.ii: ± CAUFORNU LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBR CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBR = 1 ^sg \'^^'y»^> g^^^^ffl w 1 UNIVERSITY OF CUiFORNU LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF Ci ^A^rmA\i ^^^ UmVERSITT OF CUIFORKU m f ^ LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF C, 1^=1^1% MY JOURNAL IN MALAYAN WATERS; BLOCKADE OF QUEDAH, Captain SHERAKD OSBORN, R.N., C.B, AUTHOR OF " A CRUISE IN JAPAKESK WATERS," ETC. ' Sweet Memory ! wafted by thy gentle gale. Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail, To \'iew the fairy-haunts of long-lost hours, Blest with far greener shades, far fresher flowers." Rogers. Stttmii €inim* LONDON: ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, AND ROUTLEDGE, FARRINODON 8TRKET ; AND 56, WALKER STREET, NEW YORK. 1860. OPY ADDED ►RJQ 4 40 jadee's youth and antecedents. head in a jaunty knot, whilst the others stuck up or waved about in a very saucy manner. A mouthful of cere leaf, penang nut, and chunam, with a small quid of tobacco stuck under the upper lip, completed the appearance of Jadee. Poor fellow ! he was ge- nerous to a fault, and thoughtless as a child ; and when I afterwards came to know him well, I often thought how strong the similarity was between the disposition of him and his companions and the ma- jority of our untutored seamen. He was by birth a *^Batta," or else had been stolen, at an early age, and carried off by that race from some sea-coast village. These Battas inhabit the hill country of Sumatra, and are reputed cannibals — at least, such is the charge brought against them by neighbours. Jadee, whilst still a youth, happened to accom- pany a party of Battas who visited the pepper plantation of a sea-coast chieftain, for some hostile and I fear no very reputable purpose ; the result was that, in a skirmish which took place, Jadee was cap- tured, and as a slave entered upon a different career > that of living amongst the branches of trees and eating fellow-men. Some Sooloo slave-dealers and pirates visited the district in which Jadee was detained, and he was ex- HIS PIRATICAL PROPENSITIES. 41 changed for various commodities that they disposed of to his master. Made at first to row, and bale water out of their prahus, he gave such proofs of courage and address, that in a short time they ad- vanced him to the rank of a fighting man. Jadee, however, did not like his masters, although he had an uncommon degree of respect for their enterprise and skill as sea-rovers ; and after some years of strange adventures against the Chinese, Spaniards, and Dutch — the latter of whom he never spoke of without execrating the memory of their mothers — he escaped, and took service under the Rajah of Jehore, or some chief who sailed prahus from the neighbourhood of our then youthful colony of Singa- pore. After a little active service, our hero found himself in possession of a perfect fortune in hard dollars and sycee silver ; and to spend it in the most approved manner, proceeded to Singapore. To take unto him- self a fresh wife was an easy task for such a gallant ; and Jadee kept open house in the neighbourhood of Singapore, in one of those neat native huts wjiich may still be seen raised upon piles, although^lTar enough from the water. The money flew fast, and, sailor-like, Jadee soon found himself compelled to take to the sea for a sub- 42 JADEE ESCAPES IMPRISONMENT sistQnce. For a few years he led a chequered career : plenty one day — opium, curry and rice, and wives galore ; then pulling at an oar like a galley-slave to win more; at last the white men spoilt his career. An expedition in which Jadee was engaged was attacked by a British man-of-war, and suffered a severe defeat. Jadee never bargained for fighting them : anything with a dark skin — let him be the Old Gentleman himself — he felt himself a match for. A Dutchman he did not mind, and a Spaniard he had often seen run; but the Orang-putihs — there was no charm, not even from the Koran, which had ever been efficacious against pirates so mighty as they. Jadee had sailed with distinguished Malay " Eajah Lauts," or Kings of the Sea, but their glory paled before the "Rajah Lauts" of the white men ; they were indeed rovers whom Malay men might envy but might not imitate. Driven with many of his companions from follow- ing up their profession in a wholesale way, Jadee and one or two roving spirits struck up a new business. They bought a fast-pulling sampan, lived at Singa- pore, and apart from an occasional honest fare, used at nights to waylay the market-boats and Chinese petty traders, and frighten them into paying black mail. Even this came to an end ; for, one day when BY HANGING A MAN. 43 asleep in his sampan, Jadee was captured by a dozen Chinese, who carried him before the authorities, and swore, by all they could swear by, that he had been caught in an act of piracy. Jadee was fairly frightened ; he knew the English had a rapid way of hanging up his countrymen, and vowed to him- self that he would adopt the white merCs mode of living, if he escaped this present peril. The judge, although a severe man, was a just one, and happily in this case suspected the veracity of the Chinese. Jadee was sent to jail to ruminate over his evil practices, and had remained there some time, when a reward was offered to anyone who would hang a Chinese murderer, the executioner having absconded. Our friend was glad to earn his liberty so easily, the more so that a Chinaman was to be the unfortunate to be operated upon. The murderer was duly hung, and Jadee, or Jack Ketch, was free. Finding "the Company" too strong for him, Jadee wisely determined to enlist under their colours. He turned from pirate to pirate-catcher, and a more zealous, intelligent servant Governor Bonham, or the Touhan Besar*, did not possess. Jadee soon brought himself into notice, and, with one exception, on an occasion when * »* Touhan Besar," the great chief or officer. 44 QUEDAH TOWN AND FORT. a jealous husband thrust a spear fourteen times into Jadee's body, for certain attentions to his cara sposa, he had maintained an unblemished character. Such was his history. Towards evening the rain ceased and the clouds cleared away, enabling us to see the place we had to starve into subjection. Our gun-boats lay at the distance of about twelve hundred yards from the mouth of the river, across which a stout stockade had been formed, leaving only one narrow outlet, and there the Malays had stationed a look-out man to give an alarm in case of necessity. Within the stockade, upon the north bank of the river, stood the town and fort of Quedah. The latter was a rectangular work built of stone, and said to have been constructed in the days when the Portuguese were in the zenith of their glory. The parapet was now sadly dilapidated, and armed with a few rusty guns, whilst on a bastion which, at one of the angles, served to flank the sea face of the works, and command the river entrance, several long formidable looking pieces of cannon were pointed threateningly at us. Beyond the fort, and on the same side of the river, a long continuation of neat- looking thatch-built houses constituted the town, and oif it lay numerous trading prahus, and several topes. APrEARANCE OF ADJACENT COUNTRY. 45 a Malayo-Chlnese vessel peculiar to the Straits of Malacca. A dense and waving jungle of trees skirted round the town and fort of Quedah, and spread away on either hand in a monotonous line of green. The country, which was said to be particularly rich in the interior, was extremely flat towards the sea- coaSt ; and the only thing that broke its sameness was the remarkable hill which, under the name of Ele- phant Mount, rose above the jungle like an island from the sea. Far distant ranges of hills, the back- bone of the peninsula, stretched however as a back- ground to the scene. Slowly the setting sun tinged their peaks with rosy and purple tints, and then they gradually sank into darkness as the evening mists gathered strength along the seaward edge of the jungle, and, acted upon by light airs, sailed slowly along like phantoms : it was then night with a dew- laden atmosphere and a starlit sky. The English seamen in the pinnace loaded the air with noise, if not with melody, by singing their sailor-songs ; and the^ Malays, in their own peculiar way, amused themselves by singing extempore love- soDgs, to the melancholy accompaniment of a native drum played upon by the hand: gradually these sounds ceased, men and officers sought the softest planks, and, clad in blanket frocks and trousers, lay 46 A TVET NIGHT. — MY CREW. down to sleep, and the first day of the Quedah block- ade was over. During the night it rained hard, and the wet, in spite of our awnings being sloped, began to encroach upon the dry portions of the deck. I heard my men moving about ; but desirous of setting an example of not being easily troubled with such a discomfort as a wet bed, I kept my place, and was not a little pleased to see Jadee bring a mat called a kajang, and slope it carefully over me, evidently thinking I was asleep, and then the poor fellow went away to rough it as he best could. And this man is a merciless pirate ! I thought ; and I felt a friendship for my Malay coxswain from that moment, which nothing will ever obliterate. With early dawn all were awake, and shortly afterwards the usual man-of- war operations of scrubbing and cleaning commenced, Jadee exhibiting as much energy amongst buckets and brooms, as if such peaceful articles were the only things he knew how to use. Leaving him to do first lieutenant's duty, I perched myself — I was but a lad of seventeen — upon the pivot-gun, and, as the dif- ferent men of my crew came in sight, asked their names and characters of the interpreter. Jamboo's account of them was, to say the least of it,, very un- satisfactory. One was a notorious pirate of Sumatra, another of Tringanau; those that were not pirates. jadee's want of bigotry. 47 Jamboo vowed, had fled from Java, or Acheen, for acts of violence of one sort or another. Their looks were not in their favour; and walking with the pecu- liar strut of Malay seamen, I could not but repeat Falstaif 's soliloquy : " Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves ; for indeed I had most of them out of prison I " The fears, however, of the redoubted Jamboo had much to do with the characters he gave the poor fellows ; and I afterwards discovered it was rather his opinion of what they must have been, than what they really had been. I was debating in my mind how my messing was to be carried on, in a vessel manned with Mahometans, where pork was an abomination and myself an unclean animal and an infidel, when Jadee, with the most graceful bow he could muster, came to announce that the ship^s company's rice and fish were cooked, and that in a few minutes our curry and rice would be ready. Through the interpreter, I expressed a hope that he would not depart from any religious opinions as to feeding with a Christian, because I was set in autho- rity over him. To which the good fellow made a very neat answer, in a very modest way, that he was a servant of the same Great Rajah as the white officer^ 48 PRIMITIVE MODE OF EATING. and if I did not consider it beneath my dignity to eat out of the same dish as an Orang Malayu, it was not for him to do so. This difficulty over, we sat down cross-legged to our breakfast — a mountain of snow-white rice with a curried fowl. I was at first very awkward in the use of my right hand as a substitute for spoon and fork, etiquette not allowing the left hand to be used ; but I soon learnt how to pick up the rice, press it gently together between the extended fingers, and then by means of the thumb to slip what was taken up into my mouth ; a drink of pure water finished the repast, and then the ever useful Campar ap- peared, with water and towel for us to wash our hands and mouth. We had only two meals a day ; breakfast at about seven or eight o'clock, and dinner at three p.m. ; rice and salt fish, or rice and curry, being the constant fare. BLOCKADE RENDERED MORE STRINGENT. 49 CHAP. IV. The Blockade rendered more Stringent. — The Bounting Is- lands. — My Crew keeping Holiday. — " Hyacinths " poi- soned with Ground-nuts. — We discover Wild Bees'-Nests. — Arrangements made for robbing the Hives. — The Bees quit their Hives and settle on me- — No Honey. — A Malay Doctor. — The Koran and Chunam remedy for Bee Stings. The first week or ten days was sadly monotonous : we had to be very guarded in our movements, as the policy intended to be pursued by the enemy had not developed itself, and we were yet ignorant of the force of armed prahus which they might possess up the river; but I was not idle, and, under Jadee's tuition, was fast learning the simple and beautiful language of Malaya. The interest taken by my serang, in repeating over for my information the Malay for every article or object upon which he saw .► my attention fixed for a moment, was a pretty con- vincing proof of the anxiety he entertained for our being able to understand one another without Jam- boo's assistance. About the middle of December, we had reason to £ 50 THE BOUNTING ISLANDS. believe that small prahus escaped out of the river, or entered it at top of high water, by keeping close in to the jungle ; and as we had ascertained that there was deep water inside the bar, it was determined to cross the bar at night, directly the tide rose high enough to allow us to do so> and to remain close oiF the stockade until the tide again fell, so as to compel us to retreat rather than risk an action with fort and war-prahus combined. This measure gave great umbrage to " Tonkoo Mahomet Said," who sent to warn us that we might get fired into by accident during the night, if we persisted in such a manoeuvre. The reply to this threat was a promise of returning the compliment, if any such accident did occur; and after a while we found the people of Quedah sub- mitted quietly to this stricter blockade, and it was evident that they were reserving their fighting qualities for the Siamese army, of which we only knew that it was to co-operate with us; how, or w^hen, none could guess. The want of wood and fresh water in our little squadron obliged the senior officer to detach me to a group of islands, about twenty miles distant, in quest of some ; and this job I had regularly to execute every tenth day or so. The three islands are known under the names of the Bounting Group ; the Malays, with a playful fancy. MY CREW KEEPING HOLIDAY. 51 having, in the outline of one of them, seen a resem- blance to a woman in that ** state in which ladies wish to be who love their lords." That island is called "Bounting," and, in carrying out the idea, the next is named "Pangail" or ''Call!" and the other is "Bedan" the "Accoucheur!" — a stranjre nomenclature, but the joke of which was evidently a great source of fun to my scamps. Having, then, no small boats, our mode of procuring wood and water was primitive enough ; the gun-boat used to be anchored in a convenient position, and then all hands, myself included, jumped overboard, swam ashore with casks and axes, and spent the day filling the former, cutting wood, bathing, and washing our clothing. It was a general holiday ; and, like seamen of our own country, my Malays skylarked, joked, and played about with all the zest of schoolboys ; and I observed, with no small pleasure, that, in their practical jokes or witticisms, there was none of that grossness or unbecoming language which European sailors, be their nation what it may, would assuredly have indulged in — a state of things which I imputed to the knowledge they each had of the other's quick- ness of temper, and the moral certainty of an appeal to the creese should an insult be intentionally given. The Bountings, though clothed with trees, and the s 2 52 '* hyacinths" poisoned rankest vegetation of the East, were, like many other iiflands of the Malayan Archipelago, unproductive of a single wild fruit or vegetable capable of sustaining life. If the wild cocoa-nut tree or plantain had ever grown there, they had been eradicated to prevent pirates procuring refreshment on the islands — a step often pursued by the inhabitants of these buccaneer- haunted shores. Beyond turtles and their eggs on the beaches, and wild honey in the woods, nothing edible was there procurable. Some short time after- wards, however, our gallant corvette happened to be at anchor off the Bountings> and those of the crew left in her, asked permission to go on shore for a run. Uninhabited as it was, there appeared to be no reason why they should not go on shore ; and the commanding officer cheerfully assented, with a self- congratulatory feeling that, at any rate, as there were there neither ladies nor grog. Jack could not get himself into trouble. " Oh ! yes, by all means ; you may all go," was the reply, and the jolly-boat and gig soon landed every man but the sentry and quarter- master ; a parting warning was given to the worthies not to be tempted to touch any fruit, as they were poisonous. Having bathed, and washed their clothes over once or twice, by way of a jollification, and walked up and down the beaches until tired^ one of WITH GROUND-NUTS. 63 the old sailors expressed it as his opinion, that "it must be a d — d rum island, if there was nothing eatable to be found on it," and ventured a surmise, that the woods must have heaps of nuts in them, if they only knew where to find them. A young mizen- top-man jumped at the idea, and started away in search of nuts ; finding none on the trees, he next sought for ground-nuts, and, as ill-luck would have it, soon found plenty, in the form of something which resembled strongly the common chesnut. Before long, all hands had had what they graphically termed * a bowse-out," and soon afterwards became gene- rally ill, being sick and griped to a ridiculous extent. The officers who went to bring oflf the liberty- men could hardly believe their senses when they found all those so recently landed hearty and well, lying about like 80 many sick monkeys, and almost as much frightened as hurt by their thoughtlessness. They were taken off, and «trong emetics given, which added still more to the general sickness, and all night long there were ejaculations heard of " Those infernal ground-nuts!" and the unfortunate boy who had first discovered them was promised more thrashings than, it is hoped, he ever received. My Malays, being either more experienced or less enterprising than their English comrades, contented B 3 54 WE DISCOVER WILD BEES'-NESTS. themselves with the honey and turtle-eggs; and as Jadee reported to me that a man called Alee had discovered a splendid wild bees' nest on Pulo Bedan, I expressed a strong desire to see the process by which the bees were robbed of their store. "We happened to be standing in a wood on a part of that island, and the bees were flying about us, when I expressed this wish in my usual tone of voice. " Hush ! " said Jadee, putting his finger to his lips, " hush ! speak low, or the bees will hear us ! " And then, in a whispering voice, he informed me that the honey would not be fit for capture for some time : and that, at any rate, it was wrong to disturb the bees except at the full of the moon. As he con- sidered it necessary to wait for that auspicious period, I assented, and only took care at the next full moon to be there. Alee and four other Malay seamen were told off to rob the bees'-nest, and they as well as myself were soon stripped and swimming ashore. I observed that each man carried with him a small bundle of the husk of cocoa-nut shells, and directly they landed they proceeded to cut branches of a species of palm, and in the leaves enveloped the husks they had brought with them, forming the whole into articles resembling torches; a fire was then kindled upon the beach, fragments of the burn- ARRANGEMENTS FOR ROBBING THE HIVES. 55 ing embers introduced into the heart of each torch, and then by swinging them round so as to cause a draught, the husk ignited, and, aided by the action of the green leaves, poured out of one end of the torch a solid column of smoke. The faithful Jamboo had been left on board ; but I understood, from the little these Malays told me, that the torches were intended for the purpose of driving the bees away from the honey, but I did not understand that they were essential to one's safety and therefore declined to carry one when it was offered to me* Holding the torches in their hands and standing up, the Malays next enacted some mummery or incantation, which concluded with the usual repeti- tion of the Mahometan creed — one so beautiful and concise, that it appears a pity we cannot produce anything as graphic in our own faith. " God he is God ! and Mahomet is his Prophet ! " exclaimed we all ; and the torch-men leading the way, we left the pleasant shade of the jungle, and walked briskly along the shore until abreast of the bees' nest, which lay some three-quarters of a mile inland. Turning into the jungle, waving their smoke-torches, and keeping a sharp look-out for snakes, which appeared to me all the more dangerous from the novelty of my attire, — for like my men I had only M 4 56 THE BEES SETTLE ON ME. one cloth round my hips and a handkerchief over my head, — we soon sighted, up a small vista in the forest, the aged trunk of a blighted tree, which was alive with bees. Three of the Malays now sat down, waved their torches gently, throwing a halo of smoke round their tawny persons, and commenced to re- cite, in a slow solemn manner, some verses from the Koran, whether to keep the bees away, or to insure there being honey in the nest, I don't know; for just as I, half -laughing, was putting the question to them, the fourth Malay, Mr. Alee, walked deliberately up to the nest and applied his torch. Thunder and lio;htninof ! a thousand lancets were suddenly plunged into my body, and a black cloud of bees were around me. I shouted for Alee ; " God he is God ! and Mahomet is his Prophet I " groaned out the Malays, as they waved their torches, the bees threatening them as well as myself. It was more than I could bear ; with a yell of agony, I started off like a deer for the sea : it seemed but a stride to the rocks, and at once I plunged into the water, taking down many a bee which adhered tenaciously to my body and face. Keeping down as long as possible, I rose in the hope of being clear from the little brutes ; but, alas I they were not so easily baffled, and a cloud of them was ready to descend upon my NO HONEY. — A MALAY DOCTOK. 57 devoted head: it might have ended seriously, had not Alee found that there was no honey in the nest, and he and his comrades then ran down to assist me, frightening off the bees with their torches, and ac- companying me to the gun-boat, which I reached nearly blind, and rather disgusted with the result of my first Asiatic bee-hunt ; the more so that, in addi- tion to the lesson I had learnt upon the advisability of using smoke preservers, we had disproved the truth of the old axiom, that " Where there are bees, there must be honey.** Jadee was in great distress at seeing me return in such sad plight, and vowed that Alee and his com- panions must have been lubbers at their work ; how- ever, he promised me almost instantaneous relief, and as I was willing to accept that on any terms, one of the men, a leading hand, who, from his strict obser- vance of his religious duties, was named the ** Haggi," was sent for to cure me. The Haggi, proud of an opportunity of displaying his medical skill upon a white man, who are all sup- posed to be born doctors, proceeded immediately to roll up a quid of cere leaf, betel-nut, gambier, and chunam, in the right proportions for chewing — such a quid as a Malay so much delights in. Whilst I mas- ticated this in the most approved manner, the Haggi 58 THE KORAN AND CHUNAM RExMEDY. opened a small box of fine white clmnam, made from the lime procured from burnt sea-shells; this chunam he carefully applied to my skin wherever it had been stung, muttering all the while, in a solemn strain, select sentences from the Koran, the responses or final portions of each chapter or sentence being taken up and repeated by my faithful coxswain, who for the time seemed desirous to entitle himself to a green turban by the fervour of his prayers, varying them, however, by shaking his tawny fist in the direction of the unconscious bees, and saying, with the utmost gravity, " Ah ! you d — d pouls ! " Whether it was the chunam or the Koran cured me, it would be ingratitude to my holy friend the Haggi to say, for he stoutly maintained one to be inefficacious without the other ; but this I can aver, that in a very short time all inflammation had sub- sided, and I was able to laugh over my adventure, making, however, a vow to bridle my curiosity for the future, where bees were in the question. THE NOETH-EAST MONSOON. 59 CHAP. V. The North-east Monsoon. — Unsatisfactory News of our Siamese Allies. — The Pelicans. — Alligators abound. — The Cowardice of the Alligators. — Encounter and Capture an Alligator. — Extraordinary Strength and Vitality of those Reptiles. — A Strange Antidote against Fever. — The Rah- madan and " Quedah Opera." — The Malays endeavour to evade the Blockade. — The Watchfulness of my Native Crew. The north-east monsoon had fairly set in. All day long we had a delightfully pleasant breeze off the land, for the Malayan peninsula has so small a breadth, that the winds which blow upon it from the China Sea reached us before they were robbed of their moisture or heated to an unpleasant degree by the action of the land : occasionally the monsoon would freshen, for a day or so, into a double reefed top-sail breeze, or at other times become squally without rain, but our nights were invariably fine, with only just wind enough to fill the mat sails of a prahu. The sea was seldom ruffled, and more delightful weather for boat-work cannot be conceived. All we were required to do, was to guard against sleeping in the night-dews, 60 UNSATISFACTORY NEWS OF OUR ALLIES. and by so doing, we all enjoyed better health than those cooped up in the ship. Our new position inside Quedah bar became at last to be acknowledged by the Malays as our right, and from that time we often had communications with the fishermen who came out to visit their fishing- weirs. Through them we learnt that fighting was going on with the Siamese, a long distance off: according to their version, the Malay rajahs were everywhere victorious ; several large towns and many slaves had fallen into their hands, and there was no probability of a Siamese army being able to act upon the offensive during that monsoon. This was decidedly very cheerless news, but the authority was a questionable one ; and we could see slight defensive preparations taking place in the fort, which betokened something else than entire confi- dence and security. Meantime, each day brought with it novelty and amusement. Anchored as we now were, within the river and close to the stockade, broad mud-banks ex- tended themselves on either hand whenever the tide was low. Asiatic birds and reptiles haunted these banks ; some of the former, such as the snipe and curlew, were well known to us, and, until scared away, added to our daily fare. The pelicans, at first, PELICANS. — ALLIGATORS ABOUND. 61 were the sole robbers of the fishing-weirs, but they soon found themselves no match for the expert sea- men of the pinnace and gun-boats, and left us for some other spot. The alligators, however, were not to be frightened, although they took uncommonly good care not to enter into any of the personal com- bats upon the mud which the Malays, and after them the English sailors, were constantly trying to entrap them into. The numbers of these loathsome brutes to be seen at a time was extraordinary ; but what- ever might be the danger of falling in with them, if wading or swimming alone through these waters, there was no doubt of their being arrant cowards when fallen in with on shore. With the rising tide, the alligators generally found their way up to the edge of the jungle, and there lay among the roots of the trees (which they strongly resembled), as if wait- ing for cattle, or wild animals, that might come down to drink : we, however, never saw them catch any- thing during a period of several months. The ebbing tide would often thus leave the brutes several hun- dred yards from the edge of the water, and very much they appeared to enjoy themselves when so left, with an Indian sun pouring down upon their tough hides; and, as if in the very height of the (lulccfar niente, they would open back their hideous 62 COWARDICE Of the alligators. jaws, and remain in that position for more than an hour at a time. As to trying to shoot them, we soon found it mere waste of time, as well as of powder and ball ; for, mortally wounded or not, they invariably carried themselves far beyond our reach. The Malay sailors showed us how, at any rate, we could frighten the alligators exceedingly, even if we could not cap^ ture them — by landing lightly equipped with a sharp spear or boarding-pike, and thus obliging the reptile to make a long detour to escape being assailed* Occasionally I have seen the men, by dint of great activity, get near enough to fling their weapon and strike the alligators ; but as in such cases they in- variably struck the upper part of the back, they might as well have tried to spear a rock. The natives showed the utmost indifference to the presence of alligators in their neighbourhood, and, when ques- tioned upon the subject, asserted that in salt or brackish water, at the mouths of rivers, the alligator was never dangerous to man ; and that it was only up rivers, and in marshy places, where they lived, as it were, amongst human beings, that they screwed up their courage to indulge in such a dangerous luxury as eating men or women. Of the enormous strength and extraordinary vitality of these reptiles, we had a pretty good CAPTURE OF AN ALLIGATOR. 63 proof; for one evening, when the pinnace, as usual, dropped alongside the weir to take out fish for the evening meal, the men who went into the " pocket " to see what had been caught, were obliged to move their legs nimbly to escape the gin-like jaws of a good-sized alligator which had got into the weir after the fish, and, having devoured them, could not escape. The pinnace-men cheered with delight, and proceeded at once to capture the prisoner. It was, however, a good tough job : the brute, some ten or twelve feet long, lay in the bottom of an enclosed space of about equal diameter ; the water was about three feet deep, and extremely muddy, rendered more 80 by the splashings and convulsions of the animal. Attempts were at first made to thrust sharp boarding- pikes down through his hide ; and from the height the seamen stood over the creature, and the weight they were able to bring to bear upon the pikes, it ap- peared probable that some weak spot would be found. But, no; although sometimes eight or nine powerful men pressed down with as many pikes, the brute did not suffer a scratch ; and, incredible as it may ap- pear, more than one of our boarding- pikes, strong as they are, wese bent in the neck. It was evident that a soft spot must be sought for under his " calipash," as, in imitation of turtle, the men called his upper 64 STRENGTH AND VITALITY OF ALLIGATORS. coat of armour. Every man armed himself with some weapon or other, and stirred up the alligator with a vengeance. He became perfectly furious, and lashed about his tail and snapped his jaws in a very spiteful manner: the fun waxed warm; the "click" of the teeth as the mouth closed, sounded uncommonly un- pleasant, apart from the cracking of boat-hook staffs, and other articles, as if they were mere twigs. At last a good noose was slipped over the creature's head and hauled tight round his neck ; this enabled the seamen to administer a multitude of wounds which would have let its life out had it had more than the usual number. But it was a long time before it was deemed sufficiently safe to be hauled out of the weir, and towed to one of the gun-boats to be dis- sected and skinned: and even then the muscular action of portions of the body, the tail especially, whilst being cut into pieces, was something extra- ordinary, and denoted how strong is the vitality of all this reptile tribe. I, and others, tasted a cutlet of alligator's flesh, and although it was not particularly nice, still there was nothing about it disagreeable : some compared it to very bad veal cutlets ; for my part, it tasted very much as turtle collops would, which is not saying much in its favour. Observing the " Haggi " in quest of something, STRANGE ANTIDOTE AGAINST FEVER. 65 I watched my surgical friend, and found him care- fully cutting open the head, to extract the brain. Through Jamboo, I asked what purpose it was to be applied to, and was informed, with a solemn shake of the head that would have qualified the Haggi for the College of Physicians, that " it was an invaluable remedy for all fevers ! " I need not say that, great as my faith was in the Koran and chunam-box of the holy mariner, I determined not to go through a course of alligator brains, come what might. Prior to our Christmas Day, the Mahometan fast*, or Lent, took place. Our Malays kept it in a parti- cularly lax manner; but our opponents in Quedah appeared to be far more orthodox, their devotions finding vent in a magnificent chaunt by male voices, which, heard in all the lonely stillness of a tropical night, was deeply impressive. Jadee assured me that the performers were men of undoubted sanctity, having all made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and kissed the tomb of their prophet, without which qualification they could not take part in what the English seamen sacrilegiously styled the ** Quedah Opera." The conclusion of the fast was a general holiday in the * During the month of Rahraadan, the Mussulman abstains from eating or drinking, smoking, or pleasure, from sunrise to sunset. 66 CHRISTMAS-DAY. town and fort; a constant saluting and cheering took place, and men, women, and children were dressed in holiday attire, giving a great deal more animation to the tumble-down fort and the devoted town than we were wont to see them assume. Then came our Christmas. The " Hyacinth" ran down to the Bountings, and captured some very fine turtle. Turtle-soup and plum-pudding galore were prepared ; and, like a hen gathering her chicks, we all sailed off from our blockading posts, and tumbled on board the dear old craft in time for an early dinner. The Malay sailors got a holiday and a double allowance of rice and fish, and paid all due respect to the " white man's feast," whilst we talked over our adventures with shipmates and messmates, and hoped and prophesied for the future. As the evening closed in, all boat's crews were again piped away, and we rowed into Quedah, keeping time to the tune of some sentimental ditty, in which the lady of the sailor's love " Was a rich merchant's daughter, From London she did come," &c. &c. ; and winding up with a denouement far more comical than moral. EFFORTS TO EVADE THE BLOCKADE. 67 Yet was our duty not all play or sight-seeing. The Malays in Quedah had to dispose of their pro- duce at Penang, and procure, in return, arms, powder^ and salt, and our duty was to prevent them. When- ever the night tides were high, combined with a misty state of the atmosphere likely to cover their escape through our cordon, prahus would push out, and, by keeping close under the shadow of the jungle, strive to escape our vigilance. Their lofty mat sails caught the faintest breath of land-breeze, the beauti- fully sharp bow of the prahus made hardly a ripple as it cut through the water, and it required the keenest eye to detect them when stealing thus along in silence and shadow. The quick sight and hearing of our Malays was in this respect invaluable : they had themselves been enj^aged in similar feats, and knew all the tricks of their compatriots. On more than one occasion did the look-out man call me at night, when, although a clear sky overhead, nothing but the tops of the trees could be seen peering over a white mist which poured like smoke out of the unhealthy mangrove swamps. " A prahu ! " the man would say, pointing into the mist, making a sign at tlie same time to listen. Holding my head low down and horizontally, I could at last distinguish what had caught the Malay *s attention — a low creak occasion- F 2 68 WATCHFULNESS OF MY NATIVE CREW. ally, which I most decidedly should have thought to be the swaying of some branch in the forest, had he not assured me that it was the action of a prahu's oar in a rattan grummet.* At other times a rippling sound, such as water will make when running past any fixed object, was wafted on the night wind. *' It is merely the tide running past the fishing-weirs, Jamboo," I might perhaps say. " Oh no, sir I " he would reply, "the look-out man assures me the sound is altering its position, and that it 's the stem of a prahu cutting through the water." Silently and stealthily, but quickly, as men who had been all their lives at such work, the crew would be on their legs. " Baughan ! semoa-secalar, hancat sown ! " in a low and distinct whisper, would run along the deck ; or, in other words, " Arouse, ! hands up anchor ! " The anchor would be run up gently, and Numero Tega would be after her prey like a night- hawk. We had to deal, however, with keen hands and fast boats; and often have I chased to early dawn before being sure of my prize. * " Grummet," the piece of rope used for attaching an oar to the rowing-pin. A NIGHT CHASE AFTER A PRAHU. 69 CHAP. VI. A Night Chase after a Prahu. — The Chase. — The Praha manoeuvres admirably. — Jadee volunteers to board her. — The Capture. — A Piratical Saint. — The Saint at Prayers, — The Saint's Deportment. — The Saint's Martyrdom. — Defensive Measures. — Escape of Siamese Prisoners. — Suf- ferings of the Siamese Prisoners. — A curious Mode of Sketching. The pluck and zeal of my crew often struck me, but never perhaps more than on the occasion I am about to relate. We had had a long and unsuccessful chase one day after a fast-pulling prahu, and the crew being much exhausted, I anchored for the night at the mouth of a small river called the Furlong, about two miles north of Quedah fort. Heartily tired with the past day's exertion, all my crew soon dropped asleep, except the usual look-out man, and I donned my blanket frock and trousers, and threw myself on the deck to rest. About ten o'clock I was aroused by a fine old one-eyed fellow called "Souboo," r 3 70 THE CHASE. "Touhan!"* whispered he, "a large two-masted prahu has just sailed past us !" " Where ? — in what direction?" I asked. "To leeward, sir!" said Souboo, as he dropped upon his knees and peered along the water, over which the night mists were moving; "there she is— a real 'capel prahu,' and sailing very fast." To up anchor and make sail to the land-breeze did not take many minutes; the sweeps were manned, and the guns cleared for action. Whilst my little craft was flying through the water, I questioned Souboo as to how it was he first got sight of the prahu. " The wind was rather along the land than off it," said he, "and I was watching the mouth of the river, when suddenly happening to turn my head to seaward, I saw a prahu come out of the mist and almost tumble on board of us, as she hauled in for the stream ; but in a minute her course was changed, and she bore up for the southward with flowing sheets." " All right," exclaimed Jadee, " we will have her — there is a twenty-mile run for her to the Bountings, and before that ground is gone over the fog will have cleared off and the wind fail." " How if she * Touhan, in this sense, was equivalent to "Sir;" it is generally used as Mr. would be in English. THE PRAHU MANCEUVRES ADMIRABLY. 71 hauls up, and goes to the northward ? " I suggested. " No Malay man tries to sail against the wind with a prahu, when the white man is in chase of him, Touhan!" said Jadee; " and if Souboo's description of this vessel is correct, she is one of the war-prahus of Mahomet Alee's fleet ! " Under this pleasing anticipation, Jadee got quite excited ; and I must say I joined in the feeling, as the gun-boat listed to the breeze, and her dashing crew bent with a will to their oars. The zealous Campar handed to Jadee the longest and ugliest creese in his stock, and I observed all the men stick their short knives in their girdles ready for a fray. ** No prahu yet I " I exclaimed, after running two or three miles through the mist. " We will catch herl" responded Jadee; and almost as he said the word, we seemed to be aboard of a large-sized prahu, running the same way as ourselves. There was a yell of delight from the Number Threes^ as my crew styled themselves, and one as of astonish- ment from the prahu ; but in a moment she, what is termed, jibbed her sails, and slipped out of sight again before we could dip our heavy yards and lug-sails. Altering our course so as to intercept her In her evident intention to seek a hiding-place in the Bounting Islands, the bow-gun was cleared away and r 4 72 JADEE OFFERS TO BOARD THE PRAHU. loaded with grape, ready to knock away her masts when another opportunity offered. Again we ran almost upon her, our sails being at the time boomed out " wing and wing." " Lower your sails, and sur- render ! " Jadee shouted, as I fired, and brought down her mainsail. For a minute her capture seemed certain ; but we had to deal with no novice. As we shot past the prahu, going nearly eight knots, she dropped her foresail, put her helm hard down, and long before our sails could be furled and the gun- boat's head got round, the villanous prahu was out of sight astern. I fancy I swore ; for Jadee called the lost prize a " d — d poul," which she most de- cidedly was not, and added that he evidently was " a pig ! and would not fight." We still determined to adhere to our orig-inal course, confident of the prahu having no shelter nearer than the islands, and were rewarded as the mist cleared away by again sighting her. I soon saw that we were by far the faster sailer with the fresh breeze then blowing, and determined not to let her escape me this time. I proposed, if three or four men would follow me, to jump on board of her, and prevent her escape, until the gun-boat got fairly alongside. Jadee at once seized the idea, and only so far altered it as to persuade me, through the THE CAPTURE. 73 assistance of the Interpreter, that the Malays in the prahu would be more likely to surrender quietly to a countryman who could assure them of quarter, than they would be at the sight of a naval officer, when fright alone might make them run a muck, and cause a needless loss of life. Accordingly, Jadee and his three boarders stood ready at the bow, and, looking at them as they stood on the gunwale, eagerly eyeing the prahu as we rushed at her, they would have made a fine study for a painter. They were nearly naked, with the ex- ception of a sarong wrapped round the left arm, to ward off such blows as might be aimed at them ; in the waist-belt, across the small of their backs, each had stuck his creese, and a sharp short cutlass dangled from their wrists. Strange sights indeed do travellers see I but, for disinterested devotion and bravery, I question whether a finer example could be shown than that of these dark-skinned subjects of Queen Victoria. As we closed the prahu, no answer was returned to our hail to surrender. *' All ready!" said Jadee, swinging himself almost out of the rigging with eagerness. " Look out I" I shouted, and fired again at the sails. The prahu repeated her old manoeuvre, but we checkmated her this time, for as our side 74 THE CAPTURE. scraped her stern, Jadee and his followers leapt into her with a shout. Our sails were down in a trice, and we swept alongside of the prize ; and, having heard so much as I had done of the desperate character of Malays, I was not a little delighted to find that they had, in this case, surrendered without resistance, directly Jadee made himself master of their helm, and announced his intention, with a vicious wave of his abominable creese, to maintain it against all comers until the gun-boat got alongside. The vessel had been a war-prahu ; but her breast- work for the guns had been removed, and, in the peaceful character of a trader, she was, we afterwards found, employed to keep up the communication be- tween the Malay chieftains in Quedah province and their friends in Penang. The emissary upon this occasion we made a prisoner of; the vessel we re- spected as a trader, but forced her to return into Quedah. The prisoner was a Malay of good extraction, and, having performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, wore the distinguished decoration of a considerable quantity of green calico about his head ; apart from his sanctity, he was, as his able efforts to escape had proved, an expert sailor, and, doubtless, a most worthy member of his piratical fraternity. There . A PIRATICAL SAINT. 75 was something about the man particularly com- manding. He was tall and slight for a Malay, and bore, like many of the higher caste in Malaya do, marks of Arab blood in his veins ; his face would have been good looking but for the high and square cheek-bones, and a fierce expression of the eye ; a small Vandyke-shaped beard, which was a mark of his holy rank, and a certain dignity of manner, showed him one accustomed to command ; and it amused me to see with what self-possession he was prepared, although my prisoner, to exercise his au- thority upon my men, who instinctively obeyed him as they would do their master. I did not, however, show any great awe for his piratical saintship, much to Jadee's astonishment ; for although my coxswain's knowledge of the creed of the faithful was but a mere glimmering, still he had vague superstitious fears about it, which would have made me laugh had Jadee not been so much in earnest about them. Outof considenition for Jadee's fears as to the evil consequences likely to arise through the imprisoned Haggi's influence with divers demons, spirits, et cetera, I consented that, whenever the position of the gun-boat brought the direction of the prophet's tomb over the stern, the Haggi might, in pursuance of the established form of Mahomet- 76 THE SAINT AT PRAYERS. anism, bring his carpet on the quarter-deck, and pray; at other times he was to remain forward. Accordingly, at the hour of prayer, the pirate-saint would stalk along to the stern of the gun-boat, spread his little carpet, turn towards Mecca, or, rather, the direction in which it lay, and then, indif- ferent to who were looking at him, or whatever might be going on, enter upon his devotions with a zeal and abstraction from the little world around him which could not but command admiration from men of any creed. His orisons finished, he returned to his place with the dignity of a rajah. He never made the slightest effort to conciliate either ray good-will or that of any of my crew. I was evidently a Giaour, an infidel, and the Malays around me renegades ; but I rather admired him for this independence, and took good care nothing should occur to offend his religious scruples, so far as he per- sonally was concerned. Perhaps, in time, we should have appreciated each other better ; for, on my one day notifying to him that he was to proceed to Penang, to stand upon his trial before Governor Bonham, he relaxed for a few minutes, clasped both hands together, made a low bow, and " Hoped God would be with me, and that I should walk in health I " expressions which I cordially returned ; DEFENSIVE MEASURES. 77 and 80 we parted. From what I afterwards heard, I had reason to believe the " Company Sahib" had a long account with this holy man, and that, with some others, he was to be seen in after years innocently employed sweeping and keeping in order the fortifi- cations of Fort William at Calcutta. A bevy of houris in the world to come will doubtless reward him for the injury he has suffered from the infidel in this. Towards the commencement of the new year, our attention was called to a strong working party being seen every day to leave the fort, and proceed to clear away the jungle which had grown up close round the works ; this done, they commenced ithe construc- tion of an admirable battery, which flanked our anchorage as well as the landward side of Quedah fort. Observing that this working party was strongly guarded, we learnt, on inquiry from the fishermen, that the labourers were unfortunate Siamese — men, women, and children — who had been captured when the province was conquered by the Malays, and that the work they were now doing was merely to keep them out of mischief. We, however, plainly saw that the chiefs had some cause for anxiety, and anti- cipated an attack, though how or whence we had as yet no certain intelligence. We took some pains to get information carried to these poor creatures of 78 ESCAPE OF SIAMESE PRISONERS. our readiness to give them shelter, and shortly after- wards two Siamese effected their escape under diffi- cult circumstances. The musquito squadron were just on the point of separating to take up their stations for the night — a step we always took care to carry out after dark, in order that the enemy might not know our position — when a voice was heard to hail us from a long tongue of mud which ran out to seaward from the northern point of the river. At first it was supposed to be the whoop of a night-hawkj but it was repeated, and our men declared it to be the voice of either Chinese or Siamese. Mr. Jamboo was called for, and, in a dialect which was so unmusical as to resemble the sounds emitted by knocking two hard pieces of wood together, he soon ascertained that they were two Siamese men who had escaped from the Malays, and in an attempt to cross the mud-flat had sunk into it exhausted, and unless we could reach them would assuredly be drowned or devoured by the alligators upon the return of the tide. The pinnace was now forced in as near as possible to the mud-bank, and three or four of the English seamen having volunteered to assist the unfortunates, they stripped themselves, and aided by oars and boards slipped over the mud to where the Siamese were fairly bogged, pulled THEIR SUFFERINGS. 79 them out by sheer strength and activity, and brought them off amidst the cheers of all our party. The blue-jackets washed them, and clothed their shiver- ing frames in sailors' frocks and trousers, persuaded them to drink a glass of raw Jamaica rum each, and then, with considerable truth, said, half-laughing, " Why, Jack, your mother would not know you I" — a remark the Siamese would probably have ac- quiesced in, had they understood the rough but good-natured fellows. The tale of the Siamese was soon told : they were father and son, and had originally entered the pro- vince of Quedah from the neighbourhood of Bankok. At the time of the Malay inroad, the father was a petty merchant, barber, and painter, at an island called Lancdvi. They were made prisoners, or rather slaves ; worked like horses, starved, and con- stantly saw their countrymen creesed before their eyes. They escaped, stole a boat, and sailed with her across to the mainland, by following the coast of which they knew they must reach English terri- tory. At last they observed our ship in the offing, and rightly conjecturing that some of her boats would be found off Quedah, had happily succeeded in reaching us without being seen by the lynx-eyed look-outs of Quedah. 80 CURIOUS MODE OF SKETCHING. They stayed some days with us, and appeared anxious to evince their gratitude in every possible way. The old man, as a Siamese artist, presented each officer with specimens of his skill ; the most remarkable point in his sketches being the fact of his wonderful departure from all our preconceived notions of drawing. For instance, in a pencil sketch of Buddha, drawn for me, in which that divinity is represented reposing upon one leg, and looking uncommonly like Canova's famed figure of a dancing-girl reposing, and almost as unnatural, the draughtsman commenced with the toes and worked gradually up to the gorgeous head- dress, yet preserving a just proportion in all the parts of the figure ; as a whole, the result may be said to have been more curious than pleasing. When the Siamese eventually proceeded to Penang, they left us favourably impressed with their disposition and ability, although they evidently lacked the energy of character which marked the Malays about us. ANXIETY OF COMMANDING OmCER. 81 CHAP. VII. The Anxietj of the Officer commanding the Blockade. — In- telligence received of the Pirate Fleet. — My good Fortune in sailing with so excellent a Captain. — A Tropical Thunder- storm. — Jadee kills the Wind. — How Jadee learnt to kill the Wind. — The Dutch generally disliked. — Jadee's Pira- tical Friends attack a Junk. — The Defeat and Flight of Jadee's Friends. — They are saved by the Rajah of Jehore. — Killmg the Wind. Our enterprising captain in the " Hyacinth" had, as it may be supposed, a very anxious time. The extent of coast to be blockaded was not less than fifty or sixty miles in extent much of it but little known ; nu- merous islands, rivers, and creeks existed of which charts and surveyors had no cognizance. He knew well that a large force of prahus and armed men were in the province ; their exact whereabouts, how- ever, was preserved a perfect secret, and Captain Warren's fear was, lest they should fall upon his boats or the gun-boats with vastly superior forces, and carry off an easy victory. The " Hyacinth" there- fore, like a troubled spirit, was ever flitting up and 6 82 INTELLIGENCE OF PIRATE FLEET. down between Quedah and a spot of equal impor- tance called the Parlis River, situated twenty miles farther north, and in the entrance of which the ship's cutter and No. 1. gun-boat, the Diamond, were sta- tioned. In the second week of January, information was received that a considerable number of the war- prahus seen by us at Trang during the previous autumn, had succeeded, under their renowned leader, Datoo Mahomet Alee, in getting into the Parlis River, and were employed in the defence of that neighbour- hood. It became therefore necessary to reinforce the Parlis blockading force, and I was ordered to proceed there for that purpose. Delighted at the prospect of seeing more of this interesting country, my craft was soon under weigh and spinning along the coast, which, to the northward of Quedah River, rapidly improved in appearance; the picturesque group of islands known as the Lancavas, and beyond them the Laddas, lying to seaward, and spurs of mountain land from the central chain ap- proaching close to the coast of the mainland. All, at any rate, was bright and beautiful to me : placed, young as I was, in a position of trust and responsibility ; enjoying all the sweets of command, and still too young to feel its anxieties, it was indeed *he sunny side of the world that I was then enjoying; MY EXCELLENT CAPTAIN. 83 and as, with a throbbing pulse and zealous heart, I walked my own quarter-deck, how earnest, in all the honesty of youth, were my resolutions to deserve well of my profession, and those set in authority over me. Fortunate are those boys who, like me, sail their first trip as embryo admirals with such a cap- tain as mine was ; a gentleman in all things ; labour- ing in his profession quietly and earnestly ; not, upon the one hand, scorning it as being beneath his birth or abilities ; or, upon the other, degrading himself into a mere menial, and working for the dirty pounds, shillings, and pence it would yield him. The mid- shipman who sails and learns his profession with such a man may perhaps, in after life, suffer when he happens to be under the tyrant, schemer, or bully — for, alas I such will be found in every noble profession ; but those principles early acquired will ever be a solace to him, and the love and recollection of such a man console him and cheer him in the hope of emu- lating his example. As we approached a long low point named Tan- gong Bouloo, or the Cape of Bamboos, from the numbers of those canes which were waving gracefully over it, my attention was called to the necessity of preparing for a heavy squall which was rapidly sweeping down towards us from the distant hilig. o 2 84 A TROPICAL THtJNDERSTOfiM. As the wind freshened, we reduced canvass until the " Emerald" was flying along under a close-reefed foresail, everything cracking withal. The squall swept on ; a dense black mass of clouds, charged with electricity, a burst of thunder which seenied to make the gun-boat tremble to her very keel, and a vivid flash of lightning which blinded one for a minute, showed how close it was. The tall trees bent to the gale, the bamboos were swept down like a long row of feathers, and a white streak of foam rushed tow^ards us as we took in our sail, and prepared to receive it under bare poles. With a shriek it struck us ; the little " Emerald" lay down to it for a moment, the helm was put up, and away she flew before the storm like a snow-flake. Jadee stood by my side, *^ A bad wind, Touhan ; we must kill it I " " Kill away ! Jadee," I replied, laughing at the idea of so fickle a personage as the Clerk of the Weather getting into a scrape with a Malay pirate, — " kill away, by all means !" " Cam- par !" shouted Jadee — poor Campar ! he had to be everywhere — "oh! Campar, thou son of a burnt mother, hand here the rice-spoon !" shouted Jadee, looking as solemn as a quaker or a haggi. This rice- spoon, by the way, was the only one in the vessel; it was made of wood, and used for stirring the rice whilst cooking over the fire ; its value to us may-be JADEE KILLS THE WIND ! 85 invested it with a certain degree of sanctity. The spoon was brought, and I tried to look as solemn as Jadee, who, calling to his aid the sanctimonious Alee, placed the spoon upon the deck between him and the wind, and the pair of true believers repeated some verses over it — bound themselves, by a vow, to sacrifice several game-cocks* upon a favourable occa- sion, and then the precious spoon was stuck through the lanyards of the main rigging, with the handle to leeward. I think I should have died from the effects of suppressed mirth, had not the fury of the squall and the quantity of water thrown on board of us given me enough to do to look after the safety of the craft. Jadee, however, sat quietly watching and waiting for the effect of his incantation : at last, down came the rain, not in drops, but in bucketsful, and, as usual, the wind fell entirely. Hastening to get under the rain-awnings and mats until the weather cleared up, I remarked to Jadee that " the wind was fairly killed." " Yes I" he replied, with a sly expression of countenance, " I never saw that charm fail; I never saw the wind that could long stand its effect. The Rajah of Jehore was the first man who taught it to me, and I have found it infal- * I fancy from game-cocks being introduced into this super- stitious obserrance, that it is purely of Malay origin. o 3 86 HOW JADEE LEARNT TO KILL THE WIND. llble. If Jamboo was here, Touhan, I'd tell you how it happened." Jamboo was at once sent for; and making a proviso that my coxswain should speak slowly and distinctly, so as .to enable me to call in the interpreter's aid as little as possible, he proceeded to tell his tale, somewhat as follows : — " Long before that action with the English man-of- war which drove me to Singapore, I sailed in a fine fleet of prahus belonging to the Rajah of Jehore.* We were all then very rich — ah ! such numbers of beautiful wives, and such feasting ! — but, above all, we had a great many most holy men in our force ! When the proper monsoon came, we proceeded to sea to fight the Buorlsmen and Chinamen bound from Borneo and the Celebes to Java ; for you must re- member our Rajah was at war with them (Jadee always maintained that the proceedings in which he had been engaged partook of a purely warlike, and not of a piratical character). " Our thirteen prahus had all been fitted out in and about Singapore. I wish you could have seen them, Touhan ! These prahus we see here are nothing to * I have said the Rajah of Jehore ; but Jadee called the in- dividual by some peculiar term not easily spelt, and described his place of abode and hiding-place as being near Cape Romania, in the Jehore district. THE DUTCH GENERALLY DISLIKED. 87 them ; — such brass guns ; such long pendants ; such creeses ! AUah-il- Allah ! our Datoos were indeed great men I " Sailing along the coast up as high as Patani, we then crossed over to Borneo, two IlLinoon prahus act- ing as pilots, and reached a place called Sambas : there we fought the Chinese and Dutchmen, who ill-treat our countrymen, and are trying to drive the Malays out of that country. Gold-dust and slaves in large quantities were here taken ; most of the latter being our countrymen of Sumatra and Java, who are cap- tured and sold to the planters and miners of the Dutch settlements." "Do you mean to say," I asked, " that the Dutch countenance such trafl&c ? " " The Hollanders," replied Jadee, " have been the bane of the Malay race ; no one knows the amount of villany, the bloody cruelty of their system towards us. They drive us into our prahus to escape their taxes and their laws, and then declare us pirates, and put us to death. There are natives in our crew, Touhan, of Sumatra and Java, of Bianca and Borneo ; ask them why they hate the Dutchmen ; why they would kill a Dutchman. It is because the Dutchman is a false man, not like the white man (English). The Hollander stabs in the dark: he u 4 88 jadee's pirate fleet is a liar I However, from Borneo we sailed to Bi- liton and Blanca, and there waited for some large junks that were expected. Our cruise had been so far successful, and we feasted away, — fighting cocks, smoking opium, and eating white rice. At last our scouts told us that a junk was in sight. She came ; a lofty-sided one of Fokien. We knew those Amoy men would fight like tiger-cats for their sugar and silks ; and, as the breeze was fresh, we only kept her in sight by keeping close in shore and following her. Not to frighten the Chinamen, we did not hoist sail, but made our slaves pull. Oh !" said Jadee, warming up with the recollection of the event, — "oh! it was fine to feel what brave fellows we then were I " Towards night we made sail, and closed upon the junk, and at daylight it fell a stark calm, and we went at our prize like sharks. All our fighting men put on their war dresses ; the Illanoons danced their war dance, and all our gongs sounded, as we opened out to attack her on dififerent sides. " But those Amoy men are pigs ! They burnt joss- paper, sounded their gongs, and received us with such showers of stones, hot water, long pikes, and one or two well-directed shots, that we hauled oflf to try the effect of our guns ; sorry though we were to i m ATTACK A JUNK. 89 do it; for it was sure to bring down the Dutchmen upon us. Bang ! bang ! we fired at them, and they at us ; three hours did we persevere, and whenever we tried to board, the Chinese beat us back every time, for her side was as high and smooth as a wall, with galleries overhanging. We had several men killed and hurt ; a council was called ; a certain charm was performed by one of our holy men, a famous chief, and twenty of our best men devoted themselves to effecting a landing on the junk's deck, when our look-out prahus made the signal that the Dutchmen were coming ; and sure enough some Dutch gun-boats came sweeping round a headland. In a moment we were round and, pulling like demons for the shores of Biliton, the gun-boats in chase of us, and the Chinese howling with delight. The sea- breeze freshened, and brought up a schooner-rigged boat very fast : we had been at work twenty-four hours, and were heartily tired ; our slaves could work no longer, so we prepared for the Hollanders ; they were afraid to close upon us, and commenced firing at a distance. This was just what we wanted ; we had guns as well as they, and, by keeping up the fight until dark, we felt sure of escape. The Dutch- men, however, knew this too, and kept closing gra- dually upon us, and when they saw our prahus 90 PIRATES ENGAGE A DUTCH FLOTILLA. baling out water and blood, they knew we were suffering, and cheered like devils. We were despe- rate ; surrender to Dutchmen we never would : we closed together for mutual support, and determined at last, if all hope ceased of escape, to run our prahus ashore, burn them, and lie hid in the jungle until a future day. But a brave Datoo, with his shat- tered prahu, saved us ; he proposed to let the Dutch- men board her, creese all that did so, and then trust to Allah for his escape. " It was done immediately ; we all pulled a short distance away, and left the brave Datoo's prahu like a wreck abandoned. How the Dutchmen yelled, and fired into her ! The slaves and cowards jumped out of the prahu, but our braves kept quiet ; at last, as we expected, one gun-boat dashed alongside of their prize, and boarded her in a crowd : then was the time to see how the Malay man could fight ; the creese was worth twenty swords, and the Dutchmen went down like sheep. We fired to cover our coun- trymen, who, as soon as their work was done, jumped overboard, and swam to us; but the brave Datoo, with many more, died, as brave Malays should do, running a muck against a host of enemies. " The gun-boats were quite scared by this punish- ment, and we lost no time in getting as rapidly away FLIGHT OF JADEE'S COMPANIONS. 91 a3 possible ; but the accursed schooner, by keeping more in the offing, held the wind, and preserved her position, signalling all the while for the gun-boats to follow her. We did not want to fight any more ; it was evidently an unlucky day. On the opposite side of the channel to that we were on, the coral reefs and shoals would prevent the Hollanders following us: it was determined at all risks to get there in spite of the schooner. With the first of the land-wind in the evening, we set sail before it, and steered across for Bianca. The schooner placed herself in our way like a clever sailor, so as to turn us back ; but we were determined to push on, take her fire, and run all risks. " It was a sight to see us meeting one another ; but we were desperate : we had killed plenty of Dutchmen ; it was their turn now. I was in the second prahu, and well it was so; for when the head- most one got close to the schooner, the Dutchman fired all his guns into her, and knocked her at once into a wrecked condition. We gave one cheer, fired our guns, and then pushed on for our lives. Ah I sir, it was a dark night indeed for us. Three prahus in all were sunk, and the whole force dispersed. To add to our misfortunes, a strong gale sprang up. We were obliged to carry canvass; our prahu leaked from 92 THE PIRATES SAVED BY THE RAJAH. shot-holes ; the sea continually broke into her ; we dared not run into the coral reefs on such a night, and bore up for the Straits of Malacca. The wounded writhed and shrieked in their agony, and we had to pump, we fighting nien^ and bale like black fellows I By two in the morning, we were all worn out. I felt indifferent whether I was drowned or not, and many threw down their buckets, and sat down to die. The wind increased, and at last, as if to put us out of our misery, just such a squall as this came down upon us. I saw it was folly con- tending against our fate, and followed the general example. ' God is great ! ' we exclaimed ; but the Rajah of Jehore came and reproved us : ' Work until daylight,' he said, * and I will ensure your safety.' We pointed at the black storm which was approaching. *Is that what you fear?' he replied, and, going below, he produced just such a wooden spoon, and did what you have seen me do ; and I tell you, my captain, as I would if the ' Company Sahib ' stood before me, that the storm was nothing, and that we had a dead calm one hour afterwards, and were saved. God is great, and Mahomet is his Prophet ! — but there is no charm like the Jehore one for killing the wind ! " It did not take as long to tell as it does to write KILLING THE WIND ! 93 this odd tale ; and it would be impossible to try to give an idea of how my coxswain's feelings were carried away with the recital of his narrative, or how genuine and child-like the credulity of the old pirate. I wrote it down as a strange episode in Malay life, and possibly the prescription may get me a medal from the College of Physicians, even if it should be declared valueless by European navigators in general. 94 REFRESHING EFFECTS OF A SQUALL. CHAP. VIII. Refreshing effects of a Squall in the Tropics. — Scenery in the Malay Archipelago. — My Gun-boat " The Emerald " joins the Parlis Blockading Squadron. — The Malays try to Stockade us out of the River. — Haggi Loung comes on an Embassy. — Malayan Diplomacy. — Jadee's disregard for a Flag of Truce. — Jadee and the one-eyed Enemy. — A Spy* — The Chase by Starlight. — The submerged Jungle. — An Indian Night-Scene. — The Chase lost. — The Whip and Mangrove Snakes. Again we made sail and sped on our way. How nature revives in those equatorial climes, after the revivifying effect of such a squall as we had just experienced ! Animate and inanimate objects gain fresh life as it were from the action of the passing storm ; the very sea glittered in the sunlight with a brighter and a deeper blue, and the forest-clad sides of the surrounding mountains looked even more gorgeous than was their wont, as they shone in all the thousand shades of which green and gold are susceptible. Away to the northward stretched a labyrinth of islands of every size and shape — some SCENERY IN MALAYAN ARCHIPELAGO. 95 still wrapt in storm-clouds, others bathed in refulgent light, or softened by distance into '* summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea." In short, it realised at such a moment all one's brightest dreams of the East ; and it required but little imagi- nation to people it with bloody pirates and fleet- footed prahus, in warring with whom I amongst others was to win bright honour. At the base of a range of hills which bound the broad valley of Quedah on the north, the river Parlis discharges itself over a bar into the Indian Ocean. I hauled in for it, and soon had the satisfaction of shaking the gallant Barclay by the hand. The river at its mouth was divided, by a small island half a mile long, into two branches. This island, called '* Pulo Quetam," or Crab Island, by the natives, served for a dockyard, drying-ground, and place of recreation to our little force, and, to- gether with the fact of a large fleet of war-prahus being up the river, under the command of one of the most enterprising of pirates, gave to the blockade here a degree of interest which Quedah did not possess. Our force consisted of two gun-boats and a ship's cutter, carrying altogether four guns, and about seventy men. The Malays far outnumbered us, 96 MY GUN-BOAT JOINS IN and Datoo Mahomet Alee had sent a derisive mes- sage, to say he could and should go in or out of the river whenever it suited his convenience. The consequence was, we lived in momentary expectation of a tough action with a set of heroes who had already fought the boats of H. M. S. " Zebra" and *'Rose" on former occasions, and allowed them no decided advantage. During the day we used to lie together in the northern entrance of the river, but at night I was detached to blockade the southern branch, and pre- vent all ingress and egress by even the fishermen. Until the arrival of the " Emerald " this measure had been impracticable, and it gave great umbrage to the enemy. A pangleman, or petty chief, was therefore sent down from the town of Parlis, situated twelve miles up the stream, to try and induce us to desist. The ambassador was not wanting in skill. He said that Mahomet Alee sent all health to the officer in command of the English gun-boats, and begged to assure him that the presence of a vessel in the south branch of the river was an unnecessary measure, and an act of discourtesy w^hich he hoped would cease. He knew from experience that white men (Orang-putihs^ never wantonly frightened women or children, but that my vessel rowing round to her THE BLOCKADE OP PARLIS. 97 Station every night had only that effect ! The pan- gleman alluded here to the inhabitants of a small village, situated in the fork of the river, which I had to pass nightly. Lastly, Mahomet Ali begged to remind us that such a ridiculous force as we were, was merely tolerated, and that we should not do as we liked. Mr. Barclay, our senior officer, gave a concise answer. That he should do his duty as he pleased, and that the women and children would cease to fear when they found we did them no harm; and lastly, the sooner Datoo Mahomet Ali put his threat into execution the better pleased we should all be. We never understood what Mahomet All's real motive was ; but as if to show us that he did not care about the south channel being open or not, he took advantage of my absence one night, whilst chasing a prahu, to send a strong party of men down, who actually stockaded that branch entirely across, much to the astonishment of my brother officer, who found it completed in the morning. I was told of it on my return, and he gave me full permission to do what I pleased, to show our indifference to the authority or temper of ** Mahomet Ali." I accordingly went round, and finding wc could not ciisily otherwise remove the stakes, I lashed the u 08 ATTEMPT TO STOCKADE THE BIVER. gun-boat to them at dead low water, and as the tide rose she lifted them out as easily as feathers, and on the ebb-tide we sent them floating to sea. Again did the enemy watch for an opportunity, and again did I uproot their stockade ; the expenditure of labour being but slight on our side, whilst with them the skill, energy, and labour necessary to construct such a work, although merely formed of the stems of young trees from the neighbouring jungle, were very remarkable. Several messages of a very uncivil nature came to our commanding officer, to which equally un- courteous answers were returned. One day the other gun-boat, the '^ Diamond," and the cutter had been obliged to weigh and proceed to sea in chase of prahus, leaving my vessel alone in the river. About noon two long row-^boats, called sampans, with ten or twelve persons in each, swept suddenly round the point ahead, and made direct for us. Jadee saw them immediately, and his eyes glistened at the prospect of their intentions being warlike. Whatever their original purpose was, they were peaceable enough when they saw us all under arms ; Jadee, however, as a precautionary measure, putting on his fighting jacket, a long sleeveless one of red cloth, sufficiently quilted to turn the edge of 99 a ''badi.*** The leading canoe was hailed at pistol- shot distance, and called upon to state her mission. We were informed that they came with a communi- cation from Datoo Mahomet Ali, the bearer being no less a personage than his second in command, a man called " Haggi Loung." The canoe in which the Haggi was seated, was per- mitted to come alongside, and she had evidently a picked crew, armed to the teeth ; and I had no doubt that my serang was right in saying that, had they found the gun-boat with half a crew on shore, as was usually the case about noon, the reverend Haggi and his comrades were to have essayed her capture. However, I received the gentleman with all the dignity a youth could muster, although I was some- what piqued at the supercilious smile which played on the face of Haggi Loung as he eyed the pocket edition of the white man before him. Loung was rather tall, with square shoulders and bony limbs, evincing undoubted capability for en- forcing those maxims of the Koran which his high forehead and intellectual countenance showed he possessed mental capacity for acquiring and incul- cating. * A "badi** is a small stabbing-knife, used in a close fight, or to administer a coup de grace to an enemy. H 2 100 MALAY DIPLOMACY. Seating ourselves in a circle, consisting of Haggi Loung and his secretary, with Jadee on one side of me and the interpreter on the other, we proceeded to business. The message — if ever one was sent, which I strongly question — when divested of Eastern orna- ment and circumlocution, amounted merely to an attempt to persuade me to believe that the blockade of the southern branch of the river was totally need- less, and that the best proof that it was so, consisted in the fact of their having stockaded it across them- selves ; and they begged I would not touch that stockade. I told him, "He had already received an an- swer from my superior officer upon these points; I had nothing to add ; and that Mahomet AH must remember that, as English officers merely acted from a sense of duty, and in obedience to orders, I hoped the next time he asked me a favour it would be one that I could grant." The Haggi wanted to discuss the point; but as the arguments passed for the most part through the medium of Jadee and the interpreter, I suppose they lost their point, for I kept my ground* Failing in this respect, he gradually turned the conversation to the prospect of the Siamese regaining the province of Quedah, and with much finesse led JADEE AND A FLAG OF TRUCE. 101 me into the error of believing that the Siamese army had been repulsed at all points. I now sent for boiled rice and fish, which I ordered to be set before the Haggi ; and Jadee proceeded, by my desire, to see that the Malays in the canoes had food supplied to them, though, from the expression of his face whilst so employed, I could plainly observe that he would have far preferred blowing them from the muzzle of the bow gun. Watching his opportunity, Jadee made a quiet sign that he wished to speak to me, and when I went to him, hurriedly said, " Now, sir, now is our opportunity ; capture this man ; send his canoes away to say so, and tell Mahomet Ali we are alone this afternoon, and that Numero Tega will fight him at once i " I pointed out to Jadee that the challenge might be very well, but that the capture of Loung was out of the question, as he had come to us in the sacred character of a messenger. Jadee could not understand it at all, and walked away muttering something in which I heard, "Mahomet Ali — pigs — and poltroons" generally mixed up. Haggi Loung was all smiles and civility, little thinking how hostile a proposition had juet been made against him, and shortly afterwards rose to depart ; an event I rather hastened, as it was impossible, with such inflammable materials as his crews and mine u 3 102 JADEE AND THE OI^E-EYED ENEMY. were composed of, to tell the moment a disturbance might take place. Jadee was rustling about like a game-cock ready for a row ; and I saw him, and a wild-looking Malay who steered one of the canoes, exchanging glances and curls of the lip which be- tokened anything but amity. Desiring Jadee to do something at the other side of the gun-boat, I wished Haggi Loung " Good-bye," and had just lost sight of them round the point when my serang came aft, all smiles and sunshine : to my queries he only smiled mysteriously, and replied I should soon know ; and as this evidently referred to something connected with our late visitors, I began to have my fears lest a pleasant divertissement, in the shape of a creese fight, had been arranged between him and the Orson from Parlis. Directly it fell dark, our consorts rejoined us ; and whilst all the vessels were lashed together, prior to taking up their night positions, one of the look-out men maintained that a long canoe had crossed the river above us, his quick eye having sighted her as she darted over the bright streak of light which gleamed between the gloomy shadows of either side. From one of our prizes we had captured a long fairy-like canoe, scooped out of the trunk of a tree : with six paddles she would fly through the water. Barclay A SPY. — THE CHASE BY STARLIGHT. 103 and I jumped into her at once, and, with a mixed crew of Malays and Englishmen, gave chase to the stranger. It was top of high water, or nearly so ; the tide as usual had overflowed all the neighbouring land (except the high patch of ground on which stood the little village previously referred to), and the dark stems of the mangrove and other trees, which seemed to flourish in an amphibious life, stretched away on either hand from tlie river in a black and endless labyrinth. A few deep and silent strokes brought us up almost noiselessly to the spot where the stranger had been seen to cross, although we were in the shadow on the opposite side of the river ; the paddles were laid across our boat, and the steersman alone kept her going gently up the stream. We were all eyes; now looking in among the dark waters, out of which rose the black and solemn trunks of the trees ; now eagerly gazing across to the opposite side of the river. Almost instinctively, we all pointed, with- out speaking a word, to a canoe twice as long as our own, which had evidently seen us, and was apparently waiting to see whether we were in search of her, or for us to show our intentions. We did not keep them long in suspense. B 4 104 THE SUBMERGED JUNGLE. " Give way," exclaimed Barclay, " and get above them I" In a moment our paddles struck the water, and our craft seemed to lift and jump at every stroke. The other canoe was not idle; for a few minutes it was doubtful which would win, and we could hear the men cheering one another on to exertion. " A scout ! a scout ! " exclaimed our Ma- lays ; *' the prahus will be down when the ebb-tide makes!" I told Barclay this. "I hope to God they will I " he exclaimed ; " we shall be ready for them ! " We now began to head the canoe : as soon as we saw we could do that, Barclay got his musket ready, and gave orders, directly he fired, for the helmsman to steer diagonally across the stream, so as to get on the same side as the craft we were in chase of. Taking a deliberate aim at the scout canoe he fired, and we with a shout struck across for her, hoping either to lay her alongside or drive her back upon the gun-boats ; but we had counted without our host, and the Malays of our party gave a yell of disgust as the enemy disappeared as it were into the jungle. We were soon on her heels^ and guided by the sound she made in forcing through the mangrove swamp, held our course: now aground upon tlie straddling legs of a mangrove tree; then pushing AN INDIAN NIGHT-SCENE. 105 through a thicket, out of which the affrighted birds flew shrieking ; then listening to try and distinguisli the sound of the flying canoe from all the shrill whistles, chirrups, and drumming noises, which render an Indian jungle far more lively by night than by day. Once or twice we thought we were fast catch- ing her, when suddenly our canoe passed from the mangrove swamp into an open forest of trees, which rose in all their solemn majesty from the dark waters. We saw our chance of success was now hopeless, for the scout canoe had fifty avenues by which to baffle us, and terra firma was, we knew, not far distant. It was a strange and beautiful scene. The water was as smooth as burnished steel, and reflected, wherever the trees left an opening, the thousand stars which strewed the sky : the tall stems of the forest trees rose from this glittering surface, and waved their sable plumes over our heads ; whilst the fire-fly, or some equally luminous insect, occasionally lit up first one tree and then another, as if sparks of liquid gold were being emitted from the rustling leaves. Silently we ^ay on our oars, or rather i)ad- dles; not a sound of the flying canoe could be heard : it was evident that the scout had escaped, and it only remained for us to make the best of 106 THE WHIP AND MANGROVE SNAKES. our way back again — a task which, in the ab- sence of all excitement, we found an extremely- tough one ; indeed, we grounded so often on the roots of the mangrove trees, that I proposed to wade through the mud and water, dragging the canoe after us. To this, however, the Malays would in nowise listen, and spoke so earnestly of the danger arising from a particular kind of snake, that we thought it better to listen to them — a piece of wisdom upon our part which gave rise to some con- gratulations on the morrow, when, in company with our advisers, we visited the mangrove swamp, and found in the fork of many of the trees a perfect nest of snakes. These, the Malays assured us, were very venomous, yet the reptiles were not above a foot or eighteen inches long, and about the girth of a man's little finger ; the greatest peculiarity being strong black markings about the body, which gave them an appearance somewhat in keeping with their bad reputation. Having, like most youths, read every book which I could get hold of, descriptive of wild beast, bird, and reptile, I, from my reading, had been led to believe that the whip-snake was everywhere most dangerous ; and I must say — when I observed a number of these long green-coloured creatures hanging like tendrils from the trees we THE WHIP AND MANGROVE SNAKES. 107 had in the darkness of the previous night been pushing our way through — I felt thankful for our escape. Touching one of the Malays who were with me, I pointed at them and said, " They are very bad." He smiled, and assured me they were not by any means so dangerous as those in tho forks of the trees in the mangrove swamps. 108 MAHOMET ALEE DOES NOT ATTACK. CHAP. IX. Mahomet Alee does not attack. — Start Crane shooting. — Day- break in Malay ia.— The Adjutant. — The " old Soldier ! "— The "old Soldier" fishing. — The " old Soldier" weathers a young Sailor. — Xo Cranes.— Plenty of Monkeys. — Monkeys in a Passion.— A sudden Chase of a Prahu.— Birds'-Nests and Pulo Bras Manna. — The edible-nest -building Swallow, Ili- rundo esculenia; Food; Habits. — Decide upon seeing the Nests collected. — Difficulties in the way of doing so — Jam- boo enjoying Company's pay. — Jamboo remonstrates. — A scramble for Birds'-Nests. — The Malays descend the Face of the Cliff. — The Home of the edible-nest-building Swallow. — The Birds'-Nest Trade. — The Nests composed of Ge- latin. The chase by night was followed by no general attack from the piratical fleet, and we surmised that the scouts, having found us on the *' qui vive,^^ had reported unfavourably of the probability of sur- prising the blockading squadron, — a surmise which the inhabitants of the neighbouring village after- wards confirmed. One middle watch in January, the look-out man awoke me, and told me my sampan and gun were reudy as I had desired. START CRANE-SHOOTING. 109 I could hardly conceive it possible to feel so cold and cheerless at the short distance of 200 miles from the equator as I then did. The mist of the early night had fallen in the shape of dew, wetting the decks and awnings as if it had been raining heavily ; and a light breeze blowing down from the Patani Hills struck a chill into my bones, already stiflfened by sleeping upon a hard and damp deck. Day had as yet hardly dawned, but I was anxious to try and get a shot at some flocks of elegant white cranes of a small size which nightly roosted on a .clump of trees about a mile distant from my anchorage ; and my only chance of being able to get sufficiently near, was to be there before they flew off* to their feeding-grounds. Half lamenting I had troubled myself with any such sporting mania, yet unwilling to let the Malay see what a lazy individual his captain was, I threw myself into the canoe, grasped the paddle, and by a stroke or two awoke to the interest of the spot before me, and the beau- ties of a morning in Malaya. The day dawn had already chased the stars away from one half the bright heaven overhead ; the insect world, so noisy from set of sun on the previous day, had ceased their shrill note, whilst the gloomy forest shook off* its sombre hue, and, dripping with dew. 110 THE ADJUTANT. glistened in many a varied tint, as the morning beams played upon it, or streamed down through the mountain gorges beyond. The Indian Sea laughed with a thousand rippling smiles, and the distant isles seemed floating on clouds of purple and gold as the night mists rose from their level sea^-boards, and encircled the base of their picturesque peaks. One could have cheered with joy and heartfelt healthful appreciation of the glorious East ; but no ! not far beyond me> on a projecting shoal, stands the tall adjutant, who had as yet baffled all our attempts to shoot him — a very king of fishing-birds. He formerly used to fish in the Parlis river, but our seamen in the cutter, who would brook no competi- tors in their poaching pursuits, fired and fired at the poor adjutant without hitting it, until, by way of re-* venge, they nicknamed it the "old soldier" — a term which in their estimation comprised all that was wary, and difficult to catch at a disadvantage. " The old soldier " loomed like a giant in the grey mist flowing from the forest, and he evidently saw me as soon as I did him; but knowing from experience the distance to which his enemies might be allowed to approach with safety, he strutted out a pace or two into deeper mud or water and pursued his fishing. I, however, did not intend to fire until I reached the THE "OLD soldier" FISHING. Ill cranes, which I could see clustering in some trees ahead ; and the adjutant, as if fathoming my inten- tions, or, what is more likely, taking me for a Malay (who never disturbed him), let me pass within mo- derate shot distance. I was interested in seeing how he captured his prey, and watched him narrowly. The bird stood like a statue, in a foot of water and mud, the long legs admirably supporting the comparatively small body, a long neck, and such a bill I It looked as if it could cut a man in two and swallow him. Pre- sently, from a perfect state of quietude, the adjutant was all animation, the head moving rapidly about as if watching its unconscious prey ; a rapid stride or two into a deep gully of water, a dire with the prodigious beak, and then the adjutant held in the air what looked like a moderate-sized conger-eel. Poor fish ! it made a noble fight ; but what chance had it against an " old soldier " who stood ten feet without stockings, and rejoiced in a bill as big as one's thigh and some four feet long? The last I saw of the poor conger-eel was a lively kick in the air, as "the soldier " lifted his beak and shook his breakfast down. My resolution to shoot cranes alone was not proof against the temptation. I saw before me, not only 112 "OLD soldier" F. young SAILOR. a thumping bird, but — alas ! for the frailty of a mid- shipman's appetite! — a jolly goo*d breakfast in the contents of his maw. A more convincing proof of my not being a thorough-bred sportsman could not be adduced, than my allowing such base feelings to actuate me. I stealthily laid my paddle into the boat, capped my fowling-piece before lifting it from between my feet ; but the " old soldier " had his eye upon me, and directly I stopped paddling, com- menced to walk away from his old position. By the time I took aim, a long range intervened between us, and, of course, all I did was to ruffle his feathers, and send the " old soldier" off, as usual, at "the double," — thus losing adjutant and fish, as well as the cranes, which took flight when the echoes of the forest carried the report to them. My firing had, however, disturbed more than cranes ; for a screeching and chattering noise in the jungle on my right made me load again rapidly, and paddle with all my strength for a nullah or water- course, from which these sounds were, I felt certain, coming. On obtaining a view of it, I saw at once what was the matter — a school of black monkeys had been alarmed ; and when I turned my canoe so as to go up the narrow creek of water which led into the forest, the fighting monkeys of the little MONKEYS IN A PASSION. 113 party seemed determined to frighten me out of it. I never saw anything so comical: the ladies and babies retired, whilst about a dozen large monkeys, perfectly black except their faces — which were grey or white, giving them the appearance of so many old men — sprang along the branches, that reached across over my head. They worked themselves up into a perfect fury, shrieking, leaping, and grinning with rage. Once or twice they swung so close over my head, that I expected they were going to touch rae ; but, amused beyond measure, I was determined not to fire at the poor creatures. Whether, as in the case of the "old soldier," my resolution was proof against all temptation, I had not time to prove ; for the sullen boom of a gun from Parlis river rolled along the forest ; and being the signal for an enemy in sight to seaward, I left the monkeys for a future day, and hurried back to my vessel, just reaching her in time to start in chase of a prahu that had been seen running for an island called Pulo Bras Manna. The breeze sprang up fresh and fair, and my little vessel soon rattled over the eight miles of distance which intervened, but not before the prahu had disappeared behind the island. Skirting the rocky shores of Pulo Bras Manna, we discovered the prahu at anchor in a pretty little sandy bay, the only I 114 EDIBLE BIRDS'-NESTS. one in the Island. The nicodar, or master of the prahu, hailed to say he was a friend; and, on my getting alongside of him, showed proofs of her being a peaceful trader, employed in collecting the edible birds'-nests constructed by the " Hirundo esculenta " of naturalists, with which all these islands abound. I was right glad to have an opportunity of gleaning any information about an article of commerce so novel and strange to all Europeans. The nicodar informed me that all the adjacent islands yielded birds'-nests for the Chinese market in a greater or less degree, the more rocky and precipitous islands yielding the larger quantity. The right of taking them was for the time vested in Tonkoo Maho- met Said of Quedah, on behalf of his sovereign; but he had farmed them out for a year to some Penang merchant, who paid a certain rent, and screwed as much more as he could out of the birds'- nests. The nicodar of the prahu had entered into a speculation by which he promised a certain number of nests to the merchant, provided he might have the surplus — an engagement which he assured me would this year be a very losing one. My attention had often been previously called to the little birds which construct these curious nests. They might be constantly seen skimming about the EDIBLE-NEST-BUILDING SWALLOW. 115 surface of the sea in the neighbourhood of the Ma- layan Islands. In form and feather they looked like a connecting link between the common swallow and the smallest of the petrel tribe — the Mother Carey's chicken — ever restless, ever in motion. Sometimes they appeared to skim the water as if taking up some substance with the bill from the surface ; at other times darting, turning, and twisting in the air, as if after fleet-winged insects. Yet neither in the air nor on the water could the keenest eye amongst us detect anything upon which they really fed. How- ever, the Malays asserted that they fed upon insects and upon minute creatures floating upon the surface of the sea; and that, by some arrangement of the digestive organs, the bird, from its bill, produced the glutinous and clear-looking substance of which its nest was constructed — an opinion in some manner substantiated by the appearance of the nests, which in structure resembled long filaments of very fine vermicelli, coiled one part over the other, without much regularity, and glued together by transverse rows of the same material. In form, the edible nests resemble the bowl of a large gravy-spoon split in half longitudinally, and are, in all respects, much smaller than the common swallow's nest. The bird fixes the straight edgo I 2 116 HABITS OF THE against the rocks, generally preferring some dark and shady crevice in a cliff, or a cave formed by the wash of the waves of the sea. I am rather inclined to believe that the swallow which constructs these edible nests is a night bird, and that the day is by no means its usual time for feeding ; indeed, I hardly ever remember observing them, except early in the morning, late in the evening, or in the deep shadow afforded by some tall and overhanging cliff, and they appeared to avoid sunlight or the broad glare of day. Although the nicodar of the prahu was necessarily very civil, he did not willingly assent to my proposal to accompany his men on their excursion to collect nests; but Jadee recommended me to wait quietly until we saw his party starting, and then to proceed and join them, nolens volens ; though he warned me that curiosity would hardly induce me to undergo, a second time, the risk the nest-gatherers went through for large profits. In a couple of hours' time we saw a party land from the prahu and join some half-dozen Malays who lived in a hut on the beach. Awakening my interpreter, Jamboo, who being upon Company's pay gave way to sleeping and rice-eating with a degree of perseverance which astonished me, I hastened JAMBOO REMONSTRATES. 117 uway with him, and before his eyes were well open we were scrambling through brake and jungle, at a headlong pace, the Malays having evidently deter- mined to shake us off by hard walking. The conse- quence was that poor Jamboo, with a howl, went rolling over the rocks, and tried hard to detain me. I saw only one remedy, and started off to catch the nearest party of nest-gatherers, and keep them until my worthy interpreter was able to join. I soon suc- ceeded in showing them that a young sailor's legs were as good as theirs ; and having a pistol with me, there was no difficulty in making two Malays sit down until Jamboo, in reply to my repeated hail, came up, muttering at the hardships his duty as a midshipman's interpreter was ever leading him into. Laughingly consoling him by the strong doubts I entertained of his ever again seeing his dear Penang, I added : " Now, then, Jamboo, tell these fellows tv€ are going birds'-nesting with them." " By Gad, ear ! you kill me, ear I Me poor man, sari What my mother do?" remonstrated poor Jamboo. " Never mind about the old lady," I replied ; " do what I tell you, and come along. — Why, Jamboo, you, the son of an Englishman, and not ashamed to talk in that strain!" I continued; "fancy if your father I S 118 A SCRAMBLE FOR BIRDS'-NESTS. could only see you, and hear that his son was afraid of going birds'-nesting ! " " Ah, sar !" replied Jamboo, " you only make play now. My father very brave man — so my mother say ; but I never see him ; and my mother never teach me to go down dark holes with a little bit of rope, and swing about in the air, all the same as one bird." I had at last to promise Jamboo that he should not have to " swing about in the air, all the same as one bird," and thereupon he informed the two Malays they were to go on in the execution of their voca- tion, but that we would keep with them. The Malays had on little if any clothing: each man carried a sharp bill hook, with which to cut his way through the underwood, with an iron spike of considerable length; and a torch made of bark and the resins exuded from forest trees. A small bag for containing the nests, and a coil of roughly- made rope strong enough to support their weight, together with a flint and steel, completed the equip- ment. We climbed a long though steep ascent which led to some precipitous cliffs on the opposite side of the little island. Our way led through a pretty close jungle, with much underwood overgrowing rocks. THE MALAYS DESCEND THE CLIFFS. 119 fissures, and boulders, in all directions : a more break-neck walk I had never before undertaken ; and as we went straight across country, over and through everything, Jamboo's clothes, as well as mine, were torn into shreds and decorated every thorn, or ragged etump ; to add to the excitement, the Malays kept a sharp eye about them in the hollows or where the vegetation was very dank, and muttered the ominous word "Oular!'* snake, as a warning to us. How- ever, I felt that it was out of the question to depend upon one's keenness of vision for security against such reptiles, when the creepers and grass were up to my waist, and sought a little consolation in my friend the Haggi's creed of predestination. At last we reached the edge of the cliff, which fitood about 200 feet above the sea, having many deep fissures in its face and several caves at its base. After sitting down to rest for a short time, the Malays went to work. Each man drove his spike very carefully in the ground, secured his rope to it, slung his bag and torch across his back, and, after repeating a Mahometan Patcr-noster, lowered him- self down the cliff by means of his rope, and pro- ceeded to search the caves and crannies for birds'- ncsts. Accustomed though I was, as a sailor, to sec great activity and much risk run, still it fell fur short, X 4 120 EDIBLE-NEST-BUILDING SWALLOW. in my estimation, of that undergone by these Malays : in some places they had to vibrate in the air like a pendulum, to gather sufficient momentum to swing in under some overhanging portion of the cliff, the wretched rope by which the man was suspended a hundred feet above the chafing sea and rocks below, cutting against the sharp edge of the cliff, to use a nautical simile, " like, a rope-yarn over a nail." Here and there the men picked up a nest or two, but nt last one of them who had lowered himself down to within ten or twelve feet of the water, shouted out that he had discovered a cave thickly tenanted with the birds, of which we had ocular demonstration by the numbers that flew out when they heard his voice. Leaving Jamboo to help me, should 1 fail in climb- ing up as the Malays did, I slid down to the newly- discovered cave of nests. The nest-seekers smiled at my curiosity, and pointed into a cave with a narrow entrance, out of which a smell was issuing which partook neither of frankincense nor myrrh, ar 1 of an inky darkness which the keenest eye. could not pene- trate. There was a narrow ledge ot rock which led into the cave, and on this we advanced until out of the wind and daylight : the Malay now struck a light and lit his torch, and his doing so was the signal for the most infernal din mortal ears were ever pained THE BIBDS*-NEST TRADE. 121 with ; the tiny chirp of the swallows being taken up and multiplied a thousandfold by the beautiful echoes of the cave, whilst huge bats flitted round us, and threatened not only to put our light out, but to knock us off the narrow ledge on which we stood, by a rap on the head, into the black cleft below, which seemed to descend to the very foundations of the cliffs. Holding both hands to my ears, I asked the Malay to show me the nests: he waved his torch about, and pointed some of them out in spots overhead, where it appeared as if only a gnome could have gathered them; the poor Malay, however, explained to me that he must go up and cut some saplings and branches to form a ladder by which he could reach those apparently inaccessible nests, though not, I could well see, without considerable risk. Satisfied with what I had seen, I returned to the top of the cliiF aided materially by the Malay, who, like a goat, found footing where gulls could only have roostedi and, joining Jamboo, we returned alone through the forest to my little craft. Then and afterwards I gleaned, from different sources, that the trade in birds'-nests employed a very large amount of capital and men. The loss of life arising from accidents and exposure was ex- traordinarily large; but the high prices obtained 122 THE NESTS COMPOSED OF GELATIN. insured no lack of labour. One person largely en- gaged in the trade assured me that, on an average, two out of five men employed in birds'-nesting met with a violent death; and, under those circum- stances, it is not to be wondered at that a catty (or pound and a quarter English) of the best nests cost generally forty dollars, or about nine pounds sterling ! The value of the nests depends upon their trans- lucent whiteness and freedom from feathers or dirt ; the first quality being those which evidently have not been lined, or used, by the unfortunate little swallows. Such nests are nothing but a morsel of pure gelatin ; and having often eaten them in their native state, I can vouch for their perfect tasteless- ness; indeed, upon one occasion, after being twenty- four hours without food, I enjoyed birds'-nests boiled down in cocoa-nut milk. The Chinese employ them largely, as well as beche de mer, shark-fins, and other gelatinous substances, in thickening their soups and rich ragouts. PATOO MAHOMET ALEE's THREAT, 123 CHAP. X. Return to Parlis. — Datoo Mahomet Alee's sanguinary Threat. — Jadee has, we find, sent an abusive Message. — Jadee reproved. — Jadee's feelings are hurt. — Character of my Native Crew. — A Page about Native Prejudices. — One of the Malays mutinous. — Cure for Native Prejudices. — Malayan Jungle-Scenery by Daylight. — Black Monkeys.—* A Monkey Parody upon Human Life. — English Seamen and the Monkeys. — Scarcity of Fresh Water. — The Village of Tamelan. — A Malay Chieftainess. — Watering. — Snakes disagreeably numerous. — Stories of large Snakes. From Pulo Bras Manna and birds'-nests we re- turned again to Parlis, just saving daylight enough to find our way over the bar and its shallows. On reporting myself to the senior oflficer, I was not a little astonished to learn that, in consequence of the wanton insult received from me and my gun-boat, Da- too Mahomet Alee had sent down an uncivil message, declaring the " Numero Tegas " hors de hi, and had sworn by his beard, that so surely as he caught me, or any of my crew, from the valiant Jadee to the toiling Campar, no mercy would be shown. Quite at a loss to understand the origin of so sanguinary a 124 JADEE SENDS AN ABUSIVE MESSAGE. threat — for I and Haggi Loung had parted the best of friends — I guessed that Jadee had been at some nefarious tricks. At first he pretended to suppose that the wrath of the pirate arose from my destruc- tion of his stockades ; but this I felt sure was not the sole offence, and at last he acknowledged that the Polyphemus who steered the canoe had jeered at him, and insinuated that it was unbecoming for Malay men to be commanded by a white boy, al- luding to myself. To which Jadee had replied by stating, it was his opinion that the mother of not only the one-eyed gentleman, but those of the gentry up the river in general, were no better than they should be, — that their fathers were dogs, and their chiefs pigs ! and the sooner they all came down to try the strength of the Company's powder, the better pleased he should be. I saw at once what had excited Datoo Mahomet Alee's ire, and that he no doubt identified me with Jadee. All my efforts to point out to my worthy coxswain the impropriety of his conduct failed: he was satisfied with having brought about a state of feeling which added mate- rially to the excitement of himself and crew; and although, whilst I was speaking to him, he seemed as repentant as possible, I saw in a minute afterwards he had forgotten my admonition, and would be a Malay JADEE REPROVED. — HIS FEELINGS HURT. 125 in spite of me. With any other than an Asiatic, such abuse and challenges would have partaken of the cha- racter of mere bravado ; but it was not so in Jadee's case ; and I had to be careful not to let him think I fancied it was so : for on one occasion, when he asked me what the Rajah Laut (Captain Warren) would think of it, I said I feared he would be very angry, and would rather doubt his courage than otherwise. Jadee, I saw, was sadly hurt at this, sulked for a day or two, and when I quietly got him into conver- sation, he said if Captain Warren should really express such an opinion, he had but one course, and that at any rate would prove he did not fear Mahomet Alee and all his crew put together. I knew what he meant — to run a muck amongst the pirates, a des- perate resource of every Malay when he fancies him- self irredeemably injured in character, or when ren- dered reckless by misery. Armed with his creese, one man will, in such a mood, throw himself upon any number of foes or friends, and stab right and left until himself shot down or creesed as a mad dog would be. With a little kindness, and a gentle introduction to my small store of grog, of which Jadee had not a Mahometan horror, I gradually brought him round to a better frame of mind ; indeed, by the end of the second month, I perfectly understood the cha- 126 CHARACTER OF MY NATIVE CREW. racter and disposition of all my crew. Secure in the feellnoj of awe for a white master which the native of India and Malayia cannot shake off, I was enabled to treat them far more familiarly than I could have done English seamen, without subverting the disci- pline of a man-of-war. I found them all obedient to a degree, so far as I was personally concerned ; but there were sometimes irregularities arising from Ja- dee's' Imperious treatment of them, or from the feel- ing of utter contempt in which they (the seamen) held my interpreter, the worthy Jamboo — a feeling arising purely, I fancy, from his being an unfortunate half-caste, a man of no nation nor blood. Whenever these cases did occur, 1 punished the Malays exactly as we were in the habit of doing Englishmen ; and although they sometimes stared at the novelty, the system answered admirably, notwith- standing that the native gentleman in the "Diamond" gun-boat assured me it must end in mutiny and danger to my person. Like all Asiatics, the Malay, if he finds you will listen to what are termed national prejudices, will produce an endless store of them, to avoid doing anything but what happens to please him. He sees a Sepoy soldier encouraged in all sorts of prejudices ; he sees a fellow who would quiver under your very look, were you alone with A PAGE ABOUT NATIVE PREJUDICES. 127 him in an open field, allowed to be grossly abusive and insolent to an English officer, if the latter should by accident touch his water-jar, or cross the magic circle drawn round his cooking-place, under the plea that his Brahmin or Mahometan prejudices, forsooth, liave been infringed upon; and the Malay, very naturally, would like to have some recognised pre- judices likewise. The one they wished to establish in our little squadron was the right of treating the wretched half-caste interpreter with contumely. I determined to dispute the prejudice; and although the affair occurred later in the blockade than the period I am now referring to, still I shall relate it now, as illus- trative of one of the many misapprehensions people labour under with respect to Malays. A prahu had escaped me one night, owing to the want of vigilance in the look-out men, and I, in consequence, made ar- rangements for Jadee, the interpreter, and myself, to< take the watch in turn, besides stationing a look-out man as usual. One night, after Jamboo had re- lieved me at twelve o'clock, I lay upon deck, but could not sleep, fancying I heard some unusual noises in our neighbourhood. Jamboo went forward in a quarter of an hour's time, and found the look- out man sound asleep. On rousing him, the fellow 128 ONE OF THE MALAYS MUTIKOUS. — a young, smart, but excessively saucy Malay — in- stead of thanking him, called him an abusive name. I desired Jamboo to give him an extra hour as sentry. Shortly afterwards, the Malay was again off his post, and again 'abusive. I got up, and spoke to nim, assured him of a severe punishment if he per- sisted in such conduct and language ; but it was of no avail, and, about two o'clock, 2, fracas took place, in which I heard the Malay apply the foulest epithet in his language to the interpreter ; and he persisted in repeating it when I ordered him to be silent ; in short, he became so violent and threatening, I had to iron and lash him down. I saw that there would be an end to my authority, if the fellow was not punished by a severe flogging ; and I sought Mr. B 's authority for carrying it into execution. He advised me to see the native officer, who commanded the senior gun-boat, in the first place, but fully sanctioned a severe punishment. Mr. S was very averse to any such thing, and wanted to stop the prisoner's rice or his pay. I was obstinate, however, and carried my point, al- though he warned me of all sorts of fatal conse- quences likely to ensue. Next day, with all due formalities, I carried the law into execution, lashing the culprit to the bow CURE FOR NATIVE PREJUDICES. 129 gun. He could hardly believe his senses ; and when the first lash was laid on, shouted for a rescue, and appealed to his countrymen not to look on and see him beaten like a dog : he altered his tone, nevertheless, when he found no rescue likely to come, and vowed never to disobey me again — a promise he afterwards faithfully kept ; and from that time I had no more trouble in " No. 3." with that national prejudice, at any rate, and slept just as soundly, and placed just as much faith in my swarthy crew, as ever I had done, without having any cause to rue it, the culprit eventually becoming one of my right-hand men. I had not forgotten the fact that monkeys abounded in our neighbourhood; and although both my bro- ther-midshipman and myself perpetrated all sorts of atrocities at first in shooting the poor creatures, we soon desisted, and satisfied ourselves with wasting powder and shot on less interesting creatures. Mon- key Creek, as we termed the place which they most frequented, was our usual afternoon lounge ; and after our light and necessarily wholesome dinner (consisting of Her Majesty's rations adorned with a little rice, and occasionally a plate of fish), Bar- clay and I did not, of course, feel a siesta by any means necessary, but jumping into the sampan, we K 130 INDIAN JUNGLE-SCENERY. would paddle gently up Monkey Creek, to enjoy the cool shade of the forest and amuse ourselves. Pass- ing clear of the belt of mangrove, v^e soon floated amongst the luxuriant vegetation of an Indian jungle ; the underwood here and there giving place to small patches of grass or weed. Large alligators which had been ashore on either bank launched them- selves slowly into the creek, or turned round and kept a steady watch with their cruel-looking yellow eyes. Bright-coloured iguanas and strange-shaped lizards shuffled along the banks, or lay on the branches of trees, puffing themselves up so as to look like nothing earthly; the shrill call of the pea-hen and the eternal chattering of monkeys gave life and ani- mation to a scene which did not lack interest or beauty. Pushing our canoe in amongst the over- hanging wild vines and creepers so as to hide her, we sat quietly smoking our cigars to await the curiosity of the monkeys : it was not long before they commenced their gambols or attempts to frighten us. A string of black ones, whose glossy coats would have vied in beauty with that of a black bear, came breaking through the trees with frantic cries, and threw themselves across the creek, and back again, with amazing energy ; then a hoarse sound made us turn suddenly, with a flashing suspicion of Malay A MONKEY PARODY UPON HUMAN LIFE. 131 treachery, to meet the gaze of a face almost human, with a long grey beard, which was earnestly watch- ing us through the foHage of a withered tree ; bring a gun to the shoulder, and the old man's head would be seen to leap away upon the disproportionate body of some ape. But nothing could equal in ludicrous interest a family monkey-scene taking place in some clear spot at the base of a tree. There a respectable papa might be seen seated against the roots, stretch- ing out his legs, enjoying the luxury of a scratch, and overlooking with patriarchal pride, and no small degree of watchfulness, the gambols of his son or daughter; while with fond solicitude his better half, a graceful female monkey, was employed turning aside the tufts of grass, as if seeking nuts or berries for the little one ; then she would clutch the little rascal, and roll over with him, in all the joyousness of a young mother, and he, the tiny scamp, shrieked, pouted, and caressed her, like any master Johnny or dear Billy would have done. The whole scene was a burlesque upon human na- ture : unable to contain ourselves any longer, we burst into roars of laughter. The father leapt at once on a neighbouring branch, and shaking it with rage, whoo-whoo'dl at us through a very spiteful set of teeth ; the lady screamed, the baby squealed K 2 132 ENGLISH SEAMEN AND THE MONKEYS. and jumped to her breast, clasped its little arms round her neck, and its legs round her chest, and then with a bound she was oflP and away with her " tootsy pootsy;" papa following, and covering her retreat with venomous grins at us, whom he evidently con- sidered only a superior breed of apes. Such scenes we often witnessed; and, to the En- glishmen in the cutter, the monkeys afforded an endless source of mirth ; and the quaint comparisons they drew between some of these sylvans in the forests of Quedah, and sundry Daddies Brown, or Mothers Jones, at Portsmouth or Plymouth, though extremely laughable and witty, would, I fancy, have been thought far from flattering, had they been heard by the old people in question. The main difficulty experienced in maintaining a close blockade of a coast such as Quedah, arose from the want of fresh water with which to supply the daily wants of our men. On Crab Island, all the wells we dug yielded only salt water; the river was always brackish; and as the dry season advanced, the wells upon the islands to which we usually re- sorted began to fail us. We were despatched in quest of water, and, at the suggestion of one of the men, who knew this neighbourhood, proceeded to a place called Tamelan. THE VILLAGE OF TAMELAN. 133 This village was about twenty miles distant, and situated on a small river called the " Setoue," which discharges itself into a very picturesque but shallow bay, After some difficulty, we discovered the " Setou6," and proceeded up it a few miles, and alarmed tho inhabitants of Tamelan not a little by our sudden arrival. The village was prettily situated on a high bank, and consisted of about a hundred neatly-built mat houses, scattered through a grove of cocoa-nut trees, which extended for a mile in a line along the Setou^ river; either end of the cocoa-nut grove rested on a dense jungle, which swept, with a large semicircular curve, behind the village, leaving ample clearance for the rice-fields and wells of the inha- bitants. Tamelan, strangely enough for a country where women are not held in high repute, was under the rule of a petty chieftainess, called "Nicodar Devi;** her title of Nicodar arising from her pos- sessing the prahus which had carried these Malay settlers to the reconquered village. "We of course gave her brevet rank, and christened her Queen Devi ; and a perfect little queen she was. A messenger immediately waited upon me, offering all she had, and trusting we would not molest her people. I immediately visited the Malay queen, and K 3 134 A MALAY CHIEFTIANESS. soon set her mind at rest by stating that we merely wanted water. She sent men to deepen the wells ready for the morrow, and, in short, did all that was possible to assist me. Nothing could exceed the respect and deference paid to this lady by her clan ; and we soon learnt to appreciate the kind and hos- pitable chieftainess — the first Indian woman I had as yet seen treated otherwise than as a drudge or a toy. She was not more than five-and -thirty, and still very good looking ; her manner was extremely lady- like and authoritative, and I took good care she should be treated with the utmost respect by all my people. The inhabitants of Tamelan and Numero Tega soon became great friends, and they willingly sold us all they could spare of fruit or fowl. While my crew filled the water-casks and embarked them, I generally employed myself butchering doves, wild pigeons, and orange-coloured orioles, which fed in large numbers in the open grounds or amongst the houses. There was %n\j one serious drawback to sporting such as mine, and that consisted in the great number of snakes which were to be found in the cleared grounds, especially in the neighbourhood of the many holes dug as wells by the Malays. I fancy the great heats an SNAKES. 135 long droughts had caused these reptiles to congre- gate where water was only to be found. The Malays killed them in numbers ; I counted on one occasion no less than eight of those reptiles lying together, all crushed in the head, and although not large in girth, they varied in length from five to seven feet. The natives of Tamelan declared most of them to be of the boa-constrictor species, not dangerous in their bite, but, when large, capable of killing a man or a strong deer by enveloping him in their folds : they said it was their poultry which principally suf- fered, but spoke of monsters in the deep forests, which might, if they came out, clear off the whole village — a pleasant feat for which Jadee, with a wag of his sagacious head, assured me that an " Oular Bessar," or big snake, was quite competent. It was strange but interesting to find amongst all Malays a strong belief in the extraordinary size to which the boa-constrictors or Pythons would grow : they all maintained, that in the secluded forests of Sumatra or Borneo, as well as on some of the smaller islands which were not inhabited, these snakes were occasionally found of forty or fifty feet in length ; and the vice of incredulity not being so strong in me then as it is now, I gave full credence to their K 4 136 STORIES OF LARGE SNAKES. tales, and consoled myself by remembering, when my faith was taxed by some tougher tale than usual, that my respected schoolmaster in the village of Chud- leigh had birched into me the fact, attested by even a Pliny, that a snake 120 feet long had disputed the passage of a Roman army on the banks of the Ba- grada, and killed numbers of legionaries before its skin could be secured to adorn the Capitol. JADEE DECLINES TO CLEAN THE COPPER. 137 CHAP. XL Jadee declines to clean the Copper. — A Malay Prejudice. — A Malay Mutiny. — The lost Sheep return. — The Dif- ficulty surmounted. — Malayan mechanical Skill. — An Impromptu Dock. — An Accident, and quick Repairs. — Launch, and resume Station. — Loss of my Canoe. — A Sampan constructed. — The Malayan Axe or Adze. — In- genious mode of applying native Materials in Construction of Boats. I HAD but one fracas in my gun-boat with my Malays, which, considering how young and inexpe- rienced I was as a commander, was less than might have been expected ; but as it assumed a rather serious character at one time, and showed the dispo- sition of my men, it may be worth relating. I had repeatedly pointed out to the coxswain, Jadee, that it was highly necessary, with a view to preserving the speed of the " Emerald," that the copper with which her bottom was covered should be kept as clean as possible, and where it was visible that it should shine like that of the " Hyacinth" — a vessel I naturally looked upon as my model in every nautical respect. 138 A MALAY PREJUDICE. Jadee, however, shirked the question, and the copper did not improve. I then ordered him to clean it on the morrow, employing the whole crew for the purpose. He began a long rigmarole story about Malaymen not liking to clean copper. I cut him short by saying white men did not much like doing it, either ; but it was our principle to clean every part of a vessel, and that at 9 o'clock in the forenoon on the morrow I expected to see that the work had been done. I dined with Barclay on board the cutter, and paddled myself back in the evening in my canoe, and although Jadee received me respectfully, I saw he was sulky : like more civilised first-lieutenants, he wanted to have his own way ; but I took no notice of that until next morning, when at the proper time I looked over the side and found the copper still very dirty. I need scarcely say I was very angry. Jadee caught a thorough good wigging, and said something about being afraid of ordering the men to do it. I immediately desired him to pipe " Hands clean copper ! " He did so. " Every man in a bowling knot and over the side ! " I next directed ; and then, seeing that they knew what I wanted done, and were at work, I said, in all the Malay I could muster, that the copper was to be cleaned A MALAY MUTINY. 139 daily, and pointed out the necessity of a clean bottom to catch fast prahus — a truism I could see they were perfectly aware of. All hands were soon splashing about cleaning the copper, and I fancied my difficulties at an end ; addressing Jadee, I told him that I had had to do at 9 o'clock what he should have commenced at 5 o'clock ; but that when the copper was clean, he could call his people out of the water, and meantime I was going to shoot in my canoe. He bowed silently, as if accepting my reproof, and I left the " Emerald." Firing at alli- gators and kingfishers, cranes, fishhawks, and wild pigeons, I did not return for three or four hours. As I was paddling past the cutter, my friend Barclay hailed me, to say I had better go and see what had happened, as Mr. Jadee and all the crew had just passed him, swimming and wading towards the senior gun-boat, the " Diamond," but he could not under- stand what they said. On reaching the " Emerald," I found no one on board of her but the cook and Jamboo. The latter was in a great fright, and vowed he did not know what would next happen, as all the crew had struck work after cleaning the copper, and, with Jadee at their head, had gone to the half-caste officer on board the " Diamond " to say so. Much amused at the no"^clty of a man-of- 140 THE LOST SHEEP RETURN. war's crew swimming away from her, I disguised my anger, and leaving word with Jamboo to say, when they returned, that they should not have gone out of the " Emerald " without my permission, I proceeded to explain to Barclay all that had occurred. He of course was very indignant at what with Englishmen would have been accounted mutiny. I begged him, however, not to be too severe, and to give Jadee and his men an opportunity of coming round quietly. Leaving me, therefore, on board the cutter, he went to the "Diamond," and there found Mr. S in a state of great excitement at what had taken place, and vowing some direful acci- dent would occur to me, if I did not study the native character a little more, instead of carrying out my orders in so strict a manner. Barclay, however, was an excellent clear-headed officer, and he knew I was generally considerate to the men ; he there- fore desired Mr. S to point out to Jadee that he had committed a sad breach of discipline, and that so surely as I reported him or others officially, for deserting their colours in the face of an enemy, he would be put in irons and sent off for Captain Warren to adjudicate upon ; and, as an only alter- native, the best thing they could do was to hurry THE DIFFICULTY SURMOUNTED. 141 back before I discovered that they were absent upon anything but amusement. Finding his little scheme fail, Jadee, like a wise man, yielded at once, swam ashore, crossed Pulo Quetam with his men, and went off to the gun- boat, resuming their usual avocations as if nothing had happened. About a couple of hours afterwards I returned on board, reprimanded him for going to collect shell- fish (a common employment during the day) with- out my sanction, and then, raising my voice, said, " Clean the copper again to-morrow morning, and give me the name of the first man who hesitates to doit!" Next morning Jadee reported all ready for quarters at nine o'clock ; and, with a roguish twinkle in his eye, asked if I was satisfied with the copper. I found it as bright as a new penny. Through the interpreter, I then quietly told the men that I had heard'some of them did not like cleaning the copper. I was sorry for it ; and, in order that they might es- cape from it, I should, the very first opportunity I had, take to Captain Warren all those that objected. The copper soon became so bright that I had to check their polishing ardour; and some days after- wards I intentionally ran upon a sandbank, and was 142 MALAYAN MECHANICAL SKILL. left high and dry by the ebbing tide, spending the whole of a tide cleaning every part of my gun-boat's bottom ; and found the crew work as if there never had been a difficulty upon the subject, Jadee setting the most zealous example. Henceforth the swim of Master Jadee became a joke ; and when I saw him looking sulky, I used generally to put all smooth again by saying, " Don't go swimming again, Jadee ; tell me what your reasons are for not liking what I have said, and I will give you a white man's reasons for desiring it should be done." The general skill of the Malays as handicraftsmen often struck me; and they were in nowise inferior to our English seamen in that invaluable quality of finding expedients in a time of need where none appeared to exist — a quality known among sailors under the general term nous. No difficulty ever arose, in the shape of carpentering, sail-making, or seamanship, that I did not find among my thirty men some one capable of meeting it, although none of them were professed artificers. My gun-boat's rudder had become slightly injured at the lower part, in crossing the bar during a squally dark night, and I determined to construct a tidal dock on the mud-bank which ran out from Pulo Quetam, and there remedy the defect. AN IMPROMPTU DOCK. 143 Directly I explained to Jadee what I wanted, he and a quarter-master said it could easily be done, and offered to construct it in such a way that, with a little trouble, we could launch into the river off the bank at any time of tide. I willingly assented, and next day all hands went to work. A spot was chosen at low water, and an excavation made, until good firm clay was reached ; the shovels and pickaxes being for the most part impromptu ones, made by the Malays out of the hard wood of the neighbour- ing jungle. Small trees were then cut in lengths the width of the dock, all the branches neatly lopped off, and the trunks were laid across, to form sleepers, secured firmly in their places by wooden pegs, driven down through them at either end into the clay; these sleepers were carried down in a line reaching well into the water when the tide was at its lowest ; and then two stringers of squared-out timber were laid down longitudinally on the aforesaid sleepers, 80 as to take the gun-boat's bilge, should she incline on one side or the other ; and they likewise extended from the dock down to dead low-water mark. The object of these stringers was to form a way upon which the gun-boat might be launched at any time into the river without waiting for the tide to rise and float her. In six tides everything was as 144 AN IMPROMPTU DOCK. neatly and cleverly finished as if I had had a body of English shipwrights. At high water we placed the " Emerald " over our dock, which was carefully marked out with poles; and as the water fell, although it was night time, the vessel was admirably squared and shored up: the whole strength of a British dockyard could have done no better. At low water we repaired the rudder; and, as every movable article had been shifted out of the gun-boat, to make her as light as possible, we ad- journed under the trees of Pulo Quetam, to eat our breakfast, and listen to the various tales of my men, of how the natives of the different parts of the archi- pelago dock their prahus or secrete them in their low and tide-flooded jungles. Suddenly the " Hyacinth " hove in sight from Parlis, with the signal up, "I wish to commu- nicate;" and Mr. Barclay sent me word that if I could get afloat at once I was to do so, as he was going off" to the ship. I had my doubts; for the " Emerald " was built very solidly, and of heavy teak; but Jadee smiled at my doubts, and although he acknowledged he had never played the prank before, still he felt confident of being able to launch her now. The plan was to ease her bilge down upon the AN ACCIDENT QUICKLY REPAIRED. 145 longitudinal sleeper on one side, knock away the stern shores, and then, aided by the natural inclina- tion of the bank, let her slip down to the water, so as to float with the first of the flood-tide instead of at high water. We secured the masts carefully, lashed the stoutest tackles and hawsers half-way up them for easing the vessel down, drove two stout Sampson-posts into the mud to secure the easing-down tackles, and when all was done, the shores on one side were cut away, and the strain allowed to come on the posts and tackles ; unhappily, one of the latter got foul, jerked, and carried away, and in a moment my poor craft fell on her side with a heavy surge, and, as ill-luck would have it, a piece of one of the shores, left accidentally, stove a plank very badly between two of the floor- timbers. There was no time to be lost ; the tide would soon make, and if my gun-boat filled, I knew I should, in midshipman's phraseology, " catch it.*' My men set at once to work. Jadec and two good hands started off to cut wood to repair the damage, whilst I superin' tended the wedging-up of the gun-boat, so as to take the strain off the injured part, and disengage the piece of wood on which the vessel was impaled. By the time we were ready, Jadec returned with a piece 146 LOSS OF MY CANOE. of green but hard wood, cut out of a felled tree, and this formed an admirable patch. In a short time, the " Emerald " was as sound as ever ; and two hours after the accident had happened, we resumed our station off Parlis. Another example of their skilful handling of the raw materials the jungle afforded, was in the con- struction of a sampan, or native boat. I had lost my little canoe; but on one of the islands called Pulo Pangang, or Long Island, good fortune threw in our way two long planks, of a wood named p on, about two inches thick, and maybe each was thirty feet long. Jadee exclaimed immediately, *' Ah ! Sutoo (the quarter-master) will build you a sampan now, Touhan." I gave him full permission to do so, won- dering withal how it was to be done, for we had not, I knew, a handful of nails in the gun^boat, and our stock of carpenter^s tools consisted of two native axes and an old hammer, which latter article, named a toukel-besee, was, by the bye, always in Jadee's hands, for he delighted in noise ; and, when Hot better employed, his pleasure consisted in hammering home, for the hundred and fortieth time, all the un- fortunate nails in my argosy. Next day, the quarter- master (Sutoo) and his two assistants landed on Pulo Quetam, with the said tools THE MALAYAN AXE OR ADZE. 147 and the quantity of plank I have mentioned : three weeks afterwards, a nice little boat, about twenty- two feet long, capable of containing ten persons, and pulling four ours, was launched ! The only expense or trouble I was put to consisted in the purchase of a rupee's worth of damar, a resinous substance applied generally in Malayia to the same purposes for which We use pitch and tar. The little Malay axe, in the hands of these ingenious fellows, had done all the work, and, as a tool, it is unique. The handle is about two and a half feet long, light and tough, and capable of being used in one hand ; moreover, it has a curve in it like the handle of an English adze. Over the tool end of this handle, a neat rattan grafting is worked in such a manner that the haft of the tool may be held firmly in its place. This tool is in form very like a broad ripping -chisel, except that the blade is not more than three and a half inches long. The workman uses it as an axe or an adze, as be may wish, by simply turning the blade one way or the other in the grooTe of the handle ; and, when necessary, he can take it out of the long handle, fit it temporarily into any rough piece of wood, and make a chisel. No tree is too big, no wood too hard, for this little tool in the hands of these dexterous fellows: with it L 2 148 MODE OF APPLYING NATIVE MATERIALS. my men had cut out a keel, stern, and stern-post for my sampan, dove-tailed them together, and secured them with strong pegs. The planks were then bevelled and countersunk into the keel, secured there with more wooden pegs, which seemed to do as well as nails in their hands ; and, by means of dowell-pins, the two planks were brought carver fashion on each side, one edge on top of the other, the interstices filled up with damar and a felt*like substance collected from palm trees. The boat was still too low on each side to float, and as cutting a plank of two inches thick out of a tree with an adze would have been a tedious job, I was curious to see how that difficulty was to be sur- mounted. They did not keep me long in suspense. Long bamboo dowell-pins were let into the edge of the upper plank by means of a red-hot ramrod which was used as an auger. The stems (or, botanically speaking, the midribs) of the leaves of a dwarf palm were next collected, and driven down longitudinally one on top of another on these dowell-pins, until the gunwale had been raised to the necessary height, and then a neat rattan work secured all down to the slight timbers. The thwarts were soon put in, de- pendent solely upon the timbers and a light sort of stringer of bamboo, which ran round the interior MODE OF APPLYING NATIVE MATERIALS. 149 of the sampan, and served to bind all firmly in a longitudinal direction. A primitive species of thole- pin was next secured, and then the paddles cut out ; and thus the "Emerald junior" was built. On an emergency, such a simply constructed craft might have carried a crew from Quedah to Singapore ; and, at any rate, I hardly think we can say of a people capable of exhibiting such skill in the adaptation of the crude materials at hand to nautical purposes, that they are an unintelligent race or de- ficient in mechanical ingenuity ; and that we should allow them a higher place amongst Eastern nations than the earlier writers seem inclined to yield to them. The Portuguese historian, De Barros, for example, sums them up as " a vile people, whose dwelling was more on the sea than the land." If this be a crime in the Malay, I may say there are other nations of the present day most certainly to be included in the same category. L 3 150 UETURN TO QUEDAH. CHAP. XII. Return to Quedah. — Native Defences. — The " Teda bagoose." — Searing an Ally. — Difficulties which accounted for the Delay of the Siamese.— Inchi Laa acknowledges the Effects of our Blockade. — Severity towards the Malays. — A Prahu full of Fugitives captured. — Intelligence suddenly gained of Siamese Army. — Deserters. — The Malay Forces out- manoeuvred. — Serious Losses of the Malays. — Inchi Laa. Shameful Atrocities of the Malays. — Exchange of Cour- tesies. — Permission given for the Women to escape. — Pre- parations for Flight. About February the 20th, I returned to my old station off Quedah, the two blockading divisions of boats changing their posts. The only perceptible alteration was the completion of a fascine battery we had remarked the Siamese prisoners to be at work upon in December, and that a few more guns had been placed in defensive positions around the old fort. A gingal battery, constructed for overlooking the ap- proaches of an enemy, was an interesting specimen of Malayan woodcraft and ingenuity. When clearing away the jungle to construct the fascine battery, we observed that they spared four or five lofty trees NATIVE DEFENCES. 151 which were growing near together; these trees now served as supports to a platform of bamboos, which was hoisted up and lashed as high as possible in a level position ; all superfluous branches were lopped off, and the whole well frapped* together with cords, so that the cutting away of one tree alone would not endanger the structure. A cross- I)iece, or breastwork, was built upon the platform^ overlooking the landward side, and then a long and ugly swivel-gun was mounted, such as we, in the days of good Queen Bess, should have styled a demi- culverin ; and the whole was lightly thatched over to shelter the wardours, a light ladder of twisted withies enabling them to communicate with the bat- tery below. A more formidable obstacle in the way of scouting parties and skirmishers, or to prevent a sudden assault, could not, in a closely wooded country, have been extemporised Our rigid blockade had evidently pressed sadly upon the Quedah folks: they looked big, but were low-spirited; the fishermen had ceased to visit their weirs ; few eanoes were to be seen pulling about off the town, and when we inquired where they had all * " Trapping ** is a term used when two spars, or stout ropes, arc bound together by a cord which drags them out of their natural position or right lines. L 4 152 gone, we were informed that the fighting men had marched to ravage the Siamese territory. As yet no signs of our allies, and in a few weeks' time the dry season would be drawing to a close. To be sure, a queer-looking brig had joined us, under Siamese colours, and commanded by two captains ! the fight- ing captain a Siamese, the sailing one a Penang half-caste; but the care they took to keep out of gun- shot of Quedah fort argued but little for the pluck or enterprise of our allies. We gun-boats, unknown to Captain Warren, used often to run alongside the brig, which rejoiced in at least a dozen guns of dif- ferent size and calibre, and try hard to get the skippers to move sufficiently close in to draw the Malay fire ; but it was no use : the worthy fighting captain would only shake his head, and say, " Teda bagoose ! teda bagoose ! " or. No good ! no good ! We therefore named the brig the " Teda Bagoose,*' a sobriquet which, to say the least of it, was not complimentary to His Majesty of Siam. The skipper, however, was a man of a forgiving disposition, and evidently held me in great respect, after I presented him with a gold cap-band in token of our alliance ; and he often came to listen to Jadee's glowing death's-head and marrow-bone stories of what a thorough-bred Malay pirate would do with SCARING AN ALLY. 153 the brig and her crew, if it should be her good for- tune to fall into the hands of such gentry. Jadee was sore that the Siamese should appear in the character of conquerors over his countrymen, and evidently took a malicious delight in frightening them, when he found we could not hope to draw them into a scrape — an amiable amusement in which I believe he perfectly succeeded. The brig, however, moved off to about half-way to where the '* Hyacinth *' usually anchored, and remained there until, one day, in a fit of heroism, they attacked and captured a messenger, called Inchi Laa, who used to pass, under a flag of truce, from the Malayan authorities to Captain Warren; and as they got a severe snubbing for doing so, and Jadee playfully informed them that our Rajah Laut was not unlikely, if they committed similar breaches of etiquette on the high seas (which, of course, all belonged to the Company), to blow them and their brig out of water, she weighed one fine morning, and was not again seen until the close of the blockade. " Hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" and when March came in without any appearance of the army of 30,000 Siamese that were on the 1 st of December to have marched from Slam against Quedah province, we began to hold our dark-skinned allies uncommonly 154 DIFFICULTIES OF THE SIAMESE ARMY. cheap as belligerents, whatever they might be in other respects. Looking, however, at a map of the Malayan peninsula, and taking into consideration the wild and, in many places, pathless jungle which covers it, it did appear to be an undertaking of some magnitude for any Asiatic army, unsupported with all the European appurtenances of war, to march from Bankok to Quedah, crossing numbers of deep and rapid, though short, streams which flow from the central mountains to the sea on either side, and by which the active and amphibious Malays could always threaten their flanks or throw themselves on their line of communication. To check this manoeuvre, however, was our purpose in blockading the piratical squadrons, and, as the result proved, we were per- fectly successful. On March 4th, the Secretary to Tonkoo Mahomet Said, a Malay gentleman in every acceptance of the word, named Inchi Laa, whom I have before mentioned, came off from Quedah to communicate with Captain Warren. We all ob- served an expression of anxiety in the generally calm and handsome face of the Inchi; and as he was detained some time on board the blockading boats, we had an opportunity of asking him a few questions. He owned that our rigid blockade of the coast was a sad calamity to the Malays; the more so that it THE EFFECT OF OUR BLOCKADE. 15^ showed we were determined to support the Siamese in their unjust sovereignty of Quedah. We pre- vented the Malays, he said, availing themselves of the sea and rivers, for carrying out the tactics of a race who had no equals upon the water except the " Orang-putihs ; " and that, apart from stopping rein- forcements and supplies of powder and arms, we distressed them sorely from the stoppage of supplies of salt, without which they could not live, and all of which had to be imported. To our queries about the present position of the Siamese forces Inchi Laa was more reserved, ex- cept that he said, with exultation, that the Siamese fled before Tonkoo Mahomet Type-etam, and that the latter — a distinguished Malay warrior, whom we all knew by ill-repute — had, after severe fight- ing, taken and destroyed the town of Sangorab, on the shores of the opposite sea. Sangorab we knew to be an important town, the seat of government in the Malayu- Siamese province of Ligor, and the authorities charged with the ad- ministration of the tributary Malay states — such as Patani, Calantan, and Quedah— usually resided there. It did not deserve the sounding term of " the great, the beautiful Sangorab I ** applied to it by an editor of a local journal, in the Straits of Malacca; but 156 SEVERITY TOWARDS THE MALAYS. it was, doubtless, a severe loss to the Siamese, and likely to raise the whole of the tributary states, in the hope of shaking off an allegiance at all times irksome. We naturally were disappointed at the news, in so far as our hopes of a brush with Quedah fort were concerned ; but, somehow or other, one could not help feeling admiration for the Malays — a people without a nation or dwelling-place — driven out of the peninsula by the Siamese and Portuguese in days long, long gone by ; persecuted and harassed into piracy, by the practice and example of the Spa- niard and Dutchman ; and then, in our day, hunted down, shot, and hung as felons, unless they would, on the instant, eschew evil practices which had been bred in their very nature by the rapacity and in- justice of European nations. The Inchi, however, left us impressed with the belief that there was a reservation in what he had told us — but what that reservation was, no one could guess until the morrow, when the facts came to us by mere accident. I had gone off with my gun- boat to the "Hyacinth," for the purpose of obtaining permission to practise my crew at firing at a target, when, from the ship, a prahu was seen to come out of the jungle some three or four miles south of Que- dah. We were sent after it, and, after a long chase. CAPTURE OF FUGITIYES. 157 we caught and brought her to. She was full of women and children, packed as close as they could be stowed, to the fearful number of forty souls, in a craft of about the capacity of an ordinary pinnace. Unable to get any coherent account of who they were, owing to their fright and their evident desire to mislead us, I began to believe Jadee was right in asserting that she was a native slaver, and consequently made a prisoner of her nicodar, proceeding with him and my prize to the ** Hyacinth." Jadee entered into conversation with my prisoner, and after a long harangue, in which I could perfectly understand that he was calling upon the man to speak the truth, and holding out, as an inducement to do 80, the possible contingency of being blown away from our bow-gun, or hung at a yard-arm, or, as the mildest of all punishment, working in chains for the term of his natural life. The unfortunate nicodar, aghast at such threats, clasped him round the legs, and implored him to do anything rather than send him back to Quedah. He then briefly explained that all the poor creatures in his boat were fugitives from the province, on their way to Penang, or some other spot under the British flag ; that a numerous Siamese army had crossed the frontier, and was destroying every man, woman. 158 INTELLIGENCE OF THE SIAMESE ARMY. and child ; and, pointing to long columns of smoke which we had been under the impression were distant jungle fires, the nicodar assured us they were caused by the. ravages of our faithful allies, as well as by the Malay chieftains, to place a desert between the frontier and Quedah fort. I hastened on board the " Hyacinth " with what I knew would be grateful intelligence to my gallant captain, who was labouring under a severe attack of fever and ague, contracted in long and arduous ser* vice on the West Indian station many years pre- viously. The excitement on board the ship was in- tense, for they had long been heartily tired of lying off a coast at the distance of three or four miles, see- ing nothing and hearing little. The mast-heads were soon covered with men, who however could see nothing but a distant column of smoke rising here and there in the calm and hot atmosphere. I was desired to take the prahu close in off the fort, so as to let the garrison and inhabitants know that we had at last ascertained facts, and then to dismiss her on her way to Penang. This was done : the poor creatures went on their road rejoicing, whilst the English rausquito squadron cheered heartily on learning the intelligence I had to communicate to them. DESERTERS* 15D There was considerable excitement among the good folks of Quedah, at such an unwonted degree of mer- riment upon our part ; and Inchi Laa soon came off, under some pretext, but evidently to ascertain " what was up.** We soon told him ; and he calmly replied, as he left us, that he thought it must be something far more important than the fact of a Siamese army ap- proaching, which would make us so joyful. But we saw, after he landed, that there was a great com- motion in the town; and towards dusk a small canoe sneaked out, under the plea of fishing, but eventually ran alongside our boats. The natives in her said that Mahomet Said had ill-treated them, and that they wished to desert from Quedah, carrying off their women and children ; we did not believe their excuse for ** ratting," and there- fore detained them for the night, and next day sent them off to the ship for a permit. During the night we gleaned from them further particulars of the state of affairs in the interior; and their tale fully accounted for the sudden arrival of the Siamese army. It appeared that, in execution of the plan of operations which Haggi Loung, at Par- lis, had told us was going to be pursued, the Malaya organised an army, and sent it uuder their best sol- 160 SERIOUS LOSSES OF THE MALAYS. dier, Tonkoo Mahomet Type-etam, to attack the province of Ligor, and so keep the Siamese acting on the defensive. Great success for awhile attended the Malays : they swept through the tributary state of Patani, gained numbers of adherents, put all of the enemy to the sword and eventually, as we al- ready knew, captured and sacked Sangorah. Meanwhile, a division of the Siamese forces, ten thousand strong, under the Rajah of Ligor, threw themselves across the Quedah frontier, intercepted all Type-etam's communications, cut him off from home, and, by forced marches and admirable gene- ralship, surprised an important military position called "Allegagou;" stormed two batteries, which commanded it, and put to death the entire garrison of six hundred Malays. The unfortunate force un- der Type-etam, in Sangorah, was thus cut off and destroyed in detail; he and a few desperate men only escaped by cutting their way through the Siamese army, and rejoined their compatriots at Quedah. Until the capture of "Allegagou," the Siamese army had been without cannon of any sort, either field or siege pieces, but there they had succeeded in capturing one of the former, besides several others fitted for position-guns ; and this, of course, rendered INCHI LAA. 161 them all the more formidable to the Malays. The atrocities the Malays accused them of perpetrating were truly fearful, and a war of extermination was evidently their policy. A panic had consequently taken place in Quedah ; and not only were the wo- men and children of the pirates connected with the late inroad anxious to escape, but we learned that the Malays who had formerly submitted to the Sia- mese rule, and lived in the province until Prince Abdullah made his rash attempt to repossess himself of it, were now flying before the irritated army of His Golden-tufted Majesty.* Hardly had we despatched our communicative friends to the " Hyacinth," when the emissary, Inchi Laa, was again seen coming off. He had ceased to be as reserved as of yore, returned very warmly our English salutation of shaking hands, and smiled with good-natured incredulity at our sanguine hopes of soon having possession of Quedah. He assured us that every mile the Siamese advanced into the disputed territory only rendered their perfect de- feat more certain ; and he explained away the loss of Allcgagou, and the body of meij under Tonkoo Mahomet Type-etam, by saying that the enemy far * " Golden-tufted Majesty," one of the many titles of the Emperor of Siam. M 162 ATROCITIES OF THE MALAYS. outnumbered the Malays, and that the wisdom of attacking Sangorah, although it had cost many va- luable men, was proved by the long delay of the Siamese forces. The Inchi was most indignant — and we all cor- dially joined him in that feeling — at the fearful atrocities which, he told us, had been perpetrated by our Siamese allies ; and he swore by Allah no Malay man had ever been known to wantonly tor- ture women and children, as those devils did. "If," said Inchi Laa, " the woman and the child, because they are our country people, deserve death — let them die I but, beyond death or slavery, there should be no punishment for those who cannot help them- selves." An opinion to which we all uttered an " Amen." He then craved permission to proceed to the " Hyacinth," to make arrangements for the departure of a number of defenceless creatures whom Mahomet Said wished to send to Penanoj and Pro- vince Wellesley, to save them from the wrath of the Siamese. We smiled at the cool confidence betokened by such a request ; and on asking Inchi Laa " Why he thought it probable the English would allow the women and offspring of men declared to be pirates, to escape and seek an asylum under the very 1 EXCHANGE OF COURTESIES. 163 they had abused?" his reply was characteristic: "Every Malay-man knows, Tuhan, that the white men (Orang-putihs) can fight ; but every Malay- man knows that they war with men, and not against women and children ! " We accepted his neatly-turned compliment, politic though it might be at such a time, and determined not to do aught unworthy of so high a reputation. Inchi Laa returned a few hours afterwards, looking supremely happy, and delivered to the senior oflScer of the boats, Mr. Barclay, an order to allow all unarmed vessels to pass out, provided they only carried women and children ; but on no account to permit more than just men enough to navigate the craft to Penang, and they also to be unarmed. In the evening a message came from Tonkoo Ma- homet Said, to express his grateful thanks for the humanity extended to the defenceless portion of the population, and to warn us that they would start at midnight I It was too late to remonstrate at the choice of an hour which looked very like an attempt to evade the necessary search by our boats, so we merely gave notice, that all vessels trying to pass would be sunk, and that they were to come alongside, to M 2 164 PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT. enable us to assure ourselves of no breach in the agreement. For several days past we had observed that great numbers of canoes, small prahus, and native craft had accumulated along the face of the unfortunate town. These, doubtless, had been driven down from the upper part of the river by the progress of the enemy. As the day advanced, the signs of an ap- proaching exodus gave us some cause for anxiety lest, under the plea of a flight, a large body of men should be brought down to board the two gun-boats and cutter — which was all the force we had. We therefore took every precaution : cleared for action ; loaded our guns ; placed one gun for sweeping the deck with musket-balls, and the other to command the narrow gap through the stockade, by which, whether as fugitives or foes, the pirates must come out. Sunset and the brief twilight of an Asiatic evening soon passed into a calm but very dark night, adding still more to the diflficultles of our position ; and the obscurity, for a while, was so little broken by unusual appearances, that we began to fancy the Malays had postponed their flight. THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM. 165 CHAP. XIII. The Lull before the Storm. — The Exodus. — A Scene of Confusion and Distress. — The Malay Chieftain's Wife. — Baju-Mira. — The Convoy. — An extraordinary Appeal. — Midwifery simplified. — A Night-scene. — A Midshipman's Emotions. — A Malayan Houri. — Resign my Charge and return. — An Attempt to enslave the Fugitives. The flood-tide continued to flow into the Quedah river until about ten o'clock, and beyond the hum of voices from the town, and the melancholy wailing noise made by the sentries in "calling their posts" — there was not until top of high water anything to denote the scene of activity which so soon ensued. But just after the ebb-tide commenced to run out, at eleven o'clock, the whole population of fort and town rose as if it were one man. The hoarse shouts of men, the shrill cries of womankind, and the bleating of goats, with many a shrill crow from the everlasting game cocks, betokened some unusual com- motion. Torches in great numbers soon threw their glare of light over a perfect multitude on the banks 166 THE EXODUS. of the stream beyond the fort, and evidently em- barking for the projected flight. The splash of oars and paddles was next heard, and then a perfect debacle took place, for out of the narrow opening of the stockade, where the pent- up tide caused the stream to shoot through like a rapid, flowed out upon us prahus of all sizes, ca- noes, topes, and even rafts, laden as heavily as they could be with human beings. It was indeed a wild and wretched scene, strange and exciting though it might be to us. The torches carried in some of the 'canoes threw a vivid light over the black river and jungle, and brought out in strong relief the groups of excited men and women. "Anchor! anchor!" we shouted, "or we must fire." " Mercy ! mercy ! " shrieked the women and old grey-bearded men. The nicodars yelled out orders, invoking all the saints of Islam. Babies struck in with their shrill piccolos, and the wifeless, womanless garrison left in Quedah seemed deter- mined to show what good heart they were still in, by the wild, yet not unmusical cry of " Jagga, jag-gaa !" or, '* Watch there ! watch ! " We, the blockaders, got under weigh, and slashed to and fro across the en- trance of the stream, firing an occasional blank cart- ridge at some craft that tried to escape being searched. SCENE OF CONFUSION AND DISTRESS. 167 having perhaps on board more than the proper com- plement of men, or, as in one case, because some notorious pirate who had rendered himself amenable to our laws, was desirous of escaping an interview with a petty jury and a British recorder at Penang. By four o'clock in the morning the exodus was over, and we lay at anchor with a black mass of native vessels of every size and shape around us : many of the canoes threatening to sink alongside, we were forced to take the unfortunates upon our decks, add- ing still more to the scene of confusion. My boat's crew, bloodthirsty Malays though they were, employed themselves from midnight to day-dawn boiling and serving out rice to the half-starved women and children. The sun rose upon the strange scene, just as all were falling to rest from an anxious and sleepless night. On counting the fugitive vessels we found one junk, one tope, five large prahus, and one hundred and fifteen smaller craft, the whole of them containing pro- bably three thousand souls, of which two-thirds were women and the remainder made up of children, old decrepit men, and a few adult Malays, to convoy the whole and navigate the different vessels to a place of safety. Two births took place during this sad night of confusion. M 4 168 THE MALAY CHIEFTAIN'S WIFE. During the day we were employed thinning out the people embarked in some of the most unsafe canoes. "We searched and discovered some secreted arms, and forced several men (where we found their numbers more than sufficient) to land and take their chance, instead of endangering the lives of the women and children. In the junk, independent of a mob of women and children of every shade and class, we discovered the wife and family of Tonkoo Mahomet Said. He had evidently been afraid to avow his intention of sending them, and merely trusted to the promise that had been given to respect all women and children. The Tonkoo was not disappointed; and Captain Warren ordered me to embark the chieftainess and family, and convoy them, as well as the junk and larger prahus, to Penang, not only to ensure them against shipwreck, but to guard against the dashing enterprise of His Siamese Majesty's brig, the *' Teda Bagoose," which to our sorrow made her appearance off Quedah just at this juncture. She had ascertained that the Malay boats only con- tained women and children, and her captain was, to use our English seamen's phrase, " full of fight." Towards evening a fine fair wind sprang up off the land, and we prepared to start. I placed two trust- worthy men on board each of the junks, and in two THE MALAY CHIEFTAIN'S WIFE. 169 of the largest prahus, and receiving on board Mahomet Said's family, we all weighed and made sail just at dark, the canoes, rafts, and other frail craft proceeding close along the jungle's edge. The largest junk sailed so badly that I had to take her in tow; and the breeze freshened so much as to make me feel very anxious for all my deeply-laden convoy, and so far as a youth of seventeen can feel the responsibility of his position, I think I did mine. The chieftainess was a slight graceful-looking woman, almost as fair as a Spaniard, with a very sweet expression of countenance, though it was not youthful, and boje deep traces of care stamped upon it. She was neatly clad in shawl-pattern materials. Her family consisted of a lovely girl, of perhaps twelve years old, and two babies in arms, attended by a nurse. Midshipmen are a susceptible race, and I was no exception to the rule. I felt as an embryo Nelson should do — a perfect knight errant, and I, in quest of a lady-love, had, by a freak of good fortune, lighted on a pirate's beautiful daughter : the whole thing was delightful, and I should like to have seen "John Company" dare to touch a hair of the head of Baju-Mira while I was by. Poor Baju-Mira, or Red-jacket, as I at once christened the object of my admiration, in consequence of her wearing the pret- 170 BAJU-MIRA. tiest Tndian-shawl jacket that ever was seen, was perfectly unconscious of the sudden attachment she had awakened in one who, from her frightened fawn- like ways, she evidently supposed was only one of the ruthless destroyers of the amiable fraternity to which her parents belonged. However, that was perfectly immaterial to me. I had made up my mind to be her slave; that was enough for any- one whose poetry had not been, so to speak, knocked out of him by fair Dulcineas. We cleared out my cabin, removed all the hatches, put a screen across the deck, to give the party as much privacy as possible, and indeed did all we could to make our passengers at their ease. The lady descended into the cabin with her infants and nurse, and Baju- Mira had a couch formed upon deck on one side of the hatchway, whilst two of the chieftainess's retainers, most grim-looking Malays, squatted themselves down near at hand, evidently for the purpose of watching over the party — an arrangement I willingly assented to, though. Heaven knows, nothing could have been more kind or respectful to them than all my crew were, from Jadee downwards. The night was clear and starlit, but the north-east monsoon blew fresh, as it often does towards its close ; the prahus, which I had ordered to keep close to me. AN EXTRAORDINARY APPEAL. 171 laboured heavily in the sea, and leaked so as to require constant baling, the women and children working^ for their lives with a very primitive sort of bucket, made from the bark of a species of palm-tree. In the middle watch one of the prahus sailed close alongside of us, and the men I had put in her hailed to say that one of the women was about to bless her lord with an addition to the family. I desired the fellows to hold their tongues and proceed on their course ; the nicodar, or captain of the prahu, would hear of no such thing, and begged to be allowed to speak to me. I lowered our sails, and consented that he should jump on board the gun-boat; and in a trice I found a Malay clutching me round the legs, and, with tears in his eyes, imploring me to go on board the prahu to help his wife. I assured the man I was no doctor, and could do no good, and desired Jadee to tell him as much, for by ill-luck I had left Jamboo on board the cutter with Mr. Barclay. My assurances were thrown away upon the husband ; I was a white man, and must be a doctor. Even Jadee seemed to think it purely false modesty upon my part, and argued, from my skill in curing slight derangements in the health of my crew (thanks to a few pills and some salts in the medicine-chest), that a knowledge of surgery 172 MIDWIFERY SIMPLIFIED. in all its branches was the natural inheritance of his commander. I never was so puzzled in all my life ; and finding escape from their importunities impossible, I consented to give the only assistance in my power. The husband, delighted, shouted for the prahu to come alongside, and I heard him jump on board of her, shouting that the white doctor was coming, while I went below for my prayer-book. Jadee and I then went on board, and after much squeezing reached a miserable little cabin, inside which, behind a screen, and surrounded by a crowd of women, the poor suf- ferer lay. Jadee, fully impressed with the idea that I was about to perform some incantation only second to his recipe for " killing the wind," looked as solemn and nervous as if he expected a demon to be instantly raised. My medicine was, however, a very simple one: I made Jadee hold a lantern, and desiring all around me to be silent, I proceeded to read a few prayers from my prayer-book, addressed to Him who is the merciful God alike of Malay and white man; and then ordering the woman a good cup of tea from my little stock, I told the husband that God was great, and that, if He pleased, all would be well, and returned to my own vessel, leaving those in the prahu evidently much impressed with my value as a Bedan. In due time, about day-break, one of my scampish crew held A NIGHT -SCENE. 173 up on board the prahu a diminutive reddish-looking morsel of humanity, and assured me the lady was " as well as could be expected," the wag informing me that he recommended the baby to be called after our gun-boat, " Numero Tega ! " a name almost as characteristic as that of the sailor's child, who, to insure having a long one — none of your Jems and Bills — was christened " Ten Thousand Topsail- sheetblocks I " It was about three in the morning, just after my first essay in the surgical way, and as dawn was breaking, that I seated myself on the deck, close aft against the tafFrail on the lee quarter of my vessel, and, heartily tired with six-and-thirty hours' work, dropped into a sort of dog-sleep, my head resting on the sheet of the mainsail, which was set. My thoughts, however, would not sleep, but continued to skip in all the odd jumble of a dream over the scenes which had been thrust upon me within so short a space of time. Inchi LiSi'x came chasing the " Teda Bagoose " with thousands of torches I Baju-Mira creesed me in the most approved style of Malay romance I old Ton- koo Said made me read prayers to a whole hareem- ful of women in an interesting condition I and the Lords of the Admiralty were busy trying me by a court-martial, for having women on board a vessel fly- 174 A midshipman's emotions. ing Her Majesty's pendant ! when a cry on the quar- ter-deck suddenly awoke me to the realities of what my good- hearted first lieutenant used to call this " sublunary vale of tears." I saw poor little Baju- Mira standing up and rubbing her eyes, uttering that plaintive, subdued cry which children make when awakened suddenly from a sound sleep. I fancied she had awakened in alarm, and so did the helmsman, who was close by me ; but in another moment, as the gun-boat bent over to the breeze, she gave another sharp sob, and then, to my horror, walked or rather sprang overboard ; but happily the mainsail stopped her, and as it touched her breast she started on one side with a shriek, and awoke as I caught hold of her. Now would be the moment for a romantic climax, but, alas ! there was only a general hubbub. The two sleeping Malays on guard, and the mother, nurse, and poor weeping Baju-Mira, had to be soothed, and to have explained to them that the latter had in her sleep nearly walked overboard; and to complete the riot, Jadee, who had been sleeping forward, rushed aft waving his abomi- nable creese, followed by a dozen of his men. When Baju-Mira had had a good cry, — don't laugh reader, I kept the pocket-handkerchief in which the little Hebe m A MALAYAN HOURI. 175 wept for a long, long time, and only sent it to the wash when I was equally bad about an ox-eyed peri of Ceylon — the good chieftainess said, "Ah ! Touhan, my poor child has seen and suffered enough these last few days to make her mad, much more to cause her to walk in her sleep ; " and I have no doubt she had. Badinage apart, Baju-Mira was lovely enough to have touched a tougher heart than mine: at her age, an Indian girl is just blooming into woman- hood, and as lovely and as fresh as a flower can be whose beauty in that fiery clime is but of a day. The child, the woman, mother, and old age tread on one another's heels, under an equatorial sun, with painful rapidity ; perhaps it is on that account that the short heyday of an Indian or Malay girl is all the more romantic and lovable. Baju-Mira was not tall, but beautifully proportioned, and her slight waist seemed too small to support her exquisitely rounded bust; the neck and head were perfectly classical, and betokened Arab rather than Malay blood — an intermixture which was all the more evident in her oval face and beautiful features. Be- sides the usual quantity of petticoats, made in her case of very fine Indian shawls or Cashmeres, she had an under vest of red silk, fitting tightly to her figure, and over thb another loose one of the same bright 176 A MALAYAN HOURI. and becoming hue, not unlike an Albanian jacket. Her " ebon locks, As glossy as a heron's wing Upon the turban of a king," were gathered oflP her face by the edge of a silk tartan scarf of native manufacture, which she wrapped round her head or person as was necessary ; perfect feet and hands, strongly stained with henna, completed the picture of the little belle of Quedah ; though I feel my attempt to delineate her falls short, far short, of the pretty trembling dream-like creature. At sunrise, Jadee reported to me that one of the prahus was missing, and, strangely enough, one of those in which, for better security, I had stationed two of my own Malays. Desiring all the convoy to proceed to a spot called Quala Morbu, or Dove River, we altered course for the Bounting Islands, thinking the missing vessel might have parted company by accident, and gone there in the hope of meeting me. After four hours' search I discovered the truant quietly at anchor in a secluded cove. The men I had put into her did not give a very intelligible reason for having parted company, and I therefore removed them, and warned the master that martial law would be summarily applied if I saw any further attempt RESIGN MY CHARGE AND RETURN. 177 to evade my surveillance. Hardly had I again got my convoy together, and before a fine breeze all of us were rapidly nearing Penang, when I met the " Diamond" gun-boat, and in obedience to the orders I had received, handed over my charge to her, parting from the chieftalness and my angelic Baju- Mira with mutual expressions of kindness and good- will. The "Emerald," taut on a wind, began to make the best of her way back again, and after I had had a good rest, Jadee came to tell me that my two men (in the prahu which had parted company during the night, and given me so much trouble) had come aft to make a confession and beg forgivenes?. It ap- peared that the nicodar, and three natives left in the prahu to navigate her, had during the night pointed out to my men an easy mode of realising a large sum of money, and escaping the drudgery of their present life: it was simply to give me the slip, and carry the prahu, with its freight of women and children, to the coast of Sumatra, where they might be sold at highly remunerative prices! My men, it appears, were afraid to accede at once to the proposal, but I fear they expressed a willing- ness to share in the profits and risk if the ni- codar could succeed in shaking oflf the society of the N 178 ATTEMPT TO ENSLAVE FUGITIVES. gun-boat. I had, however, stopped their cruise by- seeking them amongst the " Bountings." I must say I was very angry at my Malays for not giving me information of the treachery of the nicodar in time to have handed over that worthy to the mercy of the Sia- mese brig " Teda Bagoose," whose gallant captains were like raging lions at the escape of all the fugitives : but for the men themselves, I merely tried to point out the villany of selling poor creatures into slavery who were going under their escort to what they sup- posed a place of safety. They, however, were rather obtuse upon this point, and evidently looked upon the women and children as merely amounting to a certain total, at from forty to fifty dollars a head, and only sent into the world to minister to man's plea- sures, or to be sold for his especial benefit. MALAY SLAVE TRADE. 179 CHAP. XIV. Malay Slave Trade fostered by the Dutch. — Brutal System pursued by the Portuguese. — Slavery doubtless founded by the Mahometans. — Retribution has overtaken the Portuguese. — An enlightened Policy most likely to eradicate Slavery and Piracy. — Close Blockade. — The Call of the Siamese Sentries. — The Call of the Malay Sentries. — Deaths from Want of Water. — Kling Cruelty. — The Trial and Verdict, and Punishment. — Siamese Tortures. — Novel Mode of impaling a Rebel. — Extraordinary Palm-spears. — Remarks upon Native Governments. Thebe can be no doubt that slavery and the slave trade exist to a very serious extent throughout the JMalayan archipelago : it is carried on in a petty way, but still with all the miseries of the middle passage. The great mart for the disposal of the slaves is the pepper plantations of Sumatra, which are in the hands of the natives, altliough the Dutch claim a sovereignty over them; and the native and Dutch planters on the coast of Borneo readily take the slaves off the hands of the Malay slave-catcher, and work them to death in the plantations and gold or If 2 180 SLAVE TRADE FOSTERED BY THE DUTCH. antimony mines of those countries. The Dutch say they discountenance the slave trade; they do BO, however, merely in outward show. The first law they lay down for their Eastern subjects is, implicit submission to their cold-blooded system of political and commercial monopoly; the next thing is, the Lowland motto of " Mak' money ; honestly if you can, but mak' money;" and I was told by both English and French captains of merchantmen em- ployed collecting cargoes of pepper, that boats full of slaves used to arrive as constantly for sale at the different places they had visited on the Sumatran coast, as they formerly did in Kio de Janeiro har- bour or the Havannah. We can understand, under such circumstances, wdiat a harvest the slave-trader would reap in a province like Quedah, where the unhappy inhabitants were placed with the alternative of being impaled as rebels by Siamese, on the one hand, or hanged as pirates by Europeans, upon the other. To sell themselves, or fly for life and limb to the nicodar of a prahu, who would carry them elsewhere, and dispose of them for so much a head, was merely, in such a case, a happy alternative ; and in this, as in much else connected with the habits of the unfortunate Malay, we have incurred no small amount of responsibility. \ SYSTEM PURSUED BY PORTUGUESE. 181 Much, however, as the Dutch are to blame for ihe'ir pi'esent spirit of aggression and selfish monopoly, in awakening the reckless spirit of retaliation, tur- moil, and disorganisation of the Malays in the Eastern Archipelago, it falls far short of their former policy ; and it is a question whether they or the Portuguese did most for two centuries, by a cold-blooded system of cruelty, towards demoralising the unhappy Malays ; and assuredly, but for their warlike and nautical habits, the race would have been exterminated. A history of the system they pursued, I am not now purposing to write ; but inasmuch as it bears upon the Malay's present character of pirates and slave dealers, I may point out that, before European ships had as yet entered the Indian ocean, fleets of Chinese junks, as well as the unwarlike traders of Indostan, used to carry on a brisk commercial traffic with, and through, the Malayan archipelago, which, had piracy been as rife in the thirteenth century as it was in the early part of the present one, would have been utterly impossible; and slavery was, we know, unknown in Java at that time ; and that is the only Malayan state of which authentic historical records have been preserved. Doubtless with the introduction of the Mahometan creed into the Archipelago, slavery became a funda- ir 3 182 SLAVERY FOUNDED BY MAHOMET. mental institution of the Malays ; but the slavery allowed by Mahomet is of the mildest form, and the Koran especially enjoins kindness to the slave. But the Pope and Mahomet had a hard race to win the souls of the Malays ; indeed, many native states only embraced Islamism after the conquest of Malacca by the Christians ! God save the mark ! The houris carried the point, maybe, against Pur- gatory. Indeed, the important group of islands known in the present day as the Celebes only ac- cepted Mahomet in 1495, and that was nine years after Bartolemo Diaz rounded the Cape of Tem- pests, as he honestly styled the southern promontory of Africa. The Portuguese treated the Malays as infidels; and, as one writer, De Conto, observes of them, " they are well made and handsome, but foul in their lives, and much addicted to heinous sin ; " ergoy the Portuguese robbed, shot down, and con- quered them, just as the Spaniards, more success- fully, did the Mexican and Peruvian. Resistance to this iniquity has, I believe, made the Malay what he now is ; and one can only rejoice in the decay, and pray for the total annihilation of a people who, like the Portuguese, so sadly abused the glorious mission the Almighty called upon them to fulfil, when to them were first given the keys of RETRIBUTION TO THE PORTUGUESE. 183 the golden East — its docile millions and untold riches. When an Englishman, in the Straits of Malacca, sees a man with European features but dark skinned as the natives, wanting in courage, energy, or cha- racter — a pariah whom the very Indostanee con^ temns, — and hears that that man is a Portuguese, he recognises the just retribution of an avenging God; and on reading such a paragraph as the follow- ing, — " All these people (Malays) that have fallen into the hands of the Portuguese have been made prisoners of war. Every year there is taken of them for sale a great number to Malacca."* He naturally exclaims, the Malays have had their re- venge ! One example of the Dutch policy may be quoted, and it is no singular instance of their phlegmatic cruelty: — John Peterson Koen, their most illustrious Governor-General of the Indies, exterminated the original inhabitants of the Banda, or Spice Islands, and replaced them by slaves. With such examples before them, can it be felony in the Malay to imitate the boasted civilisation of the white man? The piratical acts now committed in the Malayan archi- * The Decade, v. book vii. M 4 184 POLICY LIKELY TO ERADICATE SLAVERY. pelago are, I firmly believe, the result of the iniquities practised upon the inhabitants in the olden day; and the Dutch, Spaniards, and English, even at the present time, are too prone to shoot down indiscri- minately any poor devils who, for the first time in their lives, are told, with powder and shot arguments, that war, as carried on by them, is piracy by our laws. We shall never eradicate by the sword an evil which has become the second nature of every Malay: who is, or who aspires to be, a free man. For three centuries the Dutch and Spaniards have been fighting with the Hydra which their tyrannical despotism and commercial policy are ever fostering ; and our exten- sion of a free and enlightened system of government through the Straits of Malacca has done more to quell piracy and slavery there — by leading the naturally mercantile Malay to legitimate sources of emolument and occupation — than all the ball-car- tridge and grape-shot which have been so ruthlessly lavished upon them. Of slavery as it exists or existed amongst the Malays themselves, though it does not apply, I fear, to the poor creatures under Chinese, Dutch, or Spa- nish masters, we have the testimony of Mr. Craufurd, one of our best authorities. He says : " The distinc- tion between the slave and freeman, though it exists CLOSE BLOCKADE. 185 amongst the !Malays, is not offensively drawn : tlie slave is not a mere chattel ; he may possess or inherit property, purchase his freedom, and has in other respects liis prescribed rights." Many of my crew in the gun-boat had in their youth been bought or sold as slaves ; Jadee himself had been one, and none of them appeared to think much of their sufferings whilst in that condition; — but I have dwelt long enough upon this subject, and will pass on to my tale. After reporting to Captain Warren the fulfilment of my task, I again returned to Quedah river, and anchored alongside my old friend the cutter. The Siamese advanced parties had already closed down upon the unlucky fortress, and throughout the night a constant fire between the respective outposts was kept up. Our friend the "Dove-cot" (described at page 151.) was rattling away at everything which moved along the edge of the jungle, and now and then, the heavy boom of a gun, and the crashing sound of the grape-shot through the trees, gave testimony to the fact that the Siamese had indeed arrived. The night-calls of the opposing forces were peculiar, and seemed to be used as much for the purpose of cheering on their respective parties, as for the purpose of showing where they were. 186 CALL OF THE SIAMESE SENTRIES. The Siamese used an instrument like a pair of castanets, made, I fancy, of two pieces of bamboo ; and admirably it answered its purpose. At certain intervals it would be sounded so faintly as to imitate some of the thousand insects of the jungle, then a long repetition of the same note would die faintly away in the distance ; after that came a sharp short note, taken up in the same way, followed by a ge- neral rattle, as if all the "gamins" of London were playing upon pieces of slate. Hardly had the line of Siamese outposts ceased to show they were wide awake, when the Malay sentries would begin. Their cry consisted of the word " Jagga," each man taking up the cry before his comrade to the right or left had finished, and then with one long- drawn cry the whole of the sentries cried Jag-ga-a-a together in a very musical manner; a moment's silence, and again a popping commenced at one another, with an occasional melees in which the sharp rattle of the Siamese castanets would be heard from right to left, showing how perfectly their skirmishers were belea- guering the poor fort. Towards day-break all the fighting would cease ; and we learnt that the Sia- mese light troops always then fell back upon the main body, still fifteen miles distant, near Elephant Mount. SUFFERINGS OF THE FUGITIVES. 187 Every night fresh parties of Malays passed out of the river in prahus, and canoes, and topes, which had been carefully hidden away in the tide -flooded jungle, ready for such an occasion, and to avoid de- struction, should we have been called upon to make an attack by sea. The sufferings of these fugitives were truly harrowing; many of them had come down from distant parts of the peninsula, flying before the wrath of the Siamese, and finding but little sympathy from the Quedah Malays. Starved and wayworn, having lived for sad periods in constant dread of death and slavery, their appearance and the stories they told, realised a picture of such utter misery, that one almost wondered how life could be sweet enough to them to make it worth their while to flee onwards. Penang and Province Wellesley were however their Goshen, and all we could do for the poor creatures was to wish them God speed. One day, amongst the fugitive vessels, a large tope came out densely crowded with men, women, and children, of different nations: there were Chinese, Indostanees, and Malays; and the men were mostly shop-keepers and vagrants who followed on the heels of the Malayan pirates to buy and sell. Some delay naturally arose in ascer- taining that there were no known pirates amongst them, and next morning we were shocked to learn. 188 KLING CRUELTY. on inquiring how all were on board of her, that several children and two women had died during the night from want of water! — a want not only we in the boats suffered from to some extent, but which we found to be very general with the people of Quedah; for the long-continued droughts had dried up all the wells, and obliged them to depend alone upon the river — a precarious means of supply now that the Siamese were at hand, and fired on all the watering parties. Going on board to relieve the sufferings of the unfortunate women, so far as our small stock of water w^ould admit, we were informed by a Malay that there were two private jars of water in the '^ tope," and after some search we discovered two fat Bengalee merchants, or rather Klings* — a race who live on the seaboard of the Madras Presidency, and form a large portion of the Straits population — actu- * Mr. Craufurd, in his valuable work upon the Archipelago, says Kling is a Malay term given to the natives of the Telinga nation, in Southern India. The trade and intercourse of the Telingas with the Archipelago is of great but unascertained antiquity, and still goes on. Many have settled in Malayia, and their mixed descendants are tolerably numerous. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese speak of them as carrying on trade at Malacca ; and Barbosa de- scribes them as " wealthy merchants of Coromandel, who traded in large ships." TRIAL AND VERDICT. — PUNISHMENT. 189 ally seated upon water-jars, and refusing to share it amongst the dying creatures at their feet. They had been long enough among Englishmen to know that we should not approve of their conduct, and had artfully arranged their robes and personal property 80 as to aid in concealing the water. I hardly know who was most indignant amongst us at this discovery ; but Barclay and I held a drum- head court-martial upon the two brutes, and decided, coute qui coute, to give the black villains a lesson in humanity. We declared them guilty, and passed sentence of death, to be commuted for personal correction. The two culprits turned perfectly livid with fear ; for Jadee, as usual, had his creese at hand, and a great big-boned coxswain of the cutter tucked up his sleeves, and requested permission to, what he called, " polish them off." Barclay and I, however, did not want to figure in the Penang courts of law, and decided therefore on applying a correction to the Indian merchants where no bones would be broken, and where they would be very unwilling to produce proofs in open court of our illegal proceedings. Keeping our countenances like a pair of Solons, we had administered to them four dozen strokes with a piece of flat wood like a sleeve- 190 SIAMESE TORTURES. board, to the extreme delight of all our seamen, and the astonishment of the fugitives, who had resigned themselves to the idea that the Klings were merely men of strong religious principles, who would not share their water with heretics. Inchi Laa paid us a long visit one evening, and, unsought by us, proceeded to detail fearful stories of the cruelties exercised by the Siamese. At the time, I gave him credit for magnifying facts ; but from other sources, such as Jamboo, who knew a good deal of the Siamese habits, and a Malay man in ray crew, who had served in a Siamese naval force equipped at Bankok, I heard sufficient to verify some of the horrid atrocities committed. Many of their cruelties will not bear repetition ; but two refined modes of torture I will venture to describe ; and the Inchi assured me that some of their unhappy countrymen and women had been subjected to them. One was cooking a human being alive : a hollow tree, either naturally so, or scooped out by manual labour, was left with merely its bare stem standing ; into it a prisoner was put naked, his hands tied be- hind his back, and a large piece of fat lashed on his head ; the tree was then carefully coated with an unc- tuous mud, to prevent its ignition, or, if it did ignite. MODE OF IMPALING A REBEL. 191 that it might merely smoulder, and then a slow steady fire was maintained round it, the unfortunate victim's Bufferings being by these means terribly prolonged, his shrieks and exclamations being responded to by the exultant shouts of his executioners. Another torture was that of carrying the pirate or rebel down to the banks of a river where a peculiar species of palm-tree grows, and choosing a spot in the mud where the sprout of a young plant was just found shooting upwards, which it does at the rate of several inches in twenty-four hours, they would construct a platform around it, and lash their miser- able victim in a sitting posture over the young tree, 80 that its lance-like point should enter his body, and bring on mortification and death by piercing the intestines — in short, a slow mode of im- paling. Of the possibility of this last torture being per- formed, I can almost vouch; for although not botanist enough to name the peculiar species of palm tree which is used, I have often seen it growing both on the banks of the Setou^ and Parlis rivers. I believe it to be the Nipa palm, but I am by no means cer- tain. It grows to no great height, and when full grown has little if any stem, the large and handsome 192 EXTRAORDINAKY PALM-SPEARS. leaves waving over the banks of the Malayan stream like a bunch of green feathers springing from the mud. The young plant springs up from the earth in a peculiar manner; the embryo leaves are wrapped in solid mass together, round their own stems, forming one solid green triangular-shaped stick, ranging in length from four to six feet, and having a point as hard and sharp as a bayonet. These palm-spears, if I may use the term, the Malays pluck before the leaves attempt to expand, and in such a state they make a formidable lance* Jadee assured me, sufficiently so to enable a man to pierce the tough under cuticle of an alligator. I have often amused myself throwing them like a dart. The rapidity with which these young plants shoot up in the rich vegetation and sweltering heats of an equatorial jungle is almost inconceivable: the Malays declared that they might be seen growing, but Jamboo told me that he had often known a sprout to shoot an inch and a half in a night, from which we may picture to ourselves the sufferings of the unfor- tunate Malay impaled on one of them. The well-known torture of rubbing people over with wild honey, and lashing them to trees near the large venomous ants' nests of the country, until bit- REMARKS UPON NATIVE G0VERN3IENTS. 193 ten to death by them and other insects, was, we were told, commonly practised, but the climax to the tale of horror was the gambling which took place upon the capture of an unfortunate Malay woman who happened to be enceinte, the stakes depending upon whether the infant was a boy or a girl, the diabolical game concluding with the death of the mother, to decide who were winners. Such are the cruelties perpetrated by these wretched native monarchies ; such have been the miseries which throughout Pegu, Birmah, Siam, and Malayia, first one master and then another has practised upon their unhappy subjects ; and yet philanthropists and poli- ticians at home maunder about the unjust invasion of native rights, and preach against the extension of our rule, as if our Government, in its most corrupt form, would not be a blessing in such a region, and as much, if not more, our duty to extend, as a Christian people, than to allow them to remain under native rulers, and then to shoot them for following native habits. In later years, it has been my sorrow to observe among another branch of this ill-starred Malayan race — the poor Otaheitians — the evil ef- fects of winning them from warlike habits without giving them British protection, for in that case our zeal in teaching them to turn their swords into o 194 REMARKS UPON NATIVE GOVERNMENTS. pruning-hooks, has caused them to fall an easy- prey to piratical Frenchmen. It is possible that Inchi Laa's sad tale of Malay Buffering was purposely told us to prepare our minds for the bloody scene enacted upon the morrow, and to justify the horrid retaliation. THE PRISONEKS IN QUEDAH FORT. 195 CHAP. XV. The Massacre of the Prisoners in Quedah Fort. — The alarmed Barber. — Inchi Laa repudiates the Act. — The Vultures' Feast. — Captain Warren visits the Siamese Camp. — The Siamese Army. — llenewed Vigour in the Operations. — The Capture of the Battery. — The Fh'ght of the Harem. — Fugitives no longer able to escape by Sea. — Narrow Escape of my Crew. — Inchi Laa surrenders. — Struck by a Whirl- wind. — The last Broadside. — The Chiefs escape. — Quedah Fort abandoned. The Siamese prisoners in the hands of the Malay chieftains had, after the completion of the defences of Quedah fort, been employed digging a reservoir, called, in India, a tank, for the purpose of collect- ing rain. Every day these wretches were marched out to their tasks and brought back again ; but on the day after the visit of the Inchi, we observed that a more than usual number of Malays accom- panied them, and that several chiefs of importance were among the escort. The spot was too distant for us to see all that took place, but our attention was attracted by piteous cries and loud shouts, and the rush and confusion of an o 2 196 THE ALARMED BARBER. evident melee : the Malays in the garrison crowded upon the parapet, and appeared very excited in voice and gesture. Suddenly, a Chinaman from the town was seen running towards our anchorage, followed, directly his object was observed, by a couple of Ma- lays; several shots were fired at the fugitive, but when under cover of our vessels, we discharged a musket over his head, to show we claimed him, and his pursuers resigned him to our custody. I never, before or since, saw a man so horror-stricken as this poor Chinese barber was — for he had all the instruments of his trade about him, and had, appa- rently, dropped his razor and fled, stricken by some sudden fear. With much ado the man was soothed into telling us, crying all the while with nervous ex- citement, that the noise which was just subsiding on shore, had been the death-shrieks of all the ill-fated Siamese prisoners; that Tonkoo Mahomet Type- etam had been burning for revenge ever since his late discomfiture at Allegagou, and the Malays gene- rally were frantic at the horrors perpetrated on their countrymen : in retaliation, therefore, they had that morning marched out three hundred Siamese (all they had in their hands) to the margin of the tank, and there drawing his creese, Type-etam had given the signal to fall on, by plunging it into the MASSACRE OP THE PRISONERS. 197 body of a prisoner; and the bodies were thrown into the tank, which lay in the road over which the Sia- mese troops must advance to the capture of Quedah. The Chinaman happened to be a witness of the mas- sacre, and not knowing whether Type-etam might not take it into his head to clear off the Chinese likewise, he, like a prudent barber, decamped at once. The murderers marched back soon afterwards, and lying, as we now did, close to the stockade, we did not think, from their appearance, they looked very elated with their bloody achievement ; still one or two ruffians were very excited, and waved their spears and muskets, as if promising us a similar fate should we fall into their hands. I need hardly say we were most indignant at such a cold-blooded act of cruelty, and it would have been an evil hour for Type-etam, had he fallen into the hands of our people: even Jadee declared it unmanly, and, as usual, took great care to explain to me, that the gen- tlemanly dogs by whom he had been brought up would have acted very differently. I upbraided Inchi Laa, the next time he visited us, for such an inhuman return to our captain's generous treatment of their defenceless women and children, and reminded him that, as pirates, there o 3 198 THE vultures' feast. was an English law which entitled us to twenty pounds a head for every one of his countrymen we sent out of the world.* The Inchi, I was glad to see, blushed, and vowed that Mahomet Said pro- tested against the act, whilst Type-etam tried to justify it, on the ground of the dearth of provisions and water, the cruelty of the Siamese, and the bad policy of liberating such a body of enemies. The keen sight of the vulture, or possibly its power of scent, was wonderfully exemplified on the day of the massacre ; for although none of us had ever seen a vulture here before, within a few hours after it had taken place a number of those repulsive crea- tures were wheeling round and round over the bodies, and soon settled down to their filthy repast ; only to rise for a short and lazy flight, when startled by some exchange of shots between the besiegers and besieged. Habit reconciles many a disgusting sight to our ideas of what is natural ; but I know nothing that, to a European as yet unhardened to it, seems so repul- sive as that of a large bird feeding upon the corpse of a human being. Yet this soon became a common sight, for many a body floated down the stream, and, directly it grounded on the mud-flats, vultures would * The head-money for pirates has been most wisely done away -with very lately, after having been sadly abused. VISIT TO THE SIAMESE CAMP. 199 be seen flapping their wings over their loathsome food. A week passed away : the Malays still spoke con- fidently of being able to hold out in the fort until the bad weather should force the Siamese to retreat, and ourselves to abandon the blockade ; and, more- over, they allowed it to leak out, that Datoo Ma- homet Alee, from Parlis, was operating against the flank of the Siamese army, and prevented them making an assault upon Quedah. On March 16 th, a Siamese flag was seen waving on a tree at the mouth of the Jurlong river, north of Quedah river ; and with a view to hastening the Siamese operations. Captain Warren decided upon visiting their head-quarters, and a message was soon sent to the Siamese general, informing him of his wish to do 80. Next day, elephants and a guard of honour were in waiting at the Jurlong. Captain Warren as- cended it as far as possible, and then, accompanied by his gig's crew and an interpreter, mounted the elephants, and proceeded to Allegagou, where the general still was, although a division of his army was closely blockading Quedah fort by land. Captain Warren was received with the greatest ho- nour, and had a house placed at his disposal, as well o 4 200 THE SIAMESE ARMY. as necessary food. The general informed him, that the diversion attempted by Datoo Mahomet Alee had br -n a perfect failure ; the Datoo experiencing a total defeat, and losing a field-piece and abundance of powder and shot, which were now in the hands of the Siamese, to be used against the Quedah garrison. The forces seen by Captain Warren, forming the main division of the army, were at least 15,000 strong, and consisted almost entirely of infantry and some elephants. Nearly 10,000 men were armed with good Tower flint muskets, which the General informed him had all been purchased from the Honourable Company, when they adopted the per- cussion-lock throughout the Indian army. On the whole. Captain Warren was favourably impressed with the materiel and personnel of the native army co-operating with us, though very different from what a European one would have been. With a promise from the General to push on operations with all possible energy, Captain Warren embarked, with his gig's crew, in one of the native canoes, descended Quedah river, and, much to all our astonishment, passed the town and fort of i Quedah without having his right to do so even chal- lenged by the Malays; proving, at any rate, the SIAMESE ATTACK THE BATTERY. 201 respect they entertained for the officer who had behaved so generously towards their wives and fa- milies. -^^ The day after Captain Warren's return, the Sia- mese appeared to be about to carry their prorhise into execution with a hearty will ; a heavy and con- tinuous fire was kept up by the outposts, and the Malays were evidently falling back : the scrub and jungle prevented us seeing much, except the wounded as they were carried to the rear. The Siamese light guns commenced to range over the fort, and were fiercely replied to by the heavy eighteen -pounders on the bastions. News was obtained by Mahomet Said at the same time, from a prisoner, that the Siamese had beaten back Mahomet Alee ; and the defence was thus rendered almost hopeless. The Malays in the fascine battery were suffering very much, and the Siamese, with their field-pieces and musketry, were punishing the defenders terribly. We had to move a little out of range, so as to let these gentry fight out the duel. It soon became evident that the Siamese, sheltered by the jungle, had a great advantage over the Malays, who we.e in open ground ; the three or four guns in the battery soon became silent, but the gingal battery fired a v^ay manfully, under a perfect storm of musket-balls — 202 THE CAPTURE OF THE BATTERY. fresh Malays ascending to take the place of those who were lowered down wounded. The Siamese dared not storm the battery, for it was commanded by the fort ; but, at last, a lucky shot from our allies struck the ^'Dove-cot," and, I fancy, dismounted the culverin, for, in a minute or two afterwards, we saw the Malays roll it off the platform, and let it fall into the battery below ; and then the whole garrison of the battery retreated into Quedah fort, carrying off their wounded and a couple of light guns. The Siamese shouted with delight, and rattled their castanets : we cheered them on ; and the Ma- lays slashed away grape and canister into the jungle, sweeping down all that dared to step on the open ground, which formed a glacis round the old fort. A cessation of firing took place in the afternoon, and that evening, the last instalment of women and children, and the last canoes in the river, escaped from Quedah. Amongst these fugitives were some fifteen damsels, the harem of Prince Abdullah ; and they showed, by their good looks, that His Royal Highness was not deficient in taste. We declared all veils contrary to " our national -prejudicesp and the ladies, with a little giggling, resigned themselves very good-naturedly to our white men's ideas, and repaid us for a liberal repast of curry and rice, to THE FLIGHT OP THE HAREM. 203 which they were immediately invited, by the kindest of smiles and the warmest thanks. Poor souls ! the villanous " Teda Bagoose" had, in the name of His Siamese Majesty, protested against rebels being al- lowed to escape so easily, and had been placed in a commanding position, between Quedah and Penang, to intercept all the canoes and prahus. We, in con- sequence, had to refuse this last party a guarantee against capture, and recommended them to land, and walk down the coast into Province Wellesley — a journey of some forty or fifty miles. They willingly adopted our suggestion, but besought permission to encamp under shelter of our guns, until sufficient men could be got together to secure them an escort. The younger ladies, I may, without scandal, say, ap- peared far from unwilling to take advantage of the holiday they were now enjoying from the strict se- clusion of the harem ; and, in spite of the prudish reprovals of some of the older ladies of the party, became upon such good terms with some of the Ma- lays who volunteered to protect them, that I fancy it was very doubtful whether Prince Abdullah would ever again recover the whole of the ladies of his household. An impromptu camp was rapidly formed on the southern point of the river, and we furnished them with sufficient food for present consumption. 204 NARROW ESCAPE OF MY CREW. These last fugitives assured us, that the fort now only contained about two hundred fighting men, under the two chiefs, Mahomet Said and Type-etam, and that they had sworn not to surrender. All next day the firing was incessant on the land side of the works, and the Siamese were evidently taking advantage of the cover offered by the town, to make their approaches sufficiently close to try an escalade or assault. The excitement of being even spectators of the fight was naturally very great, and, as either party gained or lost an advantage, we cheered and shouted from the gun-boat and cutter. Occasionally, a round-shot or two, and then a shower of musket-balls, would oblige us to move out of im- mediate range, but only one attempt was fairly made to sink us, and this was the act of a desperate cut- throat in Quedah fort, called "Jaffa." He pointed a heavy twenty-four-pounder at my craft, only eight hundred yards distant, and, having loaded it with grape and canister, discharged it at us whilst we were seated at our afternoon meal of rice and fish. How all hands escaped seemed a miracle: the awnings were cut through in several places, the hull struck and grazed a good deal, but not one man was wounded. We cleared away our guns, and keenly watched all pieces pointed in our direction. The THE SALLY. 205 attempt was not, however, repeated; and as from the angle of the fort which fired at us, we saw three or four men lower themselves down, jump into the river, and swim across so as to escape by- land to the southward, we were led to anticipate, what we afterwards heard, that Jaffa and his friends, who had fired upon us, had been reproved by the chiefs, and made to fly the fort. Just as the night was closing in, the Malays fired several smart salvos of artillery, and with loud cheers sallied out upon the Siamese, who had already com- menced to occupy the town. Volumes of fire and smoke soon rolled over the unfortunate habitations, and the fight waxed hot and furious; reinforcements, however, soon arrived to our allies, and the Malays were beaten back with loss. To our astonishment, our old friend Inchi Laa, or ** Gentleman Laa," as the sailors nicknamed him, came alongside, in a wretched canoe, and surrendered his sword. It bore marks of having been used to some purpose; but out of respect for the man's misfortunes, we did not ask many questions. He merely said, that tliey had made a sally from the fort, and been beaten back with loss ; he had found himself cut off from the gate, and happily discovered a de- 206 INCHI LAA SURRENDERS. cayed canoe before the enemy had observed him. He did not wish to return to Quedah. Poor Inchi ! he seemed so alive to the kindness shown him ; his mild and gentlemanly countenance spoke volumes in its sadness ; and as he pressed us by the hand, bowing his head to touch it in token of gratitude, and in the same garb, and with his own sword in hand, swore to escort his countrywomen safely into Province Wel- lesley, and then surrender to our authorities if called upon. There was not a single soul of our party who did not sincerely regret that political expediency should have set us against a race which can produce such men. That night and next day the firing of the fort and Siamese was constant ; the Siamese were evi- dently puzzled ; their six-pounders were not likely to breach the walls, and scaling a fort full of Malays was a disagreeable contingency which they required time to think about. The north-east wind had now almost ceased to blow during the day-time, and the heat of the calm days was most oppressive ; its disagreeables considerably increased by the smoke of fires, and the foul smell arising from the tank full of slaughtered prisoners, and many bodies of Malays and Siamese which had floated down the stream, and become either fixed in STRUCK BT A WHIRLWIND. 207 the interstices of the stockade, or grounded upon the mud-banks. In the afternoon, I experienced in the ** Emerald " the first and only " white squall " which it has been my good fortune to fall in with — but "whirlwind" would be the more proper term* It was calm, and sultry to a degree, and we were listlessly lying about the decks, watching the desultory fight, when the town was suddenly enveloped in a storm of dust, straw, sticks, rags, and flags, flying up almost ver- tically in the air, as if enchanted ; and before we could take a single precaution, such as battening down, we were struck by a squall. With one furious gust it threw us over on our beam-ends — for we lay across its path, tore away awnings and awning stanchions, and whisked them out of the gun- boat, carried away the weather shrouds, blew the sails out of the gaskets, and half swamped us with water. Happily, it went as quickly as it came, and made one rub one's head, and wonder whether the- whole affair had really taken jJace. Having to send men away to fetch the awning back was, however, a pretty good proof of the extraordinary violence of such a whirlwind ; and the Malays assured me, that through the jungle such a violent squall will cut a lane, felling trees, as if so many woodmen had been \ 208 THE LAST BROADSIDE. at work. The best term for it, though somewhat more French than English in character, was that used to me some years afterwards by a French naval officer, who, describing the horrors and dangers of a campaign dans les iles de I'Archipel, said, " Ah ! mais nous avons eu des vents la ! par ex- emple! des coups de vent effrayants — des vents du diable mon ami ! " We sat over our cup of tea discussing whether we should not, after all, have to take an active part in the fall of Quedah, when the black outline of the fort was illumined by flashes of artillery ; they lasted some few minutes, and were followed by a dead si- lence. That volley was the knell of Quedah ; for, in a short time, we heard cries, as of men drowning, near the stockade, and a number of my Malays, as well as some of Mr. Barclay's seamen, jumped into the water and swam to the rescue. They happily succeeded in saving six out of a dozen or fourteen men who had tried to swim across the river, but had failed. These men that we had saved were all natives of Upper India, and a fine six-foot fellow, directly he was able to speak, said, " We are the last of the garrison ! " Their tale was this: — -Two nights ago, under cover of an attempt made by us against the Siamese, 209 Tonkoo Mahomet Said, Prince Abdullah, and Type- etam, with a select body of men, marched along the low-water mark of the sea, as far as the mouth of the Jurlong river, unseen by us or the Siamese; there they were met by Datoo Mahomet Alee and Haggi Loung, who had marched from Parlis with some elephants to meet them ; and the united chiefs had thus escaped, to renew their resistance in another quarter. In order that the Siamese might still be detained off Quedah, a petty chieftain, whose name did not transpire, promised, with two hundred chosen men, to hold out for forty- eight hours: this he faithfully performed ; and he directed the desperate sally in which Inchi Laa had been cut off from re-entering the fort. Shortly afterwards, that chief, afraid to surrender to us after the treacherous attempt of one Jaffa to sink the gun-boat (an act all had disapproved of), swam across to the south side with the remaining men of his party, leaving fifteen Rajpoots, who were in the fort, to cover his escape by holding out, as they promised, for the space of two hours. They it was who had fired the last broadsides, and then endeavoured to make good their retreat as the others had done ; but not being as amphibious P 210 QUEDAH FORT ABANDONED. fis the Malays, they had been swept down by the tide upon the stockade, and the majority were drowned, or killed by alligators. We respected these brave fellows ; and although there w^as some suspicion of their being deserters from the Company's army, we gave them the benefit of the doubt ; and, having made them swear to escort the women with all speed to Province Wellesley, we put them all under charge of Inchi Laa, and has- tened their departure before the Siamese entered Quedah fort and observed their movements. Barclay and I crawled through the mud, aroused all the fair ladies from their al fresco slumbers, told Inchi Laa he must be off — a piece of advice which needed no repetition, — and in a few minutes we were left alone, the stars and a young moon shining on the grey walls of the deserted stronghold. SIAMESE IN POSSESSION OF THE FORT. 211 CHAP. XVI. The Siamese in Possession of the Fort. — Description of the Fort. — A Siamese Military Swell. — The Divan. — A Naval Ambassador. — The Ambassador demands Beef. — Curiosity of the Siamese Officials. — The Appearance of the Soldiery. — Mobility of the Siamese Troops. — Arms and Equipments. — The Buffalo of Malayia. — Mr. Airey, Master of the " Hyacinth." — Siamese Ingratitude not singular. — We proceed to Parlis. At daybreak on March 20th, we observed the Sia- mese to be in possession of the fort, and shortly afterwards our Captain visited, and congratulated the authorities, who, however, did not appear to under- stand the immense moral aid we had afforded to his Golden-tufted Majesty of Slara, as well as the fatal hindrance we had been to fresh supplies being thrown into the unfortunate province. In the course of the day, I visited Quedah, accompa- nied by Jadee, Jaraboo, and a guard of honour of four of my own Malays, who my worthy coxswain insisted should be armed to the teeth, lest a fray should arise p 2 212 DESCRIPTION OF THE EORT. with any of the Siamese irregulars. The gun-boat passed through the stockade, and from her I landed at the river end of a moat, which we found flanked the fort on its landward side. Neglect and ruin were everywhere apparent; the moat was half filled with rubbish, and evidently was left dry at low water: across it, opposite the only gateway not built up with stones, a temporary bridge had been thrown by the Siamese ; this gateway faced the one long row of mat-built houses which constituted the once important town of Quedah ; and as we passed through it, we could not help stopping to admire two magnificent brass guns, of Portuguese manufacture, which pointed down the road. The arms of the House of Bra- ganza were still comparatively fresh upon the metal: but how have they, the descendants of Alfonso Albu- querque, degenerated ! The fort itself was of a rectangular form, and partook more of the character of a factory such as the Portuguese and Dutch, as well as ourselves, used to construct in the early days of Eastern discovery, than that of a place intended purely as a fortification. On the parapet, there were many handsome and heavy guns, mounted on very barbaric carriages ; and within the walls, besides an old mosque or temple, and one or two stone-built houses, there was no lack DESCRIPTION OF THE FORT. 213 of mat residences of the usual Malay order of archi- tecture. It was a sad and ruinous scene : the robber and robbed had each been there in their turn ; their handiwork lay before me, and standing upon the battlements looking over the rich land and luxuriant forest, on the one side, and the fine river with the blue Indian Ocean upon the other, I could not help feeling that man had sadly abused God's bounty. Yet Quedah had not always been what it then was. When the first European visitor wrote of it, in 1516^ he had occasion to say, that it was "a seaport to which an infinite number of ships resorted, trading in all kinds of merchandise ; here come," he adds, " many Moorish* ships from all quarters ; here, too, grows much pepper, very good and fine, which is conveyed to Malacca, and thence to China." And the province adjacent is still noted for the immense productiveness of its rice-fields, and the mountains are still rich in gold and tin. I was not left long to cogitate upon what Quedah had been, and what it could now be, if in better hands ; for the Siamese soldiery were still ransacking every hole and corner for plunder, and failing in discovering much, some of them, who looked a little excited with " fighting water," or * Moor was the term applied to the Mahometan traders. p 3 214 A SIAMESE MILITARY SWELL. " hang^' ruffled up their feathers at my no less pug- nacious Malays. I therefore proceeded at once to pay my respects to the Siamese commandant, my interpreter addressing himself to a Siamese officer, or petty chief, who seemed to have charge of a guard at the gate. The worthy was leaning listlessly on some planks, and, when first addressed, gave himself as many airs as the most thoroughbred British subaltern in charge of three rank and file could have done. It made me smile to see how small the stride between the extremes of civilised and savage life: the listless apathy of fashion and the stoicism of the Indian are very, very close akin. Jamboo, however, understood the art of being a dragoman ; and I fancy stirred up the subaltern by a glowing description of who and what I was, and by his gesticulation and apparent solemnity of bear- ing when addressing me, moved the spirit of the sol- dier, and he got up, and conducted me to the pre- sence of the Siamese chief. Passing through a crowd of very uncivil officers, who could only be distinguished from the men by wearing silk tartans of a blue and white pattern, I was presented to a tall intelligent person, the com- mandant. Jamboo made, in a disagreeably abject manner, a long speech on my behalf; in which A NAVAL AMBASSADOR. 215 the Siamese tongue grated harshly on the ear after the soft and harmonious language of Malayia. The hall of audience was in one of the bastions, and was evidently the proper Divan. The courtier-like super- ciliousness of all the officers in the chief s retinue was deliciously amusing; and the great man w^as evidently wrath at something : maybe he was not struck with the importance of a British midshipman in his ambas- eadorial character; but I enjoyed the joke amazingly; for I had been ordered to give a message, and I deter- mined to give it to no one but the chief, were he the Rajah of Ligor himself. I got it from my chief; I intended it should go to theirs. Jamboo passed several compliments between us, almost going through the form of paying idolatrous worship to a Siamese general and a midshipman of H.M.S. " Hyacinth." I then said, in the most serious and formal manner, "Tell the general that I have a message from my rajah ! " and, added Jadee, " Re- member, oh Jamboo ! that these men are swine, and would never have been here but for us ; explain that to these sons of burnt mothersi" Requesting Jamboo to do DO such thing, and desiring Jadee to hold his tongue, my message was duly delivered. " He says," said Jamboo, "that he is ready to hear. But, dear me, sir, this not Siamese fashion ; nobody p 4 216 THE AMBASSADOR DEMANDS BEEF. can send a message to a great chief like this without a present ; suppose no got present, can do no good ! " " Never mind, Jamboo," I replied ; '^ you fire away as I tell you. Tell this old gentleman that my cap- tain wishes him to put the two bullocks he promised for the ship, on board my boat." Jamboo collapsed ; and I saw he was going to remonstrate at having to give such an unimportant message to so big a man, therefore checked it at once, by ordering him to do as he was told. The message was delivered, and its effect was richly comical on the audience around us : they stared open- mouthed at the impertinence of the whole affair, though I knew perfectly well I had done right ; for the devil a bullock should I have got from anyone but the chief, and to go off without two of them was not my intention. The chief seemed to divine my motive ; for though he stared at first, he soon smiled, and with becoming dignity replied that he did not look after bullocks, but that we should have two. "Will his Excellency be good enough to order one of these officers to go with me, and point them out ? I asked through Jamboo. And, wonderful to relate ! his Excellency did please to do so, and I put the gentleman under Jadee's especial care, and told him not to part from him until he had the two animals CURIOSITY OF THE SIAMESE OFFICIALS. 217 safe in his own custody. Jadee went away with him, looking as if any breach of contract would cause the Siamese officer to join the hecatomb in the tank. I was now retiring, when the small spyglass in my hand attracted the Siamese chief's attention ; and on inquiring if it was a pistol, its proper use was ex- plained to him, and very much delighted his Excel- lency was with a sight through the little Dollond; and children at a peep-show were never more excited than were his attendants in their desire to be allowed to look through it. I need hardly say that I was not over liberal in that respect to those who had given themselves airs, and I soon beat a retreat. The crowd and the heat made the Divan disagreeable amongst people with whom fresh water had become a scarce commodity. The excessive self-conceit I observed amongst these officers is a national characteristic of the Siamese people: they Btjlethemaelves, par excellence, "Thai," or freemen; the Franks, in short, of the great penin- sula embraced by the Indian Ocean and China Sea — a title they most decidedly do not deserve as a body ; for the stick is in more common use amongst them than the bamboo is with the Chinese, as an arbitrator between master and man. 218 APPEARANCE OF THE SOLDIERY. Great numbers of their soldiery were in both fort and town, and struck me as being a fine soldierlike body of men if measured by an Asiatic standard, and minus pipeclay, black-ball, and leather stocks, I miojht also add, recrimental clothinor. A cloth round their hips, falling to the knee, and another fashioned like a Malay sarang, hanging across the shoulders, formed their sole attire. In appearance, they struck me as a composite race, and betrayed strong signs of a mixed origin. They were taller than the Malays, long-backed, and better developed about the legs and hips, as a race should be who live more ashore than afloat. The features partook of the Burmese cast of countenance, with the eye just enough Chinese in outline to show that the sons of Ham were numerous on the banks of the deep Menam. In colour, they were a shade or two darker than the Malay and Chi- nese, exhibiting in that respect an aflSnity to the races of the Peninsula of Indostan, and substantiating their sacred traditions, that their religion was derived, as well as their earliest civilisation, from the banks of the Ganges. The power of endurance of these sol- diery I had often heard my Malays extol ; and look- ing at the spare athletic limbs, in which there was more bone than flesh, I could easily understand that they were capable of making long marches ; indeed. MOBILITY OF THE SIAMESE TROOPS. 219 whilst I stood at the gate, two men, clothed as I have before described, marched in with a spring in their gait which betokened that they had still plenty of work left in them ; and on inquiring where they had come from, I was informed that they had marched from a place thirty miles distant. Beside their arms, these men each carried a slip of bamboo on his shoulder, at either extremity of which was sus- pended all their baggage, cooking-gear, and several days' rice tied up in a bag with a little salt. The celerity with which an army that thus carried its equipnge and commissariat upon the men's shoulders, could move from point to point of an extensive em- pire like Siam, must be very remarkable, and fully supported the Malay acknowledgment of their being excellent soldiers. All those I saw had firearms of some description or other ; the majority had flint muskets with the Tower mark ; round the waist of the soldiery was se- cured a primitive cartouche-box containing, in little movable reeds, the charges of powder, and in the same belt a bag was suspended filled with musket- balls and pieces of a felt-like vegetable substance for wads. The martial appearance of these Siamese was heightened by a very peculiar mode of wearing the 220 THE BUFFALO OF MALAYIA. hair. Naturally jet black, and somewhat harsh in texture, the hair was cut to an equal length all over the head, leaving it about three and a half inches long, the object being to make each particular hair to stand on end, " like quills upon the fretful porcupine," and to ensure this, a fillet, of an inch and a half wide, of rattan, or some stiff substance, carefully covered with white linen, encircled the head, passing across the forehead close to the roots of the hair, and served to force it all into an erect position. It decidedly gave them a singularly fearless air, but, whether a national custom, or merely adopted by the Siamese general to make a marked distinction between his followers and the long-haired Malays, I am unable to say. I passed Jadee and his crew of twenty men, en- gaged in getting the two bullocks on board the "Eme- rald," and they had had a pretty tough hour's work in doing so : for the animals, like most of the native cattle in Malay ia, were only-half tamed bufFalos — a set of savage long-horned brutes that will not turn from the tiger so common in those jungles. Indeed in many of the native states, the favourite sport of the chiefs is to capture a tiger alive, and turn him loose into an enclosed arena with a buffalo-bull, and in nine cases out of ten the latter will, in spite MR. AlREy,%)F THE "HYACINTH." 221 of the fearful wounds it receives, kill the tiger with a blow or two of its horns, and then toss it about as an English bull would a dog. We had some difficulty in lashing down our freight of fresh beef, and taking it safely off to the " Hya- cinth ;" and the commanding officer, the kind and gallant Airey, laughed immoderately when I told him of my mode of carrying out his injunction, ** not to return without the bullocks." " A midshipman's im- pertinence must," as he observed, " have astonished the Rajah of Ligor ! " for he it was, and no one less, that I had thus played the ambassador with ! Airey was the master of the " Hyacinth ;" but owing to the death of the second lieutenant, and the promotion of the first lieutenant*, he was now doing commanding officer's duty. He was a charming specimen of a generous, gallant sailor. Poor fellow ! he now lies in a humble grave on the pestilential shores of Labuan, having fallen a victim to fever and dysentery, so rife at the commencement of our settlement on that island. Heaven rest his soul ! a better, kinder man, or more zealous officer, never * The late Captain Giflard, who was mortally wounded, and his vessel, H.M.S. " Tiger," captured by the Russians off Odessa, in the commencement of the late war. 222 SIAMESE INGRATITCDE. adorned our profession, although it never was his luck, in piping days of peace, to have sufficient opportunity for a display of his abilities, and the canker of dis- appointment and a worn-out constitution laid him under the turf. Arrangements were now made to proceed north- ward, so as to promote the rapid reduction of the rest of the province, a great portion of which was still in the hands of the Tonkoos and their adherents. The Siamese, as I have said, did not appear to understand the value of our passive form of co-operation, though it was undoubtedly very efficacious; and Jamboo assured me he had, whilst in Quedah fort, heard many insult- ing inuendoes cast upon the British mode of block- ading. " Oh ! you have been eating white rice while we have starved upon black," was one of their expres- sions equivalent "to lying in clover" whilst they worked hard. Others wanted to know, " Why we allowed a set of Malay vermin to escape, that they might return, to harass the Siamese at a future day ? " In short, had Captain Warren expected much gratitude for all his hard work and anxious days and nights, he would have been bitterly disappointed, and we may say that our unhandsome treatment by the Siamese was only of a piece with the conduct of some other countries which we could mention in more WE PROCEED TO PAKLIS. 223 civilised parts of the world, where policy, or gene- rosity, or Quixotism has caused Old England to lavish her treasure and her still more precious blood. It was with no small satisfaction that we saw the ** Hyacinth " weigh on the 22nd of March, and pro- ceed towards Parlis, leaving the Siamese and the " Teda Bagoose" to fulfil their mission, whatever that might be. By the bye, the fighting captain of the " Teda Bagoose " had vowed to report me oflfi- cially for giving such a name to his Imperial Ma- jesty's brig, and that added to my desire to see her a long way astern. 22 RETURN TO PARLIS. CHAP. XVII. Return to Parlis. — A Case of Cholera-morbus. — An Irish Cure for Cholera. — Pat Conroy's Opinion of the Chinese. — Tamelan. — Parlis. — The Flight from Tamelan. — The Legacy of Queen Devi. — The Departure. — The Heart of a Cocoa-nut Tree. — Proceed to shoot a Buffalo. — Discover a Herd. — The Shot and the Chase. — Obtain Plenty of Buffalo Meat. The cutter and gun-boat proceeded along the shore, whilst the " Hyacinth " made a straight course ; and the lack of wind in both cases caused the passage to Parlis to be longer than usual. Unable to continue at the oars and sweeps during the heat of the day, we anchored off Bamboo Point, whilst the "Hyacinth," in the distance, flapped lazily along with light airs anr ^ts'-paws which never reached us. Towards sui c we weighed, and had not gone far before a sn^ . prahu was detected endeavouring to hide herself in the jungle : we of course made her come alongside ; and a wretched sight she was ! The crew on board consisted for the most part of Chinese settlers who were flying the province: they came A CASE OF CHOLERA-MORBUS. !o from Trang, and gave us the first intimr n that that place was already in Siamese possessio.i ; but on the way down, cholera and fever had broken out in the prahu, and many had died. Whilst with us, one poor creature was seized with Asiatic cholera. It was a sad sight, to see one in a sound healthy state suddenly seized with a mortal malady. After one or two rapidly successive cramps the very appearance of the man seemed to alter ; he became livid and looked collapsed. We had no medi- cine, and beyond rubbing his cramped muscles, could do nothing, until Barclay's stroke oarsman, a fine spe- cimen of **a boy" from Kinsale, called Paddy Conroy, said it was " a pithy to say a hathen dhoi in such a manner," and volunteered to cure him, if the officers would only give him five minutes' run of their spirits. Pat Conroy, we knew, looked on spirits — in a nate state, as he called it — as a sovereign remedy for every trouble flesh is heir to; and it was necessary to ke3p an eye to his physicking, as in his zeal he might h e administered counteractives to himself, whilst doi ^ the good Samaritan to the cholera-stricken Chir. i- man. We opened our private store of spirits, which was kept in a box containing our stock of cayenne pepper, salt, chilies, pickles, and chutney. *' Be dad ! sir," said Conroy, as his Milesian nose disappeared Q ? 226 AN IRISH CURE FOR CHOLERA. in the smiles which wreathed his honest countenance, "here is the rale physic here; the devil asowl dies of cholera while there is all this whisky to be had," — and as he said so, he started a wine-glass of it into a tumbler. " And then there 's the beauthiful Jamaicy rhum too, — by the mother of Moses ! what is better than that too for cramps?" so saying, he added some of it. " Ah, now, sir, if you plaise, the smallest taste of gin; oh! it's wonderful what a power there is in that same, if so be there is plenty of it ; not that Paddy Conroy would exchange Kinsale harbour full of it for a bucketful of the rale crathur — but what can these hathens know" about it ? Now for a spoonful of chili vinegar and a pinch of cayenne." So suiting the action to the word, he mixed up a dia- bolical potion, which would have horrified a horse- doctor. I remonstrated, but Barclay truly enough said, it gave the Chinaman one chance more of surviving, and accordingly a seaman forced the poor creature's mouth open with an iron spoon-handle, — for the teeth were set close together with spasms, — and Dr. Conroy poured his cure for cholera down the man's throat. " You have killed that man ! " I said. "'The divil a fear, sir," replied Conroy; "good whisky never killed any man ; " a rash assertion CONROY's opinion of the CHINESE. 227 of his faith in his national liquor, which seemed somewhat supported by the rapid improvement which took place in the patient, who had perfectly shaken off his malady before we reached Parlis. Chinaman-like, the wretch seemed incapable of gratitude, and neither he nor his friend said, thank you! to Pat Conroy, who, when I remarked to him that I thought they might have done so, replied that " Nothing good ever came of men who wore tails, the dirty hathens ! and it was almost a pithy to have wasted good liquor on such bastes." Conroy was one of those light-hearted, devil-may- care Irishmen, one or two of whom are so invaluable on a man-of-war, just to keep up fun and light- heartedness ; more than that is always a source of trouble, for they are seldom good sailors, and often troublesome and drunken. But wherever a good joke would lighten heavy work, or dispel monotony or care, such a diverting vagabond as Paddy Conroy was invaluable ; and though Paddy was bad at steering or seamanship, he could handle a musket with all the innate love of soldiering of an Irishman, and where dash or pluck was required, ** Paddy Conroy," to use Ins own expression, " would be all there, your honour I" His love for being " all there" eventually led him into a powder-magazine in China, where