six miles through lallang grass, jungle and swamp land, came hard on our Brahmists. We knew that theonly way to make them work was to call them "Sons of dogs" and walkoff and leave them with a parting injunction to "get in by the timewe did if they wanted their wages. "

This we did without deigning to notice their pathetic gestures, heart-rending appeals and protestations to the "Sons of theHeaven-Born" that they could not lift one hundredth part of suchburdens. 

IN THE COURT OF JOHORE

The Crowning of a Malayan Prince

Tunku Ibrahim was just past seventeen when his father, the SultanAbubaker, chose to recognize him as his heir and Crown Prince ofJohore. 

From the day when the little prince had been deemed old enough to leavehis mother and the women's palace until the day he had entered thenative artillery as a lieutenant, he had been schooled and trained bythe English missionaries and the Tuan Kadi, or Mohammedan high priest, as becomes a son of so illustrious a father. 

Tunku Ibrahim had made one trip to England when he was fifteen yearsold, and with his little cousin, the Tunku, or Prince, Othman, haddined with the Queen at Windsor. 

So, when the Sultan returned from a long stay at Carlsbad and foundthat the Sultana was dead and that Ibrahim had shot up into a man, he said:--

"I am getting to be an old man and may die at any time. I will callall my nobles and people to the palace, and they shall see me place thecrown on Ibrahim's head. Then if I die, he will rule, and the Britishwill not take his country from him as long as he is wise and kingly. "

Whereupon his Highness sent out invitations to the Governor and allthe foreign consuls in Singapore to be his guests and witness thecrowning of his son. 

We started in quaint little box-like carriages, called gharries, longbefore the fierce Malayan sun had risen above the palms, accomplishingthe fourteen miles across the beautiful island in little over an hour. 

The diminutive Deli ponies, not larger than Newfoundland dogs, broke into a run the moment we closed the lattice doors, and it wasall their half-naked drivers could do to keep their perches on theswaying shafts. 

When we arrived at the little half-Malay, half-Chinese village ofKranji, on the shores of the famous old Straits of Malacca, ourponies were panting with heat, and the sun beat down on our whitecork helmets with a quivering, naked intensity. 

Close up to the shore we found a long, keel boat manned by a dozenMalays in canary-colored suits. An aide-de-camp in a gorgeous uniformof gold and blue came forward and touched his forehead with the backof his brown palm and said in good English:--

"His Highness awaits your excellencies. "

We stepped into the boat. The men lightly dipped their spear-shapedpaddles in the tepid water, the rattan oarlocks squeaked shrilly, and the light prow shot out into the strait. We could see the istana, or palace, close down to the opposite shore, with the royal standardof white, with black star and crescent in centre, floating above it. 

For a moment I felt as though I had invaded some dreamland of mychildhood. 

As our boat drew up to the iron pier that extended from the broadpalace steps out into the straits, the guns from the little fort on thehill above the town boomed out a welcome and the flags of our severalcountries were run to the tops of the poles. A squad of native soldierspresented arms, and we were conducted up the stone steps, to the cool, dim corridors of the reception or waiting room. Malays in red fezzesand silken sarongs that hung about their legs like skirts conducted usalong a marble hall to our rooms in a wing of the palace. Crowds werealready gathering outside on the palace grounds, and we could look downfrom our windows and watch them as we bathed, dressed, and drank tea. 

The Chinese in their holiday pantaloons and shirts of pink, lavender, and blue silk: outnumbered all the other races; for, strange as itmay seem, this Malay Sultan numbers among his 250, 000 or 300, 000subjects 175, 000 Chinamen. They are as loyal and a great deal moreindustrious than the Malays, and many of them, styled Baboos, do noteven know their native tongue. 

The Malays, dressed in gayly colored sarongs and bajus (jackets), with little rimless caps on their heads, squatted on their heels andchewed betel-nut, with eyes half closed and mouths distended. 

The Arab traders and shopkeepers were grouped about in little knots, gravely conversing and watching the files of gharries or carriages, and even rickshaws, that were bringing Malay unkus (princes not ofthe royal blood), patos (peers), holy men, and rich Chinese mandarinsto the steps that led up to the plaza before the throne-room. 

The palace was two stories high, long and narrow. The interior roomswere separated from the outer walls by wide, airy corridors. Thelattice-work windows were without glass and were arranged to admitthe breezes from the ocean and ward off the searching rays of theequatorial sun. In these dusky corridors were long rattan chairs, divans, and tables covered with refreshments, and along its wallswere arranged weapons of war and chase, Japanese suits of straw armor, Javanese shields, and Malay krises and limbings. 

In a little court at the end of our corridor, where a fountain splashedover a clump of lotus flowers and blue water lilies, a long-armedsilver wah-wah monkey played with a black Malay cat that had a kinkin its tail like the joint in a stovepipe, and chased the cluckinglittle gray lizards up the polished walls. 

The gorgeous aide stared in poorly concealed wonderment, when heentered to conduct us to the grand salon, at my plain evening dresssuit, destitute of gold lace or decorations, but he was too polite tosay anything, and I humbly followed my uniformed colleagues through thelong suite of rooms. It would have been useless for me to have tried toexplain the great American doctrine of "Jeffersonian simplicity. " Hewould have shrugged his narrow shoulders, which would have meant, "When you are among Romans, you should do as Romans do. "

In the grand salon, more than in any other part of the palace, onefeels that he is in the home of an Oriental prince whose tastes faroutrun his own dominions. 

Velvet carpets from Holland, divans from Turkey, rugs from Bokhara, tapestries from Persia, and lace from France mingle with embroideriesfrom China, cut glass from England, and rare old Satsuma ware fromJapan. On a grand square German piano is a mass of music in whichthe masterpieces of all countries have equal rights with the nationalanthem of Johore. 

Going directly through a mass of Oriental drapery, we are in thethrone-room, where are gathered the nobility of the little Sultanate. 

Amid the crash of music and the booming of guns the Sultan took hisseat in one of the gilded chairs on the dais, with the English Governoron his left. Ranged about the burnished walls of the great room, several files deep, were the nobility of the kingdom, the ministers ofstate, and officers of the army and navy, the space back of them beingfilled with Chinese mandarins and towkoys, and rich native merchantsin their picturesque costumes. In front of the nobility, standing inthe form of a square, were the sons of the datos each bearing golden, jewel-studded chogans, spears, krises, and maces. Inside the squarestood the fifteen consuls. Back of the throne were four young princes, two bearing each the golden bejewelled kris of the Malay, anotherthe golden sword of state, and the fourth the cimeter of the Prophet. 

Up to the steps of the throne came the young prince, dressed in theuniform of a lieutenant of artillery, with the royal order of DarjahKrabat ablaze with jewels on his breast. He was slightly taller thanhis father, the Sultan, straight, graceful, and handsome, with big, brown eyes and strongly marked features. He was nervous and agitated, and his lips trembled as he bent on one knee and kissed his Highness'shand. 

Above our heads in the gilded walls, behind a grated opening, wereInche Kitega, the Sultan's beautiful Circassian wife, and the womenof the court. We could see their black eyes as they peered curiouslydown. It was only when the Dato Mentri, or Prime Minister, stoodup and asked his people if they wished the young Tunku to be theirfuture lord that we could hear their shrill voices mingling with the"Suku, suku" ("We wish it, we wish it"), of the men. 

It is only the wives of the nobles that are secluded in the istanaisaras, or women palaces, according to Mohammedan law; the women ofthe poor are as free as the more civilized countries of Europe. Theybask in the sun with their brown babies on their laps, or wanderamong the cocoanuts that always surround their palm-thatched homes, happy and contented, with no thought for the morrow. The trees furnishthem their food, and a few hours before their looms of dark kamooningwood each week keep them supplied with their one article of dress--thesarong. They never heard of the Bible, but they are very religious, and at sunrise and sunset, at the deep-toned boom of the hollow logthat hangs before their little thatched mosques, they fall on theirfaces and pray to "Allah, the All Merciful and Loving Kind. "

When the Crown Prince had stepped modestly back among his brothersand cousins, a holy man in green robes and turban came forward andread an address in Arabic. He recited the glories of the Prophet, the promises of the Koran, and then told of the ancient greatness ofJohore, --how it once ruled the great peninsula that forever pointslike a lean, disjointed finger down into the heart of the greatestarchipelago of the world, --how its ruler was looked up to and madetreaties with, by the kings of Europe, --of the coming of the thievingPortuguese and the brutal Dutch, --of the dark, bloody years when thedeposed descendants of the once proud Emperors of Johore turned topiracy, --of the new days that commenced when that great Englishman, Sir Stamford Raffles, founded Singapore, --down to the glorious reignof the present just ruler, Abubaker. 

Our eyes wandered from time to time out through the cool marble courtsand tried vainly to pierce the botanic chaos that crowded close upto the palace grounds. Banian and sacred waringhan trees coveredgreat stretches of ground, and dropped their fantastic roots into thesteaming earth like living stalactites. The fan-shaped, water-hoardingtraveller's palm formed a background for the brilliant magenta-coloredbougainvillea. The dim, translucent depths of an orchid-house luredus on, or a great pond covered with the sacred lotus, blue lilies, and the flush-colored cups of the superb Victoria regia commandedour admiration. Palms, flowering shrubs, ferns, and creepers riotedon all sides. Monkeys swung above in the ropelike tendrils of therubber-vines, and spotted deer gamboled beneath the shade of mangotrees. 

The brilliant audience listened with bated breath to the dramaticrecital of their nation's story. Even we, who did not understanda word, were impressed by their flushed faces and eager attention, and when the band in the columned corridors beyond broke forth intothe national anthem of Johore and the vast concourse outside took upthe shouts of fealty that began within, I, for one, felt an almostirresistible desire to join in the shouts and do honor to the kindlyold Sultan and his graceful son. 

After his Highness, the Sultan, had spoken, through the mouth ofhis Prime Minister, to the nobles, and commended his son to theircare, we crowded forward and congratulated him in the names of ourrespective countries. 

We filed through the grand salon, with its luxurious medley of divans, tapestries, and rugs, through a great hall whose walls were hung withheroic-sized paintings of the English royal family, down a flight ofsteps, across the marble reception room, and into the open doors ofthe royal dining room. 

From its polished ceiling of black billion wood hung great whitepunkahs, which half-nude Indians on the outside kept gently swayingback and forth. 

In the centre of the vast table stood a golden urn filled withdelicate maidenhair ferns and dragon orchids. Against a greatplate-glass mirror, at the far end, rested massive salvers of gold, engraven with the arms of Johore, and in its flawless depths shonethe jewels that decked the entering throng and the splendid serviceof plate that dazzled our eyes. 

Around his Highness's throat was a collar of diamonds and on his handsand in the decorations that covered his breast were diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, of almost priceless value. Each button of his coat andlow-cut vest was a diamond, and from the front of his rimless capwaved a plume of diamonds. On his wrists were heavy gold braceletsof Malayan workmanship, and his fingers were cramped with almostpriceless rings. In his buttonhole blazed a diamond orchid. Thehandle and scabbard of his sword were a solid mass of preciousstones. Altogether this little known Oriental potentate possessed$10, 000, 000 worth of diamonds, the second largest collection on earth. 

In personal appearance his Highness compared favorably with the bestrepresentatives of the Anglo-Saxon race. He was five feet eight inheight, well built, with clean-cut, kindly features, in color nearerthe Spanish type than the Indian. His hands and feet were small, forehead high and full, lips thin, and nose aquiline, his hair andmustache iron gray. He spoke good English, and was able to converse inFrench and German. In every-day dress he affected the English PrinceAlbert suit, to which he added a narrow silk sarong and a rimlessblack cap. 

Besides being a lover of jewels, his Highness was a lover of goodhorseflesh and of yachts. His stud comprised two hundred horses, amongwhich were fleet Arabians, sturdy little Deli ponies, thoroughbredAustralians, and Indian galloways. Twice a year he offered a cup atthe Singapore jockey races, and entered a half dozen of his bestrunners. At his tent on the grounds he dispensed champagne, ices, and cakes, and his native band of thirty pieces played alternatelywith the regimental band from the English barracks. 

His three hundred ton steam-launch was built on the Clyde. Besidesthe Sultan's saloon on the lower deck, which was furnished befitting aking, there were cabins for ten people. The promenade deck was underan awning, and was furnished with a heavy rosewood dining-table andlong chairs. She carried four guns of long range. 

The revenue of Johore amounts to six million dollars a year, towhich the Sultan's private property in Singapore adds nearly a halfmillion more. The bulk of the national revenue is raised from opium, spirits, and gambling. The scheme of taxation is simple, but mosteffective. Any Chinaman who has a longing for the pipe pays into hisHighness's treasury one dollar a month, and is granted a permit to buyand smoke opium; another monthly dollar and he is licensed to drink. 

The gambling privilege is given to the highest bidder, and he has themonopoly for the kingdom. There is also a small export tax on gambierand tin. On the other hand, any immigrant that wishes to settle andopen a farm of any kind is given all the ground he can work, rent free, to have and to hold as long as he keeps it under cultivation. Shouldhe leave, it reverts with all its improvements to the crown. 

The government is autocratic, but tempered and kept in sympathywith the English ideas of justice as seen in the great colonies thatsurround it. 

The dinner throughout was European, save for the one nationaldish, curry. Every Malay, from the poorest fisherman along themangrove-fretted lagoon to the chef of his Highness's kitchen, justlyboasts of the excellence of his curry and the number of sambuls hecan make. 

First came a golden bowl filled with rice, as white and as lightas snow; then another, in which was a gravy of yellow curry powder, choice bits of fowl, and plump, fresh slices of egg-plant. Then camethe sambuls, or condiments, more than forty varieties, in littlecircular dishes of Japanese ware on big silver trays. There werefish-roes, ginger, and dried fish, or "Bombay duck, " duck's eggshashed with spices, chutney, peppers, grated cocoanut, anchovies, browned crumbs, chicken livers, fried bananas, barley sprouts, onions, and many more, that were mixed and stirred into the spongy rice untilyour taste was baffled and your senses bewildered. 

We knew that the curry was coming, so we passed courses that wereas expensive and rare in this equatorial land as the fruit of thedurians would be in New York, --mutton from Shanghai, turkey from Siam, beef from Australia, and oysters from far up the river Maur. We feltthat besides being a pleasure to ourselves it was a compliment toour royal host to partake generously of his national dish. 

"This service, " said the old Tuan Hakim, or chief justice, pointing tothe gold plate off which we were dining, "is the famous Ellinboroughplate that once belonged to that strange woman, Lady Ellinborough. HisHighness attended the auction of her things in Scotland. Do yousee the little Arabic character on the rim of each? It is the lateSultana's name. His Highness telegraphed to her for the money to payfor it, and she telegraphed back two hundred thousand dollars, withthe request that her name be engraved on each. Then she presentedthem to her husband. The Sultana was very rich in her own right, and left the Sultan over two million dollars when she died. "

Throughout the long dinner the native band played the airs of Europeand America, intermixed with bits of weird Malayan song. After wehad lighted our cigars from the golden censer, the British Governorarose and proposed the health of the Sultan and the young heirapparent. His Highness raised his glass of pineapple juice to hislips in acknowledgment, and said smilingly to me as the Prime Ministersaid the magic word that stirs every Englishman's heart, --

"The Queen!"

"Your people think all Orientals very bad. "

I protested. 

"Oh, yes, you do; that is why you send so many missionaries amongus. But, " he went on pleasantly, "look around my table. Not one ofmy court has touched the wine. A Mohammedan never drinks. Can yousay as much for your people?"

Then he raised his glass once more to his lips and said quietly, while his eyes twinkled at my confusion:--

"Tell your great President that Abubaker, Sultan of Johore, drankhis health in simple pineapple juice. "

As the sun sank behind the misty dome of Mount Pulei we embarked oncemore at the broad palace steps in the royal barges, amid the boomingof guns and the strains of the international "God Save the Queen, ""My Country, 'tis of Thee, " and bared our heads to the royal standardof Johore that floated so proudly above the palace, thankful for thisshort peep into the heart of an Oriental court. 

So the young Prince received the crown from the hands of hisfather. To-day, the bones of that grand old statesman, the Sultan ofJohore, rest beside those of his royal fathers within the shadow ofthe mosque. 

In 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles purchased the island on whichSingapore now stands from the father of the late Sultan of Johore, the royal palace was a palm-thatched bungalow, the country anunbroken jungle, and the inhabitants pirates and fishermen by turns;the notorious Strait of Malacca was infested with long, keen, swiftpirate praus, and the snake-like kris menaced the merchant marine ofthe world. 

The advancement of the United States has not been more rapid sincethat date than the advancement of Johore. The attap istana, or palace, has given place to a series of palaces that rival those of many a muchbetter-known country; the jungle has given place to plantations ofgambier, tea, coffee, and pepper; the few elephant tracks and forestpaths, to a network of macadamized roads and projected railways;and the native praus, to English-built barks and deeply laden cargosteamers. 

Two hundred thousand hard-working, money-making Chinese have beenadded to the thirty-five thousand Malay aborigines, and the revenueof this remnant of an empire is far greater than was the revenue ofthe original state. 

It remains to be seen whether the young Sultan will follow in thefootsteps of his father and preserve to Johore the distinction ofbeing, with the one exception of Siam, the only independent nativekingdom in southern Asia. One misstep and he will become but adependency of the great British Empire, a king only in name. 

IN THE GOLDEN CHERSONESE

A Peep at the City of Singapore

Could an American boy, like a prince in the Arabian Nights, be taken bya genie from his warm bed in San Francisco or New York and awakenedin the centre of Raffles Square, in Singapore, I will wager thathe would be sadly puzzled to even give the name of the continent onwhich he had alighted. 

Neither the buildings, the people, or the vehicles would aid him inthe least to decide. 

Enclosing the four sides of the little banian-tree shaded parkin which he stands are rows of brick, white-faced, high-jointedgo-downs. Through their glassless windows great white punkahs swingback and forth with a ceaseless regularity. Standing outside of eachwindow, a tall, graceful punkah-wallah tugs at a rattan withe, hisnaked limbs shining like polished ebony in the fierce glare of theMalayan sun. 

For a moment, perhaps, the boy thinks himself in India, possibly atSimla, for he has read some of Rudyard Kipling's stories. 

Back under the portico-like verandas, whose narrow breadths take theplace of sidewalks, are little booths that look like bay windows turnedinside out. On the floor of each sits a Turk, cross-legged, or an Arab, surrounded by a heterogeneous assortment of wares, fez caps, brassfinger-bowls, a praying rug, a few boxes of Japanese tooth-picks, somerare little bottles of Arab essence, a betel-nut box, and a half dozenpiles of big copper cents, for all shopkeepers are money-changers. 

The merchant gathers his flowing party-colored robes about him, tightens the turban head, and draws calmly at his water-pipe while abevy of Hindu and Tamil women bargain for a new stud for their noses, a showy amulet, or a silver ring for their toes. 

Squatting right in the way of all passers is a Chinese travellingrestaurant that looks like two flour barrels, one filled with drawers, the other containing a small charcoal fire. The old cookee, withhis queue tied neatly up about his shaven head, takes a variety ofmixtures from the drawers, --bits of dried fish, seaweed, a handful ofspaghetti, possibly a piece of shark's fin, or better still a lump ofbird's nest, places them in the kettle, as he yells from time to time, "Machen, machen" (eating, eating). 

Next to the Arab booth is a Chinese lamp shop, then a Europeandry-goods store, an Armenian law office, a Japanese bazaar, a foreignconsulate. 

A babble of strange sounds and a jargon of languages salute theastonished boy's ears. 

In the broad well-paved streets about him a Malay syce, or driver, is trying to urge his spotted Deli pony, which is not larger than aNewfoundland dog, in between a big, lumbering two-wheeled bullock-cart, laden with oozing bags of vile-smelling gambier, and a great patientwater buffalo that stands sleepily whipping the gnats from its black, almost hairless hide, while its naked driver is seated under thetrees in the square quarrelling and gambling by turns. 

The gharry, which resembles a dry-goods box on wheels, set in withlatticed windows, smashes up against the ponderous hubs of thebullock-cart. The meek-eyed bullocks close their eyes and chew theircuds, regardless of the fierce screams of the Malay or the frenziedobjurgations of their driver. 

But no one pays any attention to the momentary confusion. A party ofJews dressed in robes of purple and red that sweep the street passby, without giving a glance at the wild plunging of the half-wildpony. A Singhalese jeweller is showing his rubies and cat's-eyes toa party of Eurasian, or half-caste clerks, that are taking advantageof their master's absence from the godown to come out into the courtto smoke a Manila cigarette and gossip. The mottled tortoise-shellcomb in the vender's black hair, and his womanish draperies, givehim a feminine aspect. 

An Indian chitty, or money-lender, stands talking to a brother, supremely unconscious of the eddying throng about. These chitties arefully six feet tall, with closely shaven heads and nude bodies. Theirdress of a few yards of gauze wound about their waists, and redsandals, would not lead one to think that they handle more moneythan any other class of people in the East. They borrow from thegreat English banks without security save that of their caste name, and lend to the Eurasian clerks just behind them at twelve per centa month. If a chitty fails, he is driven out of the caste and becomesa pariah. The caste make up his losses. 

Dyaks from Borneo idle by. Parsee merchants in their tall, conicalhats, Chinese rickshaw runners and cart coolies, Tamil road-menders, Bugis, Achinese, Siamese, Japanese, Madras serving-men, negro firemen, Lascar sailors, throng the little square, --the agora of the commerciallife of the city. 

Such is Singapore, embracing all the races of Asia and Europe. Is itany wonder that the American boy is bewildered, standing there underthe great banian tree with a Malay in sarong and kris by his side, singing with his syrah-stained lips the glorious promises of the Koran?

Look on the map of Asia for the southernmost point of the continent, and you will find it at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, --a giantfinger that points down into the heart of the greatest archipelago inthe world. At the very end of this peninsula, like a sort of cut-offjoint of the finger, is the little island of Singapore, which is notover twenty-five miles from east to west, and does not exceed fifteenmiles in width at its broadest point. 

The famous old Straits of Malacca, which were once the haunts of thefierce Malayan pirates, separate the island from the mainland andthe Sultanate of Johore. 

The shipping that once worked its way through these narrow straits, in momentary fear that its mangrove-bound shores held a long, swiftpirate prau, now goes further south and into the island-guarded harborbefore Singapore. 

Nothing can be more beautiful than the sea approach to Singapore. Asyou enter the Straits, the emerald-green of a bevy of little islandsobstructs the vision, and affords a grateful relief to the almostblinding glare of the Malayan sky, and the metallic reflections ofthe ocean. 

Some seem only inhabited by a graceful waving burden of strange, tropical foliage, and by a band of chattering monkeys; on others youdetect a Malay kampong, or village, its umbrella-like houses of attap, close down to the shore, built high up on poles, so that half the timetheir boulevards are but vast mud-holes, the other half--Venice, filledwith a moving crowd of sampans and fishing praus. A crowd of bronzed, naked little figures sport within the shadow of a maze of drying nets, and flee in consternation as the black, log-like head and cruel, watchful eyes of a crocodile glide quietly along the mangrove roots. 

On another island you discern the grim breastworks and the frowningmouth of a piece of heavy ordnance. 

Soon the island of Singapore reveals itself in a long line of dome-likehills and deep-cut shadows, whose stolid front quickly dissolves. Thetufted tops of a sentinel palm, the wide-spreading arms of the banian, clumps of green and yellow bamboo, and the fan-shaped outlines ofthe traveller's palm become distinguishable. As the great, red, tropical sun rises from behind the encircling hills, the monotonyof the foliage is relieved in places by objects which it all but hidfrom view. The granite minaret of the Mohammedan mosque, the carveddome of a Buddhist temple, the slender spire of an English cathedral, the bold projections of Government House, and the wide, white sidesof the Municipal buildings all hold the eye. 

Then a maze of strange shipping screens the nearing shore--the militarymasts and yards of British and Dutch men-of-war, the high-heeled, shoe-like lines of Chinese junks, innumerable Malay and Kling sampans, and great, unwieldy Borneo tonkangs. 

For six miles along the wharves and for six miles back into the islandextend the municipal limits of the city. Two hundred thousand peoplelive within these limits; while outside, over the rest of the islandalong the sea-coast, in fishing villages, and in the interior onplantations of tapioca and pepper, live a hundred thousand more. Ofthese three hundred thousand over one hundred and seventy thousandare Chinese and only fifteen hundred are Europeans. 

Grouped about Raffles Square, and facing the Bund, are the greatEnglish, German, and Chinese houses that handle the three hundredmillion dollars' worth of imports and exports that pass in and out ofthe port yearly, and make Singapore one of the most important martsof the commercial world. 

Beyond, and back from the Square, is Tanglin, or the suburbs, wherethe government officials and the heads of these great firms live inluxurious bungalows, surrounded by a swarm of retainers. 

Let us drive from Raffles Square through this cosmopolitan city andout to Tanglin. Beginning at Cavanagh Bridge, at one end of whichstands the great Singapore Club and the Post Office, is the oceanesplanade, --the pride of the city. It encloses a public playgroundof some fifteen acres, reclaimed from the sea at an expense of overtwo hundred thousand dollars. Every afternoon when the heat of theday has fallen from 150° to 80°, the European population meets on thisesplanade park to play tennis, cricket, and football, and to promenade, gossip, and listen to the music of the regimental or man-of-war band. 

The drive from the sea, up Orchard Road to the Botanic Gardens, carries you by all the diversified life of the city. The Chineserestaurant is omnipresent. By its side sits a naked little bit ofbronze, with a basket of sugar-cane--each stick, two feet long, cleanedand scraped, ready for the hungry and thirsty rickshaw coolies, whohave a few quarter cents with which to gratify their appetites. Onevery veranda and in every shady corner are the Kling and Chinesebarbers. They carry their barber-shops in a kit or in their pockets, and the recipient of their skill finds a seat as best he may. Thebarber is prepared to shave your head, your face, trim your hair, braid your queue, and pull the hairs out of your nose and ears. 

There is no special quarter for separate trades. Madras tailor shopsrub shoulders with Malay blacksmith shops, while Indian wash-housesjoin Manila cigar manufactories. 

Once past the commercial part of the ride, the great bungalows of theEuropean and Chinese merchants come into view. The immediate bordersof the road itself reveal nothing but a dense mass of tropical verdureand carefully cut hedges, but at intervals there is a wide gap inthe hedge, and a road leads off into the seeming jungle. At everysuch entrance there are posts of masonry, and a plate bearing thename of the manor and its owner. 

At the end of a long aisle of palms and banians you see a bit ofwide-spreading veranda, and the full-open doors of a cool, blackinterior. Acres of closely shaven lawns, dotted with flowering shrubsof the brightest reds, deepest purples, and fieriest solferinos, beds of rich-hued foliage plants, and cool, green masses of fernsmeet your eye. 

Perhaps you spy the inevitable tennis-court, swarming with players, and bordered with tables covered with tea and sweets. Red-turbanedMalay kebuns, or gardeners, are chasing the balls, and scrupulouslyclean Chinese "boys" are passing silently among the guests with traysof eatables. 

Dozens of gharries dodge past. Hundreds of rickshaws pull out ofthe way. 

A great landau, drawn by a pair of thoroughbred Australian horses, driven by a Malay syce, and footman in full livery, and containing abare-headed Chinese merchant, in the simple flowing garments of hisnation, dashes along. The victoria and the dog-cart of the European, and the universal palanquin of the Anglo-Indian, form a perfect mazeof wheels. 

Suddenly the road is filled with a long line of bullock-carts. Youswing your little pony sharply to one side, barely escaping the bigwooden hub of the first cart. The syce springs down from behind, and belabors the native bullock driver, who, paying no attention tothe blows rained upon his naked back, belabors his beasts in turn, calling down upon their ungainly humps the curses of his religion. Thescene is so familiar that only a "globe-trotter" would notice it. Yetto me there is nothing more truly artistic, or more typically Indianin India, than a long line of these bullock-carts, laden with theproducts of the tropics, --pineapples, bananas, gambier, coffee, --urgedon by a straight, graceful driver, winding slowly along a palm andbanian shaded road. We would meet such processions at every turning, but never without recalling glorious childish pictures of the HolyLand and Bible scenery as we painted them, while our father read of aSunday morning out of the old "Domestic Bible, "--we children pronounceit "Dom-i-stick, "--how the Lord said unto Moses, "Go take twenty fatbullocks and offer them as a sacrifice. " As we would see these "twentyfat bullocks" time and again, I confess, with a feeling of reluctance, that some of the gilt and rose tint was rubbed from our childishpictures, and that a realistic artist drawing from the life before himwould not deck out the patient subject in quite our extravagant colors. 

The color of the Indian bullock varies. Some are a dirty white, some a cream color, some almost pink, and a few are of the darkershades. They are about the size of our cows, seldom as large as afull-grown ox. Their horns, which are generally tipped with curiouslycarved knobs, and often painted in colors, are as diversified intheir styles of architecture as are the horns of our cattle, thoughthey are more apt to be straight and V-shaped. Their necks are always"bowed to the yoke, " to once more use biblical phraseology, and seemalmost to invite its humiliating clasp. Above their front legs is themark of their antiquity, the great clumsy, flabby, fleshy, tawny hump, always swaying from side to side, keeping time to every plodding stepof its sleepy owner. This seemingly useless mountain of flesh servesas a cushion against which rests a yoke. Not the natty yoke of ourrural districts, but a simple pole, with a pin of wood through eachend, to ride on the outside of the bullocks' necks. The burden comesagainst the projecting hump when the team pulls. To the centre of thisyoke is tied, with strong withes of rattan, the pole of a cart, thatin this nineteenth century is generally only to be seen in nationalmuseums, preserved as a relic of the first steps in the art of wagonbuilding. And yet as a cart it is not to be despised: all the heavytraffic of the colonies is done within its rude board sides. It hastwo wheels, with heavy square spokes that are held on to a ponderouswooden axle-tree by two wooden pins. A platform bottom rests on theaxle-tree, and two fence-like sides. 

The genie of the cart, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, is atall, wiry, bronze-colored Hindu. He has a yard of white gauze abouthis waist, and another yard twisted up into a turban on his head. Thedictates of fashion do not interest him. He does not plod along year inand year out behind his team for the pittance of sixty cents per day, to squander on the outside of his person. Not he. He has a wife up nearSimla. He hopes to go back next year, and buy a bit of ground back fromthe hill on the Allabadd road from his father-in-law, old MohammedMudd. They have cold weather up in Simla, and he knows of a certaingown he is going to buy of a Chinaman in the bazaar. But his bullockslag, and he saws on the gamooty rope that is attached to their noses, and beats them half consciously with his rattan whip. Ofttimes he willstand stark upright in the cart for a full half-hour, with his rattanheld above his head in a threatening attitude, and talk on and on tohis animals, apotheosizing their strength and patience, telling themhow they are sacred to Buddha, how they are the companions of man, andhow they shall have an extra chupa of paddy when the sun goes down, and he has delivered to the merchant sahib on the quay his load ofgambier; or he reproves them for their slowness and want of interest, and threatens them with the rod, and tells them to look how he holds itabove them. If in the course of the harangue one of the dumb listenerspauses to pick a mouthful of young lallang grass by the roadside, the softly crooning tones give place to a shriek of denunciation. 

The agile Kling springs down from his improvised pulpit, and rushesat the offender, calls him the offspring of a pariah dog, shows himthe rattan, rubs it against his nose, threatening to cut him up withit into small pieces, and to feed the pieces to the birds. Then hedischarges a volley of blows on the sleek sides of the offender, thatseem to have little more effect than to raise a cloud of tiger gnats, and to cause the recipient to bite faster at the tender herbs. 

As the bullock-cart that has blocked our way, and at the same timeinspired this description, shambles along down the shady road, andout of the reach of the syce's arms, the driver slips quietly up thepole of the cart until a hand rests on either hump, and commencesto talk in a half-aggrieved, half-caressing tone to his team. Oursyce translates. "He say bullock very bad to go to sleep before thepalanquin of the Heaven-Born. If they no be better soon, their soulswill no become men. He say he sorry that they make the great Americansahib angry. "

The singular trio passes on, the driver praising and reprimandingby turns in the soft, musical tongue of his people, the historicbeasts swinging lazily along, regardless of their illustrious past, all unconscious of the fact that their names are embalmed in sacredwrit and Indian legend, and rounding a corner of the broad, red road, are lost to view amid the olive-green shadows of a clump of gentlyswaying bamboo. To me, for the moment, they seem to disappear, likephantoms, into the mists of the dim centuries, from out of which myimagination has called them forth. 

Soon you are at the wide-open gates of the Botanic Garden. A perfectriot of strange tropical foliage bursts upon the view. The clean, redroad winds about and among avenues of palms, waringhans, dark greenmangosteens, casuarinas, and the sweet-smelling hibiscus, all alikecovered with a hundred different parasitic vines and ferns. Artificiallakes and moats are filled with the giant pods of the superb Victoriaregia, and the flesh-colored cups of the lotus. 

In the translucent green twilight of the flower-houses a hundredvarieties of the costly orchids thrive--not costly here. A shiploadcan be bought of the natives for three cents apiece. 

Walks carry you out into the dim aisles of the native jungle. Monkeys, surprised at your footsteps, spring from limb to limb, and swing, chattering, out of sight in a mass of rubber-vines. Splendidmacadamized roads, that are kept in perfect repair by a force ofnaked Hindus and an iron roller drawn by six unwilling, hump-backedbullocks, spread out over the island in every direction. Leave one atany point outside the town, and plunge into the bordering jungle, and you are liable to meet a tiger or a herd of wild boar. Thetigers swim across the straits from the mainland, and occasionallystrike down a Chinaman. It is said that if a Chinaman, a Malay, anda European are passing side by side through a field, the tiger willpick out the Chinaman to the exclusion of the other two. 

Acres upon acres of pineapples stretch away on either hand, whilepatches of bananas and farms of coffee are interspersed with spicetrees and sago swamps. 

This road system is the secret of the development of the agriculture, and one of the secrets of the rapid growth of the great Englishcolonies. Were it not for the great black python, that lies sleeping inthe road in front of you, or the green iguana that hangs in a timbosotree over your head, or a naked runner pulling a rickshaw, you mightthink you were travelling the wide asphaltum streets of Washington. 

The home of the European in Singapore is peculiar to the country. Theparks about their great bungalows are small copies of the BotanicGardens--filled with all that is beautiful in the flora of theEast. From five to twenty servants alone are kept to look after itswalks and hedges and lawns. 

A bungalow proper may consist of but a half-dozen rooms, and yet looklike a vast manor house. It is the generous sweep of the verandasrunning completely around the house that lends this impression. Behindits bamboo chicks you retire on your return from the office. TheChinese "boy" takes your pipe-clayed shoes and cork helmet, andbrings a pair of heelless grass slippers. If a friend drop in, younever think of inviting him into your richly furnished drawing-room, but motion him to a long rattan chair, call "Boy, bring the mastera cup of tea, " and pass a box of Manila cigars. 

Bungalows are one story high, with a roof of palm thatch, and areraised above the ground from two to five feet by brick pillars, leavingan open space for light and air beneath. Nearly every day it rainsfor an hour in torrents. The hot, steaming earth absorbs the water, and the fierce equatorial sun evaporates it, only to return it in alike shower the next day. So every precaution must be taken againstdampness and dry-rot. 

In every well-ordered bungalow seven to nine servants are anabsolute necessity, while three others are usually added from timeto time. The five elements, if I may so style them, are the "boy, "or boys, the cook and his helpers, the horseman, the water-carrier, the gardener, and the maid. The adjuncts are the barber, the wash man, the tailor, and the watchman. In a mild way, you are at the mercy ofthese servants. Their duties are fixed by caste, one never intrudingon the work of another. You must have all or none. Still this isno hardship. Only newcomers ever think, of trying to economize onservant bills. The record of the thermometer is too appalling, andyou speedily become too dependent on their attentions. 

The Chinese "boy"--he is always the "boy" until he dies--is thepresiding genius of the house. He it is who brings your tea and fruitto the bedside at 6 A. M. , and lays out your evening suit ready fordinner, puts your studs in your clean shirt, brings your slippers, knows where each individual article of your wardrobe is kept, and, in fact, thinks of a hundred and one little comforts you would neverhave known of, had he not discovered them. He is your valet de chambre, your butler, your steward and your general agent, your interpreter andyour directory. He controls the other servants with a rod of iron, but bows to the earth before the mem, or the master. For his tenMexican dollars a month he takes all the burdens from your shoulders, and stands between you and the rude outside polyglot world. He isa hero-worshipper, and if you are a Tuan Besar--great man--he willdouble his attentions, and spread your fame far and wide among hisbrother majordomos. 

But a description of each member of the ménage and their duties wouldbe in a large measure the description of the odd, complex life ofthe East. 

The growth of Singapore since its founding by Sir Stamford Rafflesin 1819 would do honor to the growth of one of our Western cities. 

Within three months after the purchase of the ground from the Sultanof Johore, Raffles wrote to Lord Warren Hastings, the Governor:--

"We have a growing colony of nearly five thousand souls, " and a littlelater one of his successors wrote apologetically to Lord Auckland, discussing some project relating to Singapore finance;--

"These details may appear to your Lordship petty, but then everythingconnected with these settlements is petty, except their annual surpluscost to the Government of India. "

To-day the city and colony has a population of over one million, and a revenue of five million dollars--a magnificent monument to itsfounder's foresight!

From a commercial and strategic stand-point, the site of the city isunassailable. When the English and the Dutch divided the East Indiesby drawing a line through the Straits of Malacca, --the English to holdall north, the Dutch all south, --the crafty Dutchman smiled benignly, with one finger in the corner of his eye, and went back to his coffeeand tobacco trading in the beautiful islands of Java and Sumatra, pitying the ignorance of the Englishman, who was contented with theswampy jungles of an unknown and savage neck of land, little thinkingthat inside of a half century all his products would come to thissame despised district for a market, while his own colonies wouldretrograde and gradually pass into the hands of the English. 

Singapore is one of the great cities of the world, the centre of allthe East Indian commerce, the key of southern Asia, and one of themassive links in the armored chain with which Great Britain encirclesthe globe. 

A FIGHT WITH ILLANUM PIRATES

The Yarn of a Yankee Skipper

The Daily Straits Times on the desk before me contained a vividword picture of the capture of the British steamship Namoa by threehundred Chinese pirates, the guns of Hong Kong almost within sight, and the year of our Lord 1890 just drawing to a close. The reportseemed incredible. 

I pushed the paper across the table to the grizzled old captainof the Bunker Hill and continued my examination of the accounts ofa half-dozen sailors of whom he was intent on getting rid. By thetime I had signed the last discharge and affixed the consular sealhe had finished the article and put it aside with a contemptuous"Humph!" expressive of his opinion of the valor of the crew andofficers. I could see that he was anxious for me to give him myattention while he related one of those long-drawn-out stories ofperhaps a like personal experience. I knew the symptoms and sometimestook occasion to escape, if business or inclination made me foregothe pleasure. To-day I was in a mood to humor him. 

There is always something deliciously refreshing in a sailor's yarn. Ihave listened to hundreds in the course of my consular career, andhave yet to find one that is dull or prosy. They all bear the imprintof truth, perhaps a trifle overdrawn, but nevertheless sparkling withthe salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange peopleand distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at therapidity with which the scene and personnel change. The icebergs andthe aurora borealis of the Arctic give place to the torrid watersand the Southern Cross of the South Pacific. A volcanic island, anArabian desert, a tropical jungle, and the breadth and width of theocean serve as the theatre, while a Fiji Islander, an Eskimo, anda turbaned Arab are actors in a half-hour's tale. In interest theyrival Verne, Kingston, or Marryat. All they lack is skilled hands todress them in proper language. 

I

THE CAPTAIN'S YARN

The captain helped himself to one of my manilas and began:--

I've nothing to say about the fate of the poor fellows on the Namoa, seeing the captain was killed at the first fire, but it looks to melike a case of carelessness which was almost criminal. The idea ofallowing three hundred Chinese to come aboard as passengers withoutsearching them for arms. Why! it is an open bid to pirates. Goes toshow pretty plain that these seas are not cleared of pirates. Sailingships nowadays think they can go anywhere without a pound of powderor an old cutlass aboard, just because there is an English or Dutchman-of-war within a hundred miles. I don't know what we'd have donewhen I first traded among these islands without a good brass swiveland a stock of percussion-cap muskets. 

Let me see; it was in '58, I was cabin boy on the ship Bangor. CaptainHowe, hale old fellow from Maine, had his two little boys aboard. Theyare merchants now in Boston. I've been sailing for them on the Elmiraever since. We were trading along the coast of Borneo. Those weregreat days for trading in spite of the pirates. That was long beforeiron steamers sent our good oaken ships to rot in the dockyards ofMaine. Why, in those days you could see a half-dozen of our snuglittle crafts in any port of the world, and I've seen more Americanflags in this very harbor of Singapore than of any other nation. Wehad come into Singapore with a shipload of ice (no scientific icefactories then), and had gone along the coast of Java and Borneo toload with coffee, rubber, and spices, for a return voyage. We werejust off Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, and about loaded, when thecaptain heard that gold had been discovered somewhere up near the headof the Rejang. The captain was an adventurous old salt, and decidedto test the truth of the story; so, taking the long-boat and ten men, he pulled up the Sarawak River to Kuching and got permission of RajahBrooke to go up the Rejang on a hunting expedition. The Rajah wascourteous, but tried to dissuade us from the undertaking by relatingthat several bands of Dyaks had been out on head-hunting expeditionsof late, and that the mouth of the Rejang was infested by Illanumpirates. The captain only laughed, and jokingly told Sir James thatif the game proved scarce he might come back and claim the prizemoney on a boat-load of pirate heads. 

We started at once, --for the captain let me go; we rowed some sixtymiles along the coast to the mouth of the Rejang; then for four dayswe pulled up its snakelike course. It was my first bit of adventure, and everything was strange and new. The river's course was like agreat tunnel into the dense black jungle. On each side and above wewere completely walled in by an impenetrable growth of great tropicaltrees and the iron-like vines of the rubber. The sun for a few hourseach day came in broken shafts down through the foliage, and exposedthe black back of a crocodile, or the green sides of an iguana. Troopsof monkeys swung and chattered in the branches above, and at intervalsa grove of cocoanut broke the monotony of the scenery. Among them wewould land and rest for the day or night, eat of their juicy fruit, and go on short excursions for game. A roasted monkey, some baked yams, and a delicious rice curry made up a royal bill of fare, and as theodor of our tobacco mixed with the breathing perfume of the jungle, I would fall asleep listening to sea-yarns that sometimes ran backto the War of 1812. 

II

At the end of the fifth day we arrived at the head of the Rejang. Herethe river broke up into a dozen small streams and a swamp. A stockadehad been erected, and the Rajah had stationed a small company ofnative soldiers under an English officer to keep the head-huntingDyaks in check. I don't remember what our captain found out in regardto the gold fields, at least it was not encouraging; for he gave upthe search and joined the English lieutenant in a grand deer-huntthat lasted for five days, and then started back accompanied by twonative soldiers bearing despatches to the Rajah. 

It was easy running down the river with the current. One man in eachend of the boat kept it off roots, sunken logs, and crocodiles, and therest of us spent the time as best our cramped space allowed. Twicewe detected the black, ugly face of a Dyak peering from out thejungle. The men were for hunting them down for the price on theirheads, but the captain said he never killed a human being except inself-defence, and that if the Rajah wanted to get rid of the savages hehad better give the contract to a Mississippi slave-trader. Secretly, I was longing for some kind of excitement, and was hoping that themen's clamorous talk would have some effect. I never doubted ourability to raid a Dyak village and kill the head-hunters and carry offthe beautiful maidens. I could not see why a parcel of blacks shouldbe such a terror to the good Rajah, when Big Tom said he could easilyhandle a dozen, and flattered me by saying that such a brawny lad asI ought to take care of two at least. 

In the course of three days we reached the mouth of the river, andprepared the sail for the trip across the bay to the Bangor. Just aseverything was in readiness, one of those peculiar and rapid changesin the weather, that are so common here in the tropics near theequator, took place. A great blue-black cloud, looking like an immensecartridge, came up from the west. Through it played vivid flashes oflightning, and around it was a red haze. "A nasty animal, " I heard thebo's'n tell the captain, and yet I was foolishly delighted when theydecided to risk a blow and put out to sea. The sky on all sides grewdarker from hour to hour. A smell of sulphur came to our nostrils. Itwas oppressively hot; not a breath of wind was stirring. The sailflapped uselessly against the mast, and the men labored at the oars, while streams of sweat ran from their bodies. 

The captain had just taken down the mast, when, without a moment'swarning, the gale struck us and the boat half filled with water. Wemanaged to head it with the wind, and were soon driving with therapidity of a cannon-ball over the boiling and surging waters. It wasa fearful gale; we blew for hours before it, ofttimes in danger of avolcanic reef, again almost sunk by a giant wave. I baled until I wascompletely exhausted. But the long-boat was a stanch little craft, andthere were plenty of men to manage it, so as long as we could keep herbefore the wind, the captain felt no great anxiety as to our safety. 

III

At about six bells in the afternoon, the wind fell away, and therain came down in torrents, leaving us to pitch about on the rapidlydecreasing waves, wet to the skin and unequal to another effort. Wewere within a mile of a rocky island that rose like a half-ruinedcastle from the ocean. The Dyak soldiers called it Satang Island, and I have sailed past it many a time since. Without waiting forthe word, we rowed to it and around it, before we found a suitablebeach on which to land. One end of the island rose precipitous andsheer above the beach a hundred feet, and ended in a barren plateauof some two dozen acres. The remainder comprised some hundred acresof sand and rocks, on which were half a dozen cocoanut trees and afew yams. Along the beach we found a large number of turtles' eggs. 

The captain, remembering the Rajah's caution in regard to pirates, decided not to make a light, but we were wet and hungry and overcamehis scruples, and soon had a huge fire and a savory repast of coffee, turtles' eggs, and yams. At midnight it was extinguished, and awatch stationed on top of the plateau. Toward morning I clamberedgrumblingly up the narrow, almost perpendicular sides of the riftthat cut into the rocky watch-tower. I did not believe in piratesand was willing to take my chances in sleep. I paced back and forth, inhaling deep breaths of the rich tropical air; below me the wavesbeat in ripples against the rugged beach, casting off from time totime little flashes of phosphorescent light, and mirroring in theirdepths the hardly distinguishable outline of the Southern Cross. Thesalt smell of the sea was tinged with the spice-laden air of thenear coast. Drowsiness came over me. I picked up a musket and pacedaround the little plateau. The moon had but just reached its zenith, making all objects easily discernible. The smooth storm-swept spacebefore me reflected back its rays like a well-scrubbed quarter-deck;below were the dark outlines of my sleeping mates. I could hear thelight wind rustling through the branches of the casuarina trees thatfringed the shore. I paused and looked over the sea. Like a chargeof electricity a curious sensation of fear shot through me. Then anintimation that some object had flashed between me and the moon. Irubbed my eyes and gazed in the air above, expecting to see a nightbird or a bat. Then the same peculiar sensation came over me again, and I looked down in the water below just in time to see the long, keen, knife-like outline of a pirate prau glide as noiselessly as ashadow from a passing cloud into the gloom of the island. Its great, wide-spreading, dark red sails were set full to the wind, and hangingover its sides by ropes were a dozen naked Illanums, guiding thesensitive craft almost like a thing of life. Within the prau weretwo dozen fighting men, armed with their alligator hide buckler, long, steel-tipped spear, and ugly, snake-like kris. A third praufollowed in the wake of the other two, and all three were lost inthe blackness of the overhanging cliffs. 

With as little noise as possible, I ran across the plain and warned mycompanion, then picked my way silently down the defile to the camp. Thecaptain responded to my touch and was up in an instant. The men wereawakened and the news whispered from one to another. Gathering upwhat food and utensils we possessed, we hurried to get on top ofthe plateau before our exact whereabouts became known. The captainhoped that when they discovered we were well fortified and there wasno wreck to pillage, they would withdraw without giving battle. Theyhad landed on the opposite side of the island from our boat and mightleave it undisturbed. We felt reasonably safe in our fortress fromattacks. There were but two breaks in its precipitous sides, each anarrow defile filled with loose boulders that could easily be detachedand sent thundering down on an assailant's head. On the other hand, our shortness of food and water made us singularly weak in case ofsiege. But we hoped for the best. Two men were posted at each defile, and as nothing was heard for an hour, most of us fell asleep. 

IV

It was just dawn, when we were awakened by the report of two musketsand the terrific crashing of a great boulder, followed by groansand yells. With one accord we rushed to the head of the cañon. The Illanums, naked, with the exception of party-colored sarongsaround their waists, with their bucklers on their left arms andtheir gleaming knives strapped to their right wrists, were mountingon each other's shoulders, forcing a way up the precipitous defile, unmindful of the madly descending rocks that had crushed and maimedmore than one of their number. They were fine, powerful fellows, witha reddish brown skin that shone like polished ebony. Their hair wasshorn close to their heads; they had high cheek bones, flat noses, syrah-stained lips, and bloodshot eyes. In their movements they wereas lithe and supple as a tiger, and commanded our admiration whilethey made us shudder. We knew that they neither give nor take quarter, and for years had terrorized the entire Bornean coast. 

We were ready to fire, but a gesture from the captain restrained us;our ammunition was low, and he wished to save it until we actuallyneeded it. By our united efforts we pried off two of the volcanicrocks, which, with a great leap, disappeared into the darkness below, oftentimes appearing for an instant before rushing to the sea. Everytime an Illanum fell we gave a hearty American cheer, which wasanswered by savage yells. Still they fought on and up, making littleheadway. We were gradually relaxing our efforts, thinking that theywere sick of the affair, when the report of a musket from the oppositeside of the island called our attention to the bo's'n, who had beendetailed to guard the other defile. 

The bo's'n and one native soldier were fighting hand to hand with adozen pirates who were forcing their way up the edge of the cliff. Halfof the men dashed to their relief just in time to see the soldier goover the precipice locked in the arms of a giant Illanum. One volleyfrom our muskets settled the hopes of the invaders. 

Our little party was divided, and we were outnumbered ten to one. Oneof the sailors in dislodging a boulder lost his footing and wentcrashing down with it amid the derisive yells of the pirates. Suddenlythe conflict ceased and the pirates withdrew. In a short time wecould see them building a number of small fires along the beach, andthe aroma of rice curry came up to us with the breeze. The captain, Icould see, was anxious, although my boyish feelings did not go beyonda sense of intoxicating excitement. I heard him say that nothing buta storm or a ship could save us in case we were besieged; that itwas better to have the fight out at once and die with our arms inour hands than to starve to death. 

Giving each a small portion of ship biscuit and a taste of water, he enjoined on each a careful watchfulness and a provident use ofour small stock of provisions. 

I took mine in my hand and walked out on the edge of the cliff somewhatsobered. Directly below me were the pirates, and at my feet I noticeda fragment of rock that I thought I could loosen. Putting down my food, I foolishly picked up a piece of timber which I used as a lever, when, without warning, the mass broke away, and with a tremendous boundwent crashing down into the very midst of the pirates, scatteringthem right and left, and ended by crushing one of the praus that wasdrawn up on the sand. 

In an instant the quiet beach was a scene of the wildest confusion. Asurging, crowding mass of pirates with their krises between theirteeth dashed up the cañon, intent on avenging their loss. I droppedmy lever and rushed back to the men, nearly frightened to death atthe result of my temerity. There was no time for boulders; the menreached the brink of the defile just in time to welcome the assailantswith a broadside. Their lines wavered, but fresh men took the placesof the fallen, and they pushed on. Another volley from our guns, and the dead and wounded encumbered the progress of the living. Ashower of stones and timbers gave us the light, and they withdrewwith savage yells to open the siege once more. Only one of our menhad been wounded, --he by an arrow from a blowpipe. 

V

All that night we kept watch. The next morning we were once moreattacked, but successfully defended ourselves with boulders and ourcutlasses. Yet one swarthy pirate succeeded in catching the leg ofthe remaining native soldier and bearing him away with them. Withcessation of hostilities, we searched the top of the island for foodand water. At one side of the tableland there was a break in itssurface and a bench of some dozen acres lay perhaps twenty feet belowour retreat. We cautiously worked our way down to this portion andthere to our delight found a number of fan-shaped traveller's palmsand monkey-cups full of sweet water, which with two wild sago palmswe calculated would keep us alive a few days at all events. 

We were much encouraged at this discovery, and that night collecteda lot of brush from the lower plain and lit a big fire on themost exposed part of the rocks. We did not care if it brought athousand more pirates as long as it attracted the attention of apassing ship. Two good nine-pounders would soon send our foes in alldirections. We relieved each other in watching during the night, andby sunrise we were all completely worn out. The third day was one ofweariness and thirst under the burning rays of the tropical sun. Thatday we ate the last of our ship biscuit and were reduced to a fewdrops of water each. Starvation was staring us in the face. Therewas but one alternative, and that was to descend and make a fightfor our boat on the beach. The bo's'n volunteered with three men todescend the defile and reconnoitre. Armed only with their cutlassesand a short axe, they worked their way carefully down in the shadowof the rocks, while we kept watch above. 

All was quiet for a time; then there arose a tumult of cries, oaths, and yells. The captain gave the order, and pell-mell down the riftwe clambered, some dropping their muskets in their hurried descent, one of which exploded in its fall. The bo's'n had found the beachand our boat guarded by six pirates, who were asleep. Four of thesethey succeeded in throttling. We pushed the boat into the surf, expecting every moment to see one of the praus glide around theprojecting reef that separated the two inlets. We could plainlyhear their cries and yells as they discovered our escape, and witha "heigh-ho-heigh!" our long-boat shot out into the placid ocean, sending up a shower of phosphorescent bubbles. We bent our backs tothe oars as only a question of life or death can make one. With eachstroke the boat seemed almost to lift itself out of the water. Almostat the same time a long dark line, filled with moving objects, dashedout from the shadow of the cliffs, hardly a hundred yards away. 

It was a glorious race over the dim waters of that tropical sea. Ias a boy could not realize what capture meant at the hands of ourcruel pursuers. My heart beat high, and I felt equal to a dozenIllanums. My thoughts travelled back to New England in the midst ofthe excitement. I saw myself before the open arch fire in a low-roofedold house, that for a century had withstood the fiercest gales on theold Maine coast, and from whose doors had gone forth three generationsof sea-captains. I saw myself on a winter night relating this verystory of adventure to an old gray-haired, bronzed-faced father, anda mother whose parting kiss still lingered on my lips, to my youngerbrother, and sister. I could feel their undisguised admiration as Itold of my fight with pirates in the Bornean sea. It is wonderful howthe mind will travel. Yet with my thoughts in Maine, I saw and feltthat the Illanums were gradually gaining on us. Our men were wearyand feeble from two days' fasting, while the pirates were strong, and thirsting for our blood. 

The captain kept glancing first at the enemy and then at a musketthat lay near him. He longed to use it, but not a man could be sparedfrom the oars. Hand over hand they gained on us. Turning his eyes onme as I sat in the bow, the captain said, while he bent his sinewyback to the oar, "Jack, are you a good shot?"

I stammered, "I can try, sir. "

"Very well, get the musket there in the bow. It is loaded. Take goodaim and shoot that big fellow in the stern. If you hit him, I'll makeyou master of a ship some day. "

Tremblingly I raised the heavy musket as directed. The boat wasunsteady, I hardly expected to hit the chief, but aimed low, hopingto hit one of the rowers at least. I aimed, closed my eyes, andfired. With the report of the musket the tall leader sprang into theair and then fell head fore-most amid his rowers. I could just detectthe gleam of the moonlight on the jewelled handle of his kris as itsank into the waters. I had hit my man. The sailors sent up a heartyAmerican cheer and a tiger, as they saw the prau come to a standstill. 

Our boat sprang away into the darkness. We did not cease rowing untildawn, --then we lay back on our oars and stretched our tired backsand arms. I had taken my place at the oar during the night. 

Away out on the northern horizon we saw a black speck; on the southernhorizon another. The captain's glass revealed one to be the pirateprau with all sails set, for a wind had come up with the dawn. Theother we welcomed with a cheer, for it was the Bangor. Enfeebledand nearly famishing, we headed toward it and rowed for life. How weregretted having left our sails on the island. The prau had sightedus and was bearing down in full pursuit; we soon could distinguishits wide-spreading, rakish sails almost touching the water as itsped on. Then we made out the naked forms of the Illanums hangingto the ropes, far out over the water, and then we could hear theirblood-curdling yell. It was too late; their yell was one of baffledrage. It was answered by the deep bass tones of the swivel on board theBangor sending a ball skimming along over the waters, which, althoughit went wide of its mark, caused the natives on the ropes to throwthemselves bodily across the prau, taking the great sail with them. 

In another instant the red sail, the long, keen, black shell, thenaked forms of the fierce Illanums, were mixed in one undefinableblot on the distant horizon. 

And that was the skipper's yarn.