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 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
RECENT FICTION 
 
 By Grant Allen. 
 
 Linnet. 6s. 
 
 An African Millionaire. 6s. 
 By R. S. Warren Bell. 
 
 The Cub in Love. is. 6d. 
 By Frederic Breton. 
 
 True Heart. 6s. 
 By G. B. Burgin. 
 
 The Cattle-Man. 6$. 
 
 " Old Man's " Marriage. 6s. 
 By Hugh Clifford. 
 
 In Court and Kampong. 7s. 6d. 
 By George Egerton. 
 
 The Wheel of God. 6s. 
 By George Fleming. 
 
 Little Stories about Women. 3s. 6d. 
 By R. Murray Gilchrist. 
 
 A Peakland Faggot. 28. 6d. 
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 Convict 99. 3s. 6d. 
 By Haldane M'Fall. 
 
 A Black Vagabond. 6s. 
 By Leonard Merrick. 
 
 The Actor-Manager. 6s. 
 
 One Man's View. 3s. 6d. 
 By W. C. Morrow. 
 
 The Ape, the Idiot, and Other People. 6s. 
 By Helmuth Schwartze. 
 
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 By Gordon Seymour. 
 
 The Rudeness of the Honourable Mr. 
 
 Leatherhead. 2s. 
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 Cui Bono ? 2s. 
 By Lady Troubridge. 
 
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 London : Grant Richards, 1898. 
 
STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 BEING 
 
 SCRAWLS AND SMUDGES IN SEPIA 
 WHITE, AND YELLOW 
 
 • »* • • 
 
 * ••• » • • • • • 
 
 BY 
 
 HUGH CLIFFORD 
 •« 
 
 AUTHOR Or 
 
 'in court and kamfong' 
 
 fLonfcon 
 
 GRANT RICHARDS 
 
 9 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 1898 
 

€o 3. <&. «. 
 
 A» helpless Debtors come to lay 
 
 Poor presents at the feet 
 Of those they ne'er can hope to pay, 
 
 So come I, as 'tis meet, 
 To lay this book on thy dear knee, 
 
 In token that I know, 
 Of love and sacrifice for me, 
 
 How great the debt I owe. 
 
 H. C. 
 
 732931 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The tales and sketches of which this book is com- 
 posed have a very definite object underlying their 
 apparent lightness. To some extent, it must be 
 confessed, they wear the garb of fiction ; but, none 
 the less, they are s7ucfiesj)f things as tney are, — drawn 
 from the life. The facts related in the stories which 
 I have named c In the Valley of the T£lom,' 'The 
 Fate of Leh the Strolling Player,' ■ His Little Bill,' 
 'At the Heels of the White Man,' 'A Malay 
 Othello,' 'The Weeding of the Tares,' and 'From 
 the Grip of the Law,' are all things which have 
 actually occurred in the Malay Peninsula during the 
 last ten or twenty years. The tale told by Tiikang . 
 
 Burok, which is peculiarly painful and characteristic, ju/' _^J 
 is known to many people in the interior of Pahang, 
 and is, I believe, true in every detail. I can only 
 claim these stories as my own in that I have filled in . 
 
 the pictures from my knowledge of the localities in ^ 
 which the various events happened, and have generally 
 told my tales in the fashion which appealed to me as 
 
/" 
 
 viii STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the most appropriate. Umat, who is the subject of 
 one of the sketches, is a very real person indeed, and 
 as I write these lines he is sleeping peacefully over the 
 punkah cord, with which he has become inextricably 
 entangled. The purely descriptive chapters are the 
 result of personal observation in a land which has 
 become very dear to me, which I know intimately, 
 and where the best years of my life have hitherto been 
 spent. The remaining stories are somewhat more 
 imaginative than their fellows ; but * The Spirit of 
 the Tree* and 'The Strange Elopement of Chaling 
 the Dyak' were both related to me as facts, in the 
 manner which I have described. As regards the 
 former, the man whom I have called Trimlett 
 certainly had an exceedingly ugly wound on his foot, 
 for which he accounted in rather a curious manner. 
 As for Chaling, I have no hesitation in expressing my 
 own profound disbelief in its main features ; but this 
 is merely a private opinion, by which I would ask no 
 man to be unduly influenced. I am indebted to the 
 Editor of Macmillan s Magazine for permission to 
 republish the story of the Schooner. The tale is one 
 which has long been current among the native and 
 European pearlers of the Archipelago, from whom I 
 
 heard it, and by whom it is unquestioningly believed. 
 
 In writing these tales and sketches it has mainly 
 been my design to illustrate, in as readable a manner 
 as I am able, the lives lived by those among the natives 
 of the Peninsula who have not yet been changed out 
 

 Z 
 
 jifu. (V*- 
 
 of all recognition by the steadily increasing influence 
 of Europearo-y to picture their habits and customs, 
 their beliefs and superstitions, their tortuous twists of 
 thought, and incidentally to give some idea of the 
 lovely land in which they move and have their being. 
 These things have seemed to me to be all the better 
 worth recording because innovation is doing its work 
 in the Peninsula with surprising rapidity, and the 
 people, and to some extent even their surroundings, 
 are undergoing a complete and radical change, which 
 will leave them quite other than they were before we 
 came amongst them, and as a few of them still are in 
 some of the remoter places of which my stories tell. 
 
 For more than fourteen years I have dwelt in the 
 Peninsula in almost hourly contact with natives of all 
 classes, from Sultans and Rajas to Chiefs and Datos, 
 from villagers and fisher-folk to the aboriginal tribes of 
 Sakai and Semang, who people the forests of the remote 
 interior, and I have ever found the study of my sur- 
 roundings of absorbing interest. I shall probably hurt 
 no man's self-complacency, if I say that the things 
 and places of which I tell are matters concerning 
 which the ideas of the vast majority of my country- 
 men are both hazy and fragmentary. But, none the 
 less, the Peninsula and its sepia-coloured peoples are 
 curious and worthy of attention, and therefore they 
 deserve to be better known by the men of the race 
 which has taken the destiny of the Malays of the / 
 Peninsula under its especial charge. 
 
 : 
 
x STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 In the selection of the subjects of my illustrations 
 S I have frequently experienced considerable difficulty, 
 because I have often been driven to choose the ex- 
 ception rather than the rule, the abnormal rather 
 than the normal, if my tales are to be rendered 
 acceptable to any save the very few who are personally 
 and directly interested in my brown friends. Had I 
 received my training in the Kailyard School, instead 
 of among the wilds of the Malay jungles ; had I the 
 genius of a Barrie, instead of the facility of a mere 
 writer of official reports, — it is possible that I might so 
 paint the commonplace, everyday life of the Malays 
 that I should move my readers to tears and laughter 
 over every incident of the village on the river banks, 
 and of the rice- fields which lie behind it. But, alas, 
 these things are far beyond my reach, and I must 
 whip my Pegasus over break-neck leaps, must charge 
 him through barbarous combats, and must tumble him 
 head-over-heels into some ugly depths, if his antics are 
 to excite any particular emotion On the flat, and 
 across the grass, he has no special grace of action to 
 distinguish him above his fellows. 
 
 HUGH CLIFFORD. 
 
 British Residency, 
 Fahang, Malay Peninsula, 
 November 24, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 i. 
 
 2. 
 3- 
 
 4- 
 5- 
 6. 
 
 7- 
 8. 
 
 9- 
 10. 
 
 1 1. 
 
 12. 
 
 13- 
 14. 
 
 »5- 
 16. 
 
 For always roaming with a hungry heart 4j£. 
 
 Much have I seen and known. 
 
 Ulysses. 
 
 In the Valley of the Telom 
 
 The Fate of Leh the Strolling Player 
 
 Umat ...... 
 
 His Little Bill .... 
 
 The Schooner with a Past . 
 
 In Arcadia ..... 
 
 The Spirit of the Tree 
 At the Heels of the White Man 
 TOkang BOrok's Story . 
 On Malayan Rivers 
 A Malay Othello 
 Some Notes and Theories concerning Latah 
 The Weeding of the Tares . 
 In the Rush of Many Waters . 
 From the Grip of the Law . 
 The Strange Elopement of ChXling the 
 Dyak ..... 
 
 PACX 
 
 I 
 
 22 
 
 36 
 
 54 
 67 
 
 84 
 107 
 122 
 
 139 
 
 152 
 
 171 
 i8rj<- 
 
 202 
 211 
 223 
 
 H3 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TfiLOM 
 
 Where the forest yields to the open space, 
 
 And the trees stand back to see 
 The waters that babble and glisten and race 
 
 Thro' woodlands trackless and free ; 
 Where the soil is ploughed by a thousand feet, 
 
 And the salt lies sweet below, 
 Here nightly the beasts of the jungle meet 
 
 To wallow, and bellow, and blow. 
 
 The Salt-Lick. 
 
 Very far away, in the remote interior of Pahang, 
 there is a river called the Telom — an angry little 
 stream, which fights and tears its way through the 
 vast primaeval forest, biting savagely at its banks, 
 wrestling impatiently with the rocks and boulders that 
 obstruct its path, rippling fiercely over long beds of 
 water-worn shingle, and shaking a glistening mane of 
 splashing, troubled water, as it rushes downwards in 
 its fury. Sometimes, during the winter months, when 
 the rain has fallen heavily in the mountains, the 
 Telom will rise fourteen or fifteen feet in a couple of 
 hours, and then, for a space, its waters change their 
 temper from wild, excited wrath, to a sullen anger, 
 which it is by no means pleasant to encounter. But 
 
 B 
 
2 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 it is when the stream is shrunken by drought that it 
 is really most dangerous ; for, at such times, sharp and 
 ragged rocks, over which a raft is usually able to pass 
 in safety, rise ux> i from the river-bed, to within an inch 
 or two af the surface, and rip all things cast against 
 them with keen firm cuts, that need no further hacking 
 to complete their work of dismemberment. At the 
 very foot of the largest rapid in the river, one of these 
 boulders forms, in dry weather, a very efficient trap 
 for the unwary. The channel of the stream, at this 
 point, narrows somewhat, and is confined between high 
 walls of rock, and the boiling waters of the fall are 
 further troubled by the jagged blocks of granite, with 
 which the river-bed is studded. One of these leans 
 slightly up stream, for the friction of ages has worn 
 away a cavity where the force of the current strikes 
 most fiercely ; and, when the waters are low, it is 
 impossible for a raft to avoid this obstacle. 
 
 The rafts, which are used upon the upper reaches 
 of the Malayan rivers, are formed of about eighteen 
 bamboos, lashed side by side, and firmly kept in place 
 by stout wooden stays above and across. They are 
 usually some twenty feet in length, and, though they 
 have great flotage, their very lightness causes them to 
 wallow knee-deep when the furious waters of a rapid 
 roar over them and about them, while they whirl 
 down stream at a headlong, desperate pace. The more 
 shrunken the stream, the greater the speed at which a 
 raft spins down a fall, for the rapid itself is unchanging, 
 while, at such times, the volume of water is in- 
 sufficient to break the drop, and soften the descent. 
 
 Thus it is that, at the rapid in the Telom, of 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE T&LOM 3 
 
 which I speak, a raft charges down the channel between 
 the high walls of granite, and comes to eternal grief 
 upon the leaning rock, which obstructs the passage, 
 waiting so calmly and so patiently for its prey. 
 
 A harsh, sharp crack — the agonised pain-cry of the 
 bamboos — sounds above the roar of the waters, as the 
 raft strikes the boulder fairly and squarely. Another 
 second, and the bow is fast wedged beneath the pro- 
 jecting ledge of the slanting rock. The bamboos 
 give another despairing shriek j and the tail of the 
 raft rises swiftly to a perpendicular position, waggling 
 irresolutely, while the bow is buried more deeply 
 beneath the boulder, which grips it fast. Then, like 
 the sail of a windmill, the raft whirls round in the air, 
 the fixed bow serving as its axis, and, with a flap, it 
 smites the racing waters beyond the obstructing rock. 
 Every one of the bamboos is smashed in an instant 
 into starting, shrieking slivers, which have power to 
 cut more sharply than the keenest knife. The men, 
 who lately manned the raft, are cast high into the air. 
 Then they are broken pitilessly upon the rocks, are 
 cut and wounded cruelly by the matchwood that was 
 once their raft, or are to be seen struggling powerlessly 
 in an angry torrent. 
 
 Jgram Musoh Karam — the Rapid of the Drowned 
 Enemy — the place is named in the vernacular, and 
 native tradition tells of an invading expedition utterly 
 destroyed in this terrible rock-bound death-trap. But 
 men who know the records of the river are aware that 
 the Telom spares friend no more than it once spared 
 foe ; and the tale of its kills waxes longer and longer 
 as the years slip away. 
 
4 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 None the less, it is during the driest season, when 
 the stream, shrunken to the lowest limits, is most 
 angry and vicious, that the valley of the Telom fills 
 with life. It is then that the black tin ore, found in 
 the sands and shingles of the river-bed, is most 
 accessible, and the Malays come hither, in little family 
 parties, to wash for it. Men, women, and little 
 children stand in the shallows, deftly shaking their 
 great flat wooden trays, with a circular motion, and 
 storing small pinches of tin in the hollows of bamboos. 
 At night-time, they camp in rude shelters on the 
 banks of the stream, roast such fish as they have caught 
 in the cleft of split sticks, and discuss the results of the 
 day's toil. The amount of their earnings is very 
 small, but Malays are capable of a great deal of patient 
 labour when it chances to take a form that, for the 
 moment, they happen to find congenial. 
 
 At this season, too, the jungles are one degree less 
 damp and sodden than they are at other times, and the 
 searchers for getah and rattans seize the opportunity, 
 and betake themselves to the forests, for well they 
 know how unpleasant life can be when the rain falls 
 heavily, and what sun there is cannot force its way 
 through the tangled canopy of leaves and creepers, to 
 dry what the rain has soaked. 
 
 Meanwhile, the magnificent duri-an groves of the 
 upper reaches of the Telom are rich in a profusion of 
 splendid fruit, and the semi-wild tribes of Sakai * come 
 from far and near to camp beneath the shade of the 
 giant trees, and there to feast luxuriously. No man 
 
 1 Aboriginal tribes of the Malay Peninsula, belonging to the Mon- 
 Annam family. 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE T&LOM 5 
 
 knows who planted these gardens, for the Sakai asks 
 no questions as long as food is plentiful, and the 
 Malays are equally lacking in curiosity upon the 
 subject. But the trees are very ancient, and the fruit 
 has formed one of the main food-supplies of the Sakai 
 since first they roamed through these forests. 
 
 So the wild tribes gather together in the groves, 
 camping there for weeks at a time, and gorging rap- 
 turously. In the silent night-time, the dulled thud of 
 the fruit, falling upon the rank grass, sounds in the 
 ears of the watchers, and a wild stampede ensues from 
 under the shelters of the forest-dwellers, in order that 
 the fruit may be instantly secured. This is a some- 
 what necessary, precaution, for tigers love the duri-an^ 
 and a man must be quick in the gathering, if he would 
 avoid a fight for possession with one of these monsters. 
 
 But it is not only by human beings that the valley 
 of the Tdlom is overrun during the dry season of 
 the year ; for it is then that the great Salt-Lick of 
 Misong is crowded by game. The Misong is a 
 small stream, which falls into the Tglom on its left 
 bank, some miles above the rapids. About a couple 
 of thousand yards up the Misong, from its point of 
 junction with the Telom, there is a spot where the 
 right bank, though covered with virgin forest, is much 
 trodden by the passage of game. The underwood is 
 worn down, and has become thin and sparse. The 
 trees are smooth in places, and here and there are 
 splashed by great belts of mud, eight feet from the 
 ground, which mark the spots where wild elephants 
 have stood rocking backwards and forwards, gently 
 rubbing their backs against the rough bark. In many 
 
6 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMJNI1T 
 
 places, the earth is trodden down to the water's edge 
 in great deep clefts, such as the kine make near Malay 
 villages, at the points where, in the cool of the after- 
 noon, they go to wallow in the shallows of the river. 
 
 A bold sweep of the Misong, at this spot, forms of 
 the left bank a rounded headland, flat and level, and 
 covering some two acres of ground. In places, short, 
 closely-cropped grass colours the soil a brilliant green, 
 but, for the most part, this patch of open bears the 
 appearance of a deeply-ploughed field. This is the 
 Salt-Lick of Misong. 
 
 The earth is here impregnated with saline deposits,and 
 the beasts of the forest come hither in their hundreds to 
 lick the salt, which, to them, and to the lowest of our 
 /human stock also, is 'sweeter' than anything in the 
 world. When the waters of the Misong are swollen, 
 the salt cannot be got at, and the lick is deserted, but 
 in the dry weather, the place is alive with game. 
 Here may be seen the tracks of deer ; the hoof-marks 
 of the selddang^ the strongest of all the beasts j here is 
 found the long, sharp scratch made by the toes of the 
 rhinoceros ; the pitted trail, and deep rootings left by 
 the wild swine ; the pad-track of the tiger ; the tiny 
 footprints of the kanchil^ the perfectly formed deer 
 which, in size, is no larger than a rabbit ; and the 
 great round sockets, punched by the ponderous feet of 
 the elephants in the soft and yielding soil. Here 
 come, too, the tapir, and the black panther, and packs 
 of wild dogs, and the jungle cats of all kinds, from the 
 brute which resembles the tiger in all but bulk, to the 
 slender spotted animal, built as lightly and as neatly as 
 a greyhound. Sitting in the fork of a tree, high 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE T&LOM 7 
 
 above the heads of the game, so that your wind cannot 
 disturb them, you may watch all the animal life of the 
 jungle come and go, and come again, within a few 
 yards of you, and, if you have the patience to keep 
 your rifle quiet, you may see a thousand wonderful 
 things. 
 
 It was to the Salt-Lick of Misong that my friend, 
 Pandak Aris, came, one day, with two Sakai com- 
 panions, from his house below the rapids. When I 
 knew him, he was an old man of seventy or there- 
 abouts, wizened and dry, with deep furrows of wrinkle 
 on face and body. His left arm was stiff and power- 
 less, and he bore many ugly scars besides. His closely 
 cropped hair was white as hoar-frost, and, on his chin, 
 grew a long goat's beard of the same hue, which 
 waggled to and fro with the motion of his lips. Two 
 yellow fangs were set in his gums, and his mouth was 
 a cavern stained dark-red with betel-nut juice. His f 
 words came indistinctly through his quid, and from his 
 toothless gums, but he had many things to tell con- 
 cerning the jungles, in which he dwelt, and, when I 
 camped near his house, we were wont to sit talking 
 together far into the night. 
 
 In his youth, he had come to Pahang from Rembau, 
 drifting aimlessly, as young men will, to the fate 
 which awaited him, he knew not where. She — these 
 fates are always feminine — proved to be a Jelai girl, 
 who lived near the limits of the Sakai country, and, 
 after he had married her, they took up their abode a 
 couple of days' journey up the Telom river, where they 
 might be completely alone ; for no other Malays live 
 permanently in this valley. Here, she had borne him 
 
^ 
 
 8 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMJNITT 
 
 three sons, and two daughters, and he had planted 
 cocoanut and fruit trees, which now cast heavy shade 
 about the roof of his dwelling. That all happened 
 nearly fifty years before I first met Pandak Aris, and, 
 during all that long, long time, he had lived contentedly 
 •without once leaving the district in which he had his 
 home. He remained wrapped up in his own joys and 
 sorrows, and in his own concerns, rarely seeing a 
 strange face, from year's end to year's end, and entirely 
 
 y. undisturbed by the humming and throbbing of the 
 great world without. Think of it, ye White Me n ! 
 V \ He had only one life on earth to live, and this is how 
 ' t/T he spent it — like thejrog under the cocoanut-shell, as 
 
 the Malays say, who dreams not that there are other 
 worlds than his. Wars had raged within sixty miles 
 of his home, but his peace had not been broken ; great 
 changes had taken place in the Peninsula, but they had 
 affected him not at all ; and the one great event of his 
 life, which had left its mark scored deeply upon both 
 his mind and his body, was that which had befallen 
 y^him at the Salt-Lick of Misong, a score of years and 
 more, before I chanced upon him. He told me the tale, 
 brokenly as a child might do, while we sat talking in 
 the dim light of the damar torch, which guttered in 
 its clumsy wooden stand, set in the centre of his mat- 
 covered floor, and, as he spoke, he pointed, ever and 
 anon, to his stiff left arm, and to the ugly scars upon 
 his body, calling upon them, like Sancho Panza, to 
 prove that he did not lie ! 
 
 It was in the afternoon that Pandak Aris, and his 
 two Sakai followers, reached the Salt-Lick of Misong. 
 They had been roaming through the forest, blazing 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE T&LOM 9 
 
 gitah trees since morning, for it was Pandalc Aris's 
 intention to prepare a large consignment of the 
 precious gum, against the coming of the washers for 
 tin, in the next dry season. They all three knew the 
 Salt-Lick well, and as it was an open space near 
 running water, and they were hungry after their 
 tramp, they decided to halt there, and cook rice. 
 They built a little fire near the base of a giant tree, 
 which grows a hundred yards or so inland from the 
 left bank, at a point where the furrowed earth of the 
 Salt-Lick begins to give place to heavy jungle. The 
 dry sticks blazed up bravely, the flame showing pale in 
 the brighter sunlight of the afternoon, while the thin 
 vapours danced furiously above it. The black rice-pot 
 was propped upon three stones in the centre of the 
 crackling fuel, and while one of the Sakai sat stirring 
 the rice, and the other plucked leeches from his 
 bleeding legs, and cut them into pieces with his wood- 
 knife, Pandak Aris began preparing a luscious quid 
 of betel-nut, from the ingredients contained in the 
 little brass boxes which he carried in a small cotton 
 handkerchief. The gentle murmur of bird and insect 
 life, which precedes the wild clamour of the sunset 
 hour, was beginning to purr through the forest, and 
 the Mfsong sang drowsily as it pattered between its 
 banks. Pandak Aris's eyes began to close sleepily, and 
 the Sakai, who had dismembered his last leech, 
 stretched himself elaborately, and then, rolling over on 
 his face, was asleep before his nose touched the grass ! 
 This is the manner of the Sakai, and of some of the 
 other bwer_animai8. 
 
 Suddenly, a wild tumult of sound broke the stillness. 
 
 y 
 
io STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 The Sakai who was cooking had screamed a shrill cry 
 of warning to his companions, but, above his frightened 
 cry, came the noise of a furious trumpeting, like a 
 steam siren in a fog, the crashing of boughs and 
 branches, and a heavy tramping which seemed to shake 
 the earth. The cooking Sakai had swung himself into 
 a tree, and was now swarming up it like a monkey, 
 never pausing to look below, until the topmost fork 
 was reached. His sleeping fellow, at the first alarm, 
 had awaked with a leap, which carried him some yards 
 from the spot where he had been lying, for the Sakai, 
 who can fall asleep like an animal, can also wake into 
 complete alertness like any other forest creature. A 
 second later, he, too, was sitting in the highest fork of 
 a friendly tree, and all this had happened before Pandak 
 Aris, who had been merely dozing, was completely 
 awake to the fact that danger was at hand. Then he, 
 also, leaped up, and, as he did so, two long white tusks 
 with a trunk coiled closely about one of them, two 
 little fierce red eyes, and a black bulk of dingy, 
 crinkled hide, came into view within a yard of him. 
 
 Pandak Aris sought shelter behind the big tree 
 from the onslaught of the squealing elephant, and, a 
 moment later, he also swung himself into safety among 
 the branches overhead, for a jungle-bred Malay is 
 quick enough, if he be not compared with the Sakai, 
 whose activity is that of a frightened stag. 
 
 The elephant charged the fire fiercely, scattering 
 the burning brands far and wide, trampling upon the 
 rice-pot, till it was flattened to the likeness of sheet 
 tin, kneading the little brass betel-boxes deep into the 
 earth, and keeping up all the while a torrent of angry 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE T£LOM ii 
 
 squealings. The whole scene only lasted a moment 
 or two, and then the furious brute whirled clumsily 
 round, and, still sounding his war-cry, disappeared 
 into the echoing forest, as suddenly as he had emerged 
 from it. 
 
 Pandak Aris and the two Sakai sat in the trees, and 
 listened to the trumpeting of the elephant, as it grew 
 fainter and fainter in the distance. 
 
 1 How can one name such ferocity as this ? ' 
 murmured Pandak Aris, with the aggrieved half- 
 wondering patience of the much -enduring Oriental. 
 He looked down very sadly upon the flattened metal, 
 which had once been a rice-pot, and at the shapeless 
 lumps of brass, deeply imbedded in the soil, which 
 had so lately contained his betel quids. 
 
 The two Sakai, chattering in the upper branches 
 of the trees, shook the boughs on which they were 
 seated, in the agony of the fear that still held them. 
 
 'The Great Father was filled with wrath!' said 
 one of them. He was anxious to speak of the elephant 
 that had assailed them, with the greatest respect. 
 Both he and his fellow felt convinced that the rogue 
 was an incarnation of their former friend and tribes- 
 man Pa' Patin — the 'Spike-Fish' — who had come by 
 his death on the Salt-Lick two years before, but they 
 were much too prudent to express this opinion yet 
 awhile. Pa' Patin had been a mild enough individual 
 during his lifetime, but he seemed to have developed 
 a temper since he joined the other shades, and the 
 two Sakai would not willingly outrage his feelings by 
 speaking of him by name. 
 
 Presently, Pandak Aris climbed down from his tree, 
 
12 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 and began somewhat ruefully to gather together his 
 damaged property. He cried to the two Sakai to 
 come to his aid, but they sat shuddering in their lofty 
 perches, and declined to move. 
 
 c Come down ! Descend out of the branches ! 
 Are your ears deaf that ye obey me not ? ' shouted 
 Pandak Aris ; but the frightened Sakai showed no 
 signs of complying. He cursed and miscalled them 
 with that amplitude of vocabulary which the Malays 
 know how to use upon occasion. He threatened all 
 manner of grievous punishments ; he tried to bribe 
 the shuddering creatures with promises of food and 
 tobacco ; at last, he even condescended to entreat 
 them to come down. But all was in vain, for the 
 Sakai remained firm, and cared for none of these things. 
 Pandak Aris knew how hopeless would be an attempt 
 to chase these creatures through the branches, and, 
 at last, very much out of temper, he gave up all hope 
 of making the Sakai rejoin him that night. 
 
 Meanwhile, much time had been wasted, and the 
 waters of the Misong were dyed scarlet by the reflec- 
 tions cast from the ruddy clouds overhead. The 
 tocsin of the insect world was ringing through the 
 forest, and the birds' chorus was slowly dying down. 
 High above the topmost branches of the trees, the 
 moon, not yet at the full, was showing pale and faint, 
 but each moment the power of its gentle light grew 
 in strength. Pandak Aris glanced at all these things, 
 and, almost unconsciously, he drew a number of in- 
 ferences from them. It was too late for him to push 
 on alone to the mouth of the Misong, near which their 
 camp had been pitched that morning, for no Malay 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TiLOM 13 
 
 willingly threads the jungle alone when the darkness 
 has fallen upon the land. It was too late also to erect 
 a camp on the Salt-Lick, for, after the shock which 
 his nerves had received from the attack of the rogue 
 elephant, he had no fancy for penetrating into the 
 forest to cut leaves and sticks for a hut, unless he 
 was accompanied by at least one of the Sakai. There- 
 upon, Pandak Aris decided to camp on the bare earth, 
 at the foot of the giant tree near which he stood. 
 It would be fairly light, he told himself, until within 
 three hours before the dawn, and though his rice-pot 
 was smashed, and he must go to bed supperless, he 
 would light a fire and sleep beside its protecting blaze. 
 But here an unexpected difficulty presented itself. 
 The flint and steel, with which the fire was to be 
 kindled, was nowhere to be found. With the rest of 
 Pandak Aris's gear, it had been cast to the winds by 
 the rogue elephant, and the fast-waning light refused 
 to show where it had fallen. Pandak Aris searched 
 diligently for an hour, but without result, and at 
 length he was forced to abandon all hope of finding 
 it. If he could have put his hand upon a seasoned 
 piece of rattan, he could easily have ignited a dry 
 stick, by pulling the former backwards and forwards 
 across it, but rattan grows green in the jungle, and 
 is useless for this purpose until it has been dried. 
 
 Pandak Aris lay down upon the warm earth be- 
 tween the roots of the big tree, and swore softly under 
 his breath. He cursed the Sakai to the fifth and sixth 
 generation, and said bitter things of Fate and Destiny. 
 .•Then he rolled over on his side, and fell asleep. The 
 tree near which he lay, like most jungle giants, threw 
 
i 4 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 out long ridges of root, which, at their junction with 
 the trunk, rose above the surface of the ground to a 
 height of two or three feet. Thence they sloped 
 down at a sharp angle, and meandered away through 
 the grass, and the rank underwood, in all manner of 
 knotty curves and undulations. Pandak Aris lay in 
 the space between two of these roots, and was thus 
 protected by a low wall on either side of him, extend- 
 ing from his head to his hips. The placid moonlight 
 bathed the jungle with a flood of soft radiance, and 
 fell upon the sleeping face of the Malay, and upon the 
 Sakai hunched up, with their heads between their 
 knees, snoring uneasily in the tree- tops. The ants 
 ran hither and thither over Pandak Aris's body, and 
 a lean leech or two came bowing and scraping towards 
 him as he slept. The jungle hummed with its myriad 
 sounds caused by birds and insects, but the rhythm of 
 this gentle murmur did not disturb the sleepers. 
 
 Suddenly, the two Sakai awoke with a start. They 
 said never a word, but they listened intently. Very 
 far away, across the Mtsong, a branch had snapped 
 faintly but crisply. The ear of a European would hardly 
 have detected the sound, had he been listening for it, 
 but it had been more than sufficient to arouse the 
 sleeping Sakai into an alert wakefulness. The noise 
 was repeated again and again. Now, several twigs and 
 branches seemed to snap simultaneously ; now, there 
 was a swishing noise, as of green leaves ripped from 
 their boughs by a giant's hand ; and then for a space 
 deep silence once more. The sounds grew gradually 
 louder and more distinct, and for an hour the Sakai sat 
 listening intently, while Pandak Aris slept placidly. 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE TtiLOM 15 
 
 Suddenly, there came a soft squelching noise, followed 
 shortly by a pop, sounding in the distance like that of 
 a child's gun. This was repeated many times, and 
 was succeeded by the splashing of water sluiced over 
 hot rough hides. Even a White Man could have 
 interpreted the meaning of this, but the Sakai could 
 beat him even now, for their ears had told them not 
 only that a herd of elephants had come down to water, 
 but even the number of the beasts, and moreover that 
 one of them was a calf of tender age. 
 
 The wind was blowing from the jungle across the 
 Misong to the trees where the men were camped, so 
 the elephants took their bath with much leisure, 
 splashing and wallowing mightily in the shallows, and 
 in such pools as they could find. Then they came 
 ashore, and began working slowly round under cover 
 of the jungle, so as to get below the wind before 
 venturing out upon the open space of the Salt-Lick. 
 The Sakai high up in the trees, could watch the surging 
 of the underwood, as the great beasts rolled through it, 
 but the footfall of the elephants made no noise, and, save 
 when one or another of the animals cracked a bough, in 
 order to feed upon the leaves, the progress of the herd 
 was wonderfully unmarked by sound. The wind of 
 the Sakai passed over their heads, but presently they 
 scented Pandak Aris. And in a moment a perfect 
 torrent of trumpetings and squealings broke the stillness. 
 This was followed by a wild crashing, tearing noise, 
 and Pandak Aris, awake at last, fancied that the whole 
 herd was charging down upon him. It is often difficult 
 to tell in which direction big game are moving, when 
 they rush through the jungle, but, on this occasion, 
 
16 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the herd had been seized with panic, and was in full 
 flight. 
 
 Over and over again, while the light of the moon 
 held out, game of all kinds made its way to a point 
 below the wind, whence to approach the Salt-Lick, 
 and each time their noses told them that men were in 
 possession. The savage blowing and snorting of the 
 wild kine ; the grunting of a pack of pig ; the loud 
 frightened barking of a stag : all sounded in turn, and 
 each was succeeded by the snapping of dry twigs, 
 and the crashing of rent underwood, which told of a 
 hasty retreat. 
 
 At first, Pandak Aris sought shelter in the branches 
 of the tree, but, in a little space, the agony of dis- 
 comfort he suffered from his uneasy seat, and from the 
 red ants swarming over him, drove him once more to 
 brave the perils of the earth. 
 
 At about 2.30 a.m. the moon sank to rest, and a black 
 darkness, which must be experienced to be understood, 
 fell upon the forest. Though Pandak Aris squatted or 
 lay at the edge of the open, he was unable to see his 
 own hand when he waved it before his eyes ; and the 
 impenetrable gloom, that surrounded him, wrought his 
 already overstrained nerves to a pitch of agonised 
 intensity. 
 
 And now a fresh horror was lent to the situation, 
 for the game no longer troubled themselves to approach 
 the Salt-Lick from below the wind. At intervals, 
 Pandak Aris could hear some unknown beast splashing 
 in the waters of the Misong, or treading softly upon the 
 kneaded earth, within a few feet of him. He was 
 covered with a thousand biting sand-flies — the tiny 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE T£LOM 17 
 
 insect which the Malays say has a bet that he will 
 swallow a man, and seems anxious on all occasions to 
 try to win his wager. They came from the beasts, 
 which now crowded the Salt- Lick, and they clung 
 to the Malay's bare skin, and nestled into his hair, 
 driving him almost frantic with the fierce itching 
 they occasioned. 
 
 Now and again, some brute would pass so near to 
 him that Pandak Aris could hear the crisp sound of its 
 grazing, or the rhythm of its heavy breath. Occasion- 
 ally, one or other of them would wind him, as the 
 sudden striking of hoofs against the ground, and an 
 angry snorting or blowing would make plain. But 
 all this time Pandak Aris could see nothing. 
 
 Many times he clambered into the tree, but his 
 tired bones could not rest there, and the fierce red ants 
 bit him angrily, and drove him once more to the earth. 
 
 Shortly before the dawn, Pandak Aris was startled 
 out of an uneasy, fitful sleep, by the sound of some 
 huge animal passing very near him. He could hear it 
 even more distinctly than he had yet done any of the 
 other beasts which had peopled his waking nightmare. 
 Then, suddenly came a mighty blowing, a fierce 
 snort, and some monster — he knew not what — charged 
 him viciously. Pandak Aris lay flat upon the ground, 
 and the beast passed over him, doing him no harm, 
 save that a portion of the fleshy part of his thigh was 
 pinched violently by a hoof which cut cleanly, for 
 Pandak Aris could feel the warm blood trickling freely. 
 He still lay flat upon the earth, in the dead darkness, 
 too frightened to move, with his heart leaping chokingly 
 into his gullet. But his assailant had not yet done 
 
 c 
 
1 8 S7VDIES IN BROWN HUMAN ITT 
 
 with him. A warm blowing upon his face, which 
 almost deprived him of reason, told him that some 
 animal was standing over him. Almost instinctively, 
 he felt for his parang^ or long, keen wood - knife, 
 and drew it gently to his side, grasping the handle 
 firmly in his right hand. Presently, amid a tumult of 
 angry snortings, something hard seemed to be insinu- 
 ated beneath his body. Pandak Aris moved quickly to 
 avoid this new horror, and clung convulsively to the 
 ground. Again and again, first on one side, and then 
 on the other, this hard prodding substance sought to 
 force itself below him. It bruised him terribly, beating 
 the wind from his lungs, sending dull pangs through 
 his whole body at each fresh prod, and leaving him 
 feint and gasping. 
 
 Pandak Aris never knew how long this lasted. To 
 him it seemed a month or two, but the situation was 
 still unchanged when the light began to return to the 
 earth. 
 
 Dawn comes rapidly in the Peninsula, up to a 
 certain point, though the sun takes time to arise from 
 under its bed-clothes of white cloud. One moment 
 all is dark as the Bottomless Pit ; another, and a new 
 sense is given to the watcher — or so it seems — the 
 sense of form. A minute or two more, and the 
 power to distinguish colour comes almost as a surprise 
 — the faint, dim green of the grass, the yellow of a 
 pebble, the brown of a faded leaf, each one a new 
 quality in a familiar object, hitherto unnoticed and un- 
 suspected. So it was with Pandak Aris. All in a 
 moment he began to see ; and what his eyes showed 
 him did not tend to reassure him. He looked up at a 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF THE T$LOM 19 
 
 vast and overwhelming bulk of blackness, that seemed 
 to completely overshadow him, and he knew his 
 assailant for a seladang^ the largest of all beasts, save 
 only the elephant, though many say that in strength the 
 wild bull can outmatch even him. Presently, as the 
 light grew in power, Pandak Aris could see the black 
 hairy hide, the gray belly, the long fringe of shaggy 
 hair at the beast's throat, the smoking nostrils, wide 
 open, and of a dim red, and the cruel eyes looking 
 angrily into his. 
 
 Almost before he knew what he had done, Pandak 
 Aris had seized his wood-knife in both hands, and with 
 the instinct of self-preservation, had drawn its long, 
 keen edge across the monster's throat. A deluge of 
 blood fell into the man's face, and the selddang^ snorting 
 fiercely, stamped with its off fore-foot. The heavy 
 hoof fell on Pandak Aris's left arm, reducing it to a 
 shapeless mass, but the wounded limb telegraphed no 
 signal of pain to the brain, which was working too 
 eagerly on its own account to take heed of aught 
 else. 
 
 Still standing upon the arm of its victim, the 
 iiladang tried again and again to force its horn beneath 
 Pandak Aris's body, and all the while the wood-knife, 
 worked by the still uninjured hand, sawed relentlessly 
 at the brute's throat. Presently, the bull began to feel 
 the deadly sickness which comes before death, and it 
 fell heavily upon its knees. It floundered up again, 
 bruising Pandak Aris once more as it did so. Then it 
 reeled away, sinking to its knees again and again, 
 while the blood poured, in great, far-carrying jets, from 
 the widening gap in its throat. Presently it sank to 
 
20 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the ground, and, after tearing up the earth angrily in 
 its death agony, lay still for ever. 
 
 c Yonder lies much meat ! ' grunted one of the 
 Sakai to his neighbour. That was their only comment 
 on what had occurred. 
 
 Now that the fight was over, and that daylight had 
 come, they climbed down out of the tree. They 
 stooped over the insensible body of Pandalc Aris, and 
 when they found that he still lived, they bandaged his 
 wounds, not unskilfully, with strips of his sarong. Then, 
 they built a make-shift raft, and placed the wounded 
 man upon it, together with as much seladang beef 
 as it would carry. Wading down stream, one at 
 the bow, and one at the stern of the raft, they reached 
 the camp that they had left the preceding morning, 
 and there they feasted in plenty on the good red meat. 
 
 Pandak Aris was tough and blessed with a mighty 
 constitution, so, when he regained consciousness, he 
 also ate of the body of his enemy. 
 
 1 1 cut his throat, and, while doing so, I mind me 
 that I murmured the word Bishmillah — in the name 
 of God — wherefore it was lawful for me to eat of a 
 beast which had been killed according to the rites of 
 Muhammad,' he said to me, in after days, and I was 
 less surprised at the ease with which he had salved his 
 conscience, than I was at his ability to eat meat at all, 
 after such an adventure. 
 
 The Sakai got him back to his house, rafting him 
 gently down stream, and his wife, Minah of the soft- 
 eyes, tended him devotedly, till naught but scars, and 
 a useless left arm, remained to tell of his encounter 
 with the seladang. 
 
IN THE PALLET OF THE 7&L0M 21 
 
 This was the one incident that served to break the 
 dead monotony of Pandalc Aris's many days of life ; 
 and perhaps he was right in thinking that this single 
 night held sufficient excitement and adventure to last 
 any man for all his years. 
 
THE FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING 
 PLAYER 
 
 I made them to laugh till their ribs were sore, 
 I made them to weep till their eyes were red, 
 I bore their hearts through the carnage of War, 
 I bore them back to the day they were wed. 
 I gave them to think of the babe in the hut. 
 Of the soft -eyed wife, with a tender love j 
 I carried them out of their life's dull rut, 
 And wafted them up to the World Above ! 
 Ah, my skill was great in the playing ! 
 
 I fill'd them with Hate, till their hands ran blood, 
 I scourged them with Lust, like a raging fire, 
 I whipped their souls to a hurrying flood, 
 I fill'd them with torture of Vain Desire ; 
 Their skins grew parch'd, »nd their eyes wax'd hot, 
 While I drove them whither no man should go j 
 Their souls were my toys, to play with, I wot. 
 And I toss'd them down to the World Below ! 
 Ah, my skill was great in the playing ! 
 
 The Chant of the Minnesinger. 
 
 At Kota Bharu, the Capital of Kelantan, the Powers 
 that be are at great pains to preserve a kind of cock- 
 >/eyed, limping, knock-kneed Morality, which goes on 
 ajl fou rs with their notion of the eternal fitness of 
 things. Yam Tuan Mulut Merah — the Red-Mouthed 
 
FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING PLATER 23 
 
 King — did his best to discourage theft ; and with 
 this laudable intention killed, during his long reign, 
 sufficient men and women to have repeopled a new 
 country half the size of his own kingdom. Old Nek 
 'Soh, the Dato' Sri Paduka, who stood by and saw 
 most of the killing done, still openly laments that all 
 the thieves and robbers were not made over to him, 
 instead of being wasted in the shambles. With so 
 large a following, he says, he might have started a new 
 dynasty in the Peninsula, and still have had enough 
 men and women at his disposal to enable him to sell 
 one or two, when occasion required, if ready money 
 was hard to come by. Nek 'Soh is a wise old man, 
 and he probably is sure of his facts, but though his 
 influence with [his master, the Red-Mouthed King, 
 was great in most things, he never succeeded in 
 persuading him to try the experiment. So the King 
 continued to slay robbers, suspected thieves, and the 
 relations and relatives of convicted or accused persons, 
 while Nek *Soh mourned over the sinful waste of . 
 good material, and the bulk of the population thieved * 
 and robbed as persistently and as gaily as ever. 
 
 It must be owned that these efforts at reform were 
 not encouraging in their results, and perhaps this is 
 why, so long as the Red-Mouthed King, with Nek 
 'Soh at his side, was responsible for the government of 
 the country, no other attempts to improve the morality 
 of the people of Kelantan were made by the dis- 
 heartened rulers. 
 
 At length, in the fulness of time, old Mulut Merah 
 died, and his son, and later his grandson, ruled in his 
 stead. Nek 'Soh continued to have a hand in the 
 
24 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 government of the country, but a younger man than 
 he, was now the principal adviser and soon the real 
 ruler of Kelantan. This person bore the title of Maha 
 Mentri, which means the Great Minister, and since he 
 was young and energetic he plunged hotly into reforms 
 which were destined, as he forecast them, to revolu- 
 tionise the ways and manners of the good people of 
 Kelantan. Quite oblivious of the feet that mutilation 
 and sudden death, to which an added horror was lent 
 by some ingenious contrivances cunningly devised with 
 the amiable object of increasing the intensity of the 
 pain inflicted upon the unfortunate victims, had com- 
 pletely failed to cure the Kelantan folk's innate 
 propensity to rob and thieve, Maha Mentri conceived 
 the bold idea of forthwith converting an irreligious 
 people into fervent and bigoted Muhammadans. To 
 this end, he insisted upon attendance at the Friday 
 congregational prayers, even to the breaking of the 
 heads of recalcitrant church-goers ; he observed, and 
 personally superintended the observance of Fasts ; he 
 did his best to prevent the use of silk garments by any 
 save the women-folk, and this, be it remembered, in a 
 country which is famed for its silk fabrics ; he put 
 down cock-fighting, bull matches, prize-fights, hunting, 
 and the keeping of dogs, — all the sports of the wealthy, 
 in fact ; and while he pried into the home of every 
 family in the capital, with the laudable object of 
 ascertaining whether the inmates prayed regularly at 
 each of the Five Hours of Appointed Prayer, he dealt an 
 even more severe blow to the bulk of the population 
 by forbidding the performance of the ma'iong, or 
 heroic plays, such as are acted throughout the length 
 
FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING PLATER 25 
 
 and breadth of the Peninsula by troupes of strolling 
 players, but which are an amusement that is specially 
 dear to the hearts of the good people of Kelantan. 
 
 These plays are performed inside a small, square 
 paddock, enclosed by a low bamboo railing, but other- 
 wise open on all four sides, so as to give the spectators 
 an unobstructed view of all that goes forward within. 
 A palm-leaf roof protects the players from the sun by 
 day, and from the heavy dews of the tropics by night ; 
 and whenever a mcfiong shed is erected upon a new 
 site, the Pawang, or Medicine Man, who is also the 
 Actor-Manager of the company, performs certain 
 magic rites with cheap incense, and other unsavoury 
 offerings to the Spirits, reciting many ancient in- 
 cantations the while to the Demons of Earth and 
 Air, beseeching them to watch over his people, and 
 to guard them from harm. First he calls upon Black 
 Awang, King of the Earth, who is wont to wander in 
 the veins of the ground, and to take his rest at the 
 Portals of the World ; next to the Holy Ones, the 
 local demons of the place ; and finally to his Grand- 
 sire, PgtSra Guru, the Teacher who is from the 
 Beginning, who is incarnate from his birth, the 
 Teacher who dwelleth as a hermit in the recesses of 
 the Moon, and practiseth his magic arts in the Womb 
 of the Sun, the Teacher whose coat is wrought of 
 green beads, whose blood is white, who hath but a 
 single bone, the hairs of whose body stand erect, the 
 pores of whose skin are adamant, whose neck is black, 
 whose tongue is fluent, whose spittle is brine ! All 
 these he prays to guard his people, and then he cries 
 to them to aid him by opening the gates of Lust and 
 
26 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Passion, together with the gates of Desire and Credulity, 
 and the gates of Desire and Longing, the Longing which 
 lasteth from dawn unto dawn, which causeth food to 
 cease to satisfy, which maketh sleep uneasy, which 
 remembering maketh memory unceasing, causeth 
 hearing to hear, seeing to see ! 
 
 These exhortations to Spirits, which should find no 
 place in the Demonology of any good Muhammadan, 
 were naturally regarded as an Uncleanness and an 
 Abomination by the strait-laced Maha Mentri j and 
 not content with prohibiting the performances of the 
 ma'iongy he made life so excessively unattractive to the 
 actors and actresses themselves, that many bands 
 of them trooped over the jungle -clad mountains, 
 which divide KSlantan from Pahang, to roam the 
 country playing for hire at the weddings and feasts 
 of a people who, no matter what other faults they 
 may have, cannot justly be accused of bigotry or 
 fanaticism. 
 
 So great joy was brought to the natives of Pahang, 
 and from end to end of the land the throbbing beat of 
 the mafiong drums, the clanging of the gongs, the 
 scrapings of the ungainly Malay fiddles, the demented 
 shrieks and wailings of the serunai, and the roars of 
 hearty laughter, which greet each one of the clown's 
 jests, made merry discord in the villages. The gates of 
 Lust and Passion, the gates of Desire and Longing, — 
 that Longing which lasteth from dawn unto dawn, 
 which causeth food to cease to satisfy, which maketh 
 sleep uneasy, — were opened wide that tide, and there 
 were tales of woe brought in from many a village in 
 the long Pahang valley. While the ma'tong was 
 

 V 
 
 IT 
 
 FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING PLATER 27 
 
 a-playing no one had any care for the crops, the women 
 left their babies and their cooking -pots, and the 
 elders of the people were as stage-struck as the boys 
 and maidens. When the strolling actors moved 
 forward upon their way, having squeezed a village dry 
 of its last copper coins, many of the kampong folk 
 followed in their train, cadging for their food from the 
 people at each halting-place, enduring many hardships 
 often enough, but seemingly unable to tear themselves 
 away from the fascinations of the players and of the 
 actresses. Many lawful wives found themselves de- 
 serted by their men, and the husbands and fathers in 
 the villages had to keep a sharp eye upon the doings 
 of their wives and daughters while the mcfiong folk 
 were in the neighbourhood ; for when once the dead 
 monotony of their lives is broken into by some un- 
 usual occurrence, the morality of the Malay villagers, 
 which is generally far better than that of the natives 
 of the Capitals, quickly goes to pieces, like a wrecked / 
 ship in the trough of an angry sea. 
 
 Of all the Actor-Managers who were then roaming 
 up and down Pahang, none were so successful both 
 with the play-goers and with the women, as Saleh, or 
 Leh, as he was usually called, for Malay energy is /' 
 rarely equal to the effort necessary for the articulatioir 
 of the whole of a proper name. In their mouths the 
 dignified Muhammad becomes the plebeian Mat, 
 Sulehman,— our old friend Solomon, — is reduced to 
 plain Man, and a like evil fate is shared by other high- 
 sounding, sonorous names. This is worth noticing, 
 because it is very typical of the propensity, which the 
 Malay can never resist, to scamp every bit of labour, 
 
28 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Nv . no matter how light its nature, that falls to his share 
 in this workaday world. 
 
 Leh was a man of many accomplishments. He 
 played the fiddle, in most excruciating wise, to the 
 huge delight of all the Malays who heard him ; he was 
 genuinely funny, when he had put his hideous red 
 mask, with its dirty sheepskin top, which stood for 
 the hair of his head, over his handsome, clever face, 
 and roars of laughter greeted him at every turn ; he 
 had a keen eye for a topical joke, a form of satire much 
 appreciated by his Malay audiences ; he had a happy 
 knack of imitating the notes of birds, and the cry of 
 any animal ; and above all he was a skilled Rhapsodist, 
 and with that melodious voice of his would sing the 
 wonderful story of Awang Lotong, the Monkey Prince, 
 which is a bastard, local version of the Ramayana, until 
 the cocks were crowing to a yellow dawn. He travelled 
 with me, on one occasion, for a fortnight, and I had 
 the whole of the Folk-Tale written down, and when 
 \ completed it covered the best part of sixty folios, yet 
 1 Leh knew every word of it by rote, and could be 
 I turned on at any point, continuing the story every 
 I time in precisely the same words. He had learned it 
 from an old man in Kelantan, and he was reputed to 
 be the only surviving bard to whom the whole of the 
 tale was known. In due course I sent the manuscript, 
 with a translation, and elaborate notes to a Learned 
 Society, where it was lost with the usual promptitude 
 and despatch. 
 
 It was always a marvel to me that Leh escaped 
 having some angry man's knife thrust deftly between 
 his fourth and fifth ribs, for the natives of Pahang are 
 
FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING PLATER 29 
 
 wont to discourage too successful lovers by little 
 attentions of this sort, and Leh was much loved by the 
 women-folk, both high and low, throughout the length 
 and breadth of the land. Perhaps he was as cunning 
 as he was successful, for he certainly lived to return to 
 his own country. 
 
 This was rendered possible for all the ma long people 
 by the sudden death of Maha Mentri. This great 
 and good man, — the self-appointed Champion of 
 Muhammadanism, the enforcer of Prayer, the orderer 
 of Fasts for the mortification of the erring flesh, — like 
 some other zealous people, who in the cause of Religion 
 have contrived to make their neighbours' lives as little 
 worth living as possible, had one little weakness which 
 marred the purity and consistency of his character. 
 This was an irrepressible impulse to break the Seventh 
 Commandment, a strange failing in a man who was 
 so scrupulous that he would not even suffer himself to 
 be photographed when a view of Kota Bharu, in which 
 several hundreds of people figured, was being taken. 
 This is but one of the startling inconsistencies which 
 are to be remarked in the religious Oriental. Until 
 one has become familiar with an Eastern People, it 
 is difficult to realise how far the Letter of the Law 
 may be pushed by a man who, allN^e while, is daily 
 defying its Spirit. 
 
 The good people of Kclantan bore with Maha 
 Mentri and his little peculiarities for a considerable 
 time, and they might, perhaps, even have suffered 
 him for a longer period, tad it not been for the fact 
 that his religious fanaticism, on subjects which did 
 not happen to hit him in a tender place, had the effect 
 
30 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMJNI7T 
 
 of making life a more evil thing than seemed to be 
 altogether necessary. Be this how it may, upon a 
 certain night Maha Mentri was shot through the 
 flooring of another man's house by the owner thereof, 
 ably and actively assisted by two other men, who were 
 entirely convinced that there was not sufficient room 
 for them and for Maha Mentri upon the surface of 
 one and the same Planet. 
 
 Everybody knew who had done the deed, and the 
 Raja would dearly have loved to take a life for a life, 
 but the murderers were under the protection of a young 
 prince, with whom, for political reasons, the Raja could 
 not afford to precipitate a quarrel. Therefore he and 
 his advisers professed to wonder very much indeed who 
 could have been so unmannerly as to shoot Maha 
 Mentri in three several places ; and there the matter 
 ended, in spite of the clamorous protests of the dead 
 man's relatives. 
 
 Very soon the news of Maha Mgntri's death spread 
 through Pahang, word being brought by the trading 
 boats lurching down the Coast, or by the sweating 
 villagers who trudged across the mountains to bring 
 the glad tidings to the exiles from Kelantan, to whose 
 return the presence of Maha Mentri had hitherto been 
 a very sufficient obstacle. 
 
 So the ma* long folk packed their gear, and started 
 back for their own country, and many men and 
 maidens were left lamenting, when the players who 
 had loved them strode away. 
 
 Leh went back by sea, with half a dozen broken 
 hearts in his gendong (bundle), and soon after his 
 return, he was appointed to the post of Court Minstrel, 
 
FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING PLATER 31 
 
 and Master of the royal Dancing Girls. For the 
 Kelantan to which he came back, was a very different 
 place from the land which he had quitted when he 
 started out for Pahang. As soon as the worthy Maha 
 Mentri had been laid in his grave, the reaction, which 
 always follows any paroxysm of religiosity, set in in 
 full force, and for a season Kelantan was a merry land 
 for a pleasure-lover to make his home in. The Five 
 Hours of Appointed Prayer were suffered to slip by 
 unregarded of the people ; no man troubled himself to 
 fast more than his stomach thought fitting ; and the 
 music of the ma'tong was once more heard in the land. 
 
 In this new and joyful Kelantan, Leh found himself 
 very much in his element. The old Pillar Dollars, 
 which are the standard currency of the country, came 
 rolling merrily in, and Leh was able to go abroad 
 among his fellows lavishly clad, from the waist down- 
 wards, in a profusion of gaily-coloured silk sarongs and 
 sashes, such as the souls of the Kelantan people love. 
 He wore no coat, of course, for in this State that 
 garment is never used, except by the Nobles on official 
 occasions when strangers chance to be present. 
 
 Leh was never a man to keep all his good fortune 
 to himself, and not only a select few of the King's 
 Dancing Girls, but a countless troop of other dames 
 and maidens, who should rightly have been entirely 
 occupied with their lawful lords and masters, came in 
 for a large share of the spoil. Given a well -set -up 
 figure, a handsome face, gay garments, a witty tongue, 
 and a superfluity of ready money, and a far less clever 
 and engaging fellow than Leh, the Strolling Player, 
 might be expected to win the facile heart of any average 
 
32 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMAN ITT 
 
 Malay woman. It was not long before the best- 
 favoured half of the ladies of Kota Bharu, — and that 
 means a surprisingly large proportion of the female 
 population of the place, — were, to use the Malay 
 phrase, c mad ' for Leh. The natives of the Peninsula 
 recognise that Love, when it wins a fair grip upon 
 a man, is as much a disease of the mind as any other 
 yform of insanity ; and since it is more common than 
 many manias, they speak of the passion as c madness ' 
 par excellence. And this was the ailment from which 
 a large number of the ladies of Kota Bharu were now 
 suffering with greater or lesser severity, according to 
 their several temperaments. 
 
 This state of things naturally caused a considerable 
 amount of dissatisfaction to the whole of the male 
 community, and the number of the malcontents grew 
 and grew, as the c madness ' spread among the women- 
 folk. The latter began soon to throw off all disguise, 
 for they were too numerous for even the most exten- 
 sive system of wife and daughter beating to effectually 
 cope with the trouble. When they were not occupied 
 in waylaying Leh ; in ogling him as he swaggered 
 past their dwellings, cocking a conquering eye through 
 the doorways ; the ladies of Kota Bharu were now 
 often engaged in shrill and hard-fought personal en- 
 counters one with another. Each woman among 
 them was wildly jealous of all her fellows ; mother 
 suspecting daughter and daughter accusing mother of 
 receiving more than her fair share of Leh's generous 
 and widely scattered attentions. Many were the 
 scratches made on nose and countenance, long and 
 thick the tussocks of hair reft from one another by 
 
FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING PLATER 33 
 
 the angry ladies, and the men beholding these im- 
 possible goings-on with horror and dismay said among 
 themselves that Leh, the Strolling Player, must die. 
 
 He was a good man of his hands, and badly as they 
 felt about him no one saw his way to engaging him 
 in single combat, though enough men and to spare 
 were ready to have a hand in the killing. At last, 
 a committee of three angry men was appointed, by 
 general consent, and these lay in wait for Leh, during 
 several successive evenings, in the hopes of finding him 
 returning alone from the md'iong shed. 
 
 It was on the third night of their vigil that their 
 chance came. The moon was near the full, and the 
 heavy, hard shadows lay across the ground, under the 
 gently waving palm-fronds, like solid objects. The 
 footpath which leads from the main thoroughfare into 
 the villages around Kota Bharu branches off some 
 twenty yards from the spot where the watchers lay con- 
 cealed. The Committee of Three sat huddled up, in the 
 blackness cast upon the bare earth by a native house just 
 within the clustering compounds, and the vivid Eastern 
 moonlight gave up the colour of the yellow sun-baked 
 soil, the green of the smooth banana leaves, even the red 
 of the clusters of rambut-an fruits on a neighbouring tree. 
 
 Presently the sound of voices, talking and laughing 
 1 i gh t hear ted ly, came to the ears of the listening men, 
 and as the speakers drew nearer, the Committee of 
 Three were able to distinguish Leh's mellow tones. 
 At the parting of the ways Leh turned off by himself 
 along the footpath, the others, with whom he had 
 been walking, keeping still to the main road. Leh 
 took leave of them, with a farewell jest or two which 
 
 D 
 
34 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 sent the others laughing upon their way, and then he 
 strolled slowly along the footpath, humming the air 
 of Awang Lotong under his breath. The Three, in 
 the shadow of the house, could see the colour of the 
 gaudy cloths wound about Leh's waist, the fantastic 
 peak into which his head-kerchief was twisted, the 
 glint of the polished yellow wood and the gold settings 
 of his dagger- hilt, and the long, broad -bladed spear 
 that he carried in his hand. They watched him draw 
 nearer and yet more near to them, still humming gently, 
 and wearing a half smile upon his face. They suffered 
 him to come abreast of them, to stroll past them, all 
 unsuspicious of evil ; but no pity for him was in their 
 hearts, for they had all been injured in a deadly manner 
 by this callous, lighthearted libertine, who now went 
 to the death he knew not of with a smile on his face, 
 and a stave of a song upon his lips. 
 
 As soon as Leh had passed them, the Committee 
 of Three stepped noiselessly out of the shadow, and 
 sounding their s6rak y or war-cry, into which they 
 threw all the pent-up hatred of their victim which for 
 months had been devouring their hearts, plunged their 
 spears into his naked brown back. Leh fell upon his 
 face with a thick choking cough, and a few more 
 vigorous spear-thrusts completed the work which the 
 Committee had been appointed to perform. 
 
 They left the body of Leh, the Strolling Player, 
 lying where it had fallen, face downwards in the dust 
 of the footpath, and though the King did all that lay 
 in his power to discover the secret of the identity of 
 the murderers, and though half the women-folk in the 
 Capital seconded his efforts to the utmost, hoping 
 
FATE OF LEH THE STROLLING PLATER 35 
 
 that thereby their lover's death might be avenged, the 
 men who had planned the deed kept their secret well, 
 so no punishment could be meted out to those who had 
 actually brought about the destruction of the Warden / 
 of the King's Dancing Girls. But in the eyes of Malay — * 
 Justice, — which is a very weird thing indeed, — if you 
 cannot punish the right man, it is better to come 
 down heavily upon the wrong one, than to allow 
 everybody to get off scot free. The house near to 
 which the body of Leh had been found, chanced to 
 be tenanted only by an old crone and her widowed 
 daughter, with her three small children, but none the 
 less, this hut was taken as the centre of a circle of 
 one hundred fathoms radius, and all whose dwellings 
 chanced to lie within its circumference, whether men 
 or women, old or young, whole or bedridden, women 
 great with child, or babes at the breast, were indiffer- 
 ently fined the sum of three dollars each — a large sum 
 for a Malay villager to be called upon to pay, and a 
 delightfully big total, from the King's point of view, 
 when all heads had been counted. 
 
 This new system of punishment by fine has several 
 advantages attaching to it. In the first place it en- 
 hances the revenue of the King, which is a matter of 
 some moment ; and secondly, if you chance to have 
 a quarrel with some one whom you are unable to get 
 even with in any other way, you need only leave a 
 corpse at his front door, which, in a land where life is 
 is cheap as it is in Kelantan, is an easy~~matter "to 
 arranged If the corpse, by any chance, should be that 
 of a man who has done you an injury, you will kill 
 two birds with one stone. Which is economical. 
 
Omat 
 
 Fat rice to eat and viands sweet, 
 
 A mat on which to lie, 
 No feckless toil to mar and spoil 
 
 The hours that saunter by ; 
 Man-child and wife to cheer my life, 
 
 What need a man ask more? 
 Save just my sight and God's own light 
 
 To see as once I saw. 
 
 The punkah swings freely for a space ; then gradually 
 shortens its stride ; hovers for a moment, oscillating 
 gently, in answer to the feeble jerking of the cord ; 
 almost stops ; and then is suddenly galvanised into a 
 violent series of spasm -like leaps and bounds, each 
 one less vigorous than the last, until once more the 
 flapping canvas fringe is almost still. It is by signs 
 such as these that we know that Umat, the punkah- 
 puller, is sleeping the sleep of the just. 
 
 If you look behind the screen which cloaks the 
 doorway, you will see him, and, if the afternoon is 
 very warm and still, you may even hear his soft, regular 
 breathing, and the gentle murmur with which his nose 
 is wont to mark the rhythm of his slumber. An old 
 cotton handkerchief is bound about his head, in such 
 
yifu\ * v)(^ 
 
 Va*t*A~? 
 
 tiMAT 37 
 
 a manner that his bristles of hair stand up stiffly, all 
 over his scalp, in a circular enclosure, like the trainers in 
 a garden of young sirlh vines. On his back he wears 
 an old, old coat of discoloured yellow khaki, once the 
 property of a dead policeman. The Government buttons 
 have been taken away from him, by a relentless Police 
 Inspector, and their place is supplied by thorns, 
 cunningly arranged pieces of stick, and one or two 
 wooden studs. The shoulder-straps flap loosely, and 
 their use is a problem on which Umat often ponders, 
 but which he is never able to satisfactorily solve. A 
 cotton sarong — not always of the cleanest, I fear — is 
 round Umat's waist, and, falling to his knees, supplies 
 the place of all other lower garments. For Umat is 
 both comfort- loving and economical, and Pahang is 
 now a free country where a man may go~clad aslie 
 likes, without fear of some ill-thing befalling him. 
 Less than ten years ago, a man who went abroad 
 without his trousers ran a good chance of never re- 
 turning home again, since Pahang Malays were apt to 
 think that such an one was no lover of war. Among 
 Malays, who are the most personally modest people in 
 the world, it is well known that no man may fight 
 with a whole heart when, at every moment, he runs. 
 the risk of exposing his nakedness ; and, in days gone 
 by, the natives of Pahang were well pleased to display 
 their prowess in mangling one from whom little re- 
 sistance could be expected. But, in Kelantan, where 
 Umat was born, few men possess trousers, and no one 
 who loves to be comfortable wears them, when he can 
 avoid doing so. 
 
 Below his sarong, goodly lengths of bare and hairy 
 
' 
 
 ^ 
 
 38 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 leg are visible, ending in broad splay feet, with soles 
 that seem shod with horn ; for Umat could dance bare- 
 foot in a thorn thicket with as much comfort as upon 
 a velvet carpet. 
 >r He half sits, half lies, huddled up in a wicker-work 
 
 arm-chair, his head canted stiffly over his right shoulder, 
 his eyes tight shut, and his mouth wide open, exposing 
 two rows of blackened tusks, and a fair expanse of gums 
 and tongue stained scarlet with areca-nut. His feet 
 are on the seat of the chair, one doubled snugly under 
 him, with the suppleness of the Oriental, and the other 
 supporting the knee upon which his chin may rest as 
 occasion requires. The pull -cord of the punkah is 
 made fast about his right wrist, and his left hand holds 
 it limply, his arms moving forward and backwards 
 mechanically in his sleep. At his feet, hummi ng 
 coqtentrdly to himself, sits a tiny brown boy, dressed 
 chastely in a large cap and a soiled pocket-hand- 
 kerchief; and thus Umat dreams away many hours of 
 his life. If his sleeping memory takes him back to 
 
 ^the days when he followed me upon the war-path, 
 
 when we went a-fishing on a dirty night, or when 
 the snipe were plentiful, and the bag a big one, the 
 punkah dances merrily, and takes a violent part in the 
 action of which he dreams. But, if Omat's mind 
 plays about the tumble-down cottage in my compound, 
 which he calls 'home,' and dwells upon his soft-eyed, 
 gentle wife, Selema, and upon the children he loves so 
 very dearly, or if his dreams conjure up memories 
 of good meals, and quiet sleepy nights, then in sympathy 
 the punkah moves softly, sentimentally, and stops. 
 r c Tdrek ! Pull ! ' comes a voice from the inner room, 
 
 V 
 
UMJT 39 
 
 and Umat, awakened with a start, bursts into voluble 
 reproaches, addressed to himself in the guttural speech 
 of the Kelantan people. Then he falls asleep more 
 soundly than ever. 
 
 If you run up the East Coast of the Peninsula, past 
 the smiling shores of Pahang and Trengganu, you at 
 last reach the spot where the bulk of the Kelantan 
 river-water formerly made its way into the China Sea. 
 The better entrance is now a mile or two farther up 
 the Coast, but the groves of palm-trees show that the 
 people have been less fickle than the river, and that the 
 villages at the old mouth are still tenanted as of yore. 
 It is here that Umat was born and bred, the son of a 
 family of Fisher Folk, countless generations of whom 
 have dwelt at Kuala Kelantan ever since the beginning 
 of things. 
 
 If you look at Umat's round face, and observe it 
 carefully, you may read therein much that bears upon 
 the history of his people. The prevailing expression 
 is one of profoundly calm patience — not that look of 
 waiting we understand by the term, the patience which, 
 with restless Europeans, presupposes some measure of 
 anticipation, and of the pain of hope long deferred — 
 but the contented endurance of one who is satisfied to 
 be as he is j of one whose lot is unchanging, and 
 whose desires are few. It is a negative expression, 
 without sadness, without pain, or the fever of longing, 
 and yet sufficiently far removed from dulness or 
 stupidity. It speaks of long years during which U mat's 
 forebears have laboured stolidly, have been as driven 
 cattle before prince and chief, and yet, since the curse 
 
4b STUDIES IN BROWN HVMANITT 
 
 of knowledge that better things existed had not fallen 
 upon them, have accepted their lot as they found it, 
 unresisting and uncomplaining. 
 
 This is what one reads in Umat's face when it is in 
 repose, but, when emotion changes it, other things 
 may be seen as clearly. Suddenly, his features break 
 up into a thousand creases, the brown skin puckering 
 in numberless spreading lines, like the surface of a 
 muddy puddle into which a stone has fallen. A laugh 
 like the crowing of a cock, combined with the roaring 
 of a bull, accompanied this phenomenon, and you 
 may then know that Umat's keen sense of humour 
 has been tickled. It does not take much to amuse 
 him, for, like most Malays, he is very light-hearted, 
 and anything which has a trace of fun in it delights 
 him hugely. Almost every Kelantan fishing boat 
 that puts to sea carries its alanalan^ or jester, along 
 with it, for toil is lightened if men be merry, and, in 
 days gone by, Umat was the most popular man in his 
 village. A quaint phrase ; a happy repartee, not 
 always in the most refined language ; the rude mimicry 
 of some personal eccentricity ; a word or two of rough 
 chaff; or a good story ; such things are his stock in 
 trade, and this is why Umat is so well beloved by his 
 fellows. 
 
 But he can be grave, too. As my raft whirls down 
 a rapid, a clumsy punt sends it reeling to what looks 
 like certain destruction. Umat's face sets hard. His 
 teeth are clenched, his lips compressed tightly. His 
 bare feet grapple the slippery bamboos with clinging 
 grip, and his twenty-foot punting-pole describes a circle 
 above his head. The point alights, with marvellous 
 
tMAT 41 
 
 rapidity, and unerring aim, upon the only projecting 
 ridge of rock within immediate reach, and all mat's 
 weight is put into the push, while his imprisoned 
 breath breaks loose in an excited howl. The raft 
 cants violently, and wallows knee-deep, but the danger 
 of instant destruction is averted, and we tear through 
 the fifty yards of foaming, boiling, rock-beset water, 
 which divides us from the rapid's foot, without further 
 mishap. Then, Umat's face relaxes, and his queer 
 laugh resounds, as he chaffs the man, whose clumsiness 
 had nearly been our ruin, with unmerciful disregard 
 for his feelings. 
 
 His promptness to see the nature of the emergency, 
 his ready presence of mind, his quick, decisive action, 
 that saves us from a break-up, which, in a boiling, 
 foaming rapid, is no pleasant experience, have little to 
 do with Umat himself. He owes all to his kinsmen, 
 the Fisher Folk, who have been accustomed to risk 
 their lives on the fishing banks, amid the sandy river 
 bars, the rocky headlands, and the treacherous waves 
 of the China Sea, for many unrecorded centuries. 
 Readiness to face a danger, prompt and fearless action, 
 quick apprehension of the best means of escape, are 
 qualities without which the race would long ere this 
 have become extinct, and in ft mat these things amount 
 to absolute instincts. 
 
 But he can, on occasion, show pluck of quite another 
 kind — the courage which is no mere flash-in-the-pan, 
 born of excitement, and owing its origin to an instinct 
 of self-preservation — that long-enduring fearlessness in 
 "the face of a danger, before which a man must sit down 
 and wait. It is no light thing to stare death in the 
 
42 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 eyes for days or weeks together, to expect it in some 
 cruel, merciless form, and yet to possess one's soul in 
 patience, and to keep a heart in one's body that does 
 not sink and quail. Yet, Umat is capable of this higher 
 form of courage, as you shall presently hear, and though 
 v/fhe limitations of his imagination stand him in good 
 j\ stead, and doubtless make the situation easier to him 
 I \than it can be to the white man, cursed with the restless 
 brain of his kind, yet one must give Umat credit for 
 valour of no mean order. The merriment dies out of 
 his face at such times, for, unlike my friend, Raja Haji 
 Hamid, whose eyes were wont to dance, and whose 
 mouth smiled cheerily when danger was afoot, Umat 
 comes of a class to whom a gamble with death is a 
 hated thing. The look of calm patience is in his eyes, 
 but now he is enduring consciously, and the hard 
 puckers in his forehead show that his nerves are tightly 
 strung, and that there is little gladness in his heart. 
 
 But Umat's face is capable of yet another change. 
 When his brown eyes blaze, when his face is full of 
 excitement, and a torrent of hardly ar ticulate wor ds 
 bursts headlong from his lips, you may know that 
 Umat is angry. A tumult of wrathful sound, at the 
 back of the bungalow, where the servants congregate, 
 in the covered way which joins the cook-house to the 
 main building, begins the uproar, and, if you fail to 
 interfere, some Chinese heads will infallibly be broken 
 in several places. Knowing this, I run to the spot, 
 and reduce my people to silence. On inquiry, it will 
 prove to be that the cook has accused Umat of adul- 
 terating the milk, or the water-coolie, whose business 
 it also is to make lamps smell and smoke, has charged 
 
tiMAT 43 
 
 him with purloining the oil. No words can describe 
 U mat's fury, and indignation, if he is indeed guiltless ; 
 but he is a bad liar, and, if the charges are true, his 
 manner soon betrays him, and his wrath fails to con- 
 vince. In a little time, he will produce the bottle of 
 lamp-oil from the folds of his sarong^ and, laughing 
 sheepishly, will claim that praise should be his portion, 
 since the bottle is only half full. He takes my pungent 
 remarks with exaggerated humility, and, five minutes 
 later, the compound will be ringing with the songs he 
 loves to bellow. It is not possible to be angry with 
 Umat for long. He is so very childlike , and I, in common 
 with many others, love him better than he deserves. 
 
 I first met Cmat in 1890, when, after a year spent 
 in Europe, I returned to Pahang, and took charge of 
 the interior. I was very lonely. My Malay followers 
 had been scattered to the winds during my absence in 
 England, and I had none but strangers about me. 
 The few European miners scattered about the district 
 were only met with from time to time. The Pahang 
 Malays stood aloof from us, and I found the isolation 
 dreary enough. Pahang had had an ill name on the 
 Coast, any time these last, three hundred years, and^ 
 until the white men/ protected the country , few 
 sfrHIgenf cared to set foot in a land where life was held 
 on such a precarious tenure. But, presently, the 
 whisper spread through the villages of Trengganu and 
 Kelantan that work found a high price in Pahang 
 under the white men, and a stream of large-limbed 
 Malays, very different in appearance from the slender 
 people of the land, began to pour over the borders. 
 
44 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 On this stream Umat was borne to me, and, since then, 
 he has never left me, nor will he, probably, till the 
 time comes for one or the other of us to have his toes 
 turned up to the love-grass. 
 
 Umat saw that I was lonely, and perhaps he dimly 
 realised that I was_an_object_g£_pity, for he would 
 creep into my bungalow, and, seating himself upon the 
 floor, would tell me tales of his own people until the 
 night was far advanced. HTs dialect was strange to 
 me, at that time, and the manner in which he elided 
 some of his vowels and most of his consonants puzzled 
 me sorely. I could not understand the system under 
 which dnam (six) shrank into ne\ and kerbau (buffalo) 
 became kuba > ; but I let him talk on — for was he not 
 my only companion ? — and, in the end, I not onlv 
 learnt to understand him, but actually to^speak his 
 barbarous lingo. 
 
 So Umat and I became friends, and life was to me 
 a trifle less dreary because he was at hand. He taught 
 me many things which I did not know, and his_sirnple 
 stories, told with little skill, served to enliven many an 
 houT^fcnistmigToveTwTielming solitude. 
 
 Then came a period when trouble darkened the 
 land, and I turned to the war-path, which to me was 
 then so strange and unfamiliar, with Umat stamping 
 along at my heels. He never left me all that time, and 
 I had many opportunities of testing the quality of his 
 courage. At last, it became necessary for me to visit a 
 number of almost openly hostile Chiefs who, with their 
 six hundred followers, were camped about half a mile 
 from my stockade. I had only a score of men at my 
 disposal, and they were needed to hold our frail fort, so 
 
tMAT 45 
 
 it became evident to me that I must go alone. I was 
 not altogether sorry to have the opportunity of doing 
 so, for I knew how susceptible to c bluff' Malays are apt 
 to be, and I was aware that in a somewhat ostentatious 
 display of fearlessness — no matter what my real sensa- 
 tions might be — lay my best hope of safety. There- 
 fore, I armed myself carefully, and prepared to set out, 
 though most of my Malay friends were clamorous in 
 their efforts to dissuade me. As I started, Umat, 
 armed with Arts and spear, and with a set look of 
 resolve upon his face, followed at my heels. 
 
 1 It is not necessary for thee to come,' I said. l If 
 all goes well, there is no need of thee, and, if aught 
 goes amiss, what profits it that two should suffer instead 
 of one ? ' 
 
 Umat grunted, but he did not turn back. 
 
 1 Return,' I said. c I have no need of thee.' 
 
 I halted as I spoke, but ftmat stood firm, and 
 showed no signs of obeying me. 
 
 1 TuanJ he said, c for how long a time have I eaten 
 thy rice, when thou wast in prosperity and at ease ; is 
 it fitting that I should leave thee now that thou art in 
 trouble ? Tuan^ where thou goest I will go. Where 
 thou leadest I will follow after.' 
 
 I said no more, but went upon my way with Umat 
 at my heels. I was more touched than I liked to say, 
 and indeed his courage was of the highest, for he 
 believed himself to be going to certain death, whereas 
 I was backing my own opinion of the character of 
 those with whom I had to deal, and, though the stake 
 was a big one, I was sufficiently conceited to feel 
 confident about the result. During the long interview 
 
46 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 with the Chiefs, the knowledge that Umat's great, 
 fleshy body was wedged in securely between my 
 enemies and the small of my back, gave me an added 
 confidence, which was worth many points in my 
 favour. We won through, and the hostile Chiefs 
 dispersed their people, and, that night, Umat made 
 darkness hideous by the discordant yellings with which 
 he celebrated the occasion, and gave token of the 
 reaction that followed on the unstringing of his tense 
 nerves. 
 
 Later I was promoted, and Umat came with me to 
 the Capital, and since then he has lived in a house in 
 my compound with Sel£ma, the Pahang girl, who has 
 made him so gentle and faithful a wife. It was soon 
 after his marriage that his trouble fell upon Umat, and 
 swept much of the sunshine from his life. He con- 
 tracted a form of ophthalmia, and for a time was blind. 
 Native Medicine Men doctored him, and drew sheafs 
 of needles and bunches of thorns from his eyes, which 
 they declared were the cause of his affliction. These 
 miscellaneous odds and ends used to be brought to me 
 for inspection at breakfast- time, floating, most un- 
 appetisingly, in a shallow cup half full of water j and 
 Cmat went abroad with eye-sockets stained crimson, 
 or black, according to the fancy of the native physician. 
 The aid of an English doctor was called in, but Umat 
 was too thoroughly a Malay to trust the more simple 
 remedies prescribed to him, and, though his blindness 
 was relieved, and he became able to walk without the 
 aid of a staff, his eyesight could never really be given 
 back to him. 
 
 But Clmat is sanguine, and, though he has now 
 
jjMJT 47 
 
 been blind for years, and each new remedy has proved 
 to be merely one more disappointment, he still believes 
 firmly that in time the light will return to him. 
 Meanwhile, his life holds many emotions. His laugh 
 rings out, and the compound at night-time resounds 
 with the songs he loves to improvise, which have for 
 their theme the marvellous doings of s ftmat the Blind 
 Man whose eyes cannot see.' His patience has come 
 to the rescue, and the sorrow of his blindness is a 
 chastened grief, which he bears with little complaining. 
 He has aged somewhat, for his sightless orbs make his 
 face look graver, heavier, duller than of old, but his 
 heart is as young as ever. 
 
 Though his affliction has been a heavy one, other 
 good things have not kept aloof. One day, as I sit 
 writing, Umat comes into the room, and presently the 
 whole house resounds with the news that he expects 
 shortly to become a father. Umat's face dances with 
 delight, and excitement, and pride ; but it wears also 
 an uneasy look, which tells of his anxiety for Selema, 
 and another new expression which speaks of a fresh- 
 born love for the child whose arrival he prophesies so 
 noisily. When the latter feeling is uppermost, Umat's 
 ugly old race is softened until it looks almost senti- 
 mental. 
 
 Umat rushes off to the most famous midwife in the 
 place, and presents her with a little brass dish filled with 
 smooth green sirih leaves, and sixpence of our money 
 (25 cents) in copper, for such is the retaining fee 
 prescribed by Malay Custom. The recipient of these 
 treasures is thereafter held bound to attend the patient 
 whenever she may be called upon to do so, and when 
 
48 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the confinement is over, she can claim other moneys 
 in payment of her services. These latter fees are not 
 ruinously high, according to our standard, two dollars 
 being charged for attending a woman in her first 
 confinement, a dollar or a dollar and a half on the 
 next occasion, and twenty-five, or at the most fifty 
 cents being deemed sufficient for each subsequent 
 event. 
 
 When Umat has placed the sirih leaves, he has done 
 all he can for Selema, and he resigns himself to endure 
 the anxiety of the next few months, with the patience 
 of which he has so much at command. The pantang 
 ber-anak, or birth taboos, hem a husband in almost as 
 rigidly as they do his wife, and Umat, who is as super- 
 stitious as are all Malays of the lower classes, is filled 
 with fear lest he should unwittingly transgress any 
 law, the breach of which might cost Selema her life. 
 He no longer shaves his head periodically, as he loves 
 to do, for a naked scalp is very cool and comfortable ; 
 he does not even cut his hair, and a thick black shock 
 stands five inches high upon his head, and tumbles 
 raggedly about his neck and ears. Selema is his first 
 wife, and never before has she borne children, where- 
 fore no hair of her husband's must be trimmed until her 
 days are accomplished. Umat will not kill the fowls 
 for the cook now, nor even drive a stray dog from the 
 compound with violence, lest he should chance to 
 maim it, for he must shed no blood, and must do no 
 hurt to any living thing during all this time. One 
 day, he is sent on an errand up river, and is absent 
 until the third day. On inquiry, it appears that he 
 passed the night in a friend's house, and on the morrow 
 
^^ 
 
 ^j^ 
 
 fat*z._&i " 
 
 n *•*> *- 
 
 tiMAT 49 
 
 found that the wife of his host was shortly expecting 
 to become a mother. Therefore, he had to remain at 
 least two nights in the village. Why ? Because, if he 
 failed to do so, Selema would die. Why would she 
 die ? God alone knows, but such is the teaching of 
 the men of old, the wise ones of ancient days. But 
 Umat's chief privation is that he is forbidden to sit in 
 the doorway of his house. To understand what this ^ 
 means to a Malay, you must realise that the seat in 
 the doorway, at the head of the stair-ladder that 
 reaches to the ground, is to him much what the fire- jX 
 side is to the English peasant. It is here that he sits, 
 and looks out patiently at life, as the European gazes 
 into the heart of the fire. It is here that his neigh- 
 bours come to gossip with him, and it is in the door- 
 way of his own or his friend's house, that the echo of 
 the world is borne to his ears. But, while Selema is 
 ill, Omat may not block the doorway, or dreadful 
 consequences will ensue, and though he appreciates 
 this, and makes the sacrifice readily for his wife's sake, 
 it takes much of the comfort out of his life. 
 
 SelSma, meanwhile, has to be equally circumspect. 
 She bridles her woman's tongue resolutely, and no 
 word in disparagement of man or beast passes her 
 lips during all these months, for she has no desire to 
 see the qualities she dislikes reproduced in the child. 
 She is often tired to death, and faint and ill before her 
 hour draws nigh, but none the less she will not lie 
 upon her mat during the daytime lest her heavy eyes 
 should close in sleep, since her child would surely fall 
 a prey to evil spirits were she to do so. Therefore, 
 she fights on to the dusk, and Umat does all he can 
 
 E 
 
50 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 to comfort her, and to lighten her sufferings, by con- 
 stant tenderness and care. 
 
 One night, when the moon has waxed nearly to 
 the full, Pekan resounds with a babel of discordant 
 noise. The large brass gongs, in which the devils of 
 the Chinese are supposed to take delight, clang and 
 clash and bray through the still night-air ; the Malay 
 drums throb, and beat, and thud ; all manner of shrill 
 yells fill the sky, and the roar of a thousand native 
 voices rises heavenwards, or rolls across the white 
 waters of the river, which are flecked with deep 
 shadows and reflections. The jungles on the far 
 bank take up the sound, and send it pealing back in 
 
 4 recurring ringing echoes, till the whole world seems 
 to shout in chorus. The Moon which bathes the 
 Earth in splendour, the Moon which is so dear to 
 
 — each one of(Usu is in dire peril, this night, for that 
 fierce monster, the Gerhana, whom we hate and 
 loathe, is striving to swallow her. You can mark his 
 black bulk creeping over her, dimming her face, con- 
 suming her utterly, while she suffers in the agony of 
 silence. How often in the past has she served us 
 with the light ; how often has she made night more 
 beautiful than day for our tired, sun -dazed eyes to 
 look upon ; and shall she now perish without one 
 effort on our part to save her by scaring the Monster 
 from his prey ? No ! A thousand times no ! So we 
 shout, and clang the gongs, and beat the drums, till 
 all the animal world joins in the tumult, and even 
 inanimate nature lends its voice to swell the uproar 
 with a thousand resonant echoes. At last, the hated 
 Monster reluctantly retreats. Our war-cry has reached 
 
(JMAT 51 
 
 his ears, and he slinks sullenly away, and the pure, 
 sad, kindly Moon looks down in love and gratitude 
 upon us, her children, to whose aid she owes her 
 deliverance. 
 
 But during the period that the Moon's fate hung 
 in the balance, SelSma has suffered many things. She 
 has been seated motionless in the fireplace under the 
 tray-like shelf, which hangs from the low rafters, 
 trembling with terror of — she knows not what. The 
 little basket-work stand, on which the hot rice-pot is 
 wont to rest, is worn on her head as a cap, and in her 
 girdle the long wooden rice-spoon is stuck dagger- 
 wise. Neither she nor Umat know why these things 
 are done, but they never dream of questioning their 
 necessity. It is the custom. The men of olden days 
 have decreed that women with child should do these 
 things when the Moon is in trouble, and the con- 
 sequences of neglect are too terrible to be risked ; 
 so SelSma and Umat act according to their simple 
 faith. W * 
 
 Later, comes a day when Selema nearly loses her/' 
 life by reason of the barbarities which Malay science 
 considers necessary if a woman is to win through her 
 confinement without mishap. Umat's brown face is 
 gray with fear and anxiety, and drawn and aged with 
 pain. He paces restlessly between the hut, where 
 Selgma is suffering grievous things, and my study, 
 where he pours his terror and his sorrow into my . *. 
 ears, and wets the floor-mats with his great beady - * 
 tears. Hours pass, and a little feeble cry comes from 
 Umat's house, the sound which brings with it a world 
 of joy, and a wonder of relief that sends the apple 
 
52 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 lumping in one's throat, and tears rising to one's eyes. 
 Umat, mad with delight, almost delirious with relief 
 that the danger is over, laughing through his tears, 
 and sobbing in his laughter, rushes to me with the 
 news that a man-child has been born to him, and that 
 Selema is safe. Nightly for many weeks after, the 
 cries of Awang — as the boy is named — break the 
 peace of my compound during the midnight hour. 
 The poor little shapeless brown atomy is being 
 ruthlessly washed in cold water, at this untimely hour, 
 and thereafter is cruelly held face downwards over a 
 basin filled with live embers, whence a pungent, 
 reeking wood smoke ascends to choke his breath, and 
 to make his tiny eyes smart and ache fiercely. No 
 wonder the poor little thing yells lustily ; the marvel 
 is that he should survive such treatment. But he 
 does outlive it, and, so soon as he is old enough to 
 leave the house, he becomes Umat's constant friend 
 and companion. Long before the child can speak, he 
 and Umat understand one another, and you may hear 
 them holding long conversations on the matting out- 
 side my study-door with perfect content for hours at 
 a time. 
 
 Love is infectious, and as Awang grows big enough 
 to use his legs and his tongue, the little brown mite 
 patters nimbly around his blind rather, with an air 
 which has in it something of protection. He is 
 usually mother naked, save that now and again a hat 
 is set rakishly upon one side of his little bullet head, 
 and, when I speak to him, he wriggles in a most 
 ingratiating manner, and stuffs his little hand half- 
 way down his throat. Umat's eyes follow him con- 
 
(JMAT 53 
 
 stantly, and, though they are very dim, I fancy that 
 he sees Awang more clearly than anything else on 
 earth. 
 
 So much love cannot go for nothing, and I hope 
 that Awang will grow up to repay his father for the 
 devotion he lavishes upon him. But whatever gifts 
 he may be able to bring to Umat, he can never win 
 him back to sight, and the best that we can hope for 
 is that, in the days to come, Omat may learn to see 
 more clearly through Awang's eyes. Meanwhile, I 
 think he is not altogether unhappy. 
 
HIS LITTLE BILL 
 
 A STUDY IN CHINESE PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 'Tis the added straw breaks the elephant's back ; 
 'Tis the half turn more kills the man on the rack j 
 'Tis the little wrong, too hard to be borne, 
 By one who for long has been harassed and worn, 
 That can utterly break and undo him. 
 
 He put me to shame, while he saved his ' face,' 
 They held me to blame, while he thrived apace, 
 He passed me by with a mock and a jeer ; 
 His time to die grew near and more near. 
 
 Ah, my heart was well pleased when I slew him ! 
 
 Human Beings are most unaccountable creatures, and 
 the feelings and secret motions of their hearts, that 
 > > serve on occasion as the mainsprings of their actions, 
 
 are perhaps the least probable things about them. As 
 we getlower jtown^ the scale of humanity, the more 
 difficult it becomes to appreciate the attitude of mind 
 of a man who is impelled to do all manner of strange 
 and inconsequent things for reasons which to us are 
 y *^at once obscure and unreasonable. It is not that 
 the motives aTe not amply sufficient, according to the 
 notions of the man who acts upon them, but merely 
 
HIS LITTLE BILL 55 
 
 that we, who cannot get inside the creature's mind, 
 find it hard to credit that any sane human being can 
 really regard them as things of enough importance to 
 serve as a guide to him in the shaping of his conduct. 
 This story is an instance in point, and I tell it because, 
 to my thinking, it has an interest altogether its own, 
 in that it throws some light upon the workings of the 
 mind of one of the lowest specimens of our human / 
 stock. 
 
 ~Those who know the Chinese cooly, as he is when 
 he is first imported from Southern^China, will probably 
 not dispute the statement that he is intellectually as 
 debased a type of man as any in existence. It is this 
 that so largely helps the more unscrupulous employers 
 of labour, in the schemes which they are accustomed 
 to devise for his undoing, for they can feel quite 
 secure that it will never occur to the cooly that he can 
 complain to the authorities if he is defrauded or ill- 
 treated. His ideas play around rice, and the messes he 
 is accustomed to eat with his rice ; around opium, 
 when he can get it, and even more when he cannot, 
 for the want of the drug sometimes makes him 
 desperate. His pleasures are unspeakable things, into^ 
 the nature of which it is best not to inquire too 
 closely ; he has an innate love of money, which he 
 very rarely sees, for more often than not he is deeply 
 in debt to his employer for food and opium supplied to 
 him, even after he has served him as long as Jacob 
 served for Rachel. When he is very angry, when he 
 considers that he has been put upon past all bearing, 
 when he has an undying grudge against some one, 
 upon whom it is impossible to retaliate in kind, or 
 
56 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 when he goes to gaol, and his supply of opium is 
 knocked off, the Chinese cooly not infrequently com- 
 mits c '»icide. At such times, he will hang himself at 
 a height of two feet from the ground, with a foot-long 
 rope fashioned from a few twisted strands of his ragged 
 garments. He will show marvellous resolution, hold- 
 ing his ankles firmly with his hands, to prevent his 
 feet from touching the floor and so taking some of 
 the strain off his neck. He is quite determined to die, 
 and the actual manner in which he brings about his 
 self-inflicted death does not appear to be an affair of 
 much importance in his eyes. He dies to spite some 
 one, as a rule, and his last moments are made beautiful 
 to him by the thought that his spirit will return from 
 the Land of Shadows, and will haunt his enemies in 
 such a manner as to render the remainder of their lives 
 upon earth well-nigh unbearable. It is well that he 
 should have some compensations to comfort him, for 
 such a very amateurish piece of hangman's work, as 
 I have described, must be an exceedingly unpleasant 
 thing to endure. 
 
 Sometimes, however, the Chinese cooly prefers 
 murder to suicide, and it is then that one really sees 
 what a strange creature he is, and what a very thin coat- 
 ^ing of humanity overlies the animal part of his nature. 
 He occasionally shows some faint traces of courage when 
 he makes one of a crowd ; but as soon as the inevitable 
 panic sets in, he treads his best friend ruthlessly under 
 foot in his frantic eagerness to save himself. Often 
 he kills his Mandor^ after talking over the advisability 
 of doing so, calmly and dispassionately, with his fellows, 
 in the kong-si house, during the long, quiet nights. As 
 
HIS LITTLE BILL 57 
 
 soon as the plan has been finally approved, the Mandor 
 is beaten to death from behind, and most of the coolies 
 have a share in the killing. But occasionally, and far 
 more rarely, a cooly does murder alone and unaided, 
 and since, in these cases, one is enabled to mark the 
 workings of an individual mind, much may be learned 
 concerning the mental arrangements of the Chinese 
 cooly, from a study of the emotions and motives that 
 prompted him to take a life. Such an instance is that 
 of Lim Teng Wah, a mining cooly who worked at 
 Kuantan, in Pahang, during the Year of Grace 1896. 
 Lim Teng Wah had drifted from China on the 
 labour-stream, that sets so strongly towards the Malay 
 Peninsula, and indeed to any part of the World where 
 the Justice of the White Man, — ' Red-Headed Devil ' 
 though he be, — makes life and property secure, and 
 money easy to win, for the Celestial finds nothing 
 romantic in unnecessary risk. He had left his home 
 because his father required him to do so, for in China 
 they hold the eminently sound doctrine that parents 
 should be supported by their children, not children by 
 their parents. He had been shipped to the Peninsula 
 as an indentured cooly, and a Tau-keh^ who chanced to 
 be in need of labour, took him over on his arrival, after 
 signing certain documents at the Chinese Protectorate 
 which were duly read over to Lim Teng Wah and a 
 batch of fellow-coolies, by a gabbling native clerk. It 
 was nobody's fault that the strangeness of the scene 
 in which they found themselves, and the mysterious 
 nature of these proceedings, which were quite beyond 
 the grasp of the cooly mind, prevented Lim and his 
 companions from understanding a single word of the 
 
58 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 paper which set forth the terms of their agreement 
 with their new employer. As matters turned out, 
 this affected Lim Teng Wah very little, for he was a 
 steady worker, a man of good physique, who was never 
 on the sick-list, and since he did not smoke opium, he 
 soon succeeded in paying off his advances, and becoming 
 a iau-keh y or ' old cooly,' who can make his own con- 
 tract, and work where, with whom, and how he likes. 
 It was now that he was a free man, that the 
 troubles of Lim Teng Wah began. There are always 
 numerous contractors living in a large mining camp, 
 who have not the necessary capital to enable them to 
 undertake big jobs on their own account, but who sub- 
 contract for little bits of work, here and there, under the 
 holders of the main contracts. They are usually coolies 
 who are too idle to work themselves, if they can by 
 any means avoid doing so, upon whom Fortune has 
 smiled in the gambling-houses, thus placing them* in 
 the temporary possession of a little capital. The big 
 contractors have to make their profit, so the rates at 
 which job-work is let to these men are not very 
 remunerative, and as money gained in the gambling- 
 houses has a knack of returning whence it came, it 
 frequently happens that the sub-contractor is unable to 
 meet the calls made upon him when pay-day arrives, 
 and the coolies, like the Daughters of the Horse-Leech, 
 cry i Give ! Give ! ' These petty jobsters are more 
 practised in lying and fawning to those to whom they 
 owe money, in bluffing the stupid, and in bullying the 
 timid, than are any other people with whom I am 
 acquainted. When they have been dunned for weeks 
 and months, and their starving coolies can bear the 
 
HIS LITTLE BILL 59 
 
 delay no longer, a sum sufficient to pay the cost of a 
 summons is scraped together, and proceedings are 
 taken in the nearest Court. But, unfortunately, their 
 debtor has usually by this time got rid of any pro- 
 perty of which he may once have been possessed, and 
 the defrauded coolies get little or nothing for their 
 pains. 
 
 Ah Sun was a man of this stamp, and it was into 
 his clutches that Lim Teng Wah fell, as soon as he 
 became a free cooly. He worked with Ah Sun for 
 a month only, and at the end of that time no wages 
 were forthcoming. Lim Teng Wah was much ex- 
 ercised in mind. He thought of his father in distant 
 China, who would be looking for a remittance from his 
 son, and would surely impute unfilial conduct to him 
 when no money arrived. The sum due amounted to 
 S 7«68, which, at the present wholly ridiculous rate of 
 exchange, is equivalent to about fourteen shillings and 
 sixpence, but to Lim Teng Wah this was a by no 
 means insignificant amount. Moreover it was the 
 first real ready money that he had ever earned, and 
 our earliest earnings are always things of enormous 
 value in our eyes, of far more importance than much 
 larger sums gained at any future time. It was very 
 bitter to Lim Teng Wah to find himself defrauded of 
 this money, and he became most persistent in his 
 attentions to Ah Sun, following him about constantly, 
 and claiming his money in season and out of season, to 
 the no little confusion and discomfort of his debtor. 
 Lim Teng Wah procured employment elsewhere, in 
 the same mining camp, however, and he now drew his 
 wages regularly, for the contractor with whom he 
 
60 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 worked was well-to-do. But the thought of the 
 seven odd dollars out of which Ah Sun was keeping 
 him continued to rankle, and whenever an opportunity 
 offered, he renewed his application for payment. Ah 
 Sun, meanwhile, would seem to have taken a strong 
 dislike to Lim Teng Wah, which is not perhaps to 
 be wondered at. Did any one ever endear himself 
 to another by constantly dunning him for money ? 
 Ah Sun was at his old game of sub -contracting 
 now, and Lim had good reason to believe that his 
 enemy was fairly flush of cash. And it was thus 
 that the trouble began. 
 
 One day Lim Teng Wah paid his usual visit to 
 Ah Sun's kong-si house, with the object of dunning 
 him, and it so chanced that he found Ah Sun, with 
 a bag of jingling dollars in his hands, in the act of 
 paying his men. Lim at once claimed to be paid too, 
 and Ah Sun thereupon gathered up his money, tied 
 the string of the bag, with great deliberation, and, to 
 paraphrase his untranslatable Chinese monosyllables, 
 told Lim Teng Wah to go to the Devil. He then 
 smiled sweetly upon the infuriated Lim, put the bag 
 containing the money into his hat, for greater con- 
 venience in carrying it, and bowed himself out of the 
 kong-si house. 
 
 This was only one of many occasions upon which 
 Ah Sun treated Lim Teng Wah with scorn and 
 derision when he came to claim his just dues. Once 
 he told him that the Magistrate of the District had 
 specially decreed that no money should be paid to so 
 unworthy a person, and when on inquiry this proved 
 to be an impudent fabrication, Ah Sun was in no way 
 
HIS LITTLE BILL 61 
 
 abashed, and told Lim that the debt should be liqui- 
 dated when next he chanced to be in funds. 
 
 ' You had better make shift to pay me,' said Lim, 
 and Ah Sun entered his kong-si house without deigning 
 to answer a word. 
 
 Next day, when Lim Teng Wah arose from 
 sleep, his heart, as he subsequently stated, felt very 
 angry. I have said that in his new employment he 
 was receiving regular pay, but the memory of the 
 money due to him by Ah Sun wiped out all thought 
 of the good treatment he was now receiving from his 
 present employer. He said to himself [I am giving* — tGtUuj 
 his own account of the thoughts that passed through his 
 mind], ' Other folk labour and are paid for their toil, 
 I alone of all men work and receive no guerdon. To- 
 day, therefore, I will not go mine wards with the other 
 coolies.* 
 
 He had a slight sore on his foot, which he showed 
 to the Mandor^ making it his excuse for refusing to 
 work, though, in his heart, he had determined never 
 to labour any more. He was too angry and too 
 dissatisfied with the present, to have any care for the 
 future, or it would have occurred to him that a cooly 
 who will not work is very likely to starve. He had 
 no intention of retaliating upon Ah Sun ; he had had 
 many and ample opportunities of doing so, and he 
 had not availed himself of any of them ; all he felt 
 was that he was the victim of oppression, and that he ^ 
 would therefore do no work for the future, as a protest 
 against things as they are. He did not put his feelings **~ "*" 
 before himself quite so clearly as this, nor in the words 
 which I have used, but, none the less, these were the 
 
62 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 trend and shape of the thoughts that passed through 
 his mind, as he sat swinging his legs on the edge of 
 his bunk, and watched his fellow-coolies troop off to 
 their work through the early morning mist. 
 
 Then, when they were all gone, Lim Teng Wah 
 lay down again, under his musty mosquito-curtain, and 
 slept peacefully for a few hours. At about eleven 
 o'clock, he got up, bathed, cooked his rice, ate a 
 hearty meal, and sat down to smoke reeking Chinese 
 tobacco, in his long bamboo pipe. He was still very 
 angry. The extreme injustice of Ah Sun's treatment 
 of him, and the unfairness of the feet that he was de- 
 frauded of his pay, while other coolies received their 
 wages regularly, appealed to him with fresh force, as 
 he sat ruminating over his tobacco. It never occurred 
 to him that there was anything to be done. Ah Sun 
 was paying his way now, and was therefore a person 
 of far greater consideration in the mining camp than 
 was the unfortunate Lim. The debt due to him, of 
 which his friends had heard so much during the last 
 few months, was fast becoming a sort of joke among 
 them, and poor Lim Teng Wah knew that he was 
 powerless to do anything to force Ah Sun to comply 
 with his just demands. All this seemed to him to be 
 very hard, but it was with Fate that he felt that his 
 real quarrel lay. Had he not been the impotent creature 
 he was, Ah Sun would never have dared to treat him as 
 he had done, and yet this was a matter which, from 
 the very nature of things, poor Lim was quite 
 unable to control. 
 
 The sore upon his foot was causing him some 
 inconvenience, and as there can be no possible object 
 
HIS LITTLE BILL 63 
 
 in neglecting the body because the mind chances to be 
 ill at ease, Lim sallied out at about one o'clock to search 
 for herbs, such as Chinese coolies are wont to use for 
 the preparation of the loathsome concoctions with which 
 they smear and doctor themselves as occasion requires. 
 He carried a native parang^ or chopper, in his hand, to 
 cut the boughs and twigs which bore medicinal leaves, 
 and to aid him in rooting up the herbs. He went into 
 the jungle and succeeded in collecting a quantity of 
 rubbish, which he considered suitable for his purpose, 
 and, as the afternoon was beginning to decline, he 
 turned his face once more towards the mining camp. 
 His way chanced to lead past the kong-si house in 
 which Ah Sun was then living, and the coolies had 
 just returned from work. Ah Sun, himself, chanced to 
 be coming up from the wattled hut on the river bank, 
 where he had been bathing, as Lim Teng Wah walked 
 by. He wore a pair of short drawers, and a limp, damp 
 loin-cloth, that he had used while bathing, was clinging 
 closely about his shoulders. In his left hand he carried 
 the bark water-can with which he had sluiced the water 
 over his dusty body. 
 
 It had become a sort of instinct with Lim Teng 
 Wah to ask Ah Sun for the seven dollars and sixty- 
 eight cents wherever and whenever they chanced to 
 meet, so he at once rushed at him, all undraped though 
 he was, and angrily demanded payment. 
 
 Ah Sun stood quite still, and bent his gaze upon 
 Lim, as though the latter was some strange and un- 
 clean animal, whose presence had just attracted his 
 attention. He continued to look steadily at his 
 creditor in this manner for a considerable time, with- 
 
6+ STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 out uttering a word, and Lim, writhing under the cool 
 contempt of the glance, felt the cup of his bitterness 
 was full to overflowing. The quarrel he had with 
 Fate, and the dispute with Ah Sun concerning the 
 seven dollars and sixty-eight cents began to be welded 
 into one, and a fiery longing to be even with his 
 enemies sprang into being in his breast. 
 
 The pause was a long one, and never once did Ah 
 Sun remove his gaze from Lim's face. Then very 
 slowly and deliberately he said, in a kind of monotonous 
 sing-song, 1 1 will not pay thee one single tiny cent ! ' 
 As he spoke, he made a motion with his right arm, as 
 though he were sweeping some unpleasant insect from 
 before him, and to Lim Teng Wah, standing angry 
 and ashamed in his path, it seemed as if Ah Sun was 
 attempting to add blows to the other injuries and 
 insults that he had heaped upon him. The parang 
 was ready in his hand, and Lim, almost blind with 
 fury, raised his arm and brought the heavy iron blade 
 crashing down upon the naked shoulder of his enemy. 
 The force and the unexpectedness of the blow felled 
 Ah Sun to the ground, and Lim Teng Wah threw 
 himself upon him, and hacked again and again at the 
 writhing body. Presently Ah Sun's feeble struggles 
 grew fainter, and then ceased, and now the animal 
 part j )f Lim Teng Wah broke through what there 
 !/ was of humanity in his composition. He let his 
 parang fall from his grip, and began literally to bathe 
 in the blood of the murdered man. With cries of 
 horrible satisfaction, he rubbed the blood, which still 
 ran warm from the gaping wounds that the parang 
 had made, over his face and chest ; he scooped up a 
 

 ///£ LITTLE BILL 65 
 
 double handful in his reddened palms and drank of it ; 
 he grovelled about the dead body in a hideous revel of 
 satisfied revenge ; and perhaps, in those wild moments 
 of incomprehensible delight, he got what he considered 
 a fair return for the sum of seven dollars and sixty- 
 eight cents, which was still due to him when a couple 
 of months later he stood upon the gallows. 
 
 All this happened in the broad daylight, in front of 
 Ah Sun's kong-si house, and in the sight of several eye- 
 witnesses, yet no one attempted to interfere, to aid 
 Ah Sun, or to prevent the escape of his murderer. 
 But Lim Teng Wah, as the madness of his fury 
 began to cool, experienced no desire to save himself by 
 flight. He went straight to the Police Station, which 
 stood only a quarter of a mile away, and asked to be 
 suffered to enter. He was smeared with blood from 
 head to foot, he was panting and out of breath, for he 
 had come quickly from the scene of the murder, and 
 the charge-taker naturally supposed that he had been 
 the victim of an assault which he had come hither to 
 report. The Policemen pressed round him, plying 
 him eagerly with questions as to what had befallen 
 him, but he waved them aside, and seating himself 
 upon a stool, said that he would tell them all about it 
 when he had recovered his breath sufficiently to speak. 
 It is said that he expressed considerable surprise and » 
 dissatisfaction when, his tale having been told, he was 
 promptly clapped into the Station lock-up, for he 
 appeared to have imagined that now that he had stated 
 his case, — the injustice of which he had been a victim, 
 and the unpremeditated nature of the murder that he 
 had committed, — he would meet with nothing but 
 
 F 
 
 ) 
 
 lA.*yfty** 
 
66 S1VDIES IN BROWN HVMANITY 
 
 sympathy and commiseration. So poor Lim Teng 
 Wah carried his quarrel with Fate and injustice with 
 him to the grave, but as he never expressed any regret 
 for the murder of Ah Sun, and as he took an evident 
 pleasure in recalling that wjld mo ment when he had 
 found himself struggling above the prostrate body of 
 his enemy, I fancy that he derived some solid satisfac- 
 tion from the recollection that he had succeeded in 
 paying off a portion of the score that lay betwixt 
 them. 
 
 Incidentally, the story of Lim Teng Wah throws 
 some lurid side-lights upon the psychology of the 
 Chinese cooly. 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PAST 
 
 . 
 
 The Ghosts of the West are laid, are laid, 
 
 The Spirits, and Elves, and Sprites j 
 The steam- whistle's scream hath made them afraid, — 
 
 Too clear are the White Men's nights. 
 The gas-jet's flare, and the lamp-light's glare, 
 
 The clamour, the rush, the roar, 
 Have driven them forth from the lands of the North 
 
 To roam on an alien shore. 
 
 But the Ghosts of the East wax strong, wax strong, 
 
 For the land is spent and old, 
 And the corpse-lights whisper a tale of wrong 
 
 To dead men under the mould, 
 While the Hantus cry 'neath the starless sky, 
 
 And the Weird-Hags laugh and yell, 
 When the night shuts down o'er village and town, 
 
 And opens the gates of Hell. 
 
 I cannot pretend to explain this story, nor do I ask 
 any one to believe it ; that is entirely a matter for 
 private judgment. £ But those who know the East 
 intimately will hesitate to assert that anything, no 
 matter how unlikely, is impossible in the lands where 
 man's body is bathed in eternal splendour, while his ! 
 mind remains hopelessly steeped in unending night 
 and gloom. ) I can only tell the tale as I heard it ; first 
 from a white man, who knew me well enough to trust 
 
 £ 
 
68 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 me not to laugh at him, and later from a Malay boat- 
 swain, who did not realise that, by telling a plain 
 story simply and by relating facts exactly as they 
 occurred, he was running any risk of becoming an 
 object of ridicule. I have not attempted to use the 
 words of either of my (informants} for the eyes of the 
 East and the eyes of the West are of different focus, 
 the one seeing clearly where the other is almost blind. 
 No given circumstances have precisely the same value 
 when they are related by a Native or by a European, 
 yet each may speak truly according to his vision ; and 
 who shall say which of the twain attains the more 
 nearly to the abstract truth ? 
 
 The islands of the Eastern Seas, where life is too 
 indolent for a man to do more than dream over the 
 marvellous grouping of the treasures, and the lavish 
 use of light and colour and shade wherewith Nature 
 paints her pictures for lazy eyes to look upon ; where 
 the sad, soft winds lull you gently with their spicy 
 breath j where the air comes to you heavy with 
 memories of the cool sleeping forest ; where action is 
 folly, and all effort seems a madness ; and where the 
 drowsy people, taking the true spirit of their sur- 
 roundings, seem to be given over to slumber and to 
 dreamy rest, — these islands of the Eastern Seas have 
 the power to bind a man to them for all his days. It 
 needs an effort, for one who has drunk deeply of the 
 ,/ intoxication of these sleepy- places, to break away from 
 them, and effort has become repugnant to his very 
 being. But if, as happens now and again, a man 
 grows weary of the islands, he must turn his back alike 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PJS7 69 
 
 upon them and upon the rising sun, for if he goes 
 towards the East he only increases his trouble. Almost 
 before he is aware of it he will slip into the archi- 
 pelagoes of the Pacific, and there life is still so en- 
 trancing, in spite of the Germans and the Missionaries, 
 that he will soon find himself bound hand and foot by 
 ties stronger even than those from which he seeks to 
 free himself. 
 
 If, however, he turns re solutely to the West, he 
 may push his way through any one of the hundred 
 gaps that are to be found in that long fringe of forest- 
 clad islands which skirts the edge of the Malay 
 Archipelago. Then, peeping through the gates of the 
 strait, he may see once more the open, restless sea, 
 throbbing and heaving to the horizon, beyond which, 
 separated from him by more than a thousand leagues 
 of storm -swept ocean, lies the east coast of Africa. 
 The little Straits of Sunda are the favourite track for 
 such wayfarers, and as you near the western outlet, the 
 point where the calm seas of the Archipelago join issue 
 with the fierce waters of the Indian Ocean, you look 
 your last upon Malayan lands. However insensible 
 you may be to beauty, however impervious to the 
 influence of your surroundings, if you have sojourned 
 long enough among the islands, or in the Malay 
 Peninsula, the fascination of this corner of the earth 
 will have eaten into your heart, and a keen pang of 
 regret will be yours as you turn your back upon the 
 land and beat out to the open sea. 
 
 On your right hand lies a broad tract of forest, 
 broken here and there by little dainty villages, the 
 bright patches of green marking the cultivated land. 
 
70 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 The jungle, fading away in the distance, colours the 
 earth it cloaks an even greenish blue, softer than any 
 hue for which man has a name ; and behind that, 
 very far and faint and dim, rise the white and azure 
 mountains of the interior. The fleecy clouds appear 
 to float around them, casting broad belts of shadow on 
 the plain beneath, and all the land slumbers peacefully 
 under its green coverlet. This is Sumatra ; and on 
 your left the coast of Java smiles at you through the 
 evening light. The villages cluster closely along the 
 shore, the ordered fields, gay with the splendours of 
 the standing crops, spreading inland almost as far as 
 the eye can carry. Here and there a dark patch of 
 forest breaks the brighter green of the rice-fields, and 
 the hills are seen dimly, blushing faintly in the glow of 
 the setting sun. 
 
 Ahead of you lies the ocean, restless and hungry, a 
 strange contrast to the sleepy shore ; and in the very 
 portals of the strait, grim and hard and awful, without 
 a blade of grass to soften its harsh outlines, Krakatau, 
 rising sheer from the sea, stands blackly outlined 
 against the ruddy sky. 
 
 This wild mountain of roughly -hewn volcanic 
 rock, so black in colour and so strong and harsh in 
 outline, so rudely unlike the smiling land on either 
 side, resembles some fearful monster that stands on ^ 
 guard before the gates of Paradise. In 1^83 Krakatau 
 belched forth fire and lava, destroying thousands of 
 human beings and laying whole districts waste. Ships 
 far out of sight of land were licked up, and burned like 
 chafT, by the floating fire that covered the sea for miles. 
 Reefs rose clear from out the deep sea-bottom where 
 
*>v** ^ 
 
 PT* 
 
 7Y/£ SCHOONER WITH A PAST 71 
 
 formerly the waters had been unfathomed, while islands 
 disappeared, dragged down into the bowels of the ocean. 
 The deafening reports of the eruption's thousand 
 explosions carried far and wide, filling distant Malayan 
 lands with strange rumours of battle. But to-day 
 Krakatau rears its sullen crest skywards, silent, grim, 
 and terrible, like a destroying angel that has the power 
 to strike, but itself is indestructible. 
 
 It was lying close under the lee of Krakatau that 
 my friend the White Man chanced to find the 
 schooner, which he bought so cheaply from the 
 adipati, or headman, of the coast near Java Head. 
 She was a dainty little craft, and in first-rate condition. 
 The price asked and given for her was absurdly small, 
 and the White Man was full of his luck at having 
 fallen in with her. He had no very high opinion of 
 the morals of the Rajas, or headmen, who dwell in 
 Malayan lands, and he told himself that the adipati 
 had probably come in possession of the schooner by 
 means which would hardly bear scrutiny. That, 
 however, he considered was no affair of his, for men 
 who roam about the Archipelago are not apt to be 
 over scrupulous, nor do they usually ask awkward 
 questions about such gifts as the gods send them. 
 
 All went well until my friend set about seeking for 
 a crew to man his schooner. Then he found that no 
 living soul upon the coast of Java, nor yet among the 
 villages on the Sumatran shore, would set foot aboard 
 her. He wasted weeks in vainly trying to persuade 
 and bribe the people to lend him a hand to sail the 
 ship up to Tanjong Priuk, which is the port for 
 Batavia, but at length he was forced to abandon the 
 
72 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 attempt. Not without difficulty he succeeded in 
 forcing the adipati to refund one-half of the purchase 
 money, as a guarantee that the ship should not be re- 
 sold until he returned to fetch her. Then he set off 
 for Sulu, where he had a large connection among the 
 divers and fisher-folk. A couple of months later he 
 returned to Krakatau, with a gang of yelling Sulu boys 
 crowding a tiny native craft, and took formal charge 
 of the schooner. 
 
 The money was paid, and the ship began to beat 
 up the Straits before a gentle breeze ; and, after put- 
 ting in at Tanjong Priuk to refit, and lying for a 
 week or two under the shadow of the great Dutch 
 guard-ships inside the breakwater, the White Man 
 and his crew set sail for an oyster-bed of which the 
 former alone knew the situation. I cannot tell you 
 exactly where this fishing -ground is, for the White 
 Man hugged his secret closely. (Among the islands 
 men pride themselves upon having exclusive know- 
 ledge of some out-of-the-way corner that no one else 
 is supposed to have visited.) It not infrequently 
 happens that a dozen men plume themselves upon 
 possession of such knowledge in regard to one and the 
 same spot, and until two of them meet there all goes 
 happily enough. 
 
 The White Man spoke to me of his schooner, in 
 after days, with tears in his voice. She was ' a daisy 
 to sail, and as pretty as a picture,' he said ; and even 
 the Malay boatswain, who had his own sufficient 
 reasons for hating her very name, told me that at first 
 he loved her like the youngest of his daughters. 
 
 Now the custom of the Malay pearl-fishers is this : 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PAST 73 
 
 the ship is anchored on the oyster-beds, or as near to 
 them as is possible, and the diving takes place twice 
 daily, at morning and evening. All the boats are 
 manned at these hours, and the Sulu boys row them 
 out to the point selected for the day's operations. 
 The white man in charge always goes with them in 
 order to keep an eye upon the shells, to physic ex- 
 hausted divers with brandy or gin, and generally to 
 look after his own interests. 
 
 Presently a man lowers himself slowly over the 
 side, takes a long deep breath, and then, turning head 
 downwards, swims into the depths, his limbs showing 
 dimly in frog-like motions, until, if the water be very 
 deep, he is completely lost to sight. In a few minutes 
 he again comes into view, his face straining upwards, 
 yearning with extended neck for the air that he now 
 needs so sorely. His hands cleave the water in strong, 
 downward strokes j his form grows momentarily more 
 distinct, until the fixed, tense expression of his staring 
 face is plainly visible. Then the quiet surface of the 
 sea splashes in a thousand drops of sun-steeped light, 
 as his head tears through it, and his bursting lungs, 
 expelling the imprisoned air, draw in the breath, for 
 which they crave, in long, hard gasps. If the dive has "" 
 been a deep one a little blood may be seen to trickle 
 from nose and mouth and ears ; at times even the 
 eye-sockets ooze blood, in token of the fearful pressure 
 to which the diver has been subjected. He brings 
 with him, from the depths of the sea, two oyster- 
 shells, never more and very rarely less, and when these 
 have been secured, he is helped back into the boat, 
 from which another diver is now lowering himself. 
 
74 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMJNITT 
 
 These men can on occasions dive to the depth of 
 twenty fathoms, one hundred and twenty feet ; and 
 though the strain kills them early, they are a cheery, 
 d evil-m ay-care set of ruffians till such time astheir 
 lungs and hearts give way. 
 
 The shells are the property of the white man, for 
 the divers dive for a wage, and it is the mother-of 
 pearl to which the European looks for his sure profit, 
 the pearls themselves forming the plums which may or 
 may not fall to his lot. My friend always opened his 
 shells himself; and, indeed, it is a fascinating employ- 
 ment, when each closed bivalve may contain within it 
 a treasure on the proceeds of which a man may live in 
 comfort for the best half of a year. The Malay boat- 
 swain sometimes helped him, but his interest in the 
 matter, being vicarious, was less keen. 
 
 The White Man and his schooner reached the 
 oyster-bed in safety, and work was begun on the 
 following morning, each of the divers making two 
 trips to the bottom during the day. The shells were 
 lying 'as thick as mites in a cheese,' my friend told 
 me, and he got three fine pearls on the first day, which 
 is more than any pearl-fisher living has a right to hope 
 for. Therefore he turned into his bunk, and dreamed 
 of great wealth and an honoured old age. He was 
 just shaking hands warmly with Queen Victoria, to 
 whom a moment earlier he had presented a necklace 
 of pearls as big as plover's eggs, when he awoke to find 
 the Malay boatswain standing over him. 
 
 c What thing ails thee ? ' asked the White Man in 
 Malay. 
 
 1 The order hath come to Abu,' was the reply. 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PJST 75 
 
 ■ When did he die ? ' asked the White Man, who 
 understood the Malay idiom. 
 
 'I know not, TuanJ 1 said the boatswain. C I 
 found him lying face downwards on the deck a little 
 abaft the mainmast. He died startled (suddenly) and 
 no man was at hand to watch him at his death.' 
 
 c Come, let us see,' said the White Man, rolling off 
 his bunk, and together they went to view the body by 
 the light of a ship's lantern. 
 
 Abu lay dead, naked to the waist, with outstretched 
 arms extended and the palms lying flat upon the deck. 
 Half a dozen of the Sulu boys stood in a frightened 
 group at a little distance from him, talking together in 
 low, uneasy whispers. 
 
 The White Man turned the body over on its back, 
 and put his hand upon the dead man's breast. He 
 noted that the face had been badly bruised by the 
 boards of the deck, against which it had struck when 
 Abu fell. Apparently the man, who in his lifetime 
 had always appeared to be a strong, healthy fellow 
 enough, had had a weak heart, and the diving had 
 proved too great a strain for him. The White Man 
 said so to the boatswain, but the latter did not seem to 
 be convinced. 
 
 c Has the Tuan noted this ? ' he asked, turning the 
 body over as he spoke, and pointing to a minute black 
 stain on the skin below the left shoulder-blade. 
 
 The White Man examined the spot carefully. * It 
 is a birth-mark,' he said. 
 
 c Perhaps,' said the boatswain doubtfully ; * but in 
 
 1 T&an is the word commonly used in addressing Europeans in the 
 Malay Peninsula. 
 
76 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 all the years that I have seen Abu stripped for the 
 diving never have I remarked the said birth-mark.' 
 
 1 Nor I,' said the White Man ; c but if it is not a 
 birth-mark, what then may it be ? ' 
 
 4 God alone knows, TuanJ said the boatswain piously; 
 c but I have heard tell of spirits who scar their victims, 
 leaving such a mark as that we see.' 
 
 The White Man was righteously indignant. He 
 felt that he did well to be angry, for superstition is 
 an unseemly thing, more especially when it tends to 
 prevent a man from working one of the best oyster- 
 beds in the whole of the Malay Archipelago. The 
 boatswain took all the hard things that the White 
 Man said to him with the utmost composure ; but it 
 was not difficult to see that the Sulu boys, who had 
 stood listening to all that passed, felt that reason lay 
 upon his side. 
 
 Diving was resumed on the morrow, but my friend 
 noticed that some of the younger men foiled to reach 
 the bottom, apparently lacking the nerve required for 
 the violent effort, while both old and young seemed to 
 be somewhat sullen and uneasy. The White Man did 
 not like these symptoms at all, for every wise pearl- 
 fisher knows that much depends upon his divers being 
 kept in good spirits. Accordingly when night had 
 fallen, and after the evening rice had been devoured in 
 silence, he did his best to rouse his people by organising 
 a dance on the open space abaft the mainmast. Drums 
 and gongs were produced, and the Sulu boys thumped 
 and clanged them vigorously, while one of their 
 number blew the shrill sirunai^ whose note resembles 
 that of a demented bagpipe. Then some stood up and 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PAST 77 
 
 danced nimbly, and all lifted up their voices in dis- 
 cordant song. 
 
 Men of the Malayan race are gifted with volatile 
 natures, easily cast down and easily lifted up again ; 
 and soon the people on the deck of the schooner were 
 singing and laughing, bandying jests, each man 
 competing eagerly for his turn to rise up and dance. 
 Their faces, with flashing eyes and teeth showing 
 white through gums stained dark red with areca-nut, 
 looked as merry and as happy in the flare of the ship's 
 lanterns as though death and the fear of death were 
 thoughts to which they were utter strangers. The 
 White Man heaved a sigh of relief, and shortly before 
 midnight he stole away to his cabin, and set about the 
 task of opening the oyster-shells which had been taken 
 during the day. 
 
 Suddenly a bewildering hubbub broke out upon the 
 deck. The drums and gongs were silenced, and the 
 sound of the serunai died away in one expiring wail. 
 The lusty song ceased, and the noises which replaced 
 it were yells and screams of fear, mingled with the 
 pattering sound of naked feet scurrying along the 
 deck. The White Man seized a pistol and rushed out 
 of his cabin. He found the boatswain cowering 
 against the bulwarks, his teeth chattering like castanets 
 and his body bathed in a cold sweat. He was too 
 spent with fear to do more than moan, but at last the 
 White Man succeeded in shaking him into articulate 
 speech. 
 
 * Behold ! ' said the boatswain, and with a hand that 
 shook violently he pointed to an object a little abaft 
 the mainmast. The White Man walked up to it, and 
 
78 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 found that it was the body of one of his people, a 
 youngster named Intan. He lay quite dead in the 
 same attitude as that in which Abu's body had lain 
 upon the previous night, and on his back, a little below 
 the left shoulder-blade, was a small, dark stain upon 
 the skin. 
 
 The White Man picked up the body and carried it 
 to his cabin, where he laid it gently down upon his 
 bunk. In the bright light of the lamp he could see 
 Intan's face clearly for the first time. The nose and 
 forehead had been bruised and cut by the fall upon the 
 deck, but the face still wore fixed upon it the expression 
 which it had borne at the moment of death. The 
 eyes were starting from their sockets, the mouth 
 seemed open to scream, and the whole face told a 
 tale of abject, masterless terror — fear such as it is given 
 to few to experience and to fewer still to survive. 
 The White Man tried to tell himself that Intan's 
 heart had been rotten, and that death was due to natural 
 causes ; but with that strange mark below the shoulder- 
 blade before his eyes, he failed to convince even 
 himself. 
 
 While he still stood pondering upon the mystery, 
 the boatswain, and the Mandor^ or headman, of the 
 Sulu divers, came to the cabin door and begged to have 
 speech with him. They spoke in the name of all on 
 board, and entreated the White Man to set sail that 
 very night, and shape a course for the nearest land. 
 
 'This ship is the abode of devils,' said the boat- 
 swain ; * of evil spirits that war with man, and in the 
 name of Allah we pray thee to depart from this place, 
 and to abandon this woful ship. Behold, as we sat 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PAST 79 
 
 singing, but an hour ago, singing and dancing with 
 our hearts at ease, of a sudden it was laid upon us to 
 gaze upwards, and lo, we spied an aged man climbing 
 out of the rigging of the mainmast. Out of the 
 black darkness, above the reach of the lantern light, 
 he came, climbing slowly, after the manner of the 
 aged, and indeed he was far stricken in years. His 
 hair was white as the plumage of the padi crane, and 
 his beard also was white and fell to his waist. His 
 body from the belt upwards was naked and bare, and 
 the skin was creased and wrinkled like the inner seed 
 of a durian. He was clad in a yellow waist-skirt 
 looped about his middle, and his fighting-drawers were 
 also yellow. It is the colour of the Spirits, as the 
 Tuan knows. He had a long dagger, a kris cherita^ of 
 many tens of waves to its blade, and he carried it 
 cross-wise in his mouth as he climbed. We who 
 looked upon him were stricken with a great fear, so 
 that we might not stir hand or foot, and presently he 
 descended on to the deck. Then we fled screaming, 
 but He of the Long Dagger pursued Intan, and smote 
 him on the back as he ran, so that he died. Thereafter 
 the spirit swarmed back up the mast, and disappeared 
 into the darkness. Many beheld this thing, Tuan ; it 
 is not the talk of a child ; and we that saw the evil 
 one cannot endure to dwell longer within this haunted 
 ship.' 
 
 The White Man did not know what to make of it, 
 for he was not himself inclined to superstition. His 
 influence with his people was great, and their faith in 
 him was as the faith of little children in their parents. 
 Therefore he made a pact with his crew, by which 
 
80 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 he promised to sail for the nearest land if anything 
 untoward should happen on the following night, and 
 he further promised to watch with them, and protect 
 them from the spirit, should it again descend among 
 them. 
 
 The crew were in a state of abject fear, but they at 
 last agreed to accept the White Man's terms. No 
 diving was done on the morrow, for the men had no 
 heart for the effort, and though an attempt was made 
 it was speedily abandoned as useless. Night found 
 the crew huddled together on the deck, a little forward 
 the mainmast, with the White Alan sitting nearest to 
 that dreaded spot. He tried to induce them to keep 
 up their hearts by thumping the drums and gongs, as 
 on the previous night ; but the songs died down in the 
 singers' throats, the serunai wailed discordantly, then 
 ceased, and as the hour of danger approached, a dead 
 silence of fear fell upon the crowd of men, huddled 
 one against another for the sake of company on the 
 dimly lighted deck. 
 
 Shortly after midnight a tremor ran through the 
 crew, and half a dozen men started to their feet. All 
 were gazing upwards with craning necks to the rig- 
 ging of the mainmast. The White Man could hear the 
 sighing of the wind through the cordage, the creaking 
 of a rope against the mast, and the hard breathing or 
 the frightened crew ; but though he strained his eyes 
 to peer eagerly through the darkness, nothing could 
 he see. It made his flesh creep queerly, he told me, 
 as he stood there, while the night wind sighed gently 
 overhead and the little lazy ripple broke against the 
 ship's side, to watch the frightened faces of the Malays, 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PAS! 81 
 
 gazing with protruding eyes at something that he 
 could not see, something in the rigging of the main- 
 mast, whose descent towards the deck they seemed to 
 watch. 
 
 * It is He of the Long Dagger ! ' whispered a voice 
 behind that sounded harsh and strange. The White 
 Man would never have recognised it as that of the 
 boatswain, had he not seen the man's lips moving. 
 c Where, where ? ' he cried eagerly, glancing from one 
 terrified face to another ; but no one heeded him, all 
 seeming spellbound by the creeping, invisible thing 
 they watched in agony. The harsh tones of the 
 White Man's voice died down, and the little quiet 
 noises of the night, alone broke the stillness of the 
 heavy air. The sea and the sky seemed alike to 
 wait for a catastrophe, and the fear of death, and 
 worse than death, lay heavy on the watchers. 
 
 Presently the awful silence was broken rudely by 
 yells and screams, such sounds as the human voice 
 alone can produce when men wax mad with panic. 
 The groups behind the White Man broke like a herd 
 of frightened deer, the Malays flying in every direction, 
 shrieking their terror of some unseen pursuer. 
 
 And still the White Man could see nothing. He 
 turned to watch his people in their flight, and as he 
 did so a chill breath, such as often whispers over the 
 surface of the tropic sea during the quiet night-time, 
 seemed to fan his cheek and pass him by. As he 
 watched, the headman of the divers, who was running 
 up the deck, his breath coming in hard, short gasps, 
 suddenly threw up his arms, his hands extended widely, 
 and with a fearful yell fell prone upon the deck, his 
 
82 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 face striking the planks with a heavy, sickening thud. 
 The White Man ran to him, and lifted him across his 
 knee ; but the headman was dead, and below the left 
 shoulder-blade the strange, dark stain that the boat- 
 swain had called the scar of the Spirits was plainly to 
 be seen. 
 
 Before dawn the schooner was under way, heading 
 bravely for the nearest land. The Sulu boys slunk 
 about the deck, or sat huddled up against the bulwarks, 
 talking together in scared whispers. The sun shone 
 down brightly on the dancing waves, and the schooner 
 leaped joyously through them to the song of the wind 
 in the rigging and the ripple of the forefoot through 
 the water ; but Nature alone was gay and well pleased 
 that day, for the schooner carried none but heavy 
 hearts, and souls on which lay the fear of an awful 
 dread. 
 
 Early in the afternoon land was sighted, and when 
 the white trunks of the cocoanut-trees could be clearly 
 distinguished below the dancing palm-fronds, first one 
 and then another of the Sulu boys leaped upon the 
 bulwarks and plunged headlong into the sea. The 
 White Man could do naught to stay them, for they 
 were mad with fear, so he stood despairingly gazing at 
 the black heads bobbing on the waves as the swimmers 
 made for the shore. Only the old Malay boatswain 
 remained by his side, but even his fidelity could not 
 look the prospect of another night spent aboard that 
 devil's ship steadily in the face. The White Man 
 aiding, they made shift to lower a boat, and taking 
 such articles of value as were capable of being removed, 
 they too turned their faces shorewards. 
 
THE SCHOONER WITH A PAST 83 
 
 During the night a wind from off the land sprang 
 up, and carried the schooner away with it. By dawn 
 she had vanished, and so far as I am aware, she has 
 never been heard of since. 
 
 I have said that I cannot pretend to explain this 
 story, nor do I know anything of the former history 
 of the schooner, before the White Man chanced upon 
 her at Krakatau. Perhaps, if we knew the whole of 
 the facts, an explanation might be found ; but, for the 
 present, you must content yourselves with a fragment, 
 as I have had to do. 
 
IN ARCADIA 
 
 When Ambition lie* stricken and Hying, 
 
 And can rowel Mankind no more ; 
 When there's nought worth the labour of trying 
 
 To strive for and grip, as of yore j 
 When no grapes may be pressed for the drinking, 
 
 When money's unknown in the Land ; 
 When we've done with all knowing and thinking, 
 
 All struggles to understand ; 
 When men shall live tamely together, 
 
 And all be, as kine, fat fed, 
 When the Passions are bound with a tether, 
 
 And the Deadlier Sins are dead, 
 There will still be some laughing Daughter 
 
 Of Men, to rekindle our strife, 
 And that — God be thanked — will mean slaughter, 
 
 And later more full-blooded Life ! 
 
 The Millennium. 
 
 Arcadia is situated some five days' journey by 
 steamer from the Sunda Straits, — the main exit by 
 which a man may make his way out of the maze 
 of islands that together form the Malay Archipelago, 
 — and about a fortnight's hard steaming due east of 
 the island of Madagascar. Arcadia lies well off" the 
 track of any recognised trade route, and no vessel visits 
 it unless the fierce winds, which rage and roar across 
 

 
 
 /# ARCADIA 85 
 
 the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean, have taken 
 charge of her, for the time, and will not suffer the 
 men on board her to have a say in the selection 
 of her course. Naturally, if this were not so, Arcadia 
 would very soon cease to be the quiet, peaceful, un- 
 sophisticated spot we know it to be, and indeed the 
 revolutionary tendencies of the shipwrecked mariners 
 who have from time to time been cast ashore here, have 
 too often endangered the tranquillity of the island. In 
 feet, if you go deep enough into the thing, you will 
 find that the excellent Arcadia ns differ from the rest of 
 humanity, not so much in their love of virtue, and 
 hatred of vice, as in a greater lack of opportunities of 
 doing evil. Year after year, the Special Commissioners, 
 who visit the island in the little wallowing gunboats, 
 state in their official reports that there is l no crime,* 
 and everybody who reads the blue-books holds up 
 astonished hands in admiration, and feels dimly that 
 they, and every one else connected with the rule of 
 Great Britain in Asia, are deserving of much credit 
 for this high standard of morality. They altogether 
 overlook the fact that, even if we accept the statement 
 that there is no crime, the credit is chiefly due to the 
 geographical position of the islands, with which even 
 the all-powerful Great Britain itself can have had 
 nothing to do. 
 
 The Cocos Keeling Islands, for this is Arcadia's 
 official name, are inhabited by some six hundred 
 cross-bred Malays, the descendants of the slaves 
 brought thither, from the Archipelago, by the 
 founder of t he Scotchj arnily to which the islands still 
 belong. The men andtHe women are about equally 
 
86 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 numerous, and as a consequence polygamy has died 
 out, though the people still profess a bastard form of 
 Muhammadanism. The sarong^ or waist -cloth, the 
 national garment, without which no self-respecting 
 Malay ever willingly allows himself to be seen, has 
 been abandoned in favour of white duck trousers, and 
 a coloured flannel or linen shirt, while a broad-brimmed 
 straw hat crowns the whole, in open defiance of the 
 Prophet's Law, which forbids the Faithful to wear 
 any head -gear that shall prevent the forehead from 
 touching the ground when the wearer prostrates 
 himself in prayer. 
 
 The islands, which are some twenty in number, 
 rise up out of the Indian Ocean in such a manner as 
 to form a co mplete ^cjrcle, the centre of which is a 
 broad, landlocked lagoon. At the northern edge ot 
 the circle, the islands do not quite join, and thus a 
 portal is left, by means of which a fairly large steamer 
 can make its way into the lagoon. The other islands 
 so very nearly touch hands, that a man can wade from 
 one to another without difficulty. All the Arcadians 
 live on Settlement Island, as it is called, but on every 
 side of the lagoon the vast groves of cocoanut-trees 
 stand up against the sky, shielding the anchorage from 
 the wild onslaught of the tireless winds which rip 
 ceaselessly up and down these seas. Cocoanuts are 
 practically the only things that grow with comfort 
 in Arcadia, and every one of them has been planted 
 by the hand of man. Yearly a ship, specially chartered 
 for the purpose by the Scotch owners of the islands, 
 puts into the lagoon, and after discharging her cargo 
 of * Europe goods,' is loaded up with copra, which is 
 
J^' 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 /# ARCADU 87 
 
 beaten down with stampers, until her hull is a solid 
 mass of whitish stuff, with a wooden casing enclosing 
 it. It is sad to have to add that, whenever the 
 Arcadians can elude the vigilance of their masters, / 
 they tap the palms for toddy, and thereafter wax 
 exceedingly intoxicated on the stolen spirits. 
 
 As you enter the lagoon, leaving behind you the 
 throbbing, leaping, excited seas which have been your 
 companions ever since you slipped out of the Straits of 
 Sunda, and left the black bulk of Krakatau, the fearful 
 volcanic mountain that rises abruptly from the ocean, 
 standing awful and threatening in your wake, it seems 
 as though a strange silence and peace had fallen 
 upon the earth. The beating of the hungry waves 
 upon the outer edge of the circle of rock-bound islands 
 comes to you in a faint murmur, softened by distance 
 into a dreamy hush ; around you the intensely blue 
 waters of the lagoon lie calm and smooth, with scarcely 
 a ripple to roughen their even, sunlit surface ; and 
 gazing downwards over the ship's side, the white coral 
 of the bottom makes the deep, clear water look in- 
 credibly shallow, so that every branching spray of 
 plant -like rock, every waving tassel of strange sea- 
 weed, every tiny shell of dainty shape and colour, 
 every fish that glides hither and thither in this marine 
 Fairyland, is seen with marvellous distinctness of 
 detail. A fantastic - looking sea-bird or two float 
 around the ship, searching for food, or wing their 
 way across the lagoon, dipping now and again to 
 seize some object floating on the surface of the 
 water ; far away, on the shores of Settlement Island, 
 the roofs of a house or twain may be seen, showing 
 
88 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 indistinctly among the palm-trees on the beach ; a few 
 fishing boats lie rocking at anchor near the houses ; 
 but over all is an air of lazy, dreamful peace, in such 
 sharp contrast to the busy, hurrying life of the world 
 you have left behind you, that no man needs to be told 
 that this is in truth Arcadia. 
 
 Hari was an Arcadian born, and he was proud of 
 the fact when he met any of the Bantamese coolies, 
 who were periodically imported from the Malay Archi- 
 pelago to help the owners of the islands to work the g 
 copra. While he was still little, he had been through 
 the course of education that is prescribed by the owners 
 of the island for every child in the place. This was 
 before the days of Special Commissioners, so reading 
 and writing, and sums in pounds, shillings, and pence, 
 — the latter a study of doubtful utility, seeing that the 
 Arcadians are not allowed to handle money fashioned 
 from anything more precious than sheep -skin, and 
 seeing also that their arithmetic is done for them by 
 the Scotch Family aforesaid, — found no place in the 
 curriculum. He had, however, been through the 
 carpenter's and blacksmith's shops, and could use 
 tools of either trade as well and as skilfully as any 
 man need desire. This, according to the custom 
 of the islands, is a necessary step in the development 
 of one who wishes to become the father of a family, 
 for until a boy has, so to speak, won his spurs in the 
 shops, he is not permitted to marry. If you come to 
 think of it, this is a fairly sound arrangement. Harih 
 — his name was a corruption of a corruption of 'Henry'l v 
 — had raced hard to pass through the shops more 
 
IN ARCADIA 89 
 
 quickly than any of his fellows, for it so chanced 
 that, at that time, there was only one marriageable 
 girl upon the island who was still unwedded, and the 
 first comer would in all probability be served first. 
 This girl was named JVferi, a mispronunciation of 
 Mary, for on the islands the natives always give 
 their children European names, which is yet one 
 more sign of how ragged is the coating of Muhamma- 
 danism that their long intercourse with the White 
 Men has left them. Hari had known Meri all her 
 life, for they had lived always on the islands, and this 
 means seeing more of your neighbours than is likely 
 even in a secluded village, for it is impossible to get 
 away from Arcadia, whereas in the most out-of-the- 
 way places on the mainland, an absence of a day or 
 two must occur, for one or the other, during the years 
 while two young people are coming to maturity. He 
 was under no illusions as to this young woman's 
 character, such as may be entertained by one upon 
 whom his lady-love comes suddenly in all the wonder 
 of her beauty and full - fledged charms, turning a 
 commonplace existence to the likeness of a fairy-tale, 
 until such time as the said illusions wear off. He 
 knew her to be very much like other young women, 
 such as men on the island were accustomed to take to 
 wife. She had pulled his short, black hair, any time 
 these ten years past, when he chanced to anger her, 
 she had used her nails too, with good effect, as the 
 tiny white scars on his nose still bore witness, but 
 everybody on the islands knew that women always 
 treated men roughly, domineering over them, so that 
 even the bravest sailors and strongest rowers were often 
 
90 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 sent weeping from their own houses, to tell a woful 
 tale of all they had endured at the hands of their wives, 
 to the sympathetic crowd of loafers on the beach. Old 
 men said that things had been otherwise in the good 
 half-forgotten days, before the present ruler of the islands 
 came back from the White Men's country with fantastic 
 notions anent the wickedness of wife-beating ; but since 
 the punishment that was dealt out to Jan the son of 
 Charli, for stripping the hide off his woman's back with 
 a piece of rattan, no man had dared to lift his hand 
 against the women -folk, and these, realising their 
 immunity from physical harm, had taken to bullying 
 the men most mercilessly. Hari found it difficult to 
 believe that things had ever really been different from 
 what they had been, in this respect, ever since he could 
 remember anything ; and anyway, a man was better 
 off with a woman to wash and cook for him, than as 
 a bachelor in a land where a wife could not be picked 
 up for the asking whenever a young man's fancy 
 'lightly turned to thoughts of love.' Regarded in 
 this light, Meri was exceedingly desirable, and as far 
 as the thin blood of the Arcadian is capable of the 
 emotion, Hari may be said to have been in love with 
 the girl. She was a big, strapping wench, round-faced, 
 and full-busted, as are most of the sturdy Arcadian 
 women, and her eye was as bright, and her ready 
 tongue as saucy, as her fists and nails were quick to 
 act when she happened to be annoyed. On the whole, 
 Hari told himself, Meri was about as attractive a 
 girl as a man had any right to expect to win for a 
 wife ; and he was therefore all the more anxious that 
 no one else should step in to take her from him, before 
 
IN ARCADIA 91 
 
 such time as he was in a position to start a household 
 on his own account. 
 
 Unfortunately for Han's peace of mind, precisely 
 the same thoughts had occurred to Sam, a youth who 
 was passing through the shops at the same time as 
 Han, and who was equally well aware that if, by any 
 chance, he was to fail to secure Men for his wife he 
 would have to wait in single cursedness until some of 
 the half- naked little girls, now playing about the 
 beach, had attained to a marriageable age. Sam was 
 also a Cocos-born native, and he therefore had known 
 Men quite as long, and quite as intimately, as Hari 
 had done. His hair had been pulled quite as often, 
 and if it came to counting the marks left by the 
 young lady's nails, Sam had two to show for every one 
 on Hari's nose. The Fates, being like every one else 
 in Arcadia, considerably bored by the monotony of 
 the drearily peaceful and uneventful life, decreed that 
 both Hari and Sam should earn their discharge from 
 the shops upon one and the same day. They both, 
 therefore, became entitled to marry at the same time, 
 and since Meri was the only maiden on the island 
 who had attained to a ripe age, one or the other of 
 them was obviously destined to remain celibate. It 
 is to meet the requirements of such communities 
 as those of Arcadia, that polyandry is adopted in 
 some parts of the world, but the enlightened 
 owner of the island had at least as strong a pre- 
 judice against that much misunderstood system, as 
 he had against the more common one of wife- 
 beating. That they both should wed Meri was, 
 therefore, out of the question ; and it merely re- 
 
92 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 mained to be seen which of the two suitors was to 
 be the happy man. 
 
 All other things being equal, it fell to Meri and 
 to Meri's mamma, — for of course Meri's papa, being 
 only a mere man, was not to be suffered to have any 
 say in so important a matter, — to select the youth who 
 was most to their taste. 
 
 Meri's choice inclined towards Hari ; for she re- 
 membered how, a week or so before, when she went 
 to the factory to draw the family ration of flour, Hari 
 had thrown his arm about her and had chiumd 
 ('smelt') her cheeks and lips. She had cuffed him 
 soundly at the time for his audacity, but the memory 
 of his warm lips against her cheek seemed, somehow, 
 to make him nearer and dearer to her than any one 
 else in all the world. For even in Arcadia, it must be 
 MOted, old Human Nature is apt to be very much like 
 itself. 
 
 Meri's mamma, on the other hand, was a hot partisan 
 of Sam ; for she had had a warm flirtation with Sam's 
 father, in the days when both of them were young, 
 and she cherished a sentimental affection for the son 
 of her old lover. She had viewed with keen suspicion 
 the disappearance of Meri and Hari behind the big 
 factory-chimney, on that occasion when she and her 
 daughter had gone to fetch the flour, and even when 
 Hari reappeared rubbing his bruised cheeks ruefully, 
 she had not felt completely reassured. Now that by 
 the blessing of the God, whose name for the moment 
 she forgot, — Allah, was it not ? — both Sam and Hari 
 were placed on an equal footing, and the choice had 
 passed from the hands of Fate to those of herself and 
 
IN ARCADIA 93 
 
 Meri, she had very little doubt, in her own mind, 
 as to which of the twain should be condemned to a 
 life of celibacy. 
 
 As the days wore on, it became more and more 
 apparent to every one concerned that the choice of the 
 mother would also be the choice of the daughter. 
 Sam took to himself a swaggering strut and an 
 arrogant bearing which Hari found it very difficult 
 to bear with equanimity. The traditional scrap of 
 comfort, which is always offered to the unlucky lover, 
 that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out 
 of it, was powerless to console Hari in his affliction, 
 for unless some other islander was so obliging as to 
 die, and leave an attractive widow behind him, — and 
 in Arcadia people are terribly long-lived, — there was 
 no possibility of Hari finding another wife if he had 
 to stand aside and watch Sam carrying off Meri from 
 before his eyes. This thought seemed to fill Hari's 
 cup of bitterness to the brim, and from being a cheery, 
 light-hearted little fellow enough, he gradually became 
 very glum, taciturn, and surly. None the less, how- 
 ever, it was observed that he evinced no desire to 
 avoid his rival, and on the frequent occasions when 
 chance threw them together, the two youths appeared 
 to be, if anything, more friendly than of old. Sam 
 'came* the favoured lover over poor Hari, in season 
 and out of season, and never wearied of descanting 
 upon the charms of the lady whom he was about to 
 wed, when Hari was at hand to listen. Even in 
 Arcadia, people are not always careful to avoid hurting 
 the feelings of their neighbours. 
 
 The older men, who watched the two youths 
 
94 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 going about together, marvelled exceedingly at Hari's 
 choice of a companion, and even more at the good 
 temper he displayed when Sam waxed most jubilant 
 and offensive. Though they had come to Forty 
 Year, and had long ago learned c the worth of a lass,' 
 they had been young in their day, and they felt that 
 had they been in Hari's place the peace of Arcadia 
 had like to have been broken. He was evidently a 
 poor-spirited fellow, and perhaps Meri was well out of 
 a marriage with such a poltroon. 
 
 Things went on in this way for several weeks, and 
 at last the day for Sam's marriage with Meri was fixed. 
 On the Saturday before the great event, Hari invited 
 Sam to go out fishing with him on the lagoon. 
 
 i Thou wilt need much fish for thy Wedding Feast,' 
 he said. 
 
 c When will thy Wedding Feast be, Bachelor ? ' 
 asked Sam with a maddening laugh. 
 
 c God alone knows ! ' replied Hari piously ; ' but 
 say, Brother, wilt thou go a-fishing, for my lines are 
 ready, and if thou art unwilling I go single-handed.' 
 
 ' As thou art like to go through life ! ' jeered Sam ; 
 1 but for once thou shalt not be lonely in thy boat, as 
 thou wilt surely be hereafter in thy bed. Come let 
 us be gone.' 
 
 The two friends made their way down to the shore, 
 through the fenced enclosures in which the houses of 
 the Cocos people stand. They could see the women 
 hard at work at their weekly task of washing the 
 household clothes, and scrubbing the plank floors of 
 their dwellings, for the Scotch owners of the islands 
 have brought the tradition of a Saturday Washing from 
 
IN ARCADIA 95 
 
 the far-off Hebrides to these remote atolls in the 
 Indian Ocean. The men were loafing wearily about 
 the beach, for they knew better than to cross the 
 thresholds of their homes when the women-folk were 
 i redding up.' Some of them were out fishing on the 
 lagoon, Saturday being a half-holiday on the island, — 
 yet another imported tradition from a land to which 
 the Cocos natives are strangers, — but others sat about 
 doing nothing in particular, with the listless air that 
 is peculiar to the Arcadians. If you do away with 
 money, and substitute sheepskin ; if the hardest 
 worker and the most skilful mechanic fares no better 
 and no worse than other men of ordinary proficiency ; 
 when polygamy has disappeared, and a man, no matter 
 what he may do, is bound in marriage to the same 
 woman for all his days ; every possible incentive to 
 struggle for an improvement in his lot, every source 
 of ambition, every reason for competition vanishes, 
 and as a result life becomes a very insipid, dull, and 
 dreary business, in which no man can be expected to 
 take any particularly vivid interest. The wise men 
 in Europe and America, who are anxious to see things 
 reduced to this dead level, in the interests of Humanity, 
 and are of opinion that their theories and ideas are 
 the one new thing under the sun, might study with 
 advantage the effect of a precisely similar system on 
 the people of distant Arcadia. On the whole, the 
 results are not encouraging. Humanity is c no great 
 shakes ' as it is, but if we were all Arcadians ! Heaven 
 help us ! 
 
 The great kolek which belonged to HarPs father, 
 and was the fishing boat of the family, lay rocking at 
 
l/pb 
 
 96 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 anchor, some twenty yards from the shore, and the 
 two Cocos men waded out to her and stepped aboard. 
 
 c Is no other man joining our party ? * asked Sam, 
 as he threw his leg over the side. 
 
 c We twain go a-fishing this tide. Art thou afraid 
 to do so ? ' answered Hari. 
 
 Sam got on board without a word. Then they 
 put to sea, each holding an oar. 
 
 1 Is it fitting that the future husband of Meri should 
 fear aught ? ' Sam asked after a pause. 
 
 c Indeed the future husband of Meri fears nothing 
 in Heaven or Earth, and nothing in this life nor in 
 jthe life that is to come ! ' said Hari very quietly. 
 
 Those who know the lagoon of the Cocos Islands 
 are aware that though to the new-comer it looks so 
 aceful and delightful, it is in reality a most dangerous 
 place. All manner of unexpected and unaccountable 
 currents run around it, and about it, and across. Some 
 years ago two or three men from one of the visiting 
 men - of- war fell victims to the treacherous under- 
 swirls ; but the Cocos folk, born and bred upon the 
 islands, know the safe and the dangerous places fairly 
 well, and when they go a-flshing no one feels any 
 anxiety as to their safety. 
 
 Hari and Sam put out towards the centre of the 
 lagoon, dancing across the little playful waves, upon 
 as joyous a day as can well be imagined by the poor 
 people whose eyes have never feasted upon the wonders 
 of an Eastern land. The sun, burning overhead, 
 threw up the vivid blue of the sea, and the glistening 
 waters reflected the blazing sun-glare in a myriad 
 dazzling shimmering flecks of shifting, leaping, frolic- 
 
IN ARCADIA 97 
 
 some light. The murmur of the breakers on the 
 rocks beyond the cocoanut-trees came to the rowers' 
 ears in a distant, sleepy whisper ; the harsh cry of an 
 occasional sea-bird served only to emphasise the great 
 stillness that lay heavily upon the sea and shore ; and 
 the profound and dreamy peace of Arcadia hallowed all 
 the world. The two men in the boat probably felt 
 the influence of the hush which marked Nature's quiet, 
 even breathing, as she took her siesta^ for they too 
 were silent, as they rowed on and on over the glisten- 
 ing surface of the lagoon. 
 
 Sam, as he pulled mechanically at his oar, thought 
 lazily of Meri, and of the life that he was soon to live 
 in her company. She was a good girl, and a comely, 
 he thought, and worthy in every way to be his wife. 
 Also, the very fact that Hari desired her in vain, added 
 a zest which his own love for her might have lacked, 
 had no other man sought her for a wife. Sam felt 
 very contented with himself, and with the world as he 
 found it, so much so in fact that his mind was too 
 absorbed in the recollection of his own wellbeing for 
 a thought to be spared for the direction in which Hari 
 was guiding the boat. 
 
 Suddenly he looked up, and in a moment all memory 
 of Meri and the rest was lost to mind in a wild access 
 of fear. 
 
 ■ Have a care, Hari,' he cried ; ' have a care ! Dost 
 thou not know that this is the belly of the great sub- 
 eddy ? Pull, Brother, pull, or we shall be sucked down 
 into the under-world, and fall screaming into the grip 
 of the Water Demon ! ' 
 
 c Biar-lah! So be it, Bachelor!' said Hari quietly, 
 H 
 
98 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 as he deliberately shipped his oar. c In the dwelling 
 of the Water Demon thou mayest find much fish 
 wherewith to deck the table at thy bridal feast, for 
 now surely thou shalt wed the daughter of the said 
 Demon ! ' Then for the first time for some weeks 
 Hari laughed heartily, but his laughter was not pleasant 
 to listen to. 
 
 The surface of the water, in that part of the lagoon 
 over which they were now drifting, seemed to have 
 become suddenly strangely smooth and oily, and the 
 boat seemed to be drawn forward by some invisible 
 force, which also appeared to be pulling the sheet of 
 water bodily along with it, much as a fisherman draws 
 a sail, which he is spreading to dry, along the ground. 
 Sam was straining every nerve, tugging desperately at 
 his oar, striving with might and main to check the 
 progress of the boat. The single oar caused the light 
 craft to spin slowly round and round, and seeing this, 
 Sam made a clutch at its fellow, which Hari had 
 shipped when first the undertow began to grip them. 
 Before he could reach it, however, Hari, who was 
 watching him intently, leaned quickly forward, seized 
 the oar in both hands, and threw it over the side, far 
 out of reach of either of the men in the boat. The 
 slimy, oily current caught the lighter object at once, 
 and the oar drew quickly away from the boat, running 
 swiftly ahead in the course in which the men knew 
 that they must presently follow. Sam gave an in- 
 articulate howl, half curse, half lamentation, and re- 
 doubled his efforts at the rowing, causing the boat to 
 spin giddily. Hari leaned back in the stern and 
 watched Sam keenly, with a very genuine satisfaction. 
 
IN ARCADIA 99 
 
 The hard-held resentment against this man, the firm 
 grip over his rebellious temper which Hari had so often 
 found it difficult to maintain in the face of Sam's 
 constant jibes and jeers, the fierce hatred that during 
 the last few weeks had been eating into his heart, — the 
 memory of all these things made the sight of Sam's 
 agonised face, and wild struggles to avert the destruc- 
 tion that threatened them both, very sweet to watch 
 and linger over to the man who sat gloating over the 
 other's misery from his seat in the stern of the boat. 
 
 Sam's eyes seemed to be starting out of his head ; 
 his face was convulsed with his rending efforts to 
 delay the onrush of the whirling boat, and it was 
 lined and drawn with the agony of terror that was 
 marked in his wildly roving eyes, in his parted, parched 
 lips, in the hard, cruel puckers and bruise-like dis- 
 colorations which had suddenly sprung into being on 
 his brown forehead. The sweat of fear and exertion 
 was streaming down his face and chest, and his breath 
 came in short, tearing, hard -drawn gasps and gulps, 
 while the apple in his throat leaped up and down 
 ceaselessly like a ball balanced on a dancing jet of 
 water. 
 
 Presently Hari leaned forward, with his elbows on 
 his knees, and began to speak in a strangely calm and 
 even voice. 
 
 1 The men of ancient days,' he began, ' have left us 
 a saying, that it is not good to straighten the legs, 
 stretching them before thee, until the buttocks have 
 reached the floor in sitting. It is a good saying, and 
 a true. What thinkest thou, Bachelor ? ' 
 
 Sam, still labouring convulsively at his useless toil, 
 
ioo STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 while the boat spun round and round, drifting certainly, 
 slowly to destruction, groaned aloud, and Hari laughed 
 discordantly. 
 
 4 Who thinkest thou will now have Men to wife? 
 If I chance to win through she will be mine, — fairly 
 won. But as for thee, Bachelor, thou wilt not pass 
 the rocks alive, for I will be at hand to see that the 
 Water Demon's Daughter is not robbed of a husband 
 as thou wilt be of a wife ! Row, Brother, row ! 
 Row for Meri, and for me, while I sit here, like a 
 Tuan^ beholding thy labour ! ' 
 
 The boat was travelling at an increased rate of 
 speed now, and at last, in despair, Sam ceased his 
 useless rowing, and stood erect in the bows, facing 
 Hari, his breath coming hissingly through his parted 
 lips. He raised the oar he held high above his head 
 and brought it down in an ill-aimed blow at Hari's 
 jeering face. He was desperately out of breath with 
 his hard rowing, and his limbs felt weak and spent, 
 so when the oar lay clattering on the boat's side, Hari 
 had no difficulty in wresting it from his feeble grasp, 
 and hurling it overboard after its fellow. 
 
 Sam glared furiously at the man who had led him 
 into this terrible position, and whom he seemed to be 
 powerless to harm. 
 
 'Thou hast seemingly forgotten thy knack of 
 husking cocoanuts, Brother,' laughed Hari, and then, 
 with a roar of rage, Sam was upon him, and the two 
 stood locked in the death-grapple. From side to side 
 they swayed, reeling this way and that, balancing 
 themselves as best they might on the thwarts of the 
 rocking boat. At any time Hari could outmatch 
 
IN ARCADIA 101 
 
 Sam in strength, and now the latter was sore spent 
 with the furious efforts he had made to save himself 
 from the grip of the sucking eddy, and with the fear 
 of death, which, more than any other emotion/ draws 
 the virtue from a man's bones. For a second or two 
 they clutched one another in their 'fierce wrestling 
 match, and then Hari partially freed himself from the 
 hands of his adversary, and hurled him over the boat's 
 side. But Hari had had to put forth all his strength 
 to gain the advantage over his maddened victim, and 
 before he could save himself, he too had lost his balance, 
 and was struggling aimlessly in the fast-running oily 
 sea. A rush of salt water into his gullet, a tugging at 
 his heels, which seemed as though it would draw him 
 down into the depths, then a slow upward motion, 
 and a blue-white light overhead showed him that he 
 was coming to the surface. His lungs expelled the 
 imprisoned air, which felt as though it must burst 
 them to atoms, and Hari, dashing the water from his 
 eyes, looked round him over the face of the waters. 
 Sam's straw hat he could see floating at some distance 
 to his left, and the boat was lurching along at a great 
 pace farther to the left still, but nosign of Sam was 
 visible. Hari noticed with surprise that both the hat 
 and the boat were moving much faster than he ap- 
 peared to be doing, and eventually it was borne in 
 upon his mind that by some marvellous chance the 
 undertow, which had dragged him down into the 
 depths, had cast him up again beyond the reach of the 
 swirling eddy, towards which the boat was still hurry- 
 ing wildly. Hari had so completely made up his mind 
 to die, and during the last half hour had become so 
 
102 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 entirely reconciled to the idea, provided always that he 
 could arrange a similar fate for Sam, that at first he 
 .hardly grasped the possibility of escape. Then in 
 a whelming rush the love of life, and the instinct of 
 pelf- preservation, which will cause even a suicide to 
 struggle to -undo his own work, if he have but the 
 time to make the effort, awoke in Hari, goading him 
 to agonised struggles. All the people of Arcadia can 
 swim rather better than any otter in Great Britain, for 
 they are in and out of the sea all day long, from the 
 time when they first learn to crawl, and many of them 
 can make headway in the water long before they can 
 walk erect upon the dry land. So Hari was not really 
 so much out of his natural element during the fight 
 for life in which he now engaged. The current still 
 tugged at his toes, and made it hard to win away, 
 little by little, and yard by yard, from the hungry eddy 
 which was not more than a mile distant across the 
 smooth water. Gradually the current grew slacker, 
 and a quarter of an hour later, Hari dragged himselt 
 dead-beat from the sea, and sank exhausted on the 
 sandy shore. 
 
 When he awoke it was already night, and Hari 
 found the darkness very unattractive. There was a 
 dim moon, looking sleepy and woebegone behind her 
 trailing bed-curtains of cloud, and now and again the 
 water at his feet broke into blue and silver streaks or 
 phosphorescence, in token of the disturbance caused by 
 some fish floating close to the surface. Hari fancied 
 that he could see the strained face of Sam, distorted 
 and prominent-eyed as he had seen it last, peering at 
 him, out of the shadows, from half a dozen directions 
 
IN ARCADIA 103 
 
 at once, and the fancy displeased him mightily. He 
 was very stiff with his late exertions, and he was chilled 
 to the bone. Moreover he had got rid of his shirt and 
 pants, during his long swim, and now stood mother- 
 naked on the shore, with all Nature standing still to 
 gaze at him. All at once he was filled with a great 
 sense of failure. He had worked very hard in order 
 that Meri might be his, and now in this shivering 
 moment of reaction, when his mind was suddenly 
 released from the keen tension of the last few hours, 
 
 life sggmgf} suddenly flaf^ insipj^ nnalliiring^ and Meri 
 
 herself, for whom he had schemed and sinned, no longer 
 specially desirable. 
 
 He made his way back to Settlement Island, 
 shivering and depressed, a draggled, miserable object, 
 starting, like a shying horse, at every shadow on his 
 path. The usual night -guard of watchmen was 
 snoring peacefully, as though its members had but a 
 single nose, when Hari staggered into the hut, and 
 having borrowed a pair of pants from one of the 
 rudely awakened guards, was duly led before the 
 Scotchman, in the big bungalow among the fruit- 
 trees. The owner of the island promptly dosed Hari 
 with a brimming tot of very choice old Scotch Whisky, 
 thirty years in cask, and thus encouraged, the victim or 
 the disaster told a moving story of the treacherous 
 whirlpool which had dragged down Sam and the boat, 
 while only he was left to tell the tale. The whisky 
 danced through his veins and made him feel that, after 
 all, life was not so flat, stale, and unprofitable a thing 
 as he had at one time imagined. 
 
 y 
 
io+ STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 There was nothing to point to Hari as having 
 caused Sam's death, indeed all could testify to the 
 friendship which had subsisted between the twain, so 
 in due time Sam was forgotten, and Hari took Meri 
 to wife. 
 
 It was a week or two after this, one night, as 
 it chanced to be Han's turn to take his share of the 
 guard duty in the watch-house, that old Sandi, the 
 headman of the watch, crept close to Hari, when the 
 other men were sleeping, and asked him if he was still 
 awake. Sandi wriggled up closer still, and peered into 
 Hari's face. 
 
 ' Little Brother,' he said, c I have long desired to 
 have private speech with thee, for on that dayVhen 
 thou didst go a-fishing with Sam I too was fishing on 
 the lagoon.' 
 
 He looked at Hari meaningly, but the latter made 
 no sign of comprehension. 
 
 c Have no fear of me, Little Brother,' the old man 
 went on, C I have no desire to harm thee, but, from 
 afar, I beheld Sam arise and strive to strike thee with 
 his oar, and thereafter ye twain were locked in a 
 wrestling match, and I saw how both fell into the sea. 
 I held my peace then and later, for I am an old man, 
 and I have learned that little good comes to him who 
 sees too much, and thereafter blabs of what his eyes 
 have beheld ; but, Little Brother, tell me of that which 
 befell that day, for it did my old heart good to see once 
 more two youths acting as men should act, fighting to 
 the death for the love of a maiden.' 
 
 There was such a genuine ring of real feeling and 
 appreciation in Sandi's voice, that Hari had no further 
 
IN ARCADIA 105 
 
 doubts as to his good faith, and he at once launched 
 out into a boastful, swaggering account of his great 
 deed, cheered and encouraged in the recital by the vivid 
 appreciation evinced by his audience. 
 
 1 It was well done,' commented the old man, when 
 at last the tale was ended, 'and, in truth, my liver 
 waxes warm when I remember that there be still 
 men left to us in this land of cowards ; for, Little 
 Brother, in the far-off days when I also was young, 
 Ya Allah I we took but little thought for the value of 
 a life when the man who owned it stood between us 
 and our heart's desire ! Ya Allah ! I too, in my time, 
 have seen the red blood gush out, and have smelt its 
 reek, more sweet than the cheek of maiden ! But now 
 these dull islands from which we may not depart into 
 the great world, beyond the leaping waves, are no 
 longer utterly without light, for they have bred at 
 least two Men, — thee and me, Little Brother, — who 
 knew how to fashion our actions into the mould that 
 befits our sex ! ' 
 
 And thereafter Hari felt that he had acted as 
 became a man, and a bond of sympathy bound him 
 and Sandi together with a tie which nothing might 
 sever. 
 
 Varro says that even the ancient Arcadians, chosen 
 by lot (which is another name for Fate), swam across 
 a certain pool, and henceforth were transformed into 
 wolves, living in the desert places with wild beasts like 
 unto themselves ; and in this modern Arcadia of the 
 Indian Ocean, Destiny still beckons to a few of the 
 people, bidding them put off the miserable tameness of 
 
106 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 their fellows, and break, be it only for a little space, 
 the dead and dreary monotony of the island life. For 
 even in these sheltered and secluded spots, where there 
 is ' no crime,' old Human Nature, as I have already 
 said, is very much like itself. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE 
 
 Ere the dank Earth sank 'neath the tread of Man, 
 
 Ere hut* were built in the dell j ^. 
 
 Ere the streams were girt with the bamboo span, 
 
 When none save the Winds dared fell ; 
 When the Fairies and Sprites, through the soft, sad nights, 
 
 Played unscared by the voices of men, 
 The Old One, whose arm fends the great trees from harm, 
 
 Was guarding them even then ! 
 
 Then Man came creeping with halting feet, 
 
 O'er the ground, which to him was strange, 
 But still he worshipped, with service meet, 
 
 The trees where he late did range j 
 And as feet grew strong, while the years wax'd long, 
 
 Till the tree-tops were foreign land, 
 The Ancient One's ban was respected of Mun, 
 
 Though he saw not the Ancient One's hand ! 
 
 It was during the first few years of my service in the 
 East, that I forgathered with poor Trimlett. He 
 was a Cornishman by birth, and his father was the 
 manager or purser of one of the largest tin-mines in 
 the Duchy. This father of Trimlett's was a man who 
 held strong views as to the virtue of hard work, and 
 its salutary effect upon the young ; and since we are 
 all, up to a certain point, dependent upon our parents 
 
108 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 for the moulding of our characters, Trimlett owed 
 many things to the training which his father had 
 ordained for him. After he left school, Trimlett had 
 been sent 'underground,' to work for a year as a 
 common mining hand. He had acquired thereby a 
 very sound knowledge of sinking and driving and 
 stopping ; a network of hard knotty muscles ; an 
 elaborate vocabulary, in the use of which, however, 
 he was very economical ; and an extraordinary fund of 
 Old- World superstitions, all of which he accepted as 
 Gospel. 
 
 People who only know the Cornish Miner in his 
 later developments, since Mining Acts have relieved his 
 body, and Board Schools have made gallant efforts to 
 expand his mind, can have little conception of what he 
 was wont to be, and of what he was called upon to 
 endure, in the bad old days before any one had learned 
 to concern himself with the sorrows of the working 
 classes. In those times, a Cornish boy began life 
 < underground ' at the age of nine, or ten. The poor 
 little shivering mite would often be called from the 
 bed, that in winter was never too warm, at three or 
 four o'clock in the morning, and with a thin mess of 
 porridge, or gruel pap, to warm his half-starved body, 
 would have to trudge through the black darkness, — 
 which to his imagination was peopled by a thousand 
 horrors, — to the mine, that lay perhaps a mile or two 
 away from the hovel he called Home. Then his real 
 miseries began. There was only one job of which a 
 child in a big mine was capable, namely the turning ot 
 an air-fan, to force a current of less impure breathing- 
 matter into the stifling depths of the drives and stopes, 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE 109 
 
 in which the men worked, nude and sweating. 
 Though most of miners had endured, in their time, 
 the agonies through which the poor little brat at the 
 air-fan was going, no one had a thought to save him, 
 or to help him. Economy is an excellent virtue, 
 which was much practised in the mines of Cornwall, 
 even in the days before the Chinese coolies of the 
 Peninsula flooded the World's markets with tin, and 
 since no light was necessary to enable a child to turn 
 the crank of an air-fan, candles were not served out to 
 the poor brat, when his turn came to be lowered into 
 the bowels of the mine. Thus for a shift of many 
 hours, which to him seemed as years, the miserable little 
 Cornish boy would stand quaking with fear, in total 
 darkness. Any one who, as a child, has endured the 
 agony of terror, that is to be experienced when fear 
 falls upon one in the dark, will be able to picture to 
 himself something of what the little Cornish boy felt, 
 day after day, as he toiled at turning the air-fan. But 
 it is at best only dimly that an educated man can 
 realise the full measure of the child's sufferings, for 
 while we are taught to disbelieve in all the things that 
 are not apparent to the senses, even the grown men in 
 Cornwall are steeped in every kind of superstition, and 
 from their earliest infancy, the children of the Duchy 
 hear tales of ghosts, and goblins, and c pixies,' told 
 gravely by their elders, whose words they naturally are 
 not accustomed to doubt. It was in a world of 
 horrible, malignant beings, — usually invisible, but 
 sometimes, so men said, terrifically apparent to human 
 eyes, — that the poorly fed, ill-nurtured Cornish child 
 began his days, with the hours of darkness, in which 
 
no STUDIES IN BROWN HUMAN ITT 
 
 Evil Spirits chiefly have power, lengthened exceedingly 
 by the awful blackness of the mine. 
 
 I have seen Cornishmen tremble with fear at the 
 bare recollection of the heavy things they suffered as 
 children, in the perpetual darkness in which they 
 worked. Often and often, one man told me, he had 
 ceased turning the crank of the fan, so that the miners 
 in the drives and stopes below would begin to suffer 
 from the foulness of the air, and would promptly 
 climb up the ladder -way, very full of wrath, and 
 bubbling over with strange oaths, and l Put the buckle- 
 strap in about 'un,' — which means a very complete 
 licking. He said that he did this 'for the sake of 
 company,' and it needs little proving how acute the 
 mental sufferings of the unhappy little urchin must 
 have been, before he voluntarily exchanged it for the 
 physical pain of a sound thrashing, administered by the 
 hand of one who had spent all his life smashing rocks. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand what the effect of 
 such a youth as this was upon the mind of many 
 Cornish miners. The prolonged and intense strain 
 upon the child's nerves, combined with the agony of 
 fear, which had gradually become an almost chronic 
 condition of his mind, too often rendered him, in after 
 years, a man of poor courage in an emergency, and a 
 weak-charactered individual, possessed of little power 
 of self-control. I must be understood as generalising 
 widely, for of course there are many and brilliant 
 exceptions to the broad rule which I am laying down, 
 — men who have acted gallantly, saving life, when no 
 one save their God was at hand to blame them if they 
 played the coward j and others, scattered up and down 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE in 
 
 the World, who have c broken their birth's invidious 
 bars' and have risen to positions of great trust and 
 responsibility, and to the attainment of as much wealth 
 as is good for any man. But such men as these 
 cannot be regarded as in any way typical of the class 
 from which they spring. They would probably have 
 come to the fore under any circumstances, no matter 
 what the conditions in which they chanced to be born, 
 and they must be regarded as having done so in spite 
 of their surroundings, rather than as owing anything 
 to their early training. 
 
 Young Trimlett's first experience in the mine to 
 which his father elected to send him, was a severe 
 clout on the side of the head, administered whole- 
 heartedly by an irate miner, whose susceptibilities the 
 lad had unwittingly offended. Trimlett could not for 
 the life of him understand what he had done to call 
 for this summary punishment, and as the angry miner 
 was a far older man than himself, and was, moreover, 
 several sizes larger, the youngster saw that retaliation 
 was out of the question, and with a view to showing 
 that he did not mind, began to whistle unconcernedly. 
 Thereupon the brawny miner promptly knocked him 
 down. When he began to recover from the effects of 
 this new outrage, some one explained to him the cause 
 of the assault. ' Tha' must na* whustle ondergroond,' 
 he said ; c if tha' do tha'll carl the Pixies, sure 'nuff, an* 
 the 'ands'll vair slay thee ! ' That was the beginning 
 of young Trimlett's training among the men of the 
 Cornish mine. He was only a lad of sixteen or seven- 
 teen at the time, and that is perhaps the most im- 
 pressionable of all ages. Gradually, and imperceptibly, 
 
^ 
 
 112 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Trimlett began to absorb the strange beliefs and 
 superstitions of the men among whom all his days were 
 spent. He was as credulous concerning things super- 
 natural as Mrs. Crow herself could have desired, and 
 when I knew him, a dozen years ago, his mental 
 attitude, in regard to such matters, was the most ex- 
 traordinary, for an educated man, that can well be 
 conceived. 
 i « All that has been written above is designed to 
 
 t'yt 
 
 y 
 
 enable the reader to form his own opinion as to the 
 j|probability or otherwise of the story I have to tell. 
 Personally, I know Trimlett to have been a very 
 truthful individual, and though I am altogether unable 
 to find a working explanation that will fit the facts, 
 that does not shake my faith in the tale as he told it 
 to me. 
 
 At the time of which I write, Trimlett was 
 stationed in Perak, at an out-of-the-way little place 
 called Seputeh, trying to teach the intractable Chinese 
 miner not to mine on his neighbour's land, and to 
 refrain from misappropriating his friends' pay-dirt. 
 The life was a very lonely one, and there was nothing 
 to be had in the nature of amusements, such as 
 Englishmen conjure up all over the World from out the 
 ground, wherever a few of them are gathered together. 
 This it was that drove Trimlett to tree-felling as an 
 occupation, during his leisure hours. It is a healthy 
 form of exercise, and it kept Trimlett's muscles in 
 good trim for the occasional rough-and-tumbles in 
 which he was called upon to engage with refractory 
 Chinese coolies. The Malays put it down to drunken- 
 ness, that useful explanation, which, to the native 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE 113 
 
 mind, accounts for ninety per cent of the incompre- 
 hensible eccentricities of the White Men, — the Chinese 
 imagined that Trimlett hoped to make a fortune in the 
 timber trade, and the Englishman, quite undisturbed 
 by the opinions of those about him, went on hacking 
 away at all the finest trees in the vicinity of his hut. 
 For this was in the very early days, before such things 
 as forest-conservancy were dreamed of in Perak. 
 
 I had occasion to visit Trimlett in his camp among 
 the tin-mines once or twice every month, and I must 
 own that his surroundings were the reverse of cheering. 
 His hut, which was composed of a single room, stood 
 on a spot that had been flattened out, from the 
 side of a hill, and the jungle around it had been par- 
 tially cleared, the felled trees lying in all directions, a 
 confused mass of dying trunks and boughs. In the 
 valley below, the paddocks of the Chinese alluvial 
 mines were plainly visible, the coolies swarming up 
 and down the ladders, and round and about the brink, 
 like ants near their nest. The unsightly heaps of 
 earth, of an ugly yellow colour, sparsely grown upon 
 with scant and weedy green-stuff, made the whole 
 scene hideous, and even the queerly- shaped palm- 
 leaf coolie-lines, on the left, were powerless to impart 
 an air of picturesqueness to the place. About half 
 way up the hill, to the right of the hut in which 
 Trimlett lived, there stood a gigantic merbau tree, 
 running up sheer into the sky, without branch or 
 fork, to a height of more than a hundred feet. At its 
 foot, in the spaces between the spreading, knotty roots, 
 half a dozen handfuls of Chinese joss-sticks were 
 stuck into the ground, the tips smouldering sulkily, 
 
 1 
 
ii + STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 and emitting an unpleasantly ' Chinese ' smell. The 
 charred ashes of tinsel paper, lying all about, marked 
 the spots where paper money, which is piously supposed 
 to satisfy the financial desires of the Spirits, had been 
 burned by some devout Chinamen. On projections 
 of the bark, and from wands fixed in the ground, 
 depended the strips of foul rag which both the Malays 
 and the Chinese furnish to the Beings of the other 
 World, with a view to supplying their strangely in- 
 comprehensible wants. When we remember that, in 
 the first instance, the idea of what things were most 
 likely to prove acceptable to the Spirits must have 
 been evolved by human beings, a contemplation of 
 the extraordinary uselessness of the offerings selected 
 fills one with wonder. The charred tinsel, which is 
 designed to represent money, may be explained by the 
 belief entertained by men, in all parts of the World, 
 that the Spirits are very easily deceived by counterfeit 
 of any kind. But when we come to such things as 
 rags, which even a scavenger might despise, an ex- 
 planation is less easy to find. Perhaps these gifts had 
 their origin in the far-off days, when garments of any 
 sort were things of price, and a man was accounted 
 rich who could go abroad among his fellows lightly 
 garbed in a wisp of coarse stuff bound about his head. 
 In those times, conceivably, a rag given to the gods 
 represented a large part of a man's possessions, the 
 sacrifice of which meant some real high-mindedness on 
 the part of the giver ; and though, in these days of 
 Birmingham and Manchester goods, any man can 
 spare a handful of rotting calico, if thereby he may 
 please the Spirits, the practice has survived, though the 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE 115 
 
 original meaning of the gifts has long ago been for- 
 gotten. Of course such speculations as these must 
 necessarily be the purest guess-work, though, for my 
 own part, I regard the above as being at least as good 
 an explanation as any other. 
 
 Trimlett pointed the merbau tree out to me, as we 
 sat smoking in front of his hut. 
 
 ' I mean to have a try at him, one of these days,' 
 he said. 
 
 ' How do you mean ? ' I asked him. 
 
 ' Oh, I mean to try and fell him,' he said. c He is an 
 awful monster, and he will give me a hard job of it, I 
 expect, but I will get him down none the less, sooner 
 or later, sure enough.' 
 
 ' I do not fancy that the natives will like it much 
 if you do,' I said. c The tree is supposed to be kramat 
 — sacred — by the Malays, and it is a Joss of the 
 Chinamen's also. You had far better leave it alone.' 
 
 'Rubbish!' said Trimlett; 'they won't care; 
 besides, he is a splendid fellow to axe, and I have 
 promised myself the treat of bringing him down for a 
 long time past.' 
 
 'Well, if I had anything to do with it I would 
 stop you,' I said ; ' I do not believe in hurting the feel- 
 ings of the natives on these sort of subjects.' 
 
 ' But you see you have not got anything to do with 
 it, Old Man ! ' Trimlett replied j and as I knew that 
 quite well, without Trimlett going out of his way to 
 tell me, I said nothing more about it, which was 
 possibly Trimlett's object in making the remark. 
 
 I did not see Trimlett again for a week, or more, 
 and then he was brought in to Kuala Kangsar, where 
 
116 S1VDIES IN BROWN HUMAN TIT 
 
 I then lived, swearing horribly at each jolt of the 
 stretcher upon which he lay. 
 
 I put him to bed, and sent for the Dresser, to bind 
 him up, and it was while he lay propped against the 
 pillows, that he told me of what had befallen him. 
 
 He had been very busy, after I had left him at 
 Scputeh, and had not had time to give the merbau tree 
 another thought, until the work slackened. Then he 
 had recalled our conversation about the tree, and since 
 I had strongly advised him not to touch it, he, of 
 course, determined to cut it down, with as little delay 
 as possible. 
 
 He stated his intention to his Malay followers, who, 
 one and all, entreated him to forgo his purpose, and, 
 when they found that they could not prevail upon 
 him, lost no time in reporting the matter to the Malay 
 Headman at Enggor. This worthy hastened to the 
 spot, and added his prayers to those of the other 
 Malays, and the Mandors of the Chinese miners 
 joined their voices to the clamour of general protest. 
 
 'What possible harm can come of it? ' Trimlett 
 asked. 
 
 'God alone knows,' replied the Malay Headman. 
 'The tree is said to be sacred to the Spirits. The 
 men of ancient days bade us have a care how we 
 tampered with aught that the Spirits hold dear, and 
 such an one is the said tree.' 
 
 ' But any risk there may be I take ; no other man 
 will suffer, is that not so, Penghulu ? ' asked Trimlett. 
 
 ' I know not,' was the reply. ' Who shall say what 
 the Spirits may do if they wax wrathful ? And if 
 indeed, Tuan y thou only shouldst suffer, will not the 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE 117 
 
 " Company " be angry with me, the Headman, in that 
 I did not deter thee from a so foolish enterprise ? ' 
 
 Trimlett was not pleased with the Penghulu for 
 presuming to stigmatise as foolish any project upon 
 which his mind was set ; and he let the Malay know 
 his opinion in a manner which was unmistakable. 
 Eventually both the Malays and the Chinese took 
 themselves off, for every wise native is aware that an 
 angry White Man is an ill creature to deal with, and 
 their visit left Trimlett more set upon felling the tree 
 than ever. 
 
 It was at about five o'clock in the afternoon that 
 Trimlett strolled across from his hut to the foot of the 
 mirbau tree. He stood there, for a moment or two, 
 gazing with upturned face at the great gray trunk, 
 running in a sheer unbroken line, from the knotted 
 roots below, to the spreading boughs, silhouetted 
 against the clear evening sky. It seemed a veritable 
 tower of strength, c that stood four square to all the 
 winds that blew,' and the knowledge that he could 
 fell it to the ground gave Trimlett a strange sense of 
 power. He had no compunction, for in common with 
 a large class of Englishmen, Trimlett took a keen 
 pleasure in any act of destruction, and the enjoyment 
 to be experienced was in direct proportion to the size 
 of the object of his attack. He peeled off his coat, 
 rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and prepared for action. 
 
 There was one thing that Trimlett, when he told 
 me the story, was particularly anxious that I should 
 clearly understand. The warnings and protests of the 
 natives had not, so he averred, left any sort of impression 
 on his mind. As he stood before the tree, prior to 
 
u8 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 beginning his attack upon it, no thought of its sup- 
 posed sanctity, no memory of the Spirits to whom the 
 Headman had said that the tree was dear, was in 
 Trimlett's mind. He felt no greater measure of 
 excitement than he was accustomed to experience when 
 his axe was in his hand, and a new forest giant, of rather 
 more than the ordinary dimensions, was marked for the 
 felling. Trimlett was very clear upon this, point, and 
 was wont to resent any insinuation to the effect that the 
 strange thing that happened to him, was due to a pre- 
 conceived opinion upon his part, that the felling of the 
 Spirits' tree was likely to be accompanied by some 
 supernatural event, (it is, of course, a matter of some 
 doubt, how far a man can be trusted to know what is, 
 and what is not in his mind, at any given time, or to 
 judge how much, or how little he has been influenced 
 by any trivial, or even important occurrence ; for most 
 of us are so put together that we can never be quite sure 
 what functions are being performed by the various parts 
 of our complicated mental machinery A Anyhow, to the 
 best of his belief, Trimlett's thougnts were wholly 
 occupied with considerations as to the best manner in 
 which he might fell the tree, and with the triumph 
 which would be his when the great feat was at length 
 accomplished. 
 
 He planted his feet firmly on the ground, rather far 
 apart, weighed his axe lightly, poising it in his hands, 
 then, clasping it tightly, raised it high above his right 
 shoulder, and brought it down, with all his force, upon 
 the gnarled bark of the tree. The clear, crisp ring of the 
 steel upon the wood, as the blow told loudly, floated 
 out on the still air, and the awakened echoes called 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE 119 
 
 to one another, from hill to hill, through the forest- 
 clad uplands. The thousand noises which, taken 
 together, make the heavy stillness of the afternoon, 
 were lost for a moment, drowned by the sound of the 
 axe. Then the jungle-songs broke out once more, as 
 the echoes died away, on the scented, slow-breathing 
 wind. A couple of barau-barau thrushes were warb- 
 ling liquidly ; the clear, far - carrying note of the 
 selanting mixed with their swift trilling ; and the 
 shriek of the great noisy earth-worm, that cries 
 sullenly from its burrow, a foot beneath the ground, 
 strove manfully to drown the sweeter music of the 
 birds. An odd dozen of cicada were chirping and ticking 
 in the forest, and very far away the moaning hoot of 
 the siamang monkeys could be faintly heard. All these 
 voices of bird, and beast, and insect made the quiet 
 evening hour alive with sound, as, in jungle places, it 
 always must be j but though the chorus went on with 
 unabated vigour, after that first blow of Trimlett's axe, 
 somehow it seemed to the Englishman as though a 
 kind of hush had fallen upon the land. He had some 
 di fficulty in exp lain irtgprecjsely what he meant, when 
 he toldme the story, but it seemed, he said, as though 
 there were two spheres of sound, — one in which he 
 heard the chorus of birds and insects, as clearly as ever, 
 and another, totally different, in which the stillness 
 seemed to be suddenly intensified and deepened, to an 
 awful pitch of tension, that had something terrifying in 
 it. It was this other, stranger region of sound, however, 
 that seemed for the moment to be the more real. The 
 other, in which the songs of bird and insect had part, 
 appeared to be indescribably remote and distant. It 
 
120 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMAN ITT 
 
 was a curious sensation to have experienced, and after- 
 wards, when he came to recall it, Trimlett felt surprised 
 that he had not been more impressed by it at the 
 time. As it was, however, he read no warning in the 
 strange prank that his ears appeared to be playing 
 upon him ; and once more he swung the axe back, 
 high above his shoulder, preparatory to bringing it 
 down for another blow, slightly advancing his left foot 
 as he did so. 
 
 It was at this moment that he became aware of a 
 weird object at his feet. It had no particular size, or 
 shape, or colour ; it bore no sort of resemblance to any 
 object that Trimlett had ever seen. It simply forced 
 the fact of its horrible, revolting, repulsive presence 
 upon Trimlett, without the Englishman being able 
 clearly to distinguish through which_j>f_his senses the 
 ./^unearthly impression was conveyed. It seemed to 
 seize his attention in a grip that was an agony ; to 
 rivet every function of his mind ; to possess him 
 utterly with overwhelming aversion, and uncontrollable 
 fear. Trimlett's axe was uplifted for a strok'e, and, 
 almost before he was aware what he was doing, he 
 brought it crashing down upon the Unspeakable Un- 
 cleanliness at his feet. It was not till he was apprised 
 of the fact, by an agony of pain, that Trimlett became 
 aware that the object at which he had smitten so fiercely 
 was his own left foo t. Even then, the idea of that revolt- 
 ing, disgusting Presence was so firmly fixed in his mind 
 that, as he fell over, he tried with all his might to 
 throw himself down on the side farthest from that 
 upon which he believed it to belying. The earth, for 
 many yards around the tree, was worn smooth and 
 
THE SPIRIT OF THE TREE 121 
 
 hard, by the passing to and fro of countless generations 
 of horny-footed worshippers, so there was not sufficient 
 cover to effectually conceal a beetle, yet Trimlett could 
 see nothing unusual, except the red glouts of blood 
 that had leaped from the wide wound in his foot. 
 Then and after, he maintained stoutly that it was 
 wholly impossible that anything, which had really been 
 there, could have evaded his scrutiny ; and since a 
 sane man is not generally scared out of his senses by the 
 sight of one of his own limbs, Trimlett accounted for 
 the besetment that had seized him by the theory that the 
 Spirit of the Tree had hypnotised him into mistaking 
 his foot for the weird denizen of some mysterious un- 
 known World. If, in truth, the tree, as the Headman 
 said, was dear to the Spirits, this mode of protecting 
 their property was certainly as effectual as any that 
 could have been devised, for Trimlett never tried to 
 fell the mirbau, and no one else had any desire to make 
 the attempt. 
 
 It is no part of my business to offer any explanation 
 of this affair, for the story is not mine, but Trimlett' s ; 
 but since he, poor fellow, is no longer amongst us to 
 tell the tale himself, I have thought it perhaps worth 
 while to place th^factsj such as they are, on Record) 
 
AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 
 
 We Fettered Folk have felt your yoke, 
 
 For heavy years and long j 
 We've learned to sight where tortuous Right 
 
 Breaks loose from tangled^ Wrong. 
 To us the twain, 'tis all too plalnT" 
 
 Be like as pea to pea, 
 But ye be wise, and so_ our ey es 
 
 Must see as White Men see. 
 
 Your rule is just, and since we must, 
 
 We learn to kiss the yoke j 
 You we'll obey, by night and day, 
 
 But not your dark-skin 'd Folk ! 
 The bearded Sikh, and Tamil sleek, 
 
 With them we will not deal, 
 Nor with the throng that crowds along 
 
 Close to the White Man's heel ! 
 
 To begin to understand anything at all about the 
 Malay, you must realise, from the first, that he is 
 intensely self-respecting. He possesses, in a high 
 degree, one of the most characteristic qualities of the 
 English gentleman, — he is absolutely and supremely 
 sure of himself. It does not occur to him to assume 
 airs of equality or superiority, for the very simple 
 reason that he is quite satisfied with himself as he is, — 
 as it has pleased God to fashion him, — and this, instead 
 
AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 123 
 
 of making him unbearably conceited, as might well 
 be the case, causes him to take hi s place in any society 
 
 quite initiiraHjr_with fnmfnrt tn hnth hitnsg1f_anrj_Ms 
 
 neighbours, since he is not for ever mentally compar- 
 ing his own position with that of others. Thus one 
 may make an intimate friend of a Malay, may share 
 the same hut with him for long periods at a time, and 
 may talk to him of all things within his comprehension, 
 without there being any risk of familiarity breeding 
 contempt, or of the Malay taking advantage of his 
 position to dig you in the ribs, or to call you by your 
 Christian name. He respects himself far too much to 
 dream of taking liberties, or to be otherwise than 
 courteous and respectful towards those with whom he 
 has to deal. And this, be it remembered, is a national 
 characteristic ; for everything that I have said applies 
 with equal force to the humblest Malay villager, and 
 to the most courtly Native Chief. There are, of 
 course, many lamentable instances of Malays who have 
 been educated .out of this self-respecting reserve, and 
 who have become almost as offensive and familiar as a 
 low-caste European, but the existence of these un- 
 fortunates must be placed to the credit of the White 
 Men, whose presence has produced them, and not 
 debited against the Malay, with whom they have 
 nothing in common. Any way you look at them, 
 these abnormal developments are a subject for tears. 
 
 We English have an immense deal to answer for, 
 and it will be interesting to see exactly how our 
 account stands when the good and the bad that we 
 have done, — both with the most excellent intentions, 
 — face one another, in double columns, on the pages 
 
124 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 of the Recording Angel's Day-Book. We come into 
 a country which is racked with war and rapine, and 
 after making a little war of our own, to help to set 
 things straight, we reduce the land to a dead mono- 
 tony of order and peace. We find vile misrule, and 
 a government which is so incompetent and impotent 
 that it is incapable of even oppressing its subjects 
 completely, or upon any organised system, and we 
 replace it by a high -class, triple -action, automatic, 
 revenue-producing administration that presses equally 
 upon all alike. We give the poor and hitherto unde- 
 fended rights, of the very existence of which they had 
 never formerly dreamed ; we free the slaves, who have 
 for generations been made to labour sorely against 
 their will, and who celebrate their emancipation by 
 declining to engage in any toil more arduous than 
 betel- chewing, with an occasional theft thrown in, 
 when the children cry for rice ; we lop his power from 
 the Chief, who, it must be confessed, has always 
 consistently abused it, but finds little to comfort him 
 in the recollection ; we open up the most inaccessible 
 places ; we bring Trade, and Money, and Prosperity, 
 and Material Comfort, and Sanitation, and Drains, 
 and a thousand other blessings of Civilisation in our 
 wake. We educate ; we vaccinate ; we physic ; we 
 punish the Wicked, and we reward the Good. We 
 administer the native till we make him almost giddy, 
 and he begins to forget that he is an absurd anachronism 
 in the Nineteenth Century, and must surely lose his 
 way most utterly if he tries to stay there. We sweep 
 away the horrible gaol-cages of Independent Malaya, 
 and replace them by model prisons of so excellent a 
 
(/) ^ 
 
 ^Uiu^C « '-f 
 
 AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 125 
 
 type that a native comes to regard them as places 
 where, should the Fates so decree, he may lodge with 
 considerable convenience to himself. You can never 
 instil into a Malay of the lower classes the idea that 
 going to gaol is something which disgraces a man for 
 all his days. From his point of view, the whole thing 
 is purely a matter of capricious chance. He c gets ' 
 imprisonment, just as he catches fever ; and separation 
 from his women-folk and abstinence from tobacco are 
 the unfortunate accessories of the former, much as chills 
 and burnings are the accompaniments of the latter. 
 All these things, and many others also, we do for the 
 native when we take over the administration of a 
 barbarous land, and on the whole we do it all very 
 well indeed. That the sudden introduction to an 
 elaborate civilisation, which is itself the result of long 
 and slow evolution from very primitive beginnings, 
 should not always tend to immediately improve the 
 moral character of the bulk of the native population is 
 unfortunate but inevitable. The fault obviously lies 
 with the moral nature of the native^ for which no man 
 
 can hold us responsible ; and, asf I lhave already said, 
 we do our part of the business very well indeed, for 
 we are a great and peculiar people, and the majority of 
 us are quite ready to wear our souls out in the struggle 
 to realise what we believe to be for the ultimate good 
 of the folk we try to rule and serve. And this, be it 
 said, is neither a light nor an easy task. 
 
 Unfortunately we cannot do everything ourselves, 
 and it is here that the weak part of our administration 
 comes in. White Men are most expensive creatures 
 in the World. The schooling fees of an average 
 
iz6 S7VD1ES IN BROWN HVMAN1TY 
 
 English boy would be a sufficient sum to pay for the 
 restocking of an old-world rajas harem, and we all 
 know what sinful waste goes on in that department or 
 the State. If all our understrappers were Europeans 
 the revenue of even the richest lands would be inade- 
 quate to defray the cost of our administration, and 
 realising this, we are obliged to bring a host of aliens 
 at our heels, when we enter a new country for the 
 purpose of converting things as they are, into things 
 as they ought to be. When we first make our 
 appearance we are not particularly loved by anybody. 
 The Chiefs know that, cloak it as^w^ wJU, we are 
 there to wrest the^owerjhey have .misused from their 
 unwilling grasp. Naturally the notion is not one 
 which inspires them with any particular enthusiasm 
 for us. To the peasants we are strange new Beings, 
 whom their masters, the Chiefs, abhor. If half the 
 tales men tell them of us are true, our coming is 
 indeed a calamity hard to be borne. The oppression of 
 the Chiefs is, in the eyes of the peasant, a thing of 
 course. Since ever Time was, the ill things which a 
 man must suffer at the hands of one more powerful 
 than himself have formed the impassable horizon of 
 the peasant's life. But when the White Men come } 
 no one can say what new horrors will now be added 
 to the heavy lot of the people. The Chiefs are at 
 some pains to confirm this fear, and so the newly 
 arrived European finds every man's hand against him. 
 If the work is to be done at all, during the weary 
 years that must pass before their new rulers can hope 
 to win the trust and confidence of the people of the 
 land,laliens must be brought in, to help the White 
 
v/ 
 
 AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 127 
 
 Men in their work. And it is thus that the strangers, 
 who sell our names for a song, win a foothold from 
 the very inception of our rule. 
 
 They are a miscellaneous crew, of almost any shade 
 of colour, from coal black to olive, dressed in all manner 
 of nondescript garments, a weird compound of the 
 costumes of half a dozen different races. Some are 
 very dark-complexioned gentry indeed, who wear 
 excessively European clothes, — collars that once, in 
 some forgotten age, were white, and neck-ties which, 
 from much wear, show patches of yellow through 
 their dingy blackness. Others there are who are 
 obviously European from their necks to their waists^" l ^ K ( 
 and as evidently Oriental from their belts downwards. 
 And there are other some who wear English shoes, 
 and their hair in a chignon. They are a strange col- 
 lection of different races and classes of human beings ; 
 from the burly Sikh, in his coiled turban, to the little 
 Malay from the Colony, or from some well -settled 
 District of a neighbouring State ; from the fluent, 
 educated Tamil, to the black and naked cooly of the 
 same race, whom the Malays name c Bukit PekanJ — the 
 Hill-Tribes of the town, — because they also go abroad 
 among men uncumbered with any garment save a 
 narrow wisp of dirty loin-cloth twisted about their 
 middles. 
 
 The Malays loathe_antLdetest the men of their own 
 race who flock into a newly protected State at the 
 heels of their white masters. In the villages, where 
 the people are ignorant, and therefore are the natural 
 prey of any one who stands possessed of a little 
 cunning, the Malay Policeman is treated with elaborate 
 

 V^s. I28 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMAN I7T 
 
 courtesy. They call him 'Che' Sarjin,' — which 
 — means Mr. Sergeant, — defer to him on almost every 
 point, give him their daughters to wife, if he so wills 
 it, and do all they can to propitiate him. At the 
 King's Court men hate him more, and fear him less. 
 They are aware that he is not the bravest person of 
 their acquaintance, and they find it hard to resist the 
 very natural temptation to beat him whenever the 
 opportunity offers. He is better educated than are 
 sj/ \i*M tne youths °f tne Capital, and since he has a pretty 
 
 ** r \ v y knack of turning a love verse, he is constantly the 
 object of some lady's attentions. This has a great 
 deal to do with the hatred he inspires in the men, and 
 
 \V*" & it is because of his love affairs that the opportunity for 
 
 j* v , v beating him so frequently occurs, and always proves so 
 
 .- r a^ \S irresistible. 
 
 But perhaps it is the Sikh who is most abhorrent 
 to the Malay of all the followers of the White Men. 
 He is possessed of as absolute a conviction of his own 
 superiority to the men of any other race — Europeans 
 alone excepted — as is the White Man himself. He 
 / is quite frank about this opinion, and he is accustomed 
 to act upon it at all times. To other Asiatics he is as 
 ( arrogant and overbearing as can well be conceived, and 
 he displays none of the tact which helps to make a 
 European less hated for his airs of superiority than 
 he might be. The noisy, loud-mouthed, awkward, 
 familiar- mannered, bullying Sikh is as unlike the 
 courteous, soft-tongued Malay as one human being can 
 well be from another, and his conduct and behaviour 
 to the people of the land hurts the latter's self-respect 
 at every turn. 
 
Al THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 129 
 
 No man needs to be told that the Sikh is a splendid 
 soldier. His powers of endurance, especially his 
 marching capabilities, would astonish a man whose 
 experience of troops was confined to European soldiers ; 
 but the Sikh, partly perhaps because the discipline to 
 which he is accustomed has become an inseparable 
 portion of his nature, seems to be altogether incapable 
 of thinking rationally for himself, and he is altogether 
 lost unless he has a White Man at his shoulder to tell 
 him what to be at. 
 
 1 Why do you not go inside your sentry-box ? ' a 
 friend of mine cried from his verandah to a Sikh who 
 was solemnly marching up and down upon his beat in 
 rain such as the Malays say prevents one from even 
 opening one's eyes. 
 
 c There is no order ! ' was the reply, and this is 
 typical of the race to which the sentry belonged. So 
 long as there is some one at hand to give an order, the 
 Sikh will obey it as few other men will do. He never 
 counts the cost, he never hesitates, though he be 
 commanded to attempt the obviously impossible. 
 There is an order, and the wisdom and the folly of the 
 said order does not concern him in the least. The / 
 Malay, on the other hand, is utterly incapable of being ' 
 disciplined into a machine. He has, and always 
 retains, his own ideas — usually wrong o nes, be it 
 said — of how any given thing ought to be Hone, and 
 no amount of training will teach him to jump to the < 
 word of command, while wholly abandoning his own 
 opinion as to its wisdom. This makes the Malay 
 altogether hopeless as a regular, but fairly useful as an 
 irregular, for he can think for himself and does not 
 
 K 
 
^ 
 
 >' y^ 
 
 , *» 
 
 130 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 need to be told how, when, and where to do any given 
 thing. But it is when the Malay and the Sikh are set 
 to work together, and there is no White Man at hand 
 to direct either of them, that the contrast between 
 the two races comes out at its best. Here is an 
 instance : — 
 
 Alang Abdollah, the Headman, squatted, flustered 
 and dejected, upon the matted verandah of my house, 
 and spat, with disgusted emphasis, when he mentioned 
 the name of Ram Singh, the Sikh sergeant of Police. 
 He was of a full habit of body, and the sun had 
 enforced payment of a heavy tribute as he trudged 
 along in the heat, so his features were caked with dust, 
 which clung to each wrinkle, and cracked oddly as his 
 race worked with anger. For the heart of Alang 
 Abdollah was full of wrath. He had already expended 
 most of his available stock of bad language while 
 limping along the fifteen miles of glaring, aching, 
 white-hot road, which separated his village from the 
 place in which I lived, and for a space, he could do little 
 more than pant, and puff, and blow, expressing his 
 fury with the Sikh by dumb-show, and an occasional 
 meaningless expletive. 
 
 I saw that he had come to unburden himself to me, 
 and I gathered that he needed rest before he would be 
 fit to tell his tale, so I pushed the wooden sirih-box 
 across the verandah, and spoke fluently of the crops, 
 while he prepared his quid, and began to regain his 
 self-possession. 
 
 Presently he secreted the folded quid in his cheek, 
 pushed a large round wad of finely-shredded tobacco 
 under his upper lip, after carefully wiping his gums 
 
AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 131 
 
 with it, and began to speak, in a voice that seemed to 
 come from behind the thickest part of a baked potato. 
 
 c Tuan y I come to thee wailing and weeping,* he 
 said, c because of the shame which has been put upon 
 me, and upon the sons of my village, by reason of the 
 so great folly and wickedness of Ram Singh, the 
 Sikh ! ' 
 
 c How is that ? * I asked. ' Relate the matter to 
 me from the beginning even to the end.* 
 
 'Good, Tuan; be pleased to listen to my words, the 
 words of one who is not skilled in lying. 
 
 'The Tuan knows the little Police Station at 
 Changkat Medang ? Well it is of that station that 
 Ram Singh hath charge ; and many times he hath 
 come to me, the Headman, praying that I will give 
 him knowledge of all untoward things which may 
 from time to time occur within the limits of my 
 District. 
 
 c Now it chanced upon the afternoon of Friday, 
 when the Congregational Prayers had been chanted in 
 the Mosque, that Ngah Seman, a man of my village, 
 while searching for a buffalo which had gone astraying, 
 espied some twenty Chinamen camping in the jungle 
 about one mile-stone distant from the village of Batu 
 Nering. Ngah Seman was astonished at the sight of 
 these men, and he squatted in the brushwood watching 
 them. Then he beheld that they had swords, and 
 many weapons, and the knowledge came to him that 
 they were gang -robbers. Therefore, being filled 
 with a great fear, he retired quietly and with caution, 
 and ran to me at Changkat Medang, to make known 
 that which he had seen. 
 
132 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 'Thereafter did I, with much haste, get me to the 
 Police Station, and make raport to the Sikh Ram 
 Singh. 
 
 c For a long time did we sit consulting one with 
 another, and cunningly did we devise a plan. Thou 
 knowest the nature of the village of Batu Nering. 
 The road runs through it, and the shops are built 
 adjoining one unto another on each side of the way. 
 Behind the row of shops, upon the side on which the 
 sun comes to life, there is a deep swamp through 
 which no man may pass ; and on the other hand, 
 where the sun dieth daily, there riseth a steep hill. 
 The house of the Opium Farmer is on the edge of the 
 swamp, in the centre of the village, and well I knew 
 that no other house would be sought by the gang- 
 robbers, for in no other is there much property, the folk 
 of that village being an indigent and pauper-like 
 people. Therefore I said to Ram Singh, "When the 
 night hath fallen, we will go quietly to the village of 
 Batu Nering, and we will hide in the shadow of the 
 five-foot way, so that no man may see us. Thou, O 
 Brother, shalt hide thee and thy Sikh men near the far 
 entrance to the village, and I with all my folk will 
 hide near the other end of the road. Now, when the 
 gang-robbers come to pillage the Farm we will suffer 
 them to pass, and then they will be like unto fish in a 
 trap, having no means of egress. So shall we slay 
 them or capture them, and our names shall be much 
 praised by the Government of the White Men." 
 
 1 What sayest thou, Tuan y was not my stratagem a 
 clever one ? 
 
 1 Ram Singh said " It is good ! " and when the 
 
AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 133 
 
 evening had fallen, we betook ourselves to Batu 
 Nering, and ordered all things as I had arranged. 
 The night was dark, for the moon was not alight, 
 and no man could see those who sat in the shadow 
 of the five-foot way. 
 
 c We sat there waiting for as long as it would take 
 to cook a pot of rice, and thereafter to chew a quid of 
 betel-nut ; and presently the robbers came. They 
 entered the village by the end which Ram Singh 
 guarded, directing their steps straight to the door of 
 the Farmer's House, and the Sikhs suffered them to 
 pass, as had been agreed between us. The robbers 
 were some twenty men, ill-looking, and of a fierce 
 and tyrannical mien, and they began forthwith to 
 break open the door of the Farm. 
 
 c Then I cried " Amok ! Amok ! " and my people 
 sounded the sorak y as we rushed out of the shadow, and 
 began to advance upon the robbers up the centre of 
 the road. Ram Singh and his men also made a great 
 shouting, and spread themselves in a line across their 
 end of the roadway. Then again I cried " Charge ! 
 Charge ! Amok ! Amok ! " and my people following me, 
 we began to make shift to throw ourselves upon the 
 robbers, who stood stricken with fear in the middle of 
 the village, seeing no means of escape. 
 
 'Then above the tumult, and the noise, and the 
 shouting, I heard the voice of Ram Singh, the Sikh, 
 calling to his men, " Porisint arrrums ! Pire ! " and 
 at the word, all the Sikh men did fire their rifles down 
 the road, so that the bullets made sharp sounds about 
 my ears. Thereupon I and all my people were over- 
 come with a great fear, and we fell flat upon the 
 
134 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 ground thus to avoid the bullets of the Silchs. Once 
 again their rifles sounded, and the bullets went ting, 
 ting, above my head, and pat, pat, in the dust of the 
 road, but no one of the gang-robbers was hit, for these 
 folk have great skill in charms against bullets. 
 
 c Now when the gang-robbers beheld that we were 
 overcome with fear, by reason of the so great folly and 
 wickedness of the Sikhs, they made haste to escape, 
 their bare feet treading on our bodies where we lay 
 hiding from the bullets. One man placed his foot 
 upon my head* (Alang Abdollah paused to spit at the 
 recollection), 'and my heart was hot in my breast, so 
 I rose to my knees, seizing his pig-tail as it flew 
 behind him. I grasped it very tightly, and, Tuan — it 
 came off ! It was a false pig- tail that the robber wore 
 in order to deceive his enemies, and it was charged 
 with very sharp fish-hooks, so that my hand was 
 lacerated by them, even as thou seest. Then as I still 
 gazed at him in astonishment, he turned towards me, 
 and threw a little parcel of paper in my face. Tuan, 
 it contained much black pepper, and the paper becom- 
 ing torn, my eyes were filled with the burning thereof, 
 so that I was blinded, and fell to the ground screaming 
 in pain. Accursed be these Chinese gang-robbers, 
 who are so fierce, and cruel, and tyrannical, and withal 
 so very cunning and full of wiles ! 
 
 'Thus these robbers escaped from our hands one 
 and all ; and as I sat upon the dust of the road, in pain 
 and blindness, lamenting my fate, Ram Singh, the 
 Sikh, came to me, and gave abuse, very keen and 
 pungent, so that a greater shame was put upon me, 
 and in my agony, I could find but few words to reply. 
 
AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 135 
 
 Moreover, I fear that Ram Singh will make raport to 
 his Tuan^ saying evil things of me and mine, whereas 
 it was through his sin that the Chinese escaped. How 
 can a man stand up and fight in the face of the much 
 shooting of his friends ? Let our enemies and our 
 friends be known, then may a man fight with a willing 
 heart, but how can he bear it when his friends also war 
 against him ? My face is stained with soot because 
 of this thing, and I come hither wailing and weeping 
 that thou mayest aid me in the cleansing thereof. O 
 cause some very heavy punishment to fall upon Ram 
 Singh, the Sikh, as a return for his wickedness and 
 sin. Then only will my heart know satisfaction ! ' 
 
 At the back of his soul, if you could only probe so 
 deep, the Malay has the firm belief that all non- 
 Muhammadan people are equally despicable, equally 
 outcast. He may admire the wisdom and ingenuity 
 of the White Man, the physical strength and the skill 
 in athletic exercises displayed by the Sikh, or the 
 cunning and deft trading of the Chinaman, but, 
 though he will express his admiration quite freely, 
 he daily thanks God that he is not as others, — such as 
 these Publicans. Not that he is in any way a Pharisee, 
 in the ordinary sense of the term, for he has very little 
 spiritual pride. All he does think is that he professes 
 the True Faith, while other folk are hapless Infidels ; 
 and that consequently he will be saved (no matter 
 what his deeds in this life may be) while the rest of 
 the world will be damned, as they deserve to be. In 
 this belief, which he holds with an unquestioning faith, 
 he not unnaturally finds considerable comfort. All 
 
136 S7VDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the same, the Malays are less fanatical than any other 
 Muhammadans in Asia, and a man of this race will 
 tolerate, and even take pleasure in your society in this 
 world, secure in the knowledge that he will not be 
 called upon to continue the intimacy in the next. 
 
 For himself this is in his own eyes quite right and 
 fitting, but in the East what is sauce for the goose is 
 by no means necessarily sauce for the gander. Native 
 women, to do them justice, though they are ready 
 enough to forgive their fellows for lapses from virtue 
 if the man be a Muhammadan, have very little mercy 
 on a girl who so far forgets herself as to become 
 entangled in an intrigue with an Infidel ; and since 
 standards of morality are chiefly set by Public Opinion, 
 it is rare for a Malay woman of birth or social stand- 
 ing to war against the prejudices of her people in this 
 respect. To the male Malay, however, it is horrible 
 to think that any exceptions to this rule should exist, 
 and in the in - rush of aliens of all sorts and con- 
 ditions he sees a danger which he cannot pretend to 
 view with any sort of equanimity. 
 
 Quite apart from any considerations of this sort, the 
 inability of the White Man to do his own great work 
 
 7\s unaided carries with it its only too obvious drawbacks. 
 
 Our motto is Justice, and from end to end of Asia our 
 name is a proverb for that virtue in its highest ex- 
 
 S) pressions ; but, alas ! our understrappers' reputation is a 
 byword in quite another sense. If a native can win 
 to the presence of the European he is satisfied that he 
 will get a fair hearing, and a fair unbiassed decision, y^ 
 with which, though he may very heartily disagree' -*> s 
 with it, he will rest content, feeling absolutely secure 
 
AT THE HEELS OF THE WHITE MAN 137 
 
 that no personal prejudice has influenced it by a hair's 
 breadth. The more sophisticated natives are not by 
 any means to be bluffed out of seeing and laying their 
 cases before the White Men, but the poor villager and 
 the more ignorant classes generally dare not brave the 
 anger of the subordinate who would keep them from 
 1 wearying the Tuan with many words,' and such as 
 these are very apt to have the rank injustice of the 
 native policeman, or the peon, or the punkah-wallah 
 palmed off upon them as the order of the White Man. 
 j You must remember that to natives of this class the 
 / ways and works of the Europeans and their Govern- 
 ment are wholly o bscure and incomprehensible, and 
 therefore, no matter how preposterous the ruling they 
 obtain from the subordinate, these poor people have 
 nothing against which to scale it with a view to 
 gauging its propriety or authenticity. It is thus that 
 an incalculable amount of harm, the greater proportion 
 of which never reaches our ears, is daily done in the 
 name of the White Man's government. 
 
 Every one living in Asia knows all this, and, alas ! of 
 remedy there is none. Perhaps, 
 
 Far off in Summers that wc may not sec, 
 
 in the days that we are taught to look for, 'When 
 nobody works for money, and nobody works for fame,' 
 the White Men will do all their work for themselves, 
 or, more unlikely still, will have embued their Oriental 
 subordinates with an exalted spirit of honour and truth- 
 fulness, and devotion to duty even higher than their 
 own. But until all this comes to pass, we must worry 
 along as we are, and can only trust to Europeans try- 
 
138 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 ing honestly and untiringly to learn the character, and 
 the requirements, and above all the language of the 
 / people whose destinies are in their hands. If inter- 
 * preters are fTcTBe "used at all, they should be highly-paid 
 officials, of standing and position, but this is, perhaps, 
 as Utopian a proposal as any of the other impossible 
 changes which must take place before the White 
 Man's rule can cease to be marred by the many things 
 which now do so much to disfigure it. 
 
 In the meantime, it is worth considering how far 
 we are morally responsible for the evil that is daily 
 done in our name by those that follow at our heels. 
 
TtiKANG BOOK'S STORY 
 
 Though my bones be old, yet my soul within 
 
 Is wrung with the old Desire j 
 Though my limbs wax cold, though my blood runs thin, 
 
 Yet my Heart it is still afire ! 
 And ever I long, as the night shuts down, 
 
 For my Love that was lost to me, 
 And pray to the Gods of the White and the Brown 
 That the villain who robbed me, — that base-born clown, 
 Unworthy to finger the hem of her gown, — 
 
 May be blighted utterly ! 
 
 Old Tukang Burok, the fashioner of wooden dagger- 
 hilts and sheaths, sat cross-legged on the narrow 
 verandah of his hut, which, perched upon the top of 
 the high bank, overlooked the Parit River. I squatted, 
 smoking, at his side, watching him at his work, and 
 listening to the tales of the days of long ago, which 
 were for ever on his lips. 
 
 Forty feet below us the red, peat-stained waters of 
 the Parit, banked up by the tide now flowing up the 
 Pahang River, crawled lazily back towards their source. 
 The thatched roofs of more than a score of rafts lay 
 under our feet, so that anything rolling off the verandah 
 would fall plump upon the nearest of them. Nozzling 
 one another, and rubbing sides with a mighty creak- 
 
-j <- 
 
 
 140 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 ing, lay twice as many large native boats, moored in 
 the red water that they might be out of the reach of 
 the borers, which honeycomb the bottoms of crafts left 
 to ride in purer rivers. A narrow fair-way opened 
 between the boats and rafts, and down and up this 
 passed a constant stream of tiny dug-outs shooting 
 swiftly in and out of the numerous obstructions. The 
 bright colours of the Malays' garments touched the 
 scene here and there with little splashes of red, or 
 green, or yellow ; the flickering fronds of the cocoa- 
 nut, sugar, betel, and sago palms, and the spreading 
 boughs of the clustering fruit-trees, — dividing among 
 them almost every conceivable shade of green, — 
 stretched friendly hands, which nearly met, from bank 
 to bank, casting a grateful, sun-flecked, shifting shade 
 upon the ruddy water of the stream. Above, seen 
 through the mass of fronds, and boughs, and leaves, 
 the intensely pure and vividly-blue Malayan sky arched 
 over us j and below us the dusty browns and yellows 
 of the thatching, and palm-leaf roofings of boats and 
 rafts relieved the even redness of the river. A gentle 
 wind, which had run up river from the sea, playing 
 catch as catch can with the flowing tide, sighed 
 dreamily about us ; and the heavy silence was only 
 broken by the monotonous thud of a paddle-handle 
 against a boat's side, the feint bleat of a goat, the 
 whisper of a gust among the palm-fronds, and the 
 purring sound of old Tukang Burok's polishing tools. 
 c Tuan^ the maiden was passing fair, and the mad- 
 ness came upon me, and I loved her.' He held a 
 beautiful piece of kemuning wood between the toes of 
 his left foot, and sat polishing it lovingly with a mass 
 
TtJKANG BtlROK'S STORT 141 
 
 of rough empelas leaves, held in both hands. c Thy 
 servant was a youth in those so long ago days, and 
 when it comes to the young, the madness is very hot 
 and burning, and the eyes will not sleep, and the belly 
 will not eat rice, and the liver takes to itself the like- 
 ness of a live ember. And, in truth, old age changes 
 a man but little, for his desire is as great, only his 
 bones are stiff, and his limbs are turned traitor, and he 
 sees the maidens playing the game of eye-play with 
 the children, who deem themselves men, shooting 
 their love-darts before his very face, and never casting 
 a glance his way, like a bone to a hungry dog, unless 
 they would seek his help to aid them in their courtings 
 and their stolen meetings. Ya Allah ! Tuan, it is 
 very evil to grow old, so that the eyes wax dim, and 
 the ears are heavy of hearing, and only the liver within 
 is unchanged in the fury of unsatisfied desire ! Some 
 there be who turn their thoughts to money, when the 
 maidens will have nought of them, but what is the 
 dink-a-clunk of the silver coins to the love-words 
 whispered in the ear by a fair girl, and what profits 
 the white face of a dollar if it be compared with the 
 laughing lips and eyes of a lovely maiden ! Ambui ! 
 Tuan, it is verily hard to grow old ! I, thy servant, 
 sit here all the long day through, fashioning kris hilts 
 and dagger sheaths for the youths, that they may 
 make a brave show in the eyes of their loves, and the 
 boys and maidens pass hither and thither, and I watch 
 the glint in their eyes when they look one upon the 
 other, and Tuan^ the tears of envy rise up in these old 
 eyes of mine, when I know that never again will a 
 maiden love me ! 
 
142 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 'Therefore, Tuan, I sit here musing over the days 
 of long ago, and tears once again gather in my eyes, 
 so that I can barely see the wood to fashion it, for 
 ever I think of the girl I loved better than any, and 
 how in an evil hour she was lost to me, ere I had 
 known her for my wife. In truth, Tuan, my lot has 
 been chelaka, accursed of Fate. 
 
 c Be pleased to listen to my tale, Titan, for it is 
 passing strange ; though I suffered greatly, men made 
 a mock of me because of my calamity. 
 
 1 It was very long ago, far to the ulu (upper reaches 
 of the river), in the places where, as men say, the folk 
 call a bushel of water a deep pool, and I was wandering 
 through the country, for I had incurred guilt owing 
 to a trouble that arose concerning certain love passages 
 betwixt me and a maiden of the palace ; and for a while 
 my father deemed it prudent that I should leave the 
 Capital, where the King was very wroth, and hide 
 far away, among the little bustling, shallow streams, 
 where the folk are peaceful, and foolish, and ready to 
 do aught that they are bidden by a youth from the 
 Court, since they fear such people greatly. It was 
 here that I met the maiden, and forthwith the madness 
 fell upon me and I loved her. 
 
 'She was a daughter of the village-folk, and such 
 are ofttimes coarse, and big, and ill-favoured, tanned 
 black, like the bottom of a cooking-pot, with working 
 in the sunlight, so that no man may desire them ; 
 but this maiden, Tuan, was — in truth I cannot tell of 
 the wonder of her beauty. Even now, when I am 
 old, as I then was young, I feel my liver wax hot, and 
 my love spring up anew when I think upon her ! 
 
TtJKANG bCrOK'S ST0R2' 143 
 
 For every man in all the World there is always One 
 Woman. God knoweth that our loves be many, but 
 the others are as the shadows of the real, while She, 
 the Only One, is the Presence that casts the shades. 
 So it was with me, — a son of the Court, born to mate 
 with one bred gently in the towns, as I also had been, 
 — for my liver was crumbled to atoms at the sight of 
 this maid, and I sent my wedding portion to her parents, 
 who were well pleased that their daughter should wed 
 my father's son. 
 
 'At night-time I would creep beneath her house, 
 and listen to the music of her words, as she spake with 
 the woman, her mother, and all the folk who sat 
 within the dwelling. Through the chinks in the 
 wattled walls I would watch her, till I was hungry as 
 one who thirsts for water, and thereafter sleep would 
 not fall upon my eyes, so that in those days of waiting 
 my body grew lean and dry as a fish that men have 
 smoked above the leaping fire, and indeed, my liver 
 was broiled over fierce flames that tide, by reason of 
 my so great love and longing for this maiden. 
 
 c Now it was upon a day, about a Friday-span before 
 that upon which the Feast of the Becoming One, as 
 our folk name it, was to be held, that the calamity 
 came upon me, utterly destroying me like the blight 
 destroys the standing crops, making the ears empty 
 things and vain. It was in this wise. Listen, Tuan^ 
 and say was ever trouble like unto mine, shame like 
 unto the disgrace that fell upon me, or sorrow like 
 unto the grief I suffered. 
 
 4 Hodoh was her name. Yes, Tuan y as thou sayest, 
 she was ill-named, for in truth she was beautiful, not 
 
H4 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 ugly, as the word implies, — but it was thus that her 
 folk had called her when she was little, and in my ears 
 it was ever more lovely than the singing of the thikir 
 women, and that, thou knowest, is no mean music. 
 Hodoh chanced to be alone in her house, all her people 
 being gone to the fields, but she, being so near the 
 appointed time of her wedding, stayed at home. Thus 
 she only was at hand when a Sakai man, named Pa' 
 Ah-Gap, the Rhinoceros, came to her house out of the 
 jungle, praying for rice and tobacco. Now these 
 Sakai, as thou knowest, Tuan y be sorry animals, and 
 our people love not to suffer them to enter our dwell- 
 ings, for they are of an evil odour, dirty, and covered 
 with skin disease, so that from afar they seem to be 
 white, like a fair woman. The villagers of the interior 
 bear little love to the Sakai, and the women especially 
 cannot abide their presence near to them, so when 
 Hodoh beheld the face of Pa' Ah-Gap, scarred with 
 tattoo-marks, grimed with soot, as are always the Sakai 
 who sleep in the warm ashes of their fires, with hair 
 in locks like the ragged sago-palm yonder, she shrieked 
 aloud, cursing him for a filthy, unclean, mite-eaten 
 Sakai, and bidding him begone, crying " Hinchit ! 
 Hinchit ! " as men do when they drive away a dog. 
 Pa' Ah-Gap stood still gazing upon her, rubbing his 
 left leg slowly against his right shin-bone, and scratch- 
 ing his scalp with one claw-like hand hidden in his 
 frowsy hair, while Hodoh abated not her railing, and 
 ceased not from heaping shame upon him with many 
 injurious words. Then he lifted up his voice and 
 spoke. 
 
 c " Daughter of the Gobs " (Malays), he said, " why 
 
TtiKJNG BUROK'S STORT 145 
 
 miscallest thou thy lover ? In a little while thou 
 shalt seek me in the forests, imploring me to take thee 
 for my own, and in that day thou shalt be to me as a 
 wife ! " and so saying he laughed harshly as the frogs 
 croak in the Winter-time, while she fled into the house, 
 but ceased not from her railings and abuse. 
 
 'Then, when Hodoh had entered into the house, 
 Pa 1 Ah-Gap — Iblis has had him in Jehannam these 
 fifty years, but not before we too had had our will of 
 him — pattered a charm in the Sakai tongue, — for these 
 folk have great skill in magic, the gods of the ancient 
 days, whom we have deserted for Allah and Muhammad, 
 abiding with them, as once they abode with us also, — 
 and slowly, slowly he picked the bark of his loin- 
 cloth into little ragged flecks, as he stood in the open 
 space before the house. Then he cast seven pieces to 
 the North and to the South, and towards the spot where 
 the sun cometh to life, and towards the place where the 
 sun dieth ; then he shouted three times, so that the 
 folk in the rice-fields fell awondering what manner 
 of animal was crying from the jungles ; and lastly he 
 danced silent and alone, making a complete circuit of 
 the house. When these things had been accomplished 
 Pa' Ah-Gap slipped into the forest, making no sound 
 in his going, as is the manner of the jungle people. 
 And as he went, he let fall little pieces of his torn loin- 
 cloth, leaving behind him such as a man makes who 
 walks chewing sugar-cane, casting on the ground 
 the sucked pith that he has robbed of its sweet juices. 
 
 4 At the hour at which the kine go down to water, 
 Hodoh's parents and brethren returned from the rice- 
 fields, and they were told all that had happened 
 
146 studies in brown humanity 
 
 concerning Pa' Ah-Gap, and Che' Mat, Hodoh's father, 
 swore that he would punish Pa' Ah-Gap for molesting 
 his women -kind, and that with no sparing hand. 
 There was much talk that night, in Hodoh's house, 
 and I, hiding beneath the flooring, heard all that 
 passed, until the hour came for extinguishing the 
 lights, and I went to my mat, sad at heart because I 
 could no longer gaze upon the beauty of my Love. 
 
 'Now it was shortly after sleep had come to all 
 within the house, save only Hodoh, who lay wide-eyed 
 and wakeful, that a strange burning came upon her, 
 consuming her as it were in a fire, from her head even 
 to her feet, and her heart, and her liver, and her spleen, 
 and her lungs were like unto so many red-hot embers, 
 scorching their way through her body, and at the 
 same time her speech was wholly reft from her, so 
 that she could by no means cry out or call any one to 
 her aid. Then, too, a sudden knowledge came to her 
 that the cool, dark jungles could alone abate the agony 
 of her pain, and forthwith she arose, and making no 
 sound, passed out of the house. The moon was at the 
 full, very bright and vivid, so that Hodoh found it an 
 easy matter to pick her way into the forest, following 
 the track marked by the shreds of Pa' Ah-Gap's loin- 
 cloth, and each one of these she gathered up lovingly, 
 kissing them, for the touch of the 'rough bark-cloth 
 against her lips seemed to cool the burning pain within 
 her. (All these things she told us later, as thou shalt 
 hear, Tuan.) Till the moonlight was wrestling with 
 the yellow dawn, Hodoh travelled on alone, though 
 our folk fear greatly to thread the jungle single-foot, 
 and the shreds of loin-cloth, which led her on and on, 
 
TOKJNG BtiROK'S STORr 147 
 
 grew few and few, as she wandered ever onwards into 
 the Sakai people's country. The Sun had come to life 
 when her journey was at last accomplished, and she 
 came out of the jungle on to a vast Sakai clearing, and 
 at the door of the first hut, facing the track by which 
 she had come, sat Pa* Ah- Gap, — waiting for her ! 
 He sat still, looking at her, with eyes that mocked her 
 and, of a sudden, she was aware of a fierce love for 
 this man springing up in her breast, so that, lost to 
 shame, she ran forward and cast herself at his feet, 
 praying him to take her for his wife, — even as the so- 
 accursed animal had foretold that she would do ! 
 Then, as she touched him, the burning pain departed 
 from her, and she was utterly at peace. 
 
 ' Was not the magic of this Sakai very great, and 
 strong, and marvellous ? For, even among our own 
 folk, no maiden willingly throws herself into the arms 
 of her lover, though she love him dearly, for women 
 are fashioned in such wise that they feel shame like an 
 overwhelming burden, crushing them utterly, so that 
 they may not move hand or foot. Allah, in his 
 wisdom, has done well so to order, for otherwise, were 
 there no shame among women, their passions being y 
 more fierce than those of men, great trouble would 
 ensue, and verily there is enough already, even though 
 shame be not quite dead in the land. But now Hodoh, 
 the Core of my Heart's Core, my Betrothed, my Loved 
 One, the sweetest and most virtuous of all the many 
 women I have known, ran to this so filthy and 
 diseased Sakai, — a wild man of the woods, an Infidel, 
 — entreating for his love, and kissing his soot-begrimed 
 hide ! Ta Allah ! Verily I cannot think upon it ! ' 
 
v^ 
 
 148 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Old Tulcang Burok paused in his narrative, and 
 spat disgustedly, and with emphasis, into the stream 
 below. His lined and wrinkled face was working 
 queerly with the tumult of fierce emotions which were 
 brought to life by the memory of his balked desire for 
 Hodoh, by the thought of his Love given over to a 
 despised jungle-dweller, by hatred, fury, and consuming 
 jealousy and envy. He spat once more, and then, 
 selecting one of his tools, he set to work to bevel a 
 piece of beautifully grained wood with great delicacy 
 and finish. The story he was telling me was one 
 which was evidently fraught with such painful re- 
 collections for the old man, that I could not find it in 
 my heart to urge him to finish what he had begun, 
 but seemingly he was glad to have for once a sym- 
 pathetic listener, for I could well imagine how a 
 Malay audience would laugh and jeer at a man who 
 had been robbed of his lady-love by a despised Sakai of 
 the jungles. Any way Tukang Burok presently 
 resumed his narrative. 
 
 c She whom I loved had dwelt three full days and 
 nights with this accursed Sakai, — may Allah blight 
 him utterly ! — before we learned from some of his own 
 folk that she was among the jungle people. Then, 
 Che' Mat, her father, and her brethren, and her 
 relatives, men knowing the use of weapons, went, and 
 I with them, making great speed, to the Sakai camp. 
 But, alas ! we found her not, though, by means of the 
 tuas* we persuaded the men in the huts to show to us 
 
 1 The tuas is a very simple and effective torture in considerable favour 
 among the Malays. The victim is placed upon the ground, with his 
 legs extended in front of him, and a stout piece of wood is then laid 
 
TtiKANG BtJROK'S STORT 149 
 
 the path which Pa' Ah-Gap had taken, when he fled 
 into the forest, bearing my Love with him. There- 
 after for many weary days we followed on his trail, 
 now close at his heels, now losing all traces of him and 
 of the maiden, for she went willingly with him, the 
 love -spell still working in her. On that terrible 
 journey I ate no food, though I drank deeply at the 
 springs, for my throat was rough and parched, and 
 sleep visited me not, for the madness of love was upon 
 me, and I hungered for the blood of the base-born 
 creature who had robbed me of my heart's desire ! 
 
 c For how long a time we journeyed I cannot tell 
 thee, for day was night to me during our marches, but 
 in the fulness of the appointed hour we found Pa' Ah- 
 Gap sleeping, with her I loved lying, clothed in the 
 scant garments of the Sakai women, at his side among 
 the warm embers of their fire. Tuan, it was with 
 difficulty that I could recognise her, whose every 
 feature was well known to me, for, in truth, I had 
 loved her. The vile Sakai had tattooed her sweet 
 face, as is the custom of these so animal-like people> 
 and moreover she was very thin and worn, and aged, 
 and grimed with the dirt of the Sakai lairs. We 
 caught him alive, for he slept heavily, being wearied 
 by his long marches, and I and one other, her brother, 
 crept very cautiously upon him. Also I think, Allah, 
 whom he had offended, for he was an Infidel while 
 
 across his knees. A second piece of wood is then passed over the first, 
 and under the buttocks of the sitting man. Next, using the second piece 
 of wood as a lever, and the first piece as the fulcrum, great pressure is 
 exerted, in such a manner that the thighs of the victim are crushed down 
 towards the ground, while the buttocks are pushed violently upwards, 
 causing terrible pain. 
 
150 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the woman was of the Faith, gave him that day to our 
 hands, for mostly the jungle folk sleep with one ear 
 cocked and one eye agape. 
 
 'We bound him hand and foot, the cords of rattan 
 eating into his flesh as this chisel eats into the kemun- 
 ing wood, so that he screamed aloud with the pain ; 
 and she who had been Hodoh fought and bit at us, 
 like a wild-cat newly caught in the woods, so that she 
 too we were forced to bind, but gently, with the cloth 
 of our sarongs, doing her no hurt. Then we bore 
 them back to our village, whence Hodoh had fled that 
 night, and thereafter we put Pa* Ah-Gap to the torture 
 of the bamboo.' 
 
 4 What is that ? ' I asked. 
 
 Tukang Burok smiled grimly, his old eyes lighting 
 up with a thrill of pleasurable recollection. 
 
 c It is not fitting, Tuan y that I should tell thee much 
 concerning it,' he replied. c There be certain methods 
 by means of which the quick-growing shoot of the 
 bamboo can be taught to grow into a man's flesh, 
 causing him such agony as even the Shetans in Jehan- 
 nam have scarce dreamed of. When first we bound 
 him to the seat on which he was to die, he glared upon 
 us out of angry eyes, saying no word, and I was sorry 
 that he did not plead for mercy, that I might mock 
 him and refuse him ; later he prayed to be spared till I, 
 even I, was nearly satisfied, watching his pain, long- 
 drawn, slow, and very keen ; later again and he implored 
 for death, as a lover entreats his mistress to give him 
 her love ; then for a space he went mad, throwing his 
 body from side to side, so far as the cords which bound 
 him made possible, and again I was angry, and sad 
 
TtiKANG BtJROK'S STORT 151 
 
 withal, for when the madness comes to a man he no 
 longer feels, as I had a mind that that man should feel, 
 even to the very brink of the hour in which Death 
 came to set him free. Tuan, for three days the life 
 endured within him, and for all that time I sat beside 
 him, mocking him when his ears could hear, and his 
 brain could understand, and praying to Allah that his 
 agony might endure for ever. 
 
 c In the hour that he died, Hodoh came back to us 
 out of the enchantment which had held her captive, 
 for the spell laid upon her was broken j but her memory 
 held the recollection of all that had befallen her, so that 
 she was wellnigh distraught with shame. Also her 
 body was weakened with the life in the jungle, and 
 she was racked with fever and many aches and pains, 
 and, so she said, the burning of her skin was that 
 which had been laid upon her by Pa* Ah-Gap that even- 
 ing when she miscalled him. In a fortnight my Love 
 was dead j and I was left here mourning for all my days 
 over the loss of the sweetest maiden born of woman, 
 she for whom above all others my soul has been con- 
 sumed with a wild fire of desire, which the years have 
 never quenched ! And, alas ! alas ! how bitter is 
 the thought that she was wasted upon a Sakai dog, — 
 the vilest of our kind ! Wherefore, Titan, when, as 
 occasion requires, thou prayest to thy Christian God, 
 bid Him join with Allah in the utter blighting and 
 destruction of the soul of Pa' Ah-Gap, the Sakai ! ' 
 
ON MALAYAN RIVERS. 
 
 Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness sombre with forest, 
 Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river j 
 Night after night, by their blazing fires encamped on its borders. 
 Now through rushing chutes, among green islands where plumelike 
 Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current. 
 
 Evangeline. 
 
 In the Jungles of the Peninsula, where the soil 
 under foot is a rich, black loam, composed of decayed 
 vegetation, and the damp earth is littered with brown 
 and sodden leaves, newly shed, or partially decomposed, 
 one may often chance upon a pale, ghost-lilce object, 
 white or gray in colour, and delicately fine in its texture 
 as a piece of fairy lace. This is the complete skeleton 
 of a giant leaf, which once was fair, and green, and 
 sappy, but now has rotted away, little by little, until 
 nothing remains save the midrib, from which the spines 
 branch off, and a mazy network of tiny veins. 
 
 If you could strip any river basin, in the Peninsula, 
 of its forests, and could then lay bare its water-system, 
 you would find that it presented, on a gigantic scale, 
 an appearance very similar to that of the skeleton leaf. 
 The main river would represent the midrib ; the 
 principal tributaries falling into it would supply the 
 
ON MALAYAN RIVERS 153 
 
 place of the branching spines ; and the myriad tiny 
 streams and rivulets, which babble and trickle through 
 the jungles, or worm their way, slowly and painfully, 
 through the low-lying tracts of swampy country, would 
 be the numberless delicate veins of the leaf. All the 
 spaces and interstices, which in the skeleton are found 
 between midrib and spine, and spine and vein, are, in 
 the river basin, wide tracts of forest-clad country, 
 intersected, and cut up, across, and through and 
 through, by the rivers and streams of the most lavish 
 water-system in the world. 
 
 The dense jungles present a barrier which has 
 very effectually resisted the encroachments of primitive 
 men. In the valleys of the large rivers, the Malay 
 villages cluster along the banks, and the rice-fields 
 spread behind the groves of palm and fruit trees, but 
 half a mile inland, the forest shuts down around the 
 cultivated patches, like a wall about a kitchen-garden. 
 Up-country, where the rivers are smaller, man has won 
 an even more insecure foothold, and the tiny plots of 
 tilled land peep from out of the masses of jungle that 
 surround them like a bird from out of a field of 
 standing rice. Further up river still, you will find the 
 camps of the Sakai and Sumang, but even these forest- 
 dwelling people make their homes on the edges of the 
 streams, and thread their way through the jungles, in 
 which they roam, by wading up and down the water- 
 courses. Thus, it is not too much to say that only an 
 insignificant fraction of the Peninsula has ever been 
 trodden by the foot of man in all the long days since 
 this old world was young. There are thousands of 
 miles of river, in the Peninsula, whose banks have 
 
154 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 never even been camped upon by human beings, and, 
 in country which is comparatively thickly populated, 
 the vast tracts of jungle, lying between river and river, 
 and between stream and stream, are as unexplored and 
 untrodden as are the distant polar regions of the South. 
 Thus it comes to pass, that one who would here study 
 native life must learn his lessons, and seek his know- 
 ledge, on the banks of the rivers, and upon the water- 
 ways of the Malay Peninsula. 
 
 On the West Coast, where the roads and railways 
 of the White Men have partially annihilated distanc e, 
 and have made travelling and transport easy, even 
 through the densest jungle, the waterways are fast 
 becoming deserted. The enterprising Chinese hawker 
 still makes his way from village to village, in his 
 patched and rotting sampan, for the people on the river 
 banks need dried sea-fish, sugar, that is more than half 
 sand, and salt, that is three-parts dirt. Also little bits 
 of jungle produce that have escaped duty may be 
 bought and smuggled, if a man works carefully and 
 with cunning. Now and again, a half-empty boat 
 sags and lolls adown the long reaches, or an old-world 
 Chief, who prefers the cool recesses of his prdhu to the 
 heat and dust of a railway carriage, is punted up stream 
 by half a dozen straining boatmen. For the rest, the 
 river is no longer alive with crafts, as it was in the 
 days of old, and the sleepy villager, whose patient eyes 
 watch life indolently from the water's brink, wonders 
 why the land has fallen to sleep since the coming of 
 the noisy, energetic WhitT*Klen. 
 
 But in Pahang, Trengganu, and Kelantan, where 
 men still punt and paddle and wade, as of old, the rivers 
 
ON MALAYAN RIVERS 155 
 
 are the chief, if not the only highways, and, sitting in 
 the shade of the palm-trees on the bank, a man may 
 watch all the world gliding to and fro. There he may 
 see the King's boat — gay with the bright silks of 
 swaggering youths and nobles, with men sitting on the 
 palm-leaf roofing, and dangling their legs at the bow, 
 to mark that their Master is aboard — steam past him, 
 with its waving flag, amid a wild tumult of drums and 
 yells. There he may see the heavily-laden craft, 
 banked high with freight to the very bow, propelled 
 up river by a dozen punters, whose clattering poles 
 drip streams of sun-steeped water ; or the yellow face 
 of a Chinese trader, peering from under the shelter at 
 the stern, shows for a moment as a trading boat glides 
 by. As he sits watching, the villager sees the tiny 
 dug-out, bearing the wrinkled midwives, paddled down- 
 stream by a sweating man, who works as he has never 
 worked before, that relief and aid may come speedily to 
 the woman he holds dear. Or, amid the rhythmical 
 thud of the drums, the droning of verses from the 
 Kuran, and wild bursts of the sorak^ another sampan^ 
 bright with gorgeous silks and glittering with tinsel, 
 passes by, bearing the bridegroom and his relations to 
 the hut where the little frightened bride awaits their 
 coming. Or -perhaps, when the heavens are bright, 
 lying there stark in his graveclothes, carefully covered 
 from head to foot, and surrounded by a cluster of sad- 
 faced relations, who shield his head lovingly from the 
 fierce sun's rays, another villager may be seen, gliding 
 gently towards the little, shady graveyard, making his 
 last journey on the bosom of the river by which his 
 days have been spent. The birth, the marriage, the 
 
156 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 death, all the comings and the goings, all the sorrows 
 and the labour, and the rest, may be seen hinted at or 
 exemplified, if a man watch long enough on the banks 
 of a Malayan river ; for the running water, which 
 bears them to and fro, enters more closely into the 
 everyday life of the people, than do any of the other 
 natural objects with which the Malays are surrounded. 
 The large river boats, which ply on the rivers of 
 Kelantan, Trcngganu, and Pahang, are of different 
 builds, each one of which is in some measure peculiar 
 to the State in which it is used. In Kelantan the 
 favourite craft is one which, for some obscure reason, 
 is called by the natives kcpala belalang — or the grass- 
 hopper's head. Needless to say, it resembles anything 
 in the world more closely than it does the head of any 
 known insect. It is long and narrow, with a short 
 tilted punting-platform at the bow, and the cabin 
 consists of a bark or wooden erection, like a low, 
 square tunnel. The decking is sunk below the water- 
 level, so that the occupants of the cabin sit or lie in a 
 deep hollow with only an inch of bamboo flooring 
 between them and the boat's bottom. If the calking 
 be sound, this is cool and fairly comfortable — though a 
 man might as well lie in his coffin for all he can see 
 of the world around him — but, if the boat leaks, as it 
 usually does, this arrangement means wet bedding, and 
 thereafter lumbago and rheumatism. The long narrow 
 tunnel has no windows, and the only means of egress 
 or entrance is by the open space at each end of the cabin. 
 Malays of other States, who do not love the Kelantan 
 people, say that this form of boat is the only one which 
 can be used in their country, because a window would 
 
ON MALAYAN RIVERS 157 
 
 enable thieves to possess themselves of the entire 
 property of the occupant of the cabin with too great 
 ease and convenience. It is due to the people of 
 Kelantan, however, that I should state that their 
 ingenuity is not baffled by such a trifle as the absence 
 of windows, for two young Saiyids, whom I once sent 
 from the interior to Kota Bharu — the King's capital 
 — had most of their raiment removed from between 
 them, as they lay sleeping on board one of these boats, 
 during the quiet night-time. This, when they awoke, 
 seemed to them to be almost as miraculous as it was 
 annoying, for they would certainly have been roused 
 had the thief entered the boat, nor was the mystery 
 explained until they found that one of their own boat- 
 poles had been fashioned into a hook, while they slept, 
 and that the thief had successfully fished for their 
 property, with this cunning instrument, over their 
 recumbent bodies. Fortunately, however, they had 
 been provided with a professional thief by the courtesy 
 and forethought of my good friend Dato* Lela Derja, 
 and he quickly restored their missing property, by the 
 simple expedient of robbing the original thief, who 
 was now lapped in peaceful slumber. For such is the 
 custom of the land. 
 
 The boat-poles used in Kelantan are furnished with 
 large crutch -handles, and, when the punters have 
 walked up the steep incline of the forward platform, 
 and have found bottom with their poles, they suddenly 
 double up their bodies, from the waist, and throw the 
 whole of their weight on to the crutch, which they 
 wedge into the hollow of their shoulders. They 
 rarely touch their poles with their hands, during this 
 
158 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 part of the operation, and their arms wave about, claw- 
 ing the air aimlessly, as the punters step slowly down 
 the incline, doing all the pushing with their shoulders, 
 and deriving the power from the weight of their great, 
 fleshy bodies. They give a melancholy, discordant, 
 inarticulate howl each time that they take the strain, 
 and, with their bent backs, quivering legs, and groping 
 arms, they present the appearance of some strange 
 quadrupeds, impaled upon spears, vainly striving to 
 light their way to the earth on which their forefeet 
 cannot win a grip. 
 
 In the Trengganu Valley — which in some ways is 
 one of the most curious places in the Peninsula — the 
 river boats are inferior to those found elsewhere. 
 This is to be explained by the fact that the great 
 Trengganu River is only navigable for fifty miles from 
 its mouth, and this waterway is therefore of less 
 importance to the natives than are most of the wide 
 rivers of the East Coast. In 1895, only some five 
 hundred Malays were living in the broad tracts of 
 country that lie above the Kelemang Falls. The 
 rest of the population of the Trengganu Valley was 
 wedged into the space between the rapids and the sea. 
 To this is mainly attributable the great ingenuity and 
 industry of the Trengganu Malays, for, in a land 
 where men are very thick upon the ground, a lack of 
 these qualities will surely result in a want of anything 
 to eat. The banks of the Trengganu, from Kele- 
 mang to the mouth, are cultivated and inhabited, as 
 are only a very few regions in the Peninsula. No 
 produce of a bulky nature can be brought from the 
 interior, for the slender footpath, which runs round 
 
ON MALAYAN RIVERS 159 
 
 the Falls, is the only means of communication, and all 
 things must be carried on men's shoulders. There- 
 fore, such things as bamboos, from which the walls, 
 and flooring of houses, and the fences round the stand- 
 ing crops, are constructed, must be planted by the 
 people who need them, since there is no possibility of 
 cutting them in the neighbouring jungles, as may be 
 done in more comfortable lands. Accordingly there 
 are vast areas under cultivation, and a man may travel 
 on foot from Kelemang to Kuala Trengganu without 
 once leaving the string of villages that line the bank. 
 
 There is one form of boat, however, which is to be 
 met on the Trengganu River, that would make a 
 strangexiaacy that this valley, which was never visited 
 by White Men until 1895, had long been under the 
 influence of Europeans. Clinker-built boats, beauti- 
 fully fashioned from Siamese teak, and constructed 
 with a finish and a grace of line which excel anything 
 that the dockyards of Singapore can produce, look 
 somewhat incongruous on the rivers of an Independent 
 Malay State ; and but for the palms upon the banks, 
 and the paddles with which the gaily dressed natives 
 propel these boats in lieu of oars, one might almost 
 fancy one's self once more upon the brown waters 
 around Chertsey. 
 
 But it is in Pahang, where the current of the river 
 is stronger than that of any other on the East Coast, 
 and where a boat may travel up stream two hundred 
 and twenty miles from the mouth without let or 
 hindrance, that the large river-craft approaches most 
 nearly to perfection. The best constructed boats are 
 nearly eight fathoms long, and the poling platform 
 
160 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 occupies much space forward, so as to give the punters 
 plenty of room as they step aft, leaning heavily on 
 their poles. At the bow and the stern, a square sheet 
 of meshed woodwork is fixed in such a manner as to 
 give the deck of the boat an almost rectangular surface, 
 without diminishing the speed-power by widening her 
 lines. The cabins are usually two in number — the 
 kurong or main apartment, and kurong anak or after 
 cabin. They are roofed in with thatch, overlaid with 
 sheets of dried mingkuang leaves, kept firmly in place 
 by long lathes of split bamboo, lashed securely with 
 rattan. The line of the roof forms a bold, sweeping 
 curve, from the peak at the extreme stern to the 
 middle of the boat. There is a slight flattening of 
 this curve near the centre, and an even slighter rise 
 near the forward end of the cabin ; the effect being 
 exceedingly graceful, the more so since the long sloping 
 line is broken by a tiny, thatched perch, in which the 
 steersman has his seat. 
 
 The Pahang Malay punts with an air, a swagger, — 
 as he does everything, — and the clatter and the clash 
 of the poles, the single recurring thud against the side, 
 which results from the excellent time the men keep, the 
 loud complaining creak of the rudder-rod, as the boat 
 lurches along up stream, make a lilting, rhythmic 
 cadence not unpleasant to listen to. And descending 
 the river, also, when punting-poles are laid aside, and 
 the men grasp their paddles, the splash and the beat of 
 the even strokes, the song of the steersman in his perch, 
 and the crashing chorus of the crew, combined with 
 the cool current of air which the pace of the gliding 
 boat sends rushing through the cabin, make as soothing 
 
ON MALAYAN RIVERS 161 
 
 and lazy a lullaby as a man need desire to listen to. 
 The boatmen take a pride in displaying their skill in 
 all kinds of c fancy ' paddling, which, while it has a 
 pretty and graceful effect, serves also to ease their 
 muscles by employing them in a constantly changing 
 motion. The bow paddler sets the stroke ; first, one 
 long sweep of the blade, quickly followed by three 
 short ones ; or later, three long strokes with a short 
 one in between. There are hundreds of combinations 
 of long and short, each of which has its own well- 
 known name in the vernacular, and a properly trained 
 crew will travel all day long without rowing in precisely 
 the same manner for half an hour together. It is 
 marvellous how long a time Malays will sit at their 
 paddles, without ever pausing in their rowing, and yet 
 experience no especial fatigue or exhaustion. I re- 
 member, on one occasion, in 1894, setting a crew of 
 five- and -twenty men to paddle down river at four 
 o'clock in the morning. They had never worked with 
 me before, they were not a picked crowd, and they were 
 not men who were accustomed to row together. Yet 
 these Malays paddled down river to Pgkan, a distance 
 of a hundred miles, in twenty-six hours. They never 
 quitted their work all that long and weary time except 
 twice, when half their number ate rice while the other 
 half continued rowing. Once in an hour, or so, they 
 would shift from one side of the boat to the other ; 
 but that was all the relief that they sought for their 
 aching limbs. The time in which we did the journey 
 was not particularly good, for the river chanced to be 
 somewhat shrunken by drought, and we frequently 
 ran aground. During the night, which was intensely 
 
 M 
 
162 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 dark, we more than once found ourselves straying from 
 the main stream into a backwater, or cul de sac, and so 
 had to paddle up river again, the way we had come, 
 with all the weary work to do once more. Yet, in 
 spite of all these trials to body and temper, no word of 
 complaint, no whispered murmur of remonstrance, came 
 from the men at the paddles. That they suffered to 
 some extent I do not doubt, for I, who was awake all 
 night to see that they kept at it, was dropping with 
 fatigue long before the dawn showed grayly in the East. 
 Towards morning, their sorak grew very thin and 
 weedy and faint, and their eyes were dull and heavy, 
 but this did not prevent them from making half a 
 dozen spurts in the last three or four miles. To 
 appreciate to the full the achievement of these men, 
 you must realise what paddling is like. Personally I 
 know of no more tiring occupation. The rower sits 
 cross-legged on the hard decking of the boat, with 
 nothing to support his back, and with nothing in the 
 nature of a stretcher against which to gain a purchase 
 for his feet. The cross-piece at the top of the paddle 
 shaft is gripped in one hand, the other holding the 
 shaft firmly an inch or two above its point of junction 
 with the blade. Then the body of the rower is bent 
 forward from the hips, the arms extended to their full 
 length, as the paddle-blade takes the water. The arm 
 which is uppermost is held rather stiffly, the whole 
 strain of the stroke being taken by the hand and arm 
 that grips the paddle near the base of the blade. When 
 this motion has been repeated half a dozen times the 
 lower arm begins to complain, and presently its fellow 
 joins in the protest. Continue paddling for an hour 
 
ON MALAYAN RIYERS 163 
 
 or two, and not only your arms, but your shoulders, 
 your back, your legs, almost every muscle in your 
 body, will begin to ache as they have never ached 
 before, and, though practice is half the battle, you may 
 thus come by a sound working knowledge of what the 
 sensations of a man must be who has laboured for 
 more than five-and-twenty hours at the paddles. 
 After this, it is probable that you will hesitate to join'! 
 in the loud-mouthed chorus of those who tell you that V 
 the Malays are the laziest people that inhabit God's^J^ 
 Earth. 
 
 Those people who, nowadays, rush through Perak 
 and Selangor in railway carriages can have but a poor 
 conception of what a lovely land it is through which 
 they are hurrying. The narrow lines, cut through 
 the forest, are only broken, here and there, by patches 
 of coffee-gardens, and other ranker cultivation. Here, 
 there is nothing really distinctive of the Peninsula, and 
 if you would see the country in its full glory and 
 beauty, you must still keep to the river routes, which 
 are the highways proper to the Land of the Malays. 
 Travelling up and down the Peninsula, for a dozen 
 years and more, one chances upon so many lovely 
 scenes that it is not easy to decide which among them 
 all is the most good to look upon. A hundred spots 
 come before my mind's eye as, in spirit, I pass once 
 more up and down the streams I love best ; but just 
 as, among a collection of beautiful pictures, there must 
 always be some which appeal to one more strongly 
 than do the others, so, in this galaxy of Malayan 
 scenes, I have my favourites. One is very far away, 
 on a river called the Pgrtang, a tiny stream of the 
 
164 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 interior, that falls into the Tekai, which falls into 
 the Tembeling, which falls into the Pahang, which 
 flows into the China Sea. The reach of river is 
 not wide, but it is very long for an up-country 
 stream, flowing, straight as an arrow, for a dis- 
 tance of nearly a mile. The bed of this river is 
 shallow, its water running riot down long stretches of 
 shingle, forming a succession of miniature rapids. 
 Little sun-flecked splashes of water are thrown up by 
 the fiery dashing of the hurrying current against the 
 obstructions in its path, and the whole surface of the 
 stream seems to dance, and glitter, and shimmer, as 
 you look at it. But the distinctive feature of this 
 reach of river, that marks it out from its fellows, is 
 to be looked for on its jungle-covered banks. The 
 shelving earth at the water's edge is lined with magni- 
 ficent specimens of the ngeram tree, — a jungle giant 
 which is probably but little known to any White 
 Men whose work has not chanced to take them into 
 the far interior of the Malay Peninsula. The peculiar 
 form in which these trees grow renders them specially 
 suitable for the river banks on which they are always 
 found. Their trunks, which are several yards in cir- 
 cumference at their base, grow erect for only a few 
 feet. Then they gradually trend outwards, leaning 
 lovingly over the stream j and, when two of these trees 
 grow on the opposite banks of a river facing one 
 another, their branches not infrequently become inter- 
 laced, forming a natural arch of living greenery over- 
 head. In this reach of the Pertang, of which I speak, 
 the banks from end to end are lined with ngeram trees, 
 and with ngeram trees only. The effect is, therefore, 
 
ON MALAYAN RISERS 165 
 
 that of a splendid arch of foliage a mile in length, like 
 a long green tent spread above a line of dancing, 
 joyous river. Overhead, the network of graceful, 
 slender boughs, with their trailing wealth of gorgeous 
 leaves, sways gently in the faint, soft breeze that seems 
 to be for ever sweeping swooningly over the still 
 forests of the remote interior. On either hand, the 
 massive trunks of the ngiram trees show gray, save 
 where the vivid flecks of sunlight paint them a whiter 
 hue, and form the sides of the avenue through which 
 the leaping waters run. The surface of the stream 
 itself is alive with motion and colour. The brilliant 
 sunshine struggles through the heavy masses of inter- 
 woven boughs, and twigs, and leaves, forcing its way 
 amid the thick clusters of creepers and trailing orchids 
 with which the branches of these trees are draped, 
 throughout their entire length. Here, for near a mile, 
 there is cool, deep shade, that would almost be gloom, 
 were it not that the fierce Eastern sun will not suffer 
 himself to be altogether defeated, and still finds means 
 to dust and powder the running water with little 
 shifting flecks of light and colour, and, here and there, 
 to cast broad belts of glimmering brilliancy on the 
 surface of the stream. As you glide slowly down this 
 reach upon your raft, a great brown kite, disturbed by 
 your approach, flaps heavily away from you, between 
 the long avenue of the ngiram trees ; a brilliantly 
 painted butterfly catches your eye, a tiny point of 
 colour quickly fading into nothingness, as it flits 
 adown the reach j or, perhaps, a troop of monkeys 
 passes scurryingly across the river, from tree to tree, 
 and, in a moment, is swallowed up in the forest. 
 
166 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Your pleasure in gazing on the beauties of this scene 
 will not be diminished by the recollection that they 
 have only once before been looked upon by the eyes 
 of a White Man, and that the place is too far removed 
 from the beaten track for even the most energetic 
 globe-trotter to visit it, and defile it with his unappre- 
 ciative presence. 
 
 There is another spot on a river in Pahang that 
 will always have a place in my memory ; but, thoagh 
 a few years ago it was almost as remote from the 
 paths of the European as is the ngeram tree-reach to- 
 day, the trunk-road across the Peninsula now skirts it 
 closely, so that every passer-by may see it. This is 
 the Jcram Besu, the great rapid on the Lipis River. 
 At this point the waters of the Lipis, which have 
 hitherto meandered through a broad green valley, 
 dotted with nestling villages, and gay with the vivid 
 colouring of the standing rice, suddenly become pent, 
 in a narrow bed, between grim walls of granite. The 
 stream above the rapid runs smooth and even, growing 
 more oily to look upon, as it combs over, in a great 
 curved wave, at the head of the fall. Then, in an 
 instant, the gliding water is broken up into a leaping, 
 whirling, tearing, fighting, roaring torrent, that dashes 
 madly against the rocky walls that hem it in, and seem 
 to lash it into a frenzy of rage. The rapid is only 
 about thirty yards long, and the drop is probably about 
 half as many feet, but the volume of pent water, that 
 strives to force itself through this narrow channel, 
 makes the pace furious, and gives a strength to the 
 leaping flood which is altogether irresistible. The 
 combing wave, at the rapid's head, first dashes itself 
 
ON MALAYAN RISERS 167 
 
 upon a prominent, outstanding wedge of rock on the 
 left, which the natives of the place name ' The Wall,' 
 and when the dangers of a capsize at this point have 
 been avoided, c The Toad ' is found waiting, near the 
 exit from the gorge, to pick up the bits. The rock 
 which bears this name is set in mid-stream, leaning 
 slightly towards the hurrying current, for the rush of 
 water upon this side of it, during countless ages, has 
 worn away the stone. This is really the only great 
 danger to be encountered in shooting this rapid, for the 
 offset of the water from the other rocks is sufficient 
 to prevent a man being dashed with any great violence 
 against them. But with 'The Frog ' this is not the 
 case. The whole run of the current tends to drive a 
 man into the hollow in the rock, and once there, with 
 the weight of that mighty torrent to keep him in place, 
 he has but a poor chance of ever getting out again. 
 Old Khatib Jafar, who lives in the little village above 
 the rapid, and has spent all the best years of his life in 
 ferrying men's rafts down the fall, boasts that he has, at 
 different times, had every rib on his right side smashed 
 between the rafts and 'The Frog,' but he says that 
 he has always escaped being forced under it, or he 
 would not be there to tell of his manifold experiences. 
 
 Before long, no doubt, some energetic White Man • 
 
 will utilise the power of Jeram Bgsu for the generation \/ 
 of electricity, and the place will be rendered unsightly 
 by rusty iron piping, and cunningly constructed 
 machinery. Then, i ncidentally, Khatib Jafar and 
 his brethre n wilT lose their means of liveli hood, as, 
 by the way^they are already doing as one of the 
 first effects of the new road. I fear that they will 
 
168 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 not be greatly comforted by the recollection that 
 their individual loss is for the good of the greater 
 number, or by the thought that they may' in future 
 earn their rice and fish in a manner that carries with 
 it less risk than did their former occupation. 
 
 There is yet another place upon the banks of a 
 Malay river, — in Trcngganu, this time, — of which 
 I shall always retain a grateful recollection. At the 
 foot of the Kelcmang Falls, a little stream flows into 
 the wide Trcngganu River on its left bank. It comes 
 straight down from the hills, which, at this point, rise 
 almost precipitously from within a few yards of the 
 river's edge. They mount up skywards, in a series of 
 steep ascents, and on the summit of the first of these 
 there stands a very ancient grave, in which, tradition 
 says, there repose the mouldering bones of a hermit of 
 old time, who dwelt here in solitude, during his days 
 of life, and elected to lie here through the ages, awaiting 
 his summons before the Judgment Seat. The still forest 
 spreads around him, the note of bird, and beast, and 
 insect comes to lull him in his long slumbers, and the 
 monotonous sound of the neighbouring waterfall cries 
 4 Hush ! * to the noisy world. Once in a long while 
 the Sultan of Trcngganu comes hither, with all his 
 Court, to do honour to the dead Sage ; now and again, 
 villagers visit the spot in pursuance of some vow, made 
 in their hour of need; but, for the rest, the place where 
 the hermit lies is undisturbed by the passing to and fro 
 of man. 
 
 From the natural terrace in the hill, upon which 
 the grave stands, the little stream of which I speak 
 falls in a series of cataracts to the valley below. Its 
 
ON MALAYAN RISERS 169 
 
 source must be at a spot far up the mountain side, 
 for its waters, when they reach the plain, are as fresh 
 and cold as those of a highland stream in Scot- 
 land. They come dashing and leaping along, from 
 point to point, down the steep hillside, and fall in a 
 body upon the broad, smooth surface of an immense 
 granite boulder, which lies at the base of the rising 
 land. 
 
 I, and the Pahang Malays who were my companions, 
 reached this place one morning, just when the dew had 
 dried, after travelling without rest, during all the long 
 hours that should have been passed in sleep. We were 
 weary and tired to the last degree, and our eyes had 
 that curious feverish, burning sensation in their sockets, 
 which ever comes to one who looks out at the blazing 
 tropic sunshine after a sleepless night. We halted to 
 cook our rice, and we were all, I think, pretty sorry 
 for ourselves. I longed for champagne, even at that 
 early hour in the morning, or for any pick-me-up to 
 make me feel equal to the long journey which we 
 should have to make between that hour and the dawn 
 of the next day. My Malays, too, squatted about 
 disconsolately by the river, where they were washing 
 their rice, and by the fires, upon which the cooking- 
 pots were humming. One or two of their number 
 went off into the jungle, that lay round and about 
 us, to search for fuel, and presently one of them re- 
 turned, and said that he had found a capital place for 
 a bath. He looked so fresh and comfortable, as he stood 
 there with the beads of water still glistening in his hair, 
 that several of our people went in search of the place of 
 which he spoke. They all came back in tearing spirits, 
 
i7o STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 loudly extolling the marvels of the bath, and at last I, 
 too, went to try what it was like. 
 
 When I arrived, I found two or three of my people 
 lying sprawling on the large smooth boulder at the foot 
 of the fall, and, when they presently made room for me, 
 I crept cautiously on to the great stone upon which the 
 stream of water from above was thudding heavily. The 
 fall was about twenty feet in height, and the first blow 
 of the icy water laid me flat upon the rock, and held 
 me there breathless. It was like the most splendid 
 combination of cold shower-bath and vigorous massage 
 imaginable, and though it was not to be borne for 
 more than a minute or two at a time, I stretched 
 myself on the boulder, again and again, until my skin 
 was turned to goose-flesh. Never was there a more 
 splendid tonic, and though we did not rest again till 
 the Eastern sky waxed red next morning, I, for one, 
 felt no more fatigue of mind or body, after that mar- 
 vellous bath. 
 
 When once a man falls a-thinking of the thousand 
 scenes in the Malay Peninsula, any one of which it is 
 a keen delight to look upon, it is difficult to quit the 
 subject, and to make an end of vain attempts to picture 
 to others some few of the things which have filled him 
 with a pleasure that was an ample reward for the hard- 
 ships of many a long and arduous journey. But the 
 end must come, sooner or later, and perhaps, the sooner 
 the better, for how can one hope to paint in words, 
 things that, even as one looked upon them, seem too 
 full of varied beauty for the sight to really comprehend 
 them ? On Malayan rivers, at any rate, the eye is 
 abundantly filled with seeing. 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 
 
 Downward, in a flash, I swing, 
 
 Hissing like a snake, 
 Make the bones about me ring, 
 
 Splinter, chip, and break ! 
 See the blood leap up to meet 
 
 My hungry lover's kiss, 
 Ho ! Our meeting it most sweet, — 
 
 I was born for this ! 
 
 See the rent skin gape and start ! 
 
 Hear the spent lungs gasp ! 
 See me red in every part, 
 
 Handle, blade, and hasp ! 
 Hear the dying moan his moan ! 
 
 Hear me swish and hough ! 
 Rip through flesh, and shriek through bone ! 
 
 I ne'er lived till now ! 
 
 The Song of the Spear. 
 
 Up country, in the remote interior, where the words 
 and manners of men are coarse and unseemly, honey 
 is called ayer lebah, — which means c bees' water,' — 
 but in more civilised parts of the Peninsula, where 
 people pride themselves upon their exceeding culture 
 and gentility, the vernacular term in use is madu. / 
 Malays, however, love to make a word do double duty, v 
 and, if possible, force it to bear at least one obscure 
 
172 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMJNI7T 
 
 and recondite meaning, in addition to its simple and 
 obvious one. This it is which tends to make their 
 beautiful, liquid tongue such a network of traps and 
 pitfalls for the stranger ; and, verily, in speaking the 
 Malay Language, a little knowledge is an excessively 
 dangerous thing. 
 
 1 Hamba Tuan ber-madu y — Thy servant possesses 
 honey ! * cries the indignant and infuriated native. 
 
 The European finds it difficult to conceive why 
 the possession of honey should excite its owner to such 
 a wild state of emotion ; but he has often found 
 natives strange and unaccountable, and, perhaps, has 
 never made any real effort to understand them, so he 
 merely says : — 
 
 c Bring the said honey hither that I may eat there- 
 of, for I love it greatly ! ' and everybody present, 
 with the exception of the first speaker, titters furtively. 
 
 For madu^ in this instance, — though there is 
 nothing in the wide World to show it, — has no con- 
 nection whatever with bees, or with any of their 
 works. Instead it means the lover of a man's wife, or 
 the rival of a woman in her man's affections ; and to 
 those who use it, the fact has nothing sweet about it, 
 such as its original meaning would lead you to expect. 
 
 But the term is also applied to the injured husband. 
 He is the ' Old Honey,' while his rival is ' Honey 
 the Young,' and the only respectable and self-respect- 
 ing thing for the former to do when he becomes aware 
 of the existence of the latter, is, according to Malay 
 ideas, to slay him as quickly as may be, and to there- 
 after send the faithless wife shrieking at his heels into 
 the Land of Shadows. To kill one and not the other, 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 173 
 
 is murder, and punishable as such, in the cross-eyed, 
 squinting vision of Malay Law and Custom. To 
 slaughter both offenders, no matter with what de- 
 liberation and precautions, is a meritorious deed deser- 
 ving praise, the honour of men, and the love of other 
 fair women to crown the slayer's happiness. 
 
 In the Native State of Pahang, before the White 
 Men came, whenever you desired to lay your hand 
 upon the most glaring instances of things as they 
 ought not to be, it was generally safe to seek for them 
 in the TembSling Valley. Many miles of streaming 
 river separate this district from PSkan, — the King's 
 Capital, — and an attempt to supervise the outlying 
 provinces of his country does not enter into the scheme 
 of a Malay Raja's system of government. Occasion- 
 ally he may learn of the existence of a man of wealth, 
 living in some remote village, and the royal coffers 
 are then not unlikely to be the richer by the amount 
 of the fine, which the King will inflict upon his 
 prosperous subject, on purely general principles. Once 
 in a while, some grossly exaggerated ex parte state- 
 ment will filter its way down stream, and swift 
 punishment will forthwith be meted out, for unless 
 the accused is a persona grata at Court, neither the 
 King nor his Ministers dream of troubling themselves 
 to hear anything which he may have to say in his 
 defence. This is the Malay Ruler's method of 
 * larnin' ' his people to be c toads ' ; and how else 
 should he be feared, or the treasury become stocked ? 
 
 Unfortunately, all this does but little towards 
 making the distant corners of the Land peaceful or 
 
174 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 orderly, for under the Malay system of government, 
 the innocent suffer more frequently than the guilty, 
 and a ready tongue, unhampered by feckless scruples, 
 profits a man more than does the cleanest of consciences. 
 Moreover there is truth in the somewhat coarse 
 vernacular Proverb, which illustrates the fact that the 
 pupil will out-do his teacher if the latter set him an 
 ugly example. Therefore the District Chiefs act after 
 the manner of their King with trimmings and 
 additions. 
 
 In the Tembcling Valley, a dozen years or so ago, 
 things were peculiarly bad, because the nominal Chief, 
 Penghulu Raja, was an indolent creature, who cared 
 only for his women and his opium-pipe, while the large 
 clan of Warn — men of the royal stock — who had their 
 homes there, preyed unchecked upon the peasants. 
 When the Chief is a strong man, he is sure to quarrel 
 violently with the distant connections of his King, who 
 chance to dwell in his District ; and since he is of 
 more importance to his Master than they can hope to 
 be, their complaints meet with small encouragement 
 at Court. So the Wans fight him, as best they may, 
 and in the struggle, the peasants sometimes are in- 
 advertently suffered to come by their rights. 'When 
 the junks are in collision,* says the Malay Proverb, 
 'the fishes have full bellies,* and this truth, like all 
 the old wise -saws of the people, is constantly ex- 
 emplified in the everyday experiences of the natives. 
 
 The Chief of the Tgmbeling JVans^ whom I will 
 call Wan Teh, was an exceedingly unpleasant person. 
 He was rather deaf, had a harsh, discordant voice, a 
 wicked eye, a shifty manner, and a cruel mouth ever 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 175 
 
 gaping, as though seeking whom it might devour. It 
 was more than whispered, even in his own District, 
 that his courage was not of the highest quality ; and, 
 with the possible exception of his only son, who was 
 one of the most truculent young scoundrels living, 
 no man or woman, in all the land, had a good word or 
 a kind thought for him. He had one peculiar habit, 
 which used to annoy me excessively every time I met 
 him. A man, named Imam Bakar, was once slain at 
 Pasir Tambang, at the mouth of the Tgmbeling River. 
 He incautiously touched hands in greeting with a 
 Chief, called To' Gajah, and the latter, seizing him in 
 an iron grip, held him fast, while he was stabbed to 
 death with spears. The memory of this event was 
 always present in the mind of Wan Teh, and his 
 method of shaking hands was the result of the recol- 
 lection. Accordingly, whenever a hand was extended 
 to him in salutation, he was wont to grip it firmly by 
 the thumb, and his victim needed no man to tell him 
 that the brittle bones, so seized, were ready to break, 
 almost at a touch. I have seen men fence with Wan 
 Teh, for some seconds at a time, like wrestlers trying 
 for a grip, but when their hands at length met, that of 
 Wan Teh always held the thumb of his friend in a 
 steely grasp. 
 
 Such then was the man who, in 1884, slew his wife 
 and a reputed c Young Honey,' under circumstances of 
 more than ordinary atrocity. 
 
 That year the King was celebrating the marriage 
 of his eldest daughter with the Ruler of a neighbour- 
 ing State, and all the Chiefs, from one end of Pahang 
 to the other, were, by his orders, gathered together at 
 
176 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the Capital. The festivities lasted for nearly a twelve- 
 month ; gambling of all kinds, varied by cock-fighting, 
 bull-matches, and top-spinning, engrossing the atten- 
 tion of the Court, while banquets and State Processions 
 served to fill up the chinks. In the vernacular, when 
 these Court Functions are going on, the King is said 
 to be 'working,' but when you come to look into tne 
 matter, you will find that the labour of the King is 
 strangely like the play of less privileged mortals. 
 
 During all the long months which are required to 
 make the celebration of the event complete, the King 
 keeps open house, to all his subjects, in the true feudal 
 manner. The richly spiced viands, the fat rice, the 
 sickening sweetmeats, which seem to be always lying 
 in wait for you, are cooked in the palaces, and served 
 without stint to the well-born guests in the Balai, or 
 Hall of State, and to the people crowding the sheds, 
 scattered up and down the King's compound. To 
 all appearances, he spares money as little as he econo- 
 mises time, but experience will teach you that even 
 the most generous of Malay Kings has an uncommonly 
 keen eye to the main chance ; and if you observe 
 things closely, you will presently see that, in spite of 
 the lavish expenditure, and the brave show, which are 
 designed to attract the attention of the spectators, the 
 months, during which the Court ceremonies last, are 
 to be counted as the great revenue-producing periods 
 of the King's reign. 
 
 In a Malay land, where all are at the mercy of a 
 single individual, whose early training has been care- 
 fully calculated to strengthen the passions, which he 
 has been taught to leave uncontrolled, it is expedient 
 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 177 
 
 to make unto yourself a friend of the occupant of the 
 Throne. The Chiefs know this, and the peasants 
 are accordingly ground down more thoroughly than 
 usual, in order that their immediate superiors may not 
 come to Court with empty hands. Where all bring f 
 gi r ts to the King, something more striking than 
 ordinary must be produced, if a man is to win the royal 
 notice; so the Chiefs vie one with another, till the 
 serpentine lines of tribute-bearers trail over miles of 
 country, as they wind through the fruit groves to the 
 palace of the King. So the Monarch waxes rich in 
 gear and coin, and the bulging storehouses hide from 
 his sight the faces of the plundered peasantry. Also, \ 
 at many Malay Courts, the King takes a percentage 
 on every coin staked on the gambling- mats, and thus 
 makes a pleasant profit out of the sins of his people. 
 
 Wan Teh went to PSkan with the other Princes 
 and Chiefs, leaving his house in the TgmbSling, and 
 all that it contained, under the charge of his cousin 
 Wan Koming. 
 
 The King who reigns but a single day, the Malays 
 say, is ever a more tyrannical taskmaster than one 
 whose rule is permanent ; and Wan Koming set him- 
 self to make his hay merrily while the sun shone in 
 the sky above his head. He knew that whenever his 
 cousin returned from the Capital, he would be forth- 
 w'fch stripped of his garb of brief authority, so he felt 
 that he had no time to waste. Therefore the hapless 
 folk in the TSmbSling found life, for the moment, 
 more than usually unlovely. 
 
 Wan Koming's rule was sufficiently unpopular 
 with all who had the ill fortune to live under it, — if 
 
 N 
 
178 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 possible, it was even more disliked than that of Wan 
 Teh himself, — but there was one man in the Tembeling 
 who found the bare sight of Wan Koming's temporary 
 power and greatness an insult to himself, and an out- 
 rage upon the District. This was Wan Beh, another 
 cousin of the Chief, who held very strongly the view 
 that he, and not Wan Koming, should have been 
 selected by Wan Teh to keep watch and ward over 
 the Tdmbeling during the absence of the latter at the 
 Capital. He found it impossible to resist Wan 
 Koming, for the latter was a strong man who had no 
 mind to brook interference from any man during the 
 term of his power, and as Wan Beh dared not slay him, 
 — which was of course the obvious thing to do, in 
 those days, to one who had earned your dislike, — he 
 asked himself in what manner he could most cunningly 
 and surely compass his downfall, and obtain authority 
 and sanction to deprive him of his life. 
 
 Having thought the whole matter out with con- 
 siderable care, Wan Beh set off for Pfckan, leaving 
 Wan Koming in undisturbed possession of the Tem- 
 beling. On his arrival at the Capital, he at once 
 sought out his kinsman, Wan Teh, and with many 
 tears, much well-assumed indignation, and a great 
 show of that keen shame, which was to be expected, 
 under the circumstances, in Wan Teh's near relative, 
 this Malay Iago haltingly told a lying tale of Wan 
 Koming, and of the manner in which he was fulfill- 
 ing the trust reposed in him by his absent Chief and 
 kinsman. 
 
 Wan Teh's principal wife, Wan Po', had been left 
 by her husband in Wan Koming's charge, a younger 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 179 
 
 and more favoured woman having been chosen to 
 accompany the Chief to Court ; and, at the request 
 of the husband, Wan Koming had taken up his 
 quarters in the big house at Machang Raja, which 
 had been given to Wan Po' for her dwelling-place. 
 This had been done in order that the lady's virtue and 
 her husband's honour might be guarded the more 
 securely ; for marital confidence is not a strong point 
 in the Malay character, and the women, in whom no 
 trust is placed, only consider themselves bound to be 
 faithful so long as the precautions taken render it 
 impossible for them to be otherwise. 
 
 These facts all tended to aid Wan Beh, and to give 
 vraisemblance to his tale. Wan Teh was such an evil 
 person himself that he naturally found little difficulty 
 in crediting the reported wickedness of his kinsfolk ; 
 and it must be confessed that no Malay's experience 
 is such as to warrant a disbelief in the extreme prob- 
 ability of misconduct on the part of any given man and 
 woman who happen to have a sufficient opportunity 
 for misbehaving themselves. Wan Po's husband was 
 therefore soon convinced of her guilt j but the one 
 redeeming virtue of courage, which helps to save the 
 pitiful character of Othello, was lacking in Wan Teh. 
 He had no desire to slay his Desdemona with his own 
 hands, and thereby to risk a rough and tumble with 
 his kinsman, Wan Koming, who was reputed to be a 
 handy man with his knife. If left to his own devices 
 Wan Teh would probably have contented himself with 
 divorcing the woman, and would have been content 
 to allow his wounded honour to nurse itself back into 
 convalescence as best it might. But Wan Beh was 
 
180 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 determined that his Chief should not suffer the matter 
 to drop, and he dinned the tale of his dishonour in 
 Wan Teh's ears morning, noon, and night, till the 
 injured husband began to fear that he would be forced, 
 very much against his will, to fight Wan Koming for 
 the credit of the family. He had very little stomach 
 for the fray, and when, of a sudden, Wan Beh volun- 
 teered to do the job for him, if he would grant him 
 the required authority, he jumped at the offer with the 
 frantic eagerness of a man who sees at last a safe way 
 out of an uncommonly tight and unpleasant place. 
 
 So Wan Beh, armed with verbal authority from 
 Wan Teh, punted up the Pahang River, on his return 
 journey to the Tembeli ng, having very successfully 
 accomplished all that he had desired to effect by a 
 visit to the Capital. He pushed on quickly, for he 
 was burning to be at Wan Koming, and upon the 
 evening of a certain day, he tied up his boat at Labu, 
 a village which is situated about half a mile down 
 stream from Machang Raja, where Wan Po* and 
 Wan Koming were living. 
 
 At this place Wan Beh and his people waited till 
 the night had fallen ; and as the moon was rising 
 slowly above the long black line of jungle on the 
 eastern bank of the river, he began a cautious and 
 noiseless ascent of the last half mile of running water 
 that still separated him from his victims. The boat- 
 men poled in the manner called by the Malays tanjak, 
 standing still at their work, dropping their poles noise- 
 lessly into the water, till they felt them touch bottom, 
 and then propelling the boat forward against the 
 current by throwing the weight of their bodies on to 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 181 
 
 the poles. Punting in this fashion, they reached 
 Machang Raja in about twenty minutes. 
 
 Arrived at his destination, Wan Beh landed with 
 about a dozen of his followers, bidding the remainder 
 of his people surround the house as soon as he had 
 effected an entrance. Wan Po's dwelling stood by 
 itself in a large grove of fruit-trees, and was surrounded 
 on three sides by open fields, no longer under cultiva- 
 tion, upon which the rank lalang grass grew six feet 
 high. The house itself consisted of a large main 
 building, with a door opening from it on to a narrow 
 verandah, that ran along the front facing the river. 
 This verandah was guarded by a low balustrade of 
 wattled bamboo, and the stair-ladder leading from it, at 
 the down-river end, was the only means of entrance to 
 and exit from the house. In common with every other 
 Malay dwelling in the Peninsula, the house was raised 
 from the ground on piles, some five or six feet high. 
 
 Wan Beh halted his followers at a distance of a few 
 yards from the house, and himself, accompanied by a 
 youngster, named Mamat, crept cautiously forward to 
 the foot of the ladder. They moved as noiselessly as 
 they knew how, when they reached the head of the 
 stairway, but laths of bamboo make a flooring upon 
 which it is not easy to tread without sound, and the 
 creaking of their footsteps awoke Wan Koming. 
 
 He was sleeping at the far end of the verandah, 
 under a mosquito-net, and near his head stood a damar 
 torch guttering dimly. He was alone. 
 
 When the sound of Wan Beh's approach disturbed 
 him, he sat up, pulled back the bed-curtains with one 
 hand, and peered into the gloom, asking who was at 
 
i8z STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 hand. The only answer was a spear-thrust from Wan 
 Beh, which pinned him to his mat, while Mamat ran 
 in, and completed the business by a dozen fierce stabs 
 at his twisting, writhing body. 
 
 Wan Koming died without a sound, save for a rend- 
 ing gulp or two, but Malays cannot slay any creature in 
 silence, and the angry, triumphant cries of Wan Beh 
 and Mamat speedily awoke those who slept within the 
 house. The murderers yelled defiance to the dead 
 body of their enemy, and dinned in ears, that had 
 ceased to hear for ever, the nature of the crime of 
 which they accused him, — a foul lie, as those who 
 shouted it knew full well. 
 
 Wan Po', within the house, heard their words, and in 
 a moment she realised that her life also was desired by the 
 ruffians without. Escape by the door was impossible, for 
 her enemies were already battering upon it, and wrestling 
 eagerly with its stout fastenings. There was no 
 other recognised means of exit, and her sole chance of 
 life lay in slipping through the flooring on to the 
 ground beneath. She seized a wood-knife, and hacked 
 with trembling hands at the plaited rattans, which 
 bound the floor-laths one to another. The house was 
 comparatively speaking a new one, and the bamboos 
 which formed the flooring were sound and hard. 
 The frightened women-folk, who were only com- 
 panions in the house, sat huddled together, too 
 paralysed with terror to dream of affording their 
 mistress the aid of which she stood so sorely in need. 
 And all the while, as Wan Po' fought for her life 
 with the bamboos, the curses and imprecations of those 
 who sought her blood, mingled with the heavy blows 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 183 
 
 under which the stout door was rapidly giving way. 
 In her excitement Wan Po' used her knife with little 
 skill, and when, at last, a hole had been made, she 
 strove to crush her body through it, before it was 
 large enough to well admit of the passage of a child. 
 The intensity of her fear gave unnatural strength to 
 her limbs, and she fought bravely with the cruel, rasp- 
 ing bamboos, between which she was soon tightly 
 wedged. The door bent inwards with the pressure 
 from without, creaked, groaned, and then fell from its 
 hinges with a mighty crash. Wan Beh and Mamat, 
 with half a dozen others at their heels, leaped eagerly 
 through the breach, and as at last Wan Po' wriggled 
 herself free, Wan Beh's spear-blade darted through the 
 gap in the flooring, above her head, and struck home on 
 the shoulder, near the base of the neck, the keen steel 
 penetrating deep into the breast. 
 
 Wan Beh and Mamat turned about, ran on to the 
 verandah, and thence leaped down the stair-ladder to 
 the ground, yelling to their fellows without not to 
 suffer the woman to escape. The men on guard, 
 however, were loth to stab a woman, so they contented 
 themselves with trying to head her back to the house, 
 when she broke cover from under it. She was sorely 
 wounded, and dazed with fear, so she ran despairingly 
 from one to another of the men, trying to flee from 
 all, weeping, entreating, screaming pitifully, until at 
 last she broke away and plunged into the lalang grass 
 that fringed the compound. But Wan Beh's spear-stab 
 had done its work, and in a moment she sank upon the 
 ground, and thereafter lay moaning and panting while 
 her life-blood ebbed from her. 
 
1 84 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Then they lifted her up, and bore her to the great 
 state bed within the house, upon which they laid her. 
 Next they fetched the body of Wan Koming, and 
 placed it at her side. When all this was done, they 
 summoned the elders of the village, that they might 
 look upon the corpses, swearing lustily the while that 
 thus the false friend and the faithless wife had paid for 
 their crime, dying in their wickedness, side by side, 
 while sleep still held them. 
 
 After the elders had departed, unconvinced, but 
 wisely silent as to what was in their minds, Wan Beh 
 and his people set to work and rested not till they had 
 constructed an efficient stockade. In this they took 
 up their quarters, and awaited the attack of Wan Ngah 
 and Wan Jebah, — the brothers of the woman they had 
 murdered, — which, they thought, might be confidently 
 expected. But these IVans^ when the news reached 
 them, were themselves in deadly fear, so they too 
 built stockades, some miles away from Machang Raja ; 
 — and there the matter rested. 
 
 The truth concerning these doings very soon 
 filtered out, and before long every soul in Pahang 
 knew the facts of the case ; but no efforts were made 
 to bring the murderers to justice. The only comment 
 made by the King, and repeated to me by one who 
 heard it, was rather characteristic of a Malay Ruler. 
 
 Some five years after these events transpired, a 
 number of Tembeling Chieftains brought presents of 
 varying value to their sovereign, and Wan Teh, our 
 Malay Othello, was seated in the royal audience- 
 chamber when these gifts were being examined. 
 
 4 Hast thou brought me no yellow wood for dagger- 
 
A MALAY OTHELLO 185 
 
 hilts, no gharu of a sweet odour, and no precious gums, 
 as these others have done ? ' the King inquired looking 
 with very little favour at Wan Teh. 
 
 The latter broke out into a torrent of voluble 
 protests and excuses j but he had only empty hands to 
 lift up in homage to the King His Master's brow 
 darkened. 
 
 ' Have a care, Wan Teh,' he said. * It were well 
 for thee to bring gifts, ay, and precious gifts, to me, 
 for a heavy charge has been preferred against thee, 
 and it were wiser to give of thy substance, than, per- 
 chance, to lose thy life ! * 
 
 Wan Teh understood the King's meaning, and 
 acted, I believe, upon the advice thus given to him ; 
 for though the tale is told, and the men who did the 
 deed are still living amongst us, no action was taken 
 during the days before the Protection of the British 
 Government came to pacify the troubled land, and the 
 White Men always suffer bygones to be bygones, and 
 begin to rule a new country with a slate washed clean 
 of all past records of crime. 
 
SOME NOTES AND THEORIES 
 CONCERNING LATAH 
 
 The Present and Past yield their secrets at last, 
 
 For we've mastered their scope and their plan ; 
 Moon and Sun, as they pass, must lie under our glass ; 
 
 We've measured the Earth to a span $ 
 Each hurrying star, that we marked from afar, 
 
 We've assayed and weighed as it ran j 
 Round about, high and low, all Creation we know ; 
 
 But, somehow, we never know MAN ! 
 
 So much has been written, of late years, by scientific 
 and medical men on the subject of the strange affliction 
 called latah y that a mere untrained observer, like 
 myself, who has gained such knowledge of the matter 
 as he may possess from living among the Malays, — 
 often in constant daily intercourse with latah folk, — 
 instead of being carefully educated in some recognised 
 school of pathology, cannot but experience some 
 feelings of diffidence, when he ventures to approach 
 the disputed questions of its nature and causation, and 
 to advance his own unscientific theories. I should 
 feel this in an even greater degree, were it not for the 
 fact, that as regards all that they have written on the 
 subject of <7/tf<?£-running, at any rate, the scientists 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 187 
 
 have, to my thinking, persistently made a radical 
 error from the beginning, starting with a false hypo- 
 thesis which has ended by landing them nowhere in 
 particular. 
 
 It is doubtless difficult for a medical man to always 
 bear in mind that a patient is a human being, in the 
 first instance, and a 'case* purely incidentally. Of 
 course there are many learned people nowadays who 
 hold that all crime is the result of brain trouble, but 
 most of them, I fancy, have not had to sit on the 
 bench, and thence to watch the crude, naked, ugly 
 motives, which quite logically prompt men to commit 
 crimes, peeping out of the actions of perfectly sane 
 people, who have kept certain objects very clearly and 
 steadily in view, and have worked for them slowly, 
 patiently, and steadfastly. The scientific theory anent 
 brain trouble and the causation of crime is often made 
 to look remarkably foolish when we see human nature 
 from the bench, and are able to bring thither a 
 tolerably sound knowledge of the inside — Us coulisses — 
 of native life and character. In the same way, when 
 one has come a great deal into personal contact with 
 Malays as men, the study of amok as purely a question 
 of pathology begins to look almost equally foolish. In 
 a story called c The Amok of Da to' Kaya Biji Derja,' 
 I have explained at some length what I believe to be 
 the real causes of amok-running, and I will not go 
 over this ground again, further than by saying that 
 these are to be looked for in events which tend to 
 produce very intelligible psychological conditions, in 
 the man who is affected by them, rather than in any 
 obscure disorders of the brain. Some may, perhaps, 
 
188 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 say that the two are inseparable ; but this is a state- 
 ment which I, for one, am not prepared to accept until 
 far more convincing proofs of the entire dependence of 
 the moral nature upon physical conditions, than any at 
 present in our possession, have been furnished to us. 
 No one of course denies that physical disorders often 
 breed moral troubles, but the latter may result from 
 causes quite distinct from anything connected with 
 the health of the body, and, after very carefully 
 studying the subject, I am convinced that the typical 
 amok comes under this latter category. 
 
 Latah is an affliction which cannot so easily be 
 explained by psychology, and undoubtedly it is a 
 matter which must largely be treated as a question of 
 pathology. None the less, it is possible that it too 
 may have its psychological side, which may require to 
 be examined and analysed if the nature of the affliction 
 is to be thoroughly understood. 
 
 Everybody who is interested in the Malay Penin- 
 sula has heard of ldtah y and even those amongst us 
 who have not gone very far afield are, many of them, 
 familiar with its manifestations. There are other 
 some, however, who may possibly never have seen 
 any one who is afflicted in this way, and for their 
 benefit, and as illustrations, which I shall need to point 
 the remarks I have to make on the subject, I will 
 describe one or two cases which have come under my 
 own notice, and which I have had opportunities of 
 watching closely, and for extended periods of time. 
 Before doing so, however, there are a few general 
 remarks on the subject which will be necessary for 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 189 
 
 the complete understanding of what follows, by those 
 who have no previous experience of latah and latah 
 people. 
 
 Latah is an affliction, a disease, one hardly knows 
 what name to give it,' which causes certain men and 
 women to lose their self-control, for longer or shorter 
 periods, as the case may be, whenever they are startled, 
 or receive any sudden shock. While in this condition 
 they appear to be unable to realise their own identity, 
 or to employ any but imitative faculties, though they 
 very frequently, nay, almost invariably, make use of 
 villainously bad language, without any one prompting 
 them to do sofj Any person who chances to attract 
 their attention, at such times, can make them do any 
 action by simply feigning to do it himself by a gesture. 
 A complete stranger, by startling a latah man or 
 woman, can induce the condition, of which I speak, 
 accidentally, and without exercising any effort of will. 
 This should be borne in mind, for though latah 
 resembles hypnotic suggestion in many respects, it 
 differs from it in the important respect that it in no 
 way depends upon an original voluntary surrender of 
 the will-power. 
 
 The most typical case of latah y within my ex- 
 perience, was that of a SSlangor Malay named Sat, 
 who, in 1887 and 1888, cooked the rice for me, and 
 for the twenty or thirty Malays who were then living 
 in my house at Pgkan. He was a great, big, heavy- 
 featured, large -boned, clumsily -built fellow, very 
 stolid, very stupid, very phlegmatic, the last person 
 in the world, one would have thought, to be the 
 victim of any nervous disorder. To the lay mind 
 
190 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 any abnormal degree of sensitiveness should be accom- 
 panied by a somewhat etherial physique, a delicate 
 skin, a blue-veined forehead, tiny hands and feet, and a 
 highly strung organisation/ To none of these things 
 could poor Sat lay any sort of claim, and though no 
 doubt Doctors will say that these are by no means 
 invariable accompaniments of a highly nervous tempera- 
 ment, I must own that Sat looked vastly improbable as 
 the possessor of anything so rarefied. All the other 
 Malays in my household were accustomed to put upon 
 Sat most unmercifully, making him do almost the 
 whole of the work that should rightly have been 
 shared between them all. Sat never appeared to resent 
 this arrangement, and he never made any complaint to 
 me then, or at any later time, of the manner in which 
 his fellows treated him. He spent almost the whole 
 of his day in the great ramshackle room, built out 
 over the river on supporting piles of nibong y in which 
 the large wooden box filled with baked clay, which 
 served as our simple cooking - range, occupied the 
 chief place in the centre of the lath floor. When the 
 others were most noisy, Sat was still silent. When 
 some of my men boasted of the great deeds they had 
 performed in the old days in Selangor, Sat would 
 listen obediently to the thrice-told tales, stolidly but 
 without excitement. Most of the other men had 
 their own particular chums, but Sat was always solitary, 
 and he never appeared to have any ideas, in that great 
 bullet head of his, which he desired to exchange with 
 his neighbours. 
 
 He had been an inmate of my hut for nearly a year 
 before any one discovered that he was latah. The fact 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 191 
 
 came to light quite accidentally, Sat being startled out of 
 his self-possession by the sudden capsizing of a cooking- 
 pot over which he was watching. A boy, who chanced 
 to be alone in the cook-room with Sat, made an in- 
 stinctive grab at the fallen rice-pot, and in an instant 
 Sat's hand was in the fire, grasping the burning-hot 
 metal. He withdrew his flayed fingers quickly, as the 
 pin brought to him consciousness of what he had done, 
 and he carried them at once to his head, — that queer, 
 groping, scratching motion, which is an invariable 
 accompaniment of latah^ — and the boy at his side 
 needed no man to tell him that Sat was a victim 
 to that extraordinary affliction. With the wanton 
 cruelty and mischief of his age, the boy once more 
 made a feint at the smoking rice-pot, and again Sat's 
 fingers glued themselves, for a moment, to the scalding 
 metal, and then returned aimlessly to his head. I do 
 not know how many times this was repeated, but Sat's 
 fingers were in a terribly lacerated condition when, at 
 last, some one chanced to enter the cook-room, and 
 interfered to prevent the continuation of Sat's torture. 
 After that, though I did all I could to protect him from 
 molestation, Sat was never, I fancy, left in peace for 
 long by the other men of my household. Gradually, 
 in the course of a couple of months or so, this man, 
 who for nearly a year had shown no signs of being the 
 victim of any nervous disorder, was reduced to a really 
 pitiable condition. The occasional latah seizures, 
 which were at first induced by the persecutions of 
 his fellows, ceased to be abnormal phases, and became 
 the chronic condition of his mind. If one spoke to 
 him, with no matter how much gentleness, he would 
 
192 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 repeat the words addressed to him over and over again, 
 aimlessly, unintelligently, without apparently com- 
 prehending their meaning, and that wandering, 
 groping hand of his would steal to his head, and 
 scratch helplessly at his close- cropped hair. 'Sat! 
 Listen, Sat ! ' I would say to him, as quietly and 
 reassuringly as I knew how, 'Listen, no man is 
 worrying thee. Try to listen to what I say to 
 thee.' ' Listen to what I say to thee ! * Sat would 
 make answer, and then very low, in a whisper under 
 his breath, ' Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, what I 
 say to thee.' 
 
 I instituted a fine for any one who was found 
 annoying Sat, but it was almost impossible to get a 
 conviction, for the unfortunate victim could never say 
 who the man was who had teased him into a more than 
 usually severe paroxysm of latah. 
 
 It was about this time that a number of other 
 people in my household began to develop signs of 
 the affliction. I must not be understood as suggesting 
 that they became infected with latah^ for on inquiry I 
 found that they had one and all been subject to 
 occasional seizures, when anything chanced to startle 
 them badly, long before they joined my people, but the 
 presence of so complete a slave to the affliction as poor 
 Sat seemed to cause them to lose the control which 
 they had hitherto contrived to exercise over themselves. 
 One of the older men among my people, — Pa' Chim, we 
 called him, — a Malay of birth, and of some standing 
 with his fellows, came to me and begged that I would 
 see that no one did anything to give him a sudden 
 start, since, he said, only a very little was needed to 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 193 
 
 make him latah also. Yet this man neither then nor 
 later showed any signs of the affliction. He probably 
 exercised a considerable amount of self-control, but I 
 always knew that in a moment I could have broken 
 through his guard, and have startled him into as com- 
 plete a seizure of latah as those of which Sat was the 
 victim. 
 
 One day a curious thing happened, which I will 
 relate as it occurred, though I only witnessed the end 
 of the incident. A Trengganu Malay, who had a cousin 
 among my people, came in to visit his relative, and 
 chanced to find no one but Sat in the house. The latter 
 invited the Trengganu man to partake of sirihj and they 
 squatted down on the pentas y or raised eating platform, 
 in the centre of the house, with the sirih-box between 
 them. The villainous small boy who had first discovered 
 Sat's weakness, was playing about in the room, and in 
 some unholy way he had learned that the Trengganu 
 visitor was also a latah subject. He seized a long rattan, 
 which I think was kept in the room by one of the older 
 men for his occasional correction, and smote the sirih- 
 box, as it lay between the two betel-chewers, making the 
 wooden covering resound with the smart blow. The 
 sudden and unexpected noise at once deprived both 
 men of all power of self-restraint. Each gave a sharp 
 cry, and a 'jump,' to use the colloquial expression, and, 
 since there was nothing to distract their attention from 
 one another, they fell to imitating each the other's 
 gestures. For nearly half an hour, so far as I could 
 judge from what I learned later, these two men sat 
 opposite to one another, gesticulating wildly and aim- 
 lessly, using the most filthy language, and rocking 
 
194 STVDIES IN BROWN HVMAN1TY 
 
 their bodies to and fro. They never took their eyes 
 off one another for sufficient time for the strange 
 influence to be broken, and, at length, utterly worn 
 out and exhausted, first Sat, and then the Trengganu 
 man fell over, on the platform, in fits, foaming horribly 
 at the mouth with thin white flakes of foam. Men 
 came running to me for help, many having witnessed 
 the end of this strange scene, and when I had doctored 
 Sat and his companion back to consciousness, I tried 
 to ascertain from them how they had come to fall 
 victims to this seizure. They could tell me nothing, 
 however, for they only remembered that before their 
 trouble came upon them they had been chewing betel- 
 nut. The matter was sifted out, none the less, and 
 the small boy who had been the cause of the trouble 
 again made the acquaintance of the piece of rattan, 
 and to judge by his cries, found the interview an 
 unusually painful one. 
 
 I have known so many cases of Idtah y during the 
 years that I have spent wandering up and down the 
 Peninsula, that I am tempted to multiply my instances 
 indefinitely. The Malays have many tales of latah 
 folk who have terrified a tiger into panic-stricken flight 
 by imitating his every motion, and impressing him 
 thereby with their complete absence of fear. I cannot 
 say whether there is any sort of truth in these stories, 
 but I can see no good reason for doubting them, since 
 a sudden start, such as a tiger might well be expected 
 to give to any one who came upon him unawares, would 
 certainly induce a paroxysm of latah in a man suffering 
 from the affliction, and a ludicrous caricature of the 
 tiger's gait and movements would as certainly follow. 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 195 
 
 A tiger might well be supposed to be frightened out 
 of his life by such an unwonted spectacle. I have 
 myself seen a woman, stiff-jointed, and well stricken in 
 years, make violent and ungainly efforts to imitate the 
 motion of a bicycle, just as I once saw an old hag strip 
 off her last scanty garment because a chance passer-by, 
 who knew her infirmity, made a gesture as though he 
 was about to undress himself. But when one or two 
 examples have been given, the main features of this 
 affliction are made as clear to the reader as they would 
 be after a thousand instances had been examined, for 
 one latah person is very like another, the only difference 
 between them being one of degree. 
 
 I now come to the unscientific notions and theories 
 of which, as I warned my readers at the beginning of 
 this paper, I propose to unburden myself. 
 
 It has been remarked that people afflicted with 
 latah are as often found among the well fed and 
 gently nurtured, as among the poor and indigent. 
 Also that they are more frequently of the female 
 than of the male sex, and I may add that, so far 
 as my experience goes, they are invariably adults. 
 During the last fourteen years I have seen a great 
 deal of all classes of Malays, and I will go further 
 than all this, and say that to the best of my belief 
 every adult Malay of either sex is to some extent latah, 
 I do not mean to imply that they are all, or nearly all, 
 advanced instances of the affliction, such as those of 
 which I have been speaking, but I do most emphatically 
 state my belief that almost any Malay is capable of de- 
 veloping into a typical case of latah y if he be sufficiently 
 persecuted, teased, and harassed. To induce rudi- 
 
196 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 mentary symptoms of latah in a Malay it is only 
 necessary to startle him violently. Most human 
 beings can be made to start or 'jump* involuntarily 
 at a sudden noise, such as that caused by the loud 
 slamming of a door, and Malays are peculiarly liable 
 to these temporary nervous surrenders of self-control 
 and of will-power, for in this light these involuntary 
 movements must be regarded. The man who is the 
 victim of a sudden fright or nervous shock loses for 
 a moment all control over his body, as completely as 
 does the Malay on whom latah has won its firmest 
 grip. The difference which exists between him and 
 the latah man is only one of degree, and that difference 
 may often be more trifling than that which separates 
 one latah subject from another. Imagine a start or 
 'jump* indefinitely prolonged, and you have the latah 
 state, about which so much has been said and written. 
 Any one who is inclined to doubt that incipient 
 latah lies hidden somewhere in most pu re - blooded 
 Malays, can experimentalise upon the vile bodies of 
 any chance native who comes in their way. For 
 choice I would recommend a villager, one who has 
 lived all his life among other Malays, and who has not 
 had his sensations blunted by much intercourse with 
 White Men. Give him a sudden dig in the ribs when 
 he knows not that any one is at hand, and though he 
 is not latah in the ordinary sense of the term, as 
 Europeans understand its meaning, he will not only 
 give a violent start, but will also shoot out some 
 exceedingly coarse word, for which, in all probability 
 he will forthwith apologise. When asked for an 
 explanation, he will say simply that he was startled, 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 197 
 
 and that a sudden shock always makes him latah ; for 
 the Malays see no reason for applying this word 
 exclusively to those who suffer from the affliction in 
 its more advanced and exaggerated forms. Unless you 
 know the Malay upon whom you propose to experi- 
 ment pretty intimately, I counsel you to be cautious 
 how you try to extend your knowledge at his expense. 
 His passionate love of science will not probably equal 
 your own, and it is possible that then or later he may 
 think it advisable to try what effect his knife will have 
 on your ribs, which after all, from his point of view, is 
 a sufficiently interesting experiment in its way. 
 
 As I have had occasion to say more than once in 
 this paper, I have no pretensions to be regarded as a 
 scientific man, and, therefore, in so far as the pathology 
 of latah is concerned, I ask rather than offer an 
 explanation ; but any one who desires to really account 
 for this affliction must, I am convinced, begin by 
 analysing and examining and explaining the pathology 
 of the common start or 'jump,' to which we are all 
 in a lesser or a greater degree subject. This must be 
 the starting-point, and when this has been accounted 
 for by some workable hypothesis, — supposing always 
 that it admits of explanation at all irt the present state 
 of medical science, — then, and not till then, we may 
 hope to arrive at some reason that must undoubtedly 
 lie at the back of the fact that Malays, more than all 
 other races of men, are so peculiarly liable to this 
 species of seizure in its most exaggerated forms. 
 
 In the meantime, there are one or two suggestions 
 that may be made, as tending to throw light upon the 
 latter point. It is within the experience of every 
 
198 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 European who has had occasion to sojourn long in the 
 Malay Peninsula, that his nerves have suffered some- 
 what from the 'climate.' He notices, no matter how 
 abstemious he may be in his habits, that he is apt to 
 grow what he calls 'jumpy.' He starts violently at 
 any sudden noise ; finds it difficult to control the 
 trembling of his hands in moments of strong excite- 
 ment ; and is generally speaking less master of his 
 will, and over the movements of his body, than is his 
 wont. Now this may be the effect of any tropical 
 climate upon the system of a European ; to some extent 
 this is no doubt the case, but I cannot but fancy that 
 this peculiar 'jumpiness' is more universal and more 
 severe in the Peninsula and in the Archipelago than in 
 other parts of the World. If this is so, we have at once 
 a tangible reason that may perhaps account for the 
 extraordinary sensitiveness of the Malays to sudden 
 sounds and shocks. If within a year or two Europeans 
 are able to note a marked change in their ability to 
 bear shocks and noises without 'jumping out of their 
 skins,' is it not easy to understand that a race, which 
 has inhabited these regions for many generations, is 
 very likely to have become morbidly susceptible to 
 these things ? Once more, it is for the medical 
 authorities to say why the climate of the Malay Penin- 
 sula and Archipelago should have this strange effect 
 upon the nervous systems of the people who live in it. 
 There are two other matters to be considered 
 before I conclude these somewhat disconnected remarks 
 upon latah. The first of these is the question that 
 must naturally present itself, as to why adults alone are 
 subject to this affliction. The most natural explana- 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 199 
 
 tion would seem to be, that in the young the nervous 
 system is not sufficiently developed to admit of this 
 abnormal sensitiveness being experienced in its full 
 force. It may be objected that little children start as 
 readily at sudden noises as do adults, but I think that 
 this cannot be regarded as in any way tending to 
 weaken the probability of the suggestion that I have 
 offered. The start or 'jumps,' as I have said, is to be 
 looked upon as the germ from which latah springs ; 
 and when we take into consideration the vast changes 
 to the whole nervous organisation that occur at the 
 age of puberty, it is easily conceivable that the seed of 
 the affliction may have no chance of coming to 
 maturity, so to speak, until the nerves of a boy or girl 
 have passed their rudimentary stages. All this is the 
 merest speculation, and I only put forward the hypo- 
 thesis as a suggestion, on the validity of which some 
 expert can finally pronounce. 
 
 The second point is, in some ways, more difficult 
 to deal with. Every one who has spoken or written 
 on the subject of latah^ has drawn especial attention 
 to the manner in which latah folk invariably try to 
 imitate the actions, and often the very words, of those 
 who happen to attract their attention while they are 
 subject to one of their seizures. Why, it will be 
 asked, if latah is really only a prolonged start or 
 'jump,' should this feature so constantly recur ? To 
 this I reply that the latah subject, having for the time 
 being completely lost all controlling power over his 
 will, is bereft of the faculty which is wont to regulate 
 the motions of his body. The will is incapable of 
 performing its proper functions ; and the helpless body, 
 
200 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 abandoned to its own devices, looks about it for some- 
 thing to serve it as a guide. In this extremity, it 
 seizes upon the first moving object that catches its 
 sight, and follows slavishly every movement which it 
 makes. That there is no question of a weak will 
 surrendering itself to some stronger brain, is amply 
 proved by the fact that a latah person will mimic the 
 swaying motion of wind-shaken boughs just as readily 
 as the actions of a human being, — will follow their 
 movements in preference to those of a man, indeed, if 
 the former chance to attract his attention before the 
 latter. This shows that it is not a question of 
 surrender of will so much as a complete temporary 
 paralysis of the will-power, — similar, be it noted, to 
 that from which a man suffers when he performs some 
 wholly involuntary action because his will is, for a 
 moment, stunned by a sudden noise or shock. It is 
 not necessary to insist upon the fact that the actions of 
 a latah man, while he is in the grip of the affliction, 
 are in no sense voluntary. Sat did not thrust his hand 
 into the flame, or lay it upon the burning cooking-pot, 
 because he found it amusing ; and no woman of the 
 Malays, — the race beyond all others which is particular 
 to a fault about all matters of personal modesty, — 
 willingly dispenses with her last garment, in a public 
 place, at the casual invitation of a passing stranger. 
 Still less does a hag, who is racked with rheumatism, 
 try to prance along the high road in imitation of a 
 bicycle out of pure gaiete de coeur. The cause to 
 which I have attributed the alacrity of the latah 
 subject to imitate the actions of the moving things 
 about him may not be the correct one, but it is, at any 
 
THEORIES CONCERNING LATAH 201 
 
 rate, I venture to think, a more likely and accountable 
 one than any that I have hitherto seen advanced by 
 writers on this subject. 
 
 I have spoken earlier in this paper of the possibility 
 of the psychological condition of the latah man being, 
 to some extent, accountable for his affliction. This, 
 however, can only be guess-work, until such time as 
 we know infinitely more about the real nature of the 
 infirmity than we do at present. In the meanwhile, 
 these notes may perhaps enable some more scientific 
 observer than myself to direct his researches in the 
 right course, with a view to discovering the true 
 nature of what, rightly regarded, is a racial rather than 
 an individual weakness. 
 
THE WEEDING OF THE TARES 
 
 Kneel ilown, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, 
 
 Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth 
 
 Upon the sides of mirth, 
 
 Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears' 
 
 Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing; 
 
 Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs 
 
 Upon the flesh to cleave, 
 
 Set pains therein and many a grievous thing, 
 
 And many sorrows after each his wise 
 
 For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve. 
 
 Swinburne. 
 
 One morning, some fifteen years ago, old Mat Drus, 
 bare to the waist, sat cross-legged in the doorway of 
 his house, in the little sleepy village of Kedondong 
 on the banks of the Pahang River. A single long 
 blade of lalang grass was bound about his forehead, to 
 save appearances, — for all men know that it is un- 
 mannerly to go with the head uncovered, and Mat 
 Drus had mislaid his head-kerchief. His grizzled hair 
 stood up stiffly above the bright green of the grass- 
 blade ; his cheeks were furrowed with wrinkles ; and 
 his eyes were old, and dull, and patient, — the eyes of 
 the driven peasant, the cattle of mankind. His lips, 
 red with the stain of the areca-nut, bulged over a 
 
THE WEEDING OF THE TARES 203 
 
 damp quid of coarse tobacco, shredded fine, and rolled 
 into a ball the size of a marble. His jaws worked 
 mechanically, chewing the betel -nut, and his hands 
 were busy with a little brass tube, in which he was 
 crushing up a fresh quid, for his teeth were old and 
 ragged, and had long been powerless to masticate the 
 nut without artificial aid. The fowls clucked and 
 scratched about the litter of trash with which the 
 space before the house was strewn ; and a monkey, of 
 the species called brok^ which the Malays train to pluck 
 cocoa-nuts, sat on a box fixed to the top of an upright 
 pole, searching diligently for fleas, with the restlessness 
 of its kind, and occasionally emitting a plaintive, 
 mournful cry. In the dim interior of the house, the 
 voices of the women could be heard, amid the recurring 
 clack of crockery ; and the fresh, pure, light-hearted 
 laugh of a very young girl rippled out constantly, 
 the soft and tender cadence of her tones contrasting 
 pleasantly with the harsher notes of her older com- 
 panion. 
 
 Presently a gaily dressed youngster entered the 
 compound. He carried a kris at his belt, and in his 
 hand was a short sword, with a sheath of polished 
 wood. 
 
 ' O Che' Mat Drus ! ' cried the new-comer, as soon 
 as he caught sight of the old man in the doorway. 
 
 'What thing is it ? * asked the latter, pausing in the 
 preparation of his quid of betel-nut. 
 
 1 The Chief sends greetings to thee, and bids thee 
 come on the morrow's morn to the rice-field, thee and 
 thine, to aid in plucking the weeds from amid the 
 standing crop.' 
 
20 4 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 ' It is well,' said Che' Mat Drus, resuming his 
 pounding stolidly. 
 
 'Also the Chief sends word that no one of thy 
 household is to remain behind. The women-folk also 
 are to come, even down to the girl Minah, who has 
 newly wedded thy son Daman.' 
 
 c If there be no sickness, calamity, or impediment 
 we will come,' said Mat Drus, with the caution of the 
 Oriental. 
 
 But here a third voice took part in the conversation 
 — a voice shrill, and harsh, and angry, which ran up 
 the scale to a painful pitch, and broke queerly on the 
 higher notes. 
 
 1 Hast thou the heart, Kria, to bring this message 
 to my man ? ' it cried. ' We both are of age, we both 
 know and understand. The Chief shall die by a 
 spear cast from afar, shall die vomiting blood, shall die 
 a violent death, and thou also, thou who art but the 
 hunting dog of the Chief.' 
 
 ' Peace ! Peace ! ' cried Mat Drus, in a voice 
 betokening an extremity of fear. c Hold thy peace, 
 woman without shame. And Kria do thou tell the 
 Chief that we will come even as he bids us, and heed 
 not the words of this so childish woman of mine.' 
 
 i Indeed,' said Kria, c I cannot trouble me to bandy 
 words with a hag, but the Chief will be wroth if he 
 learns of the things which thy woman hath spoken.' 
 
 c They matter not, the words of a woman who is 
 childish,' said Mat Drus uneasily. 'Speak not of them 
 to the Chief.' 
 
 c Then lend me thy spear with the silver hasp at 
 the base of the blade ! ' said Kria, and when he had 
 
THE WEEDING OF THE TARES 205 
 
 obtained possession of this weapon, which he had long 
 coveted, he swaggered off to pass the word to other 
 villagers that the Chief required their aid to weed his 
 rice crop. 
 
 The sun stood high in the heavens, its rays beating 
 down pitilessly upon the broad expanse of rice-field. 
 The foot -high spears of pddi received the heat and 
 refracted it, while the heat -haze danced thin, and 
 restless, and transparent over the flatness of the 
 cultivated land. The weeders, with their sarongs 
 wound turban -wise about their heads, for protection 
 against the fierce sun, squatted at their work, men, 
 women, and little children, the perpendicular rays 
 dwarfing their shadows into malformed shapeless 
 patches. 
 
 Near the centre of the field a hut had been erected, 
 walled and thatched with palm-leaves, and the interior 
 was gay with many-coloured hangings surrounding the 
 mat and pillows of the Chief. Numerous brass trays 
 containing food specially prepared for the occasion lay 
 upon the flooring. In the interior of the Malay 
 Peninsula, the luxury accessible to even the richest 
 and most powerful natives is of a somewhat primitive 
 order ; but to the eyes of the simple villagers, the 
 interior of this hut presented as high a degree of 
 civilisation, as did the chateau of a French noble 
 before '89 to the peasant who dwelt on his estate. 
 
 About noon the Chief emerged from the hut, and 
 began a tour of inspection among the weeders, throwing 
 a word to one or another, and staring boldly at the 
 women, with the air of a farmer apprizing his stock. 
 
206 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Haifa dozen fully-armed youths, dressed brilliantly in 
 many-coloured silks, followed at the heels of their 
 master. 
 
 Mat Drus and his son Daman, with three or four 
 women, sat weeding near the edge of the jungle, and 
 Minah, the girl who had recently married Daman, 
 edged her way towards her husband, as the Chief 
 drew near. 
 
 ' What is the news, Mat Drus ? ' asked the harsh, 
 coarse voice of their Master. 
 
 1 The news is good, O Chief,' replied Mat Drus, 
 stopping his work, and turning submissively towards 
 the speaker. All the rest of the little party acted in like 
 manner, and the women-folk, squatting humbly with 
 their men, bowed down their heads to avoid the 
 hungry eyes of the Chief. 
 
 ' Who is this child ? ' asked the great man, pointing 
 to Minah. 
 
 1 She is the wife of thy servant's son,' replied Mat 
 Drus. 
 
 c Whose daughter is she ? ' 
 
 c She is thy servant's daughter,' said an old and 
 ill-favoured woman, who squatted at Mat Drus's 
 elbow. 
 
 1 Verily a salak fruit ! ' cried the Chief. c An ugly 
 tree, thorny and thin art thou, but thou hast borne a 
 pretty luscious fruit.' 
 
 The weeders laughed obsequiously. 
 
 c How clever are the words of the Chief ! ' ejaculated 
 Mat Drus, in a voice carefully calculated to reach the 
 ears of the man he feared. The Chief did not even 
 condescend to glance at him. 
 
THE WEEDING OF THE TARES 207 
 
 4 Sweet Fruit,' he said addressing Minah. c Thou 
 art thirsty with thy toil. Come to my hut, and I 
 will give thee luscious sweetmeats to slake thy little 
 parched throat.' 
 
 c Don't want to,' mumbled the girl. 
 
 1 Nay come, I bid thee,' said the Chief. 
 
 'Go, girl,' said the mother. 
 
 ' Don't want to,' repeated Minah, nestling more 
 closely to Daman, as though seeking his protection. 
 
 'What meaneth this?' cried the Chief, whose 
 eyes began to wax red. 'Come when I bid thee, 
 thou daughter of an evil mother ! ' 
 
 'She is afraid,' said Mat Drus pleadingly. 'Be 
 not angry, O Chief, she is very young, and her fears 
 are great.' 
 
 ' May she die a violent death ! ' yelled the Chief. 
 ' Come ! Wait but a moment, and thou shalt be 
 dragged thither ! ' 
 
 'Have patience, O Chief!' said Daman sulkily. 
 ' Let her be. She desires not to go.' 
 
 ' Arrogant one ! ' screamed the Chief. ' Thou art 
 indeed a brave man to dare to thwart me. Thou shalt 
 aid to drag her to my hut.' 
 
 Daman leaped to his feet. Like the rest of his 
 kindred, he had squatted humbly in the dust during all 
 the talk, — a serf in the presence of his lord, — but now 
 he stood erect, an equal facing an equal, a man defend- 
 ing his women-folk from one who sought to put 
 shame upon them. 
 
 ' Peace, Daman ! Have patience ! ' cried Mat Drus 
 nervously, but his son had no thought to spare for 
 any save the Chief just then. His clear, young eyes 
 
208 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 looked boldly and angrily into the sodden, brutal, 
 bloodshot orbs, set in the coarse self-indulgent face of 
 his enemy, and the Chief faltered and quailed before 
 his gaze. Daman's hand went to his dagger-hilt 
 with a sounding slap, and the Chief reeled hastily 
 backwards, nearly losing his footing, as he stepped 
 blindly. His youths surged up around him, and the 
 coward felt his courage returning to him, when he 
 realised that they were at hand. No word was spoken 
 for a little space, as the enemies eyed one another, 
 and Minah, crouching close to Daman's mother, 
 whimpered softly, though a thrill of love and admira- 
 tion ran through her, as she marked the bearing of her 
 husband. 
 
 Suddenly Kria, who stood somewhat to the right 
 of the Chief, raised his arm in act to throw, and the 
 bright sunlight glinted for a moment on the naked 
 blade of a spear, — a spear with a silver hasp, which, 
 until lately, had been the property of Daman's father. 
 Kria's eye sought that of the Chief, and the latter 
 signalled to him to cast his weapon. The long spear- 
 handle, with its shining tip, flew forward with 
 incredible velocity, like a snake in the act of striking, 
 but Daman leaped aside, and the weapon hissed harm- 
 lessly past him. 
 
 4 Strike with the Paralyser ! ' cried the Chief, and 
 at the word one of his youths ran forward, and stabbed 
 swiftly and shrewdly at Daman with a long uncanny- 
 looking weapon. It was a forked spear with two 
 barbed blades of unequal length, and, after vain attempts 
 to avoid the thrusts of his enemy, Daman at length 
 took the point in his chest. He was now powerless, 
 
THE WEEDING OF THE TARES 209 
 
 for the barbed tip could not be withdrawn, and the 
 sharp point of the shorter blade prevented him from 
 running up the spear, and killing his man, as has 
 frequently been done in the Peninsula by one mortally 
 stricken. 
 
 The women screamed shrilly, and Minah sought 
 to run to her man's aid, but those about her held her 
 fast, while she shrieked in an agony of horror. The 
 weeders clustered around, murmuring sullenly, but 
 none dared interfere, and above all the tumult sounded 
 the harsh, coarse laugh of the Chief. 
 
 c Verily a fish at the end of a fish-spear ! Watch 
 him writhe and wriggle ! ' he cried. c Do not kill 
 him until we have had our sport with him.' 
 
 But Daman who had never uttered a sound, was not 
 a man to die without a struggle. He soon found that 
 it was impossible for him to wrench the barbed spear 
 from his breast, and seeing this, he threw his kris 
 violently in the face of the man who had stabbed him. 
 The snaky blade flew straight as a dart, and the tip 
 ripped open the cheek and eye-lid of Daman's enemy. 
 The latter dropped the end of the spear, which he had 
 hitherto held firmly in both hands, and Daman now 
 strove manfully, in spite of the agony it occasioned 
 him, to wrench the blade free. This was an unex- 
 pected turn for affairs to take, and the Chief's laughter 
 stopped suddenly. 
 
 'Slay him ! Slay him ! ' he yelled to his men, and, 
 at the word, Kria, who had recovered his weapon, 
 stabbed Daman full in the throat, with the broad 
 spear-blade. The murdered man sank to the ground 
 with a thick, sick cough, and no sooner was he down, 
 
 p 
 
210 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 than the Chiefs youths rushed in to wet their blades 
 in his shuddering flesh. 
 
 Minah, wild with fear, threw herself prostrate upon 
 the ground, seeking to shut out the sight with her 
 tightly clasped hands, and, as she lay on the warm 
 earth, the wailing of the women, the rough voices of 
 the men, and the soft swish of the steel piercing the 
 now lifeless body of her husband, told her that all was 
 over. 
 
 The day waned, darkness shut down over the land, 
 and the moon rose above the broad, still river, pale and 
 passionless, looking calmly down upon a world which, 
 bathed in her rays, seemed unutterably peaceful and 
 serene. But all through that night, and for many 
 days and nights to come, the pitiful wailing of a girl 
 broke the stillness of the silent hours, in the neighbour- 
 hood of the Chiefs compound. It was only Minah 
 mourning for her dead, and taking more time than her 
 friends thought altogether necessary to become ac- 
 customed to her new surroundings, as one of the 
 household of the Chief. 
 
 Her new lord was not unnaturally annoyed by her 
 senseless clamour ; and beating, he discovered, tended 
 only to increase the nuisance. But crumpled rose- 
 leaves are to be met with in every bed of flowers, and 
 the Chief had, at any rate, the satisfaction of knowing 
 that in future the season of weeding would be a merry 
 time for him, and that all would be conducted seemly 
 and orderly, without any risk of his peace or his 
 pleasure being further disturbed by rude and vulgar 
 brawls. 
 
IN THE RUSH OF MANY WATERS 
 
 Our homes are whelmed 'neath a watery waste, 
 
 Bestir ye, our Thousands, and flee ! 
 Crawl, wriggle, and struggle, and haste, O haste ! 
 
 To the bough, and the branch, and the tree. 
 The purring flood is around and about, 
 
 His waters are angry and red, 
 Quick ! Join in the tail of the labouring route, 
 
 Ere half of our Thousands be dead ! 
 
 The Song of the Ants. 
 
 The broad Perak River was rolling down in flood. 
 For two days its waters had been rising steadily, and 
 my boat had sidled up stream, hugging the jungle- 
 covered bank, towards which the steersman kept her 
 head pointed, while three or four squealing Malays 
 propelled her by means of forked poles thrust firmly 
 against the yielding, swaying branches, and the leafy 
 shrubs. As the poles were withdrawn the boat would 
 move forward, reeling tipsily against the greenery of 
 the banks, so that protruding boughs forced their way 
 under the palm-leaf roof, scratching my face and hands 
 as I lay there, and littering my mat with heaps of 
 sodden trash. Ants and other creeping things had 
 come aboard in their thousands, running over me with 
 
212 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 swarms of restless legs. Occasionally one or another 
 of the boatmen would miss his aim as he prodded at 
 the jungle on the bank, and a lurch which followed 
 would send an even wave of water rippling over my 
 mat. Therefore everything in the boat was wet 
 through, and the physical discomfort of my surround- 
 ings was more than sufficient for my requirements. 
 
 We made little progress, of course, for the current 
 was very strong, and the greenery on the banks gave 
 but a poor hold to the punting-poles, and as I was in 
 a hurry, I tied up my boat for the night in a pretty 
 bad temper. 
 
 Three times before the dawn came we had to shift 
 our moorings, for the waters were rising angrily, and 
 when daylight broke, the river was a dozen feet 
 above its banks. It was a lovely morning when the 
 sun rose above the jungle, for the rain to which the 
 flood was due had fallen in the mountains more than a 
 hundred miles away, and here the sky was clear and 
 bright. The river, red with earth stains, rolled along 
 with here and there a swirling eddy on its surface, 
 marking some submerged snag or rock. Its broad 
 breast was flecked with drift, — a portion of a native 
 shanty ; a giant tree, whirling helplessly round and 
 round, while the water played in and out of its spread- 
 ing branches to which the green leaves still clung, or 
 rolled it over and over ; dry logs, long dead, which no 
 flood had hitherto succeeded in dragging into the 
 water, wallowed deeply as they sagged down stream ; 
 and here and there some drowned buffalo, or dead 
 beast of the forest. The river in its bed made a gentle 
 purring sound as it rolled along, but on each bank the 
 
IN THE RUSH OF MANY WATERS 213 
 
 water, tearing through the jungle, made a ceaseless 
 swishing noise, varied now and then by the dull splash 
 of a felling tree. And from above us the sun looked 
 down upon the dulled flood which glistened and shone, 
 but threw back no answering reflection from its ruddy 
 surface. 
 
 The boatmen sat philosophically chewing quids of 
 betel-nut, and gazing placidly at the world of water. 
 Progress in the face of such a flood was of course 
 impossible for my large boat, and a dug-out with a 
 couple of Malays in it, which whirled down to us 
 from the village below which we were moored, had 
 much ado to avoid being swept past us. 
 
 4 If this be the likeness of the Male Flood, what 
 will that of the Female be ? ' ejaculated my Head 
 Boatman. In common with other Malays he held the 
 belief that floods, like other moving things, go in 
 couples. The first to come is the Male, and when he 
 has passed upon his way, the Female comes after him, 
 pursuing him hotly, according to the custom of the 
 sex, and she is the more to be feared, as she rushes 
 more furiously than does her fleeing mate. 
 
 It was important for me to reach Kuala Kangsar, 
 — a township which lay some thirty miles up river, — 
 not later than the following evening ; and while the 
 morning meal was being cooked, I gazed sulkily at 
 the flood, and wondered how this was to be accom- 
 plished. Walking was out of the question, for the 
 river had broken bounds and the water stood ten feet 
 in the jungle on either bank. Then it occurred to 
 me that a dug-out might thread its way through the 
 submerged forest, where the current was broken by 
 
214 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the trees, and the obstructing underwood was well 
 below the surface of the flood. Accordingly when our 
 rice had been eaten, I embarked in the dug-out with 
 Kulop and Ngah, two of my men, and talcing the 
 steer-oar myself, set them to work the paddles. 
 
 We expected to spend the night in some native 
 hut, — for the banks of the Perak River are set closely 
 with little villages, — so we did not encumber the dug- 
 out with food. A change of clothes for each of us, 
 and a mosquito-net for me, was all the gear we con- 
 sidered necessary, except the tobacco and betel-nut 
 which such of us as needed them carried about our 
 own persons. 
 
 We fought our way through the racing water, 
 which lined the jungle, and pushed through a tangle 
 of boughs into the forest. Then we headed up stream, 
 threading our way carefully between the close -set 
 trees. 
 
 The forest, as I saw it that day, has left an impres- 
 sion upon me that I shall never forget. It resembled 
 the depths of some enchanted wood such as an Evil 
 Genius might have set about his castle in order to 
 affright would-be intruders upon his solitude. The 
 canopy of branches, interwoven and twined one about 
 another, completely obscured the daylight, and cast an 
 even and melancholy gloom about us. The sodden 
 darkness which eyer. clings about the forests of the 
 Peninsula seemed to be intensified by the water in 
 which the trees appeared to have taken root ; and an 
 added stillness pervaded the silent woods. This, how- 
 ever, was an aspect of Nature by no means strange to 
 me, but to-day the trees themselves were wholly un- 
 
IN THE RUSH OF MANY WATERS 215 
 
 like any to which my eyes were accustomed. Some 
 were stained an angry red, others glistened with a 
 black sheen, while others again were of a dull and 
 lustreless colour, quite foreign to vegetable life. And 
 as I looked at them the bark of one and all seemed to 
 be endued with a strange power to move and crawl. 
 Then I saw the cause of the change that had come 
 over the forest. Every tree was covered with ants, 
 and insects of strange varieties, all seeking shelter from 
 the flood. One tree would be occupied by all the 
 inhabitants of a red ants' nest, the lanky, long-legged, 
 wasp-waisted creatures crawling restlessly over one 
 another, and occasionally missing their foothold, to fall, 
 struggling impotently, into the water beneath. On 
 many trees a fierce war was waging between ants from 
 rival nests, every inch of bark being covered by a 
 swarming, struggling mass of furious insects, fighting 
 cruelly, and with a viciousness which the complete 
 absence of all noise and outcry only seemed to empha- 
 sise. Here and there a great elephant ant, an inch 
 long, would be seen struggling bravely but helplessly 
 under a load of tiny assailants ; or a great flat wood- 
 louse floundered along with half a hundred insects 
 clinging to his scaly back. Clouds of cockroaches of 
 all shapes, sizes, and degrees of villainy, fluttered from 
 the branches against which we brushed, and ran over 
 our bodies with their loathsome legs. 
 
 But the semblance of an "enchanted wood was 
 chiefly given by the snakes. Over and over again as 
 we skirted a tree, or pushed past a low, hanging bough, 
 a cruel, lozenge-shaped head would dart out at us from 
 among the foliage, with wicked, glistening eyes, and 
 
216 STUDIES IN BROWN HVMJN1TT 
 
 nimble, protruding tongue. We could see others coiled 
 up in the branches overhead, and several fell into the 
 boat, or splashed into the water around us during the 
 course of the day. Now and then we would turn 
 aside to avoid a water-snake wriggling along the sur- 
 face of the flood, only to find another enemy coiled up 
 in a branch into which we had backed. 
 
 Scorpions and centipedes, wasps and hornets, which 
 nest in the earth, every kind of stinging and evil- 
 smelling abomination crawled over or fluttered among 
 the trees in which they had sought shelter. We killed 
 two large, black, crab-like scorpions in the boat. I 
 was myself stung by a centipede which fastened on to 
 the back of my neck, and our skins were raw with 
 the stinging and biting of ants and other lesser insects. 
 
 All that day we pushed on through the submerged 
 forest, baling out water and wild beasts at intervals, 
 and when the night began to shut down, we found 
 ourselves far inland, with a very vague idea of our 
 whereabouts, and no village in our neighbourhood. 
 Broad patches of ground were here and there showing 
 above the surface of the water, and on one of these we 
 camped for the night. Supper there was none, and 
 the mosquitoes came in clouds to feast upon us. The 
 sounding slaps upon their bare skins, which the Malays 
 made every second when the mosquitoes bit them 
 keenly, disturbed my rest, and eventually we all three 
 lay down side by side upon the bare earth under my 
 curtain. My bedfellows were restless sleepers, and 
 the ants were here as everywhere, so when the dawn 
 came I was not only a very hungry, but also a very 
 tired man. 
 
IN THE RUSH OF MANY. WATERS 217 
 
 Alas ! there was no morning meal to detain us while 
 it was being cooked ; no fire even over which to 
 linger warming ourselves after the cold dankness of 
 our comfortless night ; so we made a very early start, 
 stepping into our dug-out, and making our way once 
 more through the insect- and reptile-covered trees. 
 The jungle had been submerged for many hours now, 
 and the fights between rival ants were mostly ended — 
 even wounded friends had been cast ruthlessly into the 
 water. Some depressed-looking monkeys sat cowering 
 in the upper branches, and here and there the sharp 
 face of a rat peered down at us with quick, curious 
 glances. We were heading inland now, trying to find 
 the edge of the flooded jungle, and about 1 1 a.m. we 
 came to dry ground and went ashore. 
 
 The jungle was not thick in this place, and we 
 pushed our way through it with little difficulty. This 
 was just as well, for we had eaten no food for nearly 
 thirty hours, and had passed a night which held but 
 little ease. We said hardly a word one to another, 
 but we plied our wood-knives doggedly, and plodded 
 patiently onwards. After an hour's tramp, Kulop, 
 who was leading, suddenly gave a grunt of dissatisfac- 
 tion. In front of us the jungle was once more sub- 
 merged, and looking through the trees, we could see 
 no end to the stretch of water. I began to feel 
 desperate. We had come too far inland to think of 
 going back, for we were now walking against Hunger 
 - that grimmest and most sure - footed of all 
 competitors. 
 
 4 Our fate is indeed accursed ! ' exclaimed Kulop. 
 
 ' What is now our stratagem ? ' I asked. 
 
218 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 'Whatever the Tuan pleases,* said my two com- 
 panions. 
 
 I said a word or two to them, and then we all three 
 fell to work, and in a few minutes had completed the 
 construction of a tiny raft. Next we stripped to the 
 skin, and, piling all our possessions upon the raft, 
 waded into the stagnant water, pushing it carefully 
 before us. We were soon out of our depths, but aiding 
 one another we swam steadily onwards with the raft 
 bobbing and rolling in front of us. Ngah was faint 
 for want of food, and we had to make many halts, 
 clinging to the trunks of the trees, or the overhanging 
 branches for support, before that weary swim was 
 finished. The swamp proved to be about half a mile 
 across, and we were all more or less exhausted before 
 we gained the far side. 
 
 At last, dragging the raft after us, we floundered 
 out of the shallows, three naked men, with here and 
 there a black and shiny band six inches long clinging 
 to our water- puckered skins. These were horse- 
 leeches, breakfasting happily, and when we had 
 wrenched them from their holds, the blood ran in 
 widening scarlet streaks and patches down our wet 
 bodies. 
 
 Shivering and chattering with cold, stained with the 
 foul water, raw with the bites and stings of insects, 
 and bleeding in many places, we began to tumble into 
 our clothes. We were very sorry for ourselves. It 
 was now that I discovered that my shoes had dis- 
 appeared. When they fell off the raft we could not 
 say, but they were gone past all hope of recovery. I 
 cut my trousers off at the knee with my wood-knife, 
 
IN THE RUSH OF MA NT WATERS 219 
 
 for the flapping bottoms would afford too good cover for 
 the jungle leeches, and I think I cursed a little to myself 
 as I started forward once more. I had been in charge 
 of a District the year before where the swamp water 
 was so poisonous that it made one's feet swell hideously. 
 Therefore during some months I had been driven to 
 do my jungle travelling without the aid of the boots 
 into which my feet declined to fit, so I now found 
 little difficulty in picking my way barefoot through 
 the forest. 
 
 Twice again we had to cross swamps, but neither 
 of them was so broad as that which we had already 
 encountered. Standing on the grassy bank of the last 
 one, while we plucked a fresh batch of horse-leeches 
 from our bleeding limbs, I saw the mountains which 
 divide the Perak Valley from Larut showing above the 
 jungle. Directly in front of us was Gunong Arang 
 Para — the Mountain of Soot — and a little behind it 
 rose the summit of Gunong Bubu — the Fish-Trap — 
 with its angular peak flanked by the long, flat ridge. 
 I could see each round tree-top on the mountain sides, 
 and the bungalow among the coffee shrubs on the 
 upper slopes of Arang Para. This showed me that we 
 were already some five miles inland, and I knew that 
 if we pressed forward towards the hills, we should, 
 sooner or later, strike a charcoal-burners' path leading 
 along the foot of the mountains to the high-road. 
 This thoroughfare joins Kuala Kangsar to Taiping, 
 and I calculated that we should strike it some five miles 
 from the former place. This gave me hope, and we 
 all three plunged into the jungle, heading for the 
 mountains with renewed energy. 
 
220 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 The Malays lagged somewhat, and I pressed on 
 alone. There had once been a path leading inland 
 from this point, but it was now much overgrown, and 
 my wood - knife was constantly needed to help me 
 force my way through the thick brushwood. Here 
 and there a monster tree, which in its fall had dragged 
 others to the ground, obstructed the path, and over it 
 I had to climb laboriously. In places the faint trail dis- 
 appeared utterly, and I had to make numerous casts on 
 one side and on the other, before I could find a means 
 of again moving forward. It was weary work, and I 
 was faint with hunger, but I pushed on doggedly, and 
 after some hours, which seemed like weeks, I came 
 out upon a charcoal-burners* path. It had only been 
 cleared sufficiently to enable the slow buffaloes to drag 
 their clumsy sledges along it, and the passage of many 
 hoofs had stamped the yielding earth into a quagmire. 
 It was heavy walking for a weary, famished man, and 
 the two miles which separated me from the high-road 
 were almost too much for me. 
 
 At last the welcome streak of yellow — the dusty, 
 metalled road winding through the green walls of 
 jungle on either hand — showed me that civilisation was 
 drawing near ; and my bare feet trod its flint-set surface 
 with a boundless satisfaction. A Chinaman's booth 
 stood by the roadside, a few hundred yards away, and 
 from rattan lines stretched across the window depended 
 little clusters of yellow bananas. The Chinaman 
 could speak no known language, so I could not explain 
 my position to him, but when I sat down and devoured 
 the whole of his fruit with such eager delight he smiled at 
 me compassionately, and doubtless told himself that the 
 
IN THE RUSH OF MANY WATERS 221 
 
 4 Red-Headed Foreign Devil ' was mad. I am afraid 
 that I confirmed him in this opinion by the lavish 
 manner in which I paid for my meal ; but indeed I was 
 grateful to him, and would readily have parted with 
 my birthright that day in exchange for the least savoury 
 mess of pottage. 
 
 Then I got some Malays together, and sent them 
 back, with such food as they could collect, to seek for 
 Kulop and Ngah. I afterwards learned that they 
 found them lying down, quite exhausted, about half a 
 mile from the charcoal-burners' track. 
 
 When the search party had started, I set off to 
 walk into Kuala Kangsar, and in three hours' time I 
 once more saw the waters of the Perak River. The 
 angry stream rolled down swollen and ruddy, measuring 
 nearly half a mile across. The whole of the low-lying 
 township was flooded, and even in the shops on the 
 higher roads the people were camping on the roofs. 
 On the hills around the town the Malays were living 
 under all manner of crazy shelters, and the smell of the 
 evening meal, which all were engaged in cooking, fell 
 gratefully upon my nostrils as I threaded my way 
 among the huts. 
 
 Many of my friends were homeless and outcast that 
 day, and a draggled and woebegone crowd they were 
 to look upon, but my own figure was, perhaps, the 
 most ruffianly of all. My broad felt hat was a limp 
 and shapeless mass j my flannel shirt was torn down 
 the back, and hung in sodden tatters about me ; my 
 trousers were sawn off raggedly at the knee ; my legs 
 and feet were bare. Here and there a patch of red 
 showed where the blood from a leech bite had stained 
 
222 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 my clothes. The dirt of the jungles clung about me 
 from head to foot, and the white dust of the road was 
 caked over all. Never was respectable man reduced to 
 an aspect more disreputable ! 
 
 Perak is a peaceful land, from which the knife and 
 the spear have for ever departed ; but so long as 
 Nature plays her pranks with us, a man may 
 accumulate unpleasant experiences even in places 
 where Pax Britannica is an idol unbroken. 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 
 
 The Dream came to me as I lay 
 
 Beneath the waving palm, 
 It led me forth upon my way, 
 
 It broke upon my calm, 
 It whispered to me as I went 
 
 Beneath the forest green, 
 The Message that my God had sent 
 
 To break my sleep serene. 
 
 Ah me ! I travailed brave and strong, 
 
 To set the wry World right, 
 To succour those who suffered wrong, 
 
 To fight the Holy Fight j 
 And if the Wicked win the day 
 
 'Tis Allah's will, I wean, 
 Glad to His peace I'll pass away, 
 
 Who have His Vision seen ! 
 
 The Song of the Dreamer of Dreamt. 
 
 Is the East men not infrequently suffer sadly because 
 they are so unfortunate as to possess ideas. In the 
 West, on the other hand, a man may hold all manner of 
 extravagant theories without necessarily being brought 
 by them to an evil end. The reason of this is very 
 plain. The less excitable European does not always 
 think it incumbent upon him to put all his theories 
 into practice, whereas the ideas which come to an 
 
224 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Oriental have a habit of running away with their 
 owner, leaving him no peace, until they have succeeded 
 in landing him in some very unsavoury place, such as 
 the Andaman Islands, or the Central Gaol. 
 
 The White Man, looking calmly at the age into 
 which he has been born, and at all the circumstances 
 of his surroundings, may tell himself that the times are 
 not yet ripe for the adoption of his more advanced 
 theories. This is a comforting view to take, for the 
 man who looks upon life and its difficulties in this 
 common-sense light runs no risks, while he has further 
 the consolation of thinking that he is blessed with an 
 intellect more far-seeing than those of his fellows. If 
 he has ideas very badly indeed, he may sit down and 
 write about them ; and we all know that the profuse 
 ink-flux is an exceedingly efficient safety-valve. By 
 its means large quantities of bile and other disagree- 
 able fluids may be carried off, which, without some 
 such relief, might conceivably hurry their victim into 
 impossible action, dangerous to society, and still more 
 hazardous to himself. The inability of the Celt to 
 appreciate the fact that half a hundred excellent reasons 
 may exist for not putting a beautiful theory into 
 practice without more ado, is one of the qualities 
 that make the most Westerly people of Europe so 
 incongruously like the nations of the East. The 
 Russians, being to all intents and purposes an Oriental 
 race, share this inability with other Asiatic peoples. 
 
 But the majority of Brown Men go further than 
 this, for they can see no steps between the inception 
 of an idea and its realisation. Their natures are so 
 constructed that they cannot easily be made to under- 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 22$ 
 
 stand that all really sound theories are sure to be tried 
 upon their merits, if you only wait long enough, but 
 that for this to happen, the theory itself must have 
 some intrinsic value of its own. Even could they 
 appreciate this feet, it would not help them, for they 
 are impatient of delay. They want to see their 
 theories put into practice now, at once, during their 
 own lifetime. They are unable to look forward calmly 
 to the days when their children's grandchildren will 
 enjoy many good things to which they must ever 
 remain strangers. c Why should we do so much for 
 Posterity ? What has Posterity done for us ? ' was 
 the impassioned exclamation of the excellent Sir Boyle 
 Roach, and the feeling expressed in this remarkable 
 phrase finds an echo in many an Oriental heart. 
 
 Moreover the Man with an Idea, if he belong to an 
 Asiatic race, never stays to ask himself whether his 
 theory is really for the good of the greatest number. 
 An intense belief in its merits comes to him with the 
 idea itself, and his utter faith in it is thus, from the 
 very first, both firm and unquestioning. 
 
 Now in Europe and Asia alike, the first object or 
 the political theorist is to break down the Present ; but 
 while the White Man peers eagerly into the Future, 
 and his hands itch to fashion it according to his heart's 
 desire, the Brown Man's eyes are fixed dreamily upon 
 the Past. The White Man seeks to build up What 
 Ought To Be ; the Brown Man longs to reconstruct 
 What Has Been ; and since the unlettered Oriental 
 has none of the safety-valves which may bring relief 
 to the European, the Idea is wont to hurry him into 
 ill-considered and ill-advised action. Then, if the » 
 
 Q 
 
226 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Present chances to be presided over by the British 
 Government, that unwieldy monster lifts up its foot, 
 and stamps upon the Man with an Idea ; and he and 
 those who have followed him thereafter suffer many 
 and heavy things because of the faith that is in them. 
 
 In the Malay State of Pahang there was once a 
 Man with an Idea. He had begun life as dog-boy to 
 a Prince ; and the latter, after many wars, wrested the 
 throne from its rightful owners, and became a King. 
 As the new Monarch was a keen sportsman, and 
 appreciated the skill of the dog-boy, it followed that 
 the latter presently found himself the possessor of a 
 high-sounding title, a long and straggling river, and a 
 steady income, derived from c squeezing ' the couple 
 of thousand peasants who had their homes in the 
 valley through which this river ran. In an in- 
 dependent Malay State, jobs on this magnificent scale 
 excite no adverse comment ; and the simple villagers 
 bowed down before the ex-dog-boy, and feared him 
 exceedingly, as one who held unlimited power in his 
 hands. 
 
 I knew him well in those days, and he certainly 
 was a remarkable man. His knowledge of wood-craft 
 was unsurpassed, even among the aboriginal tribes of 
 jungle-dwellers, with whom, at certain seasons, he was 
 wont to herd, garbed, like them, in a scanty loin- 
 cloth, fashioned from the bark of the trap tree. He 
 was gifted with great physical strength, invincible 
 courage, much cunning, and a really marvellous 
 imagination. This latter possession is of no small 
 value to a Malay of the Peninsula, for in no land, and 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 227 
 
 among no other people, may a man more easily induce 
 others to take him at his own valuation. A huge 
 granite boulder, weighing some five tons, is still 
 pointed out, lying high up on the bank of the river, 
 over which the ex-dog-boy ruled, and the traveller, 
 who passes it, is told how the Chief plucked it with 
 one hand from the river bed, and cast it aside where it 
 now lies, because it chanced to obstruct the passage of 
 his dug-out. The Chief himself was responsible for 
 this remarkable statement, and no man dreamed of 
 doubting his word. Like the man who was the 
 bravest Knight in France, ' he said so, and he ought 
 to know.* 
 
 Thus the ex-dog-boy's reputation waxed very great 
 in the land, and he flourished exceedingly ; and the 
 good old times ran gaily through the hour-glass in the 
 bad old way, until Pahang became a Protected State, 
 and the servants of the British Government began the 
 ungrateful and laborious task of teaching an un- 
 regenerate people the elementary differences between 
 right and wrong, and between meum and tuum. 
 
 The bulk of the people were well pleased, for peace 
 and plenty — strangers in their villages — began to draw 
 near, and to smile upon them. But the Chiefs could 
 not, of course, regard matters in quite the same light. 
 When a large district lies before him, from which he 
 may pick and choose all that his heart may desire, 
 without asking absurd questions as to ownership ; 
 when his income is what he may elect to exact in fine 
 and cess from the cowed villagers, who dare not resist 
 him ; when he is not cursed with a conscience \ and 
 when he has no bowels of compassion in his anatomy, — 
 
228 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 even though he be married half a dozen deep, a man 
 may succeed in living very much at his ease. But 
 when all these things, upon which he has learned to 
 rely, sink away suddenly from under him, as the Earth 
 drops downwards as you gaze at it from the car of a 
 rising balloon ; when power, and wealth, and cherished 
 manorial rights, — such as were wont to make life so 
 sweet to him, so exceeding bitter to his neighbours, 
 — are all reft from him in a moment ; when he is 
 called upon to live up to a standard of morality with 
 which he has no sympathy ; and when his only com- 
 pensation is a monthly stipend, — the very regularity of 
 which robs life of half its excitement, — a man is apt to 
 become morose and taciturn, and to spend much time 
 in dreaming of the good old days. 
 
 Such was the experience of the ex-dog-boy ; and 
 upon a certain day, as he lay tossing upon his mat, 
 and pondering moodily upon the Past, the Idea came 
 to him. Then, in that hour, several hundreds of souls 
 — men, and tender women, children at their mothers' 
 skirts, and little babies at the breast — were doomed to 
 terrible suffering, and, in too many instances, to a 
 lingering and untimely death. 
 
 The Idea was, of course, that the ex-dog-boy and 
 his people should rise up against the representatives 
 of the British Government, and should drive them 
 screaming from the land. The ex-dog-boy had nothing 
 to scale things by, and he knew that the White Men 
 and their followers were few. The matter seemed 
 easy, and he counted on the other Chiefs, who shared 
 his grievances, and his love of the good old times, to 
 join him, and share also in his risks. The peasants, 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 229 
 
 he knew, would follow the Chiefs in a war directed 
 against their best interests, from sheer force of habit, 
 and because the feudal feeling was still strong within 
 them ; and in so judging the event proved him to be 
 right. But the other Chiefs lacked his courage, so 
 the rising never became general, though aid was lent 
 to the ex-dog-boy by every secret means that could 
 suggest themselves to his numerous well-born sympa- 
 thisers. 
 
 And here it is that the Muhammadan has the 
 advantage of the Christian. If the latter wars with 
 the Powers that Be, he may be an Anarchist, or a 
 Socialist, or a Nihilist, but he is by no means neces- 
 sarily regarded as a Christian Hero. Some Christians 
 may be found to sympathise with him, but their 
 sympathy is in no sense connected with their religious 
 beliefs. But with the Muhammadan it is different. 
 If those against whom he rebels chance to belong 
 to any other Faith, no matter what the cause 
 of quarrel, no matter how lax the rebel's own 
 practice may be, his revolt against authority is at once 
 raised to the dignity of a Sabil Allah, or Holy War 
 against the Infidel. It becomes a reproach to any 
 Muhammadan to side against him ; all who aid him 
 thereby serve God and His Prophet ; and in this lies 
 the real strength of a Muhammadan population. 
 
 Wonderful it is how powerful are those words c Sabil 
 Allah* among even the least fanatical of Muhammadans. 
 Men who never pray, not even on Friday ; men who 
 break the Fast of Ramathan for thirty days each year ; 
 men to whom the Faith is nothing but a name, and 
 whose knowledge of its tenets would disgrace an 
 
230 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 ignorant European, can still be fired to enthusiasm, 
 when the sorriest and most selfish rebel among them 
 dignifies his storm in a tea-cup by calling it a Holy 
 War. 
 
 This merely affords one more instance of the 
 marvellous cohesion of the Muhammadans. Their 
 Faith, which is hedged about by pride and hate, 
 causes them to regard the professors of all other 
 religions with a passion of disdain, such as no modern 
 Christian can easily realise ; and it has, withal, the 
 power to bind men one to another, as nothing else 
 can do. The old, simple, unquestioning Faith of the 
 Middle Ages, when the two thousand odd Christian 
 Sects were as yet uninvented, and when, speaking 
 broadly, all men held the same teaching upon all 
 points of theology, may have had some very similar 
 effect upon its professors ; but the warlike Creed of 
 Muhammad has for its very marrow a desire to ex- 
 terminate all other Faiths — putting infidel men to the 
 sword, and leading their women-folk captive, — a spirit 
 which is certainly not to be found in the Gospels of 
 Christ. 
 
 This is the rough outer edge which Muham- 
 madanism presents to those who are not of the Faith ; 
 but among themselves, those who believe in Allah and 
 the Prophet, exercise to one another a large and 
 generous charity, that may well put to shame the 
 Christians, to whom that virtue, in its highest practice, 
 should surely belong. 
 
 The ex-dog-boy opened the game by firing upon 
 a party of Europeans from the heavy jungles which 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 231 
 
 fringed the banks of the narrow river over which he 
 had once ruled supreme. He killed a few people, and 
 wounded some others. Then he chanced to catch 
 Sikh, who had lost his way in the jungle, and him he 
 strangled with a rattan, after making him, while still 
 living, the victim of nameless mutilations. Thus the 
 first blood was to him ; and his people followed him 
 like sheep, with their old fear of him, and their belief 
 in his prowess waxing strong within them. 
 
 But his next move in the game was a mistake. 
 Malays chiefly conduct their warfare from behind 
 stockades, the attacking party constructing their rude 
 works at a safe and convenient distance from those of 
 the enemy. Much breath is expended in shouts and 
 vaunting challenges, and large quantities of gun- 
 powder are burned, but after war has raged for many 
 months a mere handful of casualties have to be counted, 
 for no attempt is made to rush a stockade so long as 
 any watch is kept within it. The ex-dog-boy believed 
 that White Men fought upon a like principle \ so when 
 he took the field, he built numerous forts, all of which 
 were promptly destroyed. 
 
 I shall not follow him through the various stages 
 of the campaign which ensued, but eventually he 
 became convinced that he and his people must make 
 their way out of Pahang if they would win to safety. 
 He dared not travel by any known route, but his 
 skill in wood-craft has been spoken of. He took to 
 the jungle, with some six hundred men, women, and 
 children, and during the space of five months he 
 wormed his way through untraversed forests, guiding 
 himself wholly by the knowledge which he possessed 
 
232 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 of the river-systems of the country, until after many 
 adventures, and almost unparalleled hardships, the 
 strange journey was accomplished, and the miserable 
 remnant, that had survived the march, won clear of 
 the country. 
 
 If you know the East Coast of the Malay Peninsula 
 well, you can make your way up and down it, and 
 across and across, and through and through, by follow- 
 ing the net- work of narrow footpaths which thread 
 the jungles here, there, and everywhere. Travelling 
 in this fashion is not easy, for the trails are almost 
 blind in places, and every now and then a wood-knife 
 must make a way through the forest before a man 
 may pass. But the fugitives dared not follow well- 
 known paths, or any paths at all, save in the wildest 
 and least frequented parts of the forest, and even then 
 they were constantly harassed by their enemies. For 
 the rest, they cleared their own way through the 
 depths of a Malayan jungle, which is more like one 
 enormous thick-set hedge, bound fast by ropes in- 
 numerable, stayed at every point by giant trees, than 
 anything else which the untravelled Englishman can 
 easily imagine. Half a mile a day was a good journey 
 in such country ; and when the food failed, a few 
 yards was almost more than the stricken wretches could 
 accomplish. Their line of march was marked by 
 biiyas and /£»/, and other wild palms, which had been 
 felled, that men might fill their empty stomachs with 
 the edible shoots. At every point the earth had been 
 grubbed up, as by a thousand moles. This marked 
 the places where jungle roots and yams had been dug 
 for. At spots where the kepayang fruit grew plenti- 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 233 
 
 fully the refugees had camped for over a week, and 
 many new graves marked their resting-place, for the 
 kepayang bears an ill name. 
 
 Kepayang fruits so green and fair, 
 
 How like my Love are they ! 
 To eat thereof I do not dare, 
 
 Yet cannot throw away ! 
 
 says the Malay rhyme ; but those who run from the 
 grip of the Law are foredoomed to the suffering of 
 many things, and by a starving stomach no food, no 
 matter how unhealthy, may be lightly rejected. 
 
 For the first three months or so the rebels kept more 
 or less together, for deserters were dealt with severely 
 by the Chief, and at night-time, round the fires of the 
 camp, he told blood-curdling tales of the vengeance of 
 the White Men, filling his simple followers with a 
 fear that made them prefer a lingering death in the 
 forests to even a chance of capture. But when the 
 cruel grip of hunger began to wring their empty 
 stomachs, those among the rebels who still had the 
 strength to do so, pushed on, devouring the jungle 
 foods as they went, while the weak and feeble lagged 
 hopelessly behind in a land where there was no 
 gleaning. 
 
 The forests were dotted with little knots of strag- 
 glers, and we gathered them in, filled them with 
 good food, and sent them home to their villages, with 
 peace upon their faces, and in their eyes glad wonder 
 at the treatment meted out to them. We followed up 
 the main body of the rebels, and fought them again and 
 again in the blind jungles, where nought could be 
 seen save trees and dripping greenery, with the thick, 
 
234 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 white smoke-clouds bellying through between trunks 
 and leaves, or hanging low in the still air. Here men 
 were struck dead not seeing the hand that smote them, 
 while the rifles sang out sharply, and clearly, and 
 fiercely, breaking through the forest in a thousand 
 echoes, amid the discordant war-yells of the enemy, 
 and the answering roar of our own people. 
 
 Towards the end of the fifth month the chase grew 
 hotter, and the little bands of survivors dwindled daily 
 in number. We followed them up relentlessly, for 
 Pahang stood at gaze, irresolute concerning the action 
 which it would be wise for it to take while the success 
 or failure of the Government hung uncertainly in the 
 balance. Sometimes we lost all trace of the fugitives 
 for weeks together ; sometimes, for a day or two, we 
 were hot upon their trail, and we had a stirring little 
 brush with them in those dreary forests every other 
 hour. The stragglers became more and more numer- 
 ous, while the Chief and his fighting-men pressed 
 forward with increased eagerness as they neared the 
 Kclantan boundary. The distress of the fugitives be- 
 came daily more acute, and never shall I forget the 
 horror of those days, and the heartrending scenes of 
 which I was a witness. 
 
 Sometimes it would be a small knot of stragglers, 
 mostly women and ghastly little children — children 
 whose care-worn faces seemed to bear the weight of a 
 hundred years of pain and sorrow. We would find 
 them sitting huddled together, in utter, dull despair, 
 looking at us almost calmly from out the awful hollows 
 of their deep-set eyes. How well I know that miser- 
 able, squalid group, and the sick passion of pity which 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 235 
 
 the sight of it awakens ! They never doubt but that 
 death awaits them, but even that seems to them to be 
 preferable to any prolongation of the keen yet lingering 
 agony from which they are suffering. They are in 
 the last stages of famine. Their skulls show sharp and 
 angular, with knobs of protruding temple, and promi- 
 nent cheek-bones visible beneath the taut, dry skin. 
 Their knees, their elbows, every joint in their shrunken 
 bodies, are bosses of bone, huge, and round, and ugly, 
 from which depend brittle, stick-like limbs, hanging 
 feeble and inert. Their feet and hands resemble the 
 talons of some unclean night-fowl, and their ribs rise 
 clear, each one of them as separate and as distinctly 
 marked as the bold, black stripes upon a tiger's hide. 
 Their stomachs alone are swollen and inflated, dread- 
 fully out of all proportion to their wasted frames, but 
 the roundness is that of disease, not the curves of health. 
 Their eyes are the eyes of wild beasts when food is set 
 before them, and like animals they throw themselves 
 upon it, seizing and tearing it in the fury of their 
 hunger. But when the first few mouthfuls have been 
 devoured, their strange, feeble listlessness returns, and 
 the slow, painful languor of their movements makes 
 them resemble more and more closely a weird band of 
 spectres in some ugly Dance of Death 
 
 Sometimes we would find a man, sitting with his 
 head fallen forward between his knees, with his back 
 against a tree, with his arms pendent and nerveless, 
 and his legs drawn convulsively up against his empty 
 stomach. His body would be a mere bag of bones, — 
 slender, frail bones, in a wofully tight casing of yellow, 
 fever-parched skin. Such an one would too often be 
 
236 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 beyond all human aid, his shrunken gullet refusing to 
 swallow the brandy which we forced through his set 
 teeth. His mouth would be half full of some horrible 
 trash, with which he had tried to stay the pangs of his 
 hunger, stuff which he had lacked the power even to 
 eject. His glassy eyes would stare horribly into our 
 pitying faces, and without a word he would pass away 
 while we stood around him. 
 
 Wonderful devotion was shown to one another by 
 some of these poor folk in their common necessity. 
 Once we found a man sitting gaunt and grim, by the 
 side of one whom he had loved. He was too weak to 
 be able to bury his dead, but he would not leave the 
 useless skin and bone, which hunger had transformed 
 into a mummy, for the beasts of the forest to devour. 
 He would neither eat nor move until the body had 
 been washed and buried, according to the rites of the 
 Muhammadans ; and those who did these last offices 
 told me that the dead man's mouth was full of rice 
 which he had been unable to swallow, — the last hoarded 
 handful that the starving father had forced upon his 
 dying son ! 
 
 On another occasion we found a little party of 
 three, a man and his wife, with their baby at her breast. 
 All were in sore straits for lack of food, and the woman 
 had quite lost the use of her legs. The man carried 
 her upon his bowed back, bound to him by an old 
 sarong or native waist-cloth. In his hands were two 
 bundles, containing all that remained to them of the 
 wreck of their household goods. The woman nursed 
 the fretful baby in the hollow of her left arm, and with 
 her disengaged hand she sought to clear the way for 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 237 
 
 her man, hacking feebly at the lower branches of the 
 trees, and at the thick underwood with a clumsy wood- 
 knife. She was quite a young girl, while the man was 
 middle-aged, and neither of them were at all good to 
 look upon, but when they gazed at one another I saw 
 the love-light well up in their eyes. Just before we 
 chanced upon them this poor family had struggled, in 
 the manner which I have described, over the summit 
 of a hill nearly a thousand feet in height, whence they 
 had again descended into the plain. I know not 
 how long this part of their journey had taken them, 
 nor what measure of toil, and pain, and heart-breaking 
 effort had been the man's ere half his self-imposed task 
 had been accomplished ; but whatever he may have 
 suffered, and however great the strain that he had put 
 upon his endurance, I know that his first care was for 
 the woman, when we set food before them. I re- 
 member, too, that he insisted upon helping to carry the 
 litter upon which we laid her, though he could hardly 
 stagger along unaided when the strain to which he had 
 nerved himself had been removed. When we got the 
 girl to one of the field hospitals he watched beside her, 
 tending her with a constant care and gentleness very 
 pitiful to sec ; and even in her last agony her eyes 
 followed him lovingly. But though he failed to stay 
 the life that ebbed so fast away from her, I cannot 
 think that his love, and his labour, and his suffering, 
 and his pain, were utterly wasted. 
 
 But, perhaps, the saddest incident of all was that 
 which befell at the very end of the Disturbances, when 
 we were hunting the vanguard of the rebels through 
 the forests that cluster around the borders of Kelantan. 
 
238 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 They had still a few of their women and children 
 with them, but the men were nearing safety and 
 plenty, so those who sank by the way, too utterly worn 
 out to make a further effort, were now often de- 
 serted even by their own kinsfolk. 
 
 We were close upon the track of the rebels, whose 
 footsteps we had been following all day, and we were 
 expecting every moment to come up with them. The 
 afternoon was far advanced, and we hoped to find 
 them in camp. Some of the tracks were so fresh that 
 water was still oozing into the depressed toe-prints, 
 and the Dyak trackers in front were beginning to 
 bristle with excitement, like hounds on a hot scent. 
 The evening hymn, which all the jungle creatures 
 join in singing as the sun sinks, was ringing through 
 the forest, the parrots calling shrilly one to another as 
 they swooped upon the clouds of flying insects, the 
 birds thrilling and quavering upon almost every tree, 
 while the cicada raised their strident tocsin to tell that 
 the day was dead. 
 
 Suddenly, through all the tumult of the animal and 
 insect world, there broke upon our ears a cry that 
 made our heart-beats quicken. It was the whine of a 
 little child ; but to us it meant that a camp which we 
 hoped held the advance party of the rebels — the men 
 whom we had so long pursued, yet had never once 
 taken unawares — was close at hand. We crept 
 forward as noiselessly as we were able, turning into 
 the bed of a stream and wading down the shallows. 
 Presently the Dyak trackers, who were leading, 
 stiffened like pointers, and the next moment four of 
 them fired a volley. Their orders had been to hold 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 239 
 
 their fire until they received the word, but Dyalcs are 
 ill to hold when the chance of killing presents itself. 
 I rushed forward, and came up with the Dyaks in time 
 to see that they had fired into a small camp on the 
 river bank, and pushing past them I ran into the little 
 cluster of temporary sheds. One man lay dead with a 
 bullet through his stomach ; another, huddled up 
 under a torn and shabby velvet coverlet, was squirming 
 with fear, and crying to us to slay him speedily, if 
 indeed we desired to take his life. 
 
 In the centre of the camp sat a woman with a little 
 child, a girl of perhaps five years of age, clinging con- 
 vulsively to her. Both mother and child were scream- 
 ing in a manner most pitiful to hear. I turned the 
 man with the coverlet over with my foot, and bade 
 him hold his peace, as no man had any intention of 
 harming him. He was in the last stages of dropsy, 
 brought on by the hardships which he had endured in 
 the damp, comfortless jungles, and he sat there, a 
 horrible sight, calling upon his bloated carcase to burst 
 if he were in thought or deed inimical to the British 
 Government. 
 
 Disregarding him, I pushed on to where the 
 woman sat, and strove to reassure her. 
 
 ' Peace, Sister ! ' I said. l There is no one here who 
 desireth to hurt thee.' 
 
 c Not hurt me ? ' she cried, with a fresh outburst of 
 screams. * Not hurt me ? Behold ! ' 
 
 She had been sitting cross-legged on the ground, 
 but as she spoke, she kicked her left leg forward, and 
 it opened in the middle of her shin, until the heel 
 snapped limply against the inside of her knee. A red 
 
240 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 chasm opened like the mouth of a shark, wide, and 
 gaping, and horrible to see, and a spurt of warm blood 
 spattered me from head to foot. She rolled over on 
 her back in a dead faint. The bones of her leg were 
 both sundered by the cruel Snider bullet, which to all 
 intents and purposes is an expanding missile, and the 
 severed arteries pumped the blood out in little eddying 
 jets. The ground on which she lay speedily became 
 covered with a broad patch of scarlet, clotting in 
 cracking blebs and blisters, upon which a thousand 
 flies settled and feasted horribly, and while we strove 
 vainly to staunch the flow of blood, the little girl sat 
 placidly at her mother's side, munching a captain's 
 biscuit, which we had given to her, clasping it greedily 
 between her tiny hands. The utter insensibility of 
 the child to her mother's sufferings, and the ease with 
 which - food distracted her attention from all other 
 things, was not the least ghastly feature of that painful 
 scene. 
 
 Presently the wounded woman began slowly to 
 recover consciousness. Her head rolled restlessly from 
 side to side, a low groan escaped her, and her eyes 
 opened and fixed themselves upon me as I knelt by her 
 side leaning over her. The look they wore — the look 
 of some tender, hunted animal gazing despairingly at 
 her captor — made the lump rise queerly in my throat. 
 Her lips were painfully forming words, and I bent low 
 to catch them. They came faint, and halting, and 
 broken with suffering, but even in that moment of 
 agony the mother's heart was with her child. 
 
 'Wilt . . . thou . . . slay . . . my . . . child . . . in 
 like manner ? ' 
 
FROM THE GRIP OF THE LAW 2+1 
 
 1 Sister ! ' I cried, in the familiar vernacular 
 phrase which makes all folks akin. c O Sister, thou 
 knowest that we had no desire to harm thee. It was 
 a bullet that had gone astraying, a bullet that had lost 
 its way which did thee this hurt. Have no fear for 
 thy child.' 
 
 c If thou slayest her not,' came the painful whisper, 
 1 she is still as one already dead, living as she will do, 
 having neither father nor mother, nor any relative to 
 tend or love her.' 
 
 c Peace, Sister ! ' I said. ' I myself will tend and 
 love her. Have no fear for her.' 
 
 The woman looked up at me wonderingly, stupidly, 
 until the meaning of my words at last forced itself 
 upon her tortured brain. Then, with a supreme 
 effort, she raised herself into a half-sitting posture. 
 
 c Say that again ! ' she screamed, and I repeated the 
 words of my promise. 
 
 c Swear that thou wilt tend her ! ' she cried next, 
 and I swore solemnly in the name of God. Then 
 she sank back exhausted, but with peace upon her 
 face. 
 
 c It is well,' she murmured, 'and now leave me 
 with my child for a little space before I die.' 
 
 I left her, and as I turned away I saw her draw the 
 emaciated little creature to her heart, while her face 
 spoke of love unfathomable, and her lips moved pain- 
 fully, as they formed the words of the baby language 
 — that tenderest of all tongues — which only mothers 
 and little children, the purest of our kind, know and 
 understand. 
 
 We camped on the opposite side of the stream, and 
 
 R 
 
242 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 the night fell dark and impenetrable. At about eight 
 o'clock a pure baby's voice broke the stillness. 
 
 'Come and fetch me,' it cried. 'Come and fetch 
 me, for my mother is dead ! ' 
 
 And presently the poor little starving girl, whose sad 
 experience had taught her so early- to recognise death, 
 was carried across the stream in the arms of one of my 
 Malays, and was laid to sleep beside me upon my mat. 
 Next day she was put into a knapsack, fashioned of 
 rattan, and sent to the rear ; and, as I write these lines 
 five years later, the sound of a merry laugh is borne in 
 to me from the place where the children of my native 
 followers are playing together in my compound. 
 The laugh rings out in the shrill pure treble of happy 
 childhood, and when I hear it I pause in my work, and 
 wonder whether the child's mother looks down upon 
 her little one, and is satisfied that after all her life has 
 not been quite a loveless one. 
 
THE STRANGE ELOPEMENT OF 
 chAling THE DYAK 
 
 The Woods are old, and vast, and wide, 
 These Forest Lands, through which we stride j 
 We've known them long, we've known them well, 
 Their every secret folks may tell. 
 And yet, and yet, these Woods are strange, 
 These Forest Lands, through which we range, 
 For though we know them through and through, 
 They still hold marvels wondrous new. 
 
 The Song of the Old Hunters. 
 
 This story was told to me by the Penghulu of the 
 Dyaks, as he sat cooling his feet in the running 
 waters of a little stream in the interior of Trengganu, 
 and tenderly arranged the broken peacock feathers of 
 his head-dress, like a draggled bird pluming itself. 
 He wore a Government khaki uniform, stained green, 
 and black, and yellow, by much hard wear in damp 
 jungles, and a mangy tiger's skin, with a hole cut in 
 its centre, through which his head was thrust, hung 
 down his back and chest, like the chasuble of a 
 Catholic priest. He was tattooed with faint lines in 
 pale indigo, and the lobes of his ears consisted mainly 
 of two vast holes, so that the lower rims of flesh 
 
244 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 depended limply, almost to his shoulders. His voice 
 was harsh and grating, and his words came with the 
 curious jerky intonation of the Dyalc people ; and, 
 since he had little skill in story-telling, and as his 
 Malay was crude, I shall take the words out of his 
 mouth, and shall relate the strange things, to which he 
 bore testimony, in a manner of my own choosing. 
 
 In what follows, I believe that I have not omitted 
 anything material, and that I have myself inserted 
 nothing at all ; though the tale, as I write it, is more 
 connected, and more exact in detail, than was the tale 
 as I heard it told at any one time. Natives of the 
 lower class lack the power to narrate any story in such 
 a manner that the facts follow one another, in the 
 order in which they actually occurred. Also, they 
 tell their tales with a baldness that will not bear re- 
 production. If a man would fill in the rude outlines, 
 thus supplied to him in the beginning, he must listen 
 to constant repetitions, must ask countless questions, 
 and must trust to picking up a stray fact or detail 
 here and there, until, at last, he can piece the thing 
 together into a more or less connected whole. 
 
 The following story is a specimen of this kind of 
 verbal patch-work. 
 
 The interior of the Dyak hut was plunged in 
 obscurity, dimly relieved by the dull, red glow of the 
 smouldering embers, and by the flecks of light cast by 
 the pale moonbeams struggling through the inter- 
 stices of the high-pitched, thatched roof, and the 
 wattled walls. The married couples within the single 
 long room, of which the hut consisted, were three in 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DYAK 245 
 
 number : — the father and mother, owners of the house, 
 and their two married sons with their wives — each 
 couple lying packed away under dingy mosquito 
 curtains, only giving evidences of their presence, now 
 and again, by a restless movement, a many-jointed, 
 hard-fought snore, or by the sleepy, fretful cry of an 
 infant at the breast, quickly soothed into silence again 
 by the gentle words of comfort whispered by its tired, 
 patient mother. But, though the night was very far 
 advanced, though the cool dawn-wind was whispering 
 through the fruit trees of the compound, and even 
 making a little stir among the bed-curtains of the 
 sleepers, two figures sat facing one another in the 
 obscurity, still wide awake, and happy, as only lovers 
 can be, who find each moment ugly that is not spent 
 in one another's company. 
 
 If you study the manners and customs of the various 
 races of the Earth with a little care, you will find the 
 ways of humanity strangely similar, though the men 
 you watch be clad in loin-cloths or in dress-coats, 
 though the scene be a French salon or a Malay hut. 
 The continental system of arranging marriages between 
 young folk, who have barely seen one another, finds 
 its counterpart in many savage lands. But the Dyak 
 custom of allowing unmarried girls to receive their 
 own guests, and to practically manage all the pre- 
 liminaries to their own marriages with the youth of 
 their choice, without reference to, or interference 
 from, their elders, more nearly approximates to the 
 American system, and would seem to show that even 
 the emancipated girls of that energetic race have not 
 got so very far ahead of primitive people and their 
 
246 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 beginnings, as one might at first be inclined to 
 suppose. 
 
 dialing the Dyak had come to this particular hut 
 to ngayap, or court, Minang, and, though he had been 
 refused admittance on the first one or two occasions, 
 he had, later, been allowed to pay his nocturnal calls 
 with great regularity. Before she had become con- 
 vinced of his earnestness, Minang had treated dialing 
 with the scant courtesy that a Dyak maiden finds 
 necessary, if she is to preserve her self-respect. Once 
 or twice she had suddenly affected to be wearied by 
 his presence, and had abruptly bidden him depart, and 
 when, declining to believe that she really desired 
 him to be gone, he had stubbornly kept his seat, 
 she had stepped quickly to the fireplace, and, with 
 a few deft strokes of the bellows, had set flames 
 leaping, which cast a lurid light throughout the 
 hut. Then dialing had fled precipitately, for all 
 men know what is implied when a damsel throws 
 unnecessary light upon the situation, and dialing had 
 no desire that any one should look upon his face, and 
 recognise that he was the youth who had bored a girl 
 to desperation. Later, when she had begun to love 
 him, and when there no longer remained any doubt in 
 her mind as to dialing's passionate devotion to herself, 
 she had invited him to stretch himself to rest upon the 
 mat beside her, and dialing had lain there, listening 
 to her even breathing, longing for the time when she 
 would be his wife, but fearing to touch even the edge 
 of her garment, lest the cry which rouses a maiden's 
 men-folk should be uttered, and he should be cast out 
 of the hut, with the door barred against him, his body 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DYAK 247 
 
 covered with wounds and bruises, and his head broken 
 in many places ; for such is the custom of the Dyak 
 people ; and severe is the probation which a lover 
 must undergo before he is deemed to have proved him- 
 self worthy of her he desires to have to wife. 
 
 But, lately, things had taken a turn for the better. 
 Minang had been kinder and gentler, at each successive 
 meeting, and, this evening, when Chaling had played 
 his best and sweetest upon the little Jew's harp, and 
 had begun the fragmentary conversation that is per- 
 mitted before the girl takes her turn with the music- 
 maker, the consent to allow Chaling to make a formal 
 proposal to her people, which Mtnang in her coyness 
 had long withheld, had at length been given. Then 
 Chaling had clasped her about the waist for a moment, 
 and the twain now sat whispering together c In that 
 New World which is the Old.' 
 
 Next day, Chaling had an interview with the parents 
 of his lady-love — that mauvais quart cPheure which 
 helps to knock the romance out of so many lovers' day- 
 dreams — but he was a mighty hunter, and his hut was 
 well stored with gear of his own earning, so the ques- 
 tions asked by Minang's father, and the rather mercenary 
 demands which he made as the price of his consent, 
 were answered and complied with satisfactorily enough. 
 The date was fixed, upon which all the house should 
 be invited to partake of the puding sirih y and Chaling, 
 with his heart uplifted, as it had never been before, 
 betook himself to the jungle to seek for wild swine. 
 
 He was a dapper little fellow, with well-formed 
 sturdy limbs, the face of a London street-arab, and 
 
248 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 only one eye. A thorn had pierced the pupil of its 
 fellow long ago, when Chaling was a little naked 
 baby roaming about, with other tiny brown puff-balls, 
 bathing in the streams, and playing catch-as-catch-can 
 in the brakes of jungle near the villages. None the 
 less, his sight was nearly as keen as that of other 
 Dyaks, which means an acuteness of vision that we 
 civilised men, whose organs have been blunted by 
 long disuse, regard as little short of miraculous. 
 
 He wore about his waist a twisted loin-cloth of 
 scarlet cotton with a gold thread running through the 
 fabric, and, by his side, hung a curved, wooden sheath, 
 brave with beads and red horsehair, in which reposed 
 the long, keen-edged Dyak knife, without which he 
 never went forestwards. He went all alone, like 
 Young Lochinvar, for the pork he sought was destined 
 to be a present to his future mother-in-law ; and he 
 was not willing that any one but himself should have 
 a hand in the killing. He passed quickly through 
 the forest, placing one foot exactly in front of the 
 other at each step, as is the manner of all jungle 
 creatures, and soon the scant traces of human habitation 
 were left far behind him, and Chaling found himself 
 in the deep, dead jungle, with only the babble of a 
 brook, and the gentle distant murmur of the forest 
 flies and insects, to disturb the utter stillness. 
 
 There was an unusual stir in the house of Minang's 
 people when, after two days — ample time for a man to 
 slay more wild swine than the village-folk could eat 
 in a month — Chaling still failed to return, and the 
 hour appointed for the eating of the puding sirih drew 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DYAK 249 
 
 near. The friends and relations of the bride had been 
 invited in their scores, and Minang's father and mother 
 waxed very wrathful, indeed, when they thought of 
 the shame that must fall upon them if Chaling was too 
 late to keep his appointment. Minang's brothers 
 girded their loins anew, and, with their swords at their 
 sides, set off upon Chaling's track, in a state of anger 
 which boded ill for the treatment that their prospective 
 brother-in-law might expect, if he chanced to fall into 
 their hands. Little Minang sat within her father's 
 hut weeping furtively, a shamed maiden, and her 
 mother shook her head sadly, for all Dyak women 
 know that suicide is the only proper medicine for 
 a girl who has been the subject of a public slight, 
 such as this. Her brothers returned bringing with 
 them Chaling's sword, which they had found in the 
 jungle, and they told strange stories of broken boughs 
 overhead, and of a sudden cessation of Chaling's foot- 
 prints, as though he had suddenly soared upwards 
 through the branches. They said that he had been 
 caught up to the sky by the hand of the Jungle Fiend, 
 for one and all swore that no wild beast had seized 
 him, since no tracks were to be found. Needless to 
 say, no man placed credit in their words, for they had 
 good reason to wish that their sister's shame might be 
 hidden. And Minang, weeping very bitterly, in the 
 still, sad night, knew that her brothers' talk was foolish- 
 ness ; writhed in body and spirit when she thought of 
 the shame that had been put upon her ; and shuddered 
 at the open door of self-inflicted death, through which 
 she knew that she ought now to pass, because, even 
 without Chaling, and with a fame that was besmirched, 
 
250 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 life was still sweet while the young blood pulsed so 
 warmly through her veins. 
 
 As for the shameless dialing, he had eloped with a 
 lady, or, to be more accurate, a lady had run away "with 
 him ; and he now sat bruised, and sore, and naked, high 
 up amid the tree-tops, eyeing his new-found mistress 
 with extreme disfavour. He kept continually asking 
 himself whether he was really awake, hoping against 
 hope that this vile thing, which had happened to him, 
 was "an evil dream such as the bad spirits send to a 
 man when he lies stretched to sleep upon 'hard 
 ground,' where the devils love to dwell. But his 
 sores, and cuts, and scratches, and bruises, and the 
 aching pains in every bone, told him unmistakably 
 that he was wide awake, and that this unspeakable 
 thing was true. He rehearsed in his mind, again and 
 again, the order in which the events had occurred, and 
 he almost went mad with impotent fury when he 
 thought of the horror of the situation in which he 
 now found himself, and of his utter powerlessness to 
 escape from it. The morning when, amid the peace- 
 ful birds' chorus, he had left the Dyak village, and had 
 passed into the forest, that glistened with undried dew, 
 when his soul had been at rest, and his heart uplifted 
 with joy in his love for Minang, seemed incredibly far 
 away ; and he himself had aged, he felt, and was now 
 transformed into a being strangely different from the 
 light-hearted, cheery creature whom he had known as 
 Chaling so few hours ago. 
 
 He had sat down to rest at the foot of a large tree, 
 in a spot where the jungle was, if anything, more 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DTAK 251 
 
 thick and entangled than elsewhere, for the day was 
 hot, and he found the shade grateful. He had pulled 
 out his knife, and, with it, had peeled the rind from a 
 length of sugar-cane, which he had brought with him, 
 and, when he done with it, he had laid it aside, with- 
 out putting it back into its sheath. Then he had 
 fallen to thinking of Minang, of the soft, sweet words 
 she had whispered to him in the dim firelight, of the 
 look her face had worn when he told her of his love, 
 and asked her to be his wife. The better to see her 
 dear features on the retina of his mind, he had closed 
 his eyes, and the craving for sleep, that the long 
 watching during the previous night had brought to 
 him, aiding the soft, warm midday air, in the fragrant 
 forest, had lulled him to slumber before he even knew 
 that he was drowsy. 
 
 He was rudely awakened — startled into a wide-eyed 
 alertness without any previous gradation from sound 
 sleep to intense clearness of perception — by his right 
 arm, and the back of his neck being violently seized 
 from behind. He could see nothing, for the vice-like 
 grip on his neck kept his head immovable, but he felt 
 that his assailant was not a wild animal, but a human 
 being, for he could count the fingers that pressed into 
 his flesh. The things which grasped him were hands, 
 hard, bony, long-nailed hands, with palms rough as the 
 hide of a skate, and with muscles of enormous power, 
 but, none the less, the hands of a human being. 
 Chaling smelt a keen, pungent odour, like that of ill- 
 kept swine, and, during that terrible moment — it 
 seemed to him an age — while he could see nothing 
 but had power to feel, with a keenness of fear, that he 
 
252 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 had never before experienced, every tale of the Spectre- 
 Huntsman, of the Forest-Demons, of Giants and Ogres 
 and Devils and Spirits, that Chaling had ever heard told 
 by the elders of his village, ran riot through his 
 frightened brain. Vainly he tried to screw his head 
 round one half inch, so that he might see the creature 
 behind him ; vainly he struggled to release his right 
 arm from the grip of the unseen hand that held it 
 drawn painfully back ; vainly he sought with his left 
 hand to reach the knife, whose blade shone amid the 
 carpet of brown dead leaves, with which the earth of 
 the forest is always strewn to a depth of many inches. 
 He could do nothing. The knife looked very near, 
 yet it was as hopelessly out of reach as it would have 
 been had the metal that formed its blade still lain 
 untouched in the bowels of the earth. Chaling 
 stretched out a prehensile foot to grasp the knife, 
 for, like most Dyaks, he could on occasion pick a 
 sixpence off the ground with his toes, but he missed 
 it by a fraction, and the semblance to a bad dream 
 seemed now to be complete. All these actions, and 
 the hurrying thoughts that prompted them, occupied 
 fewer seconds than it is easy to conceive, for the mind 
 works with extraordinary rapidity when the stimulus 
 of deadly fear comes to aid it, and, at such times, the 
 limbs follow the dictates of the brain, even before the 
 soul of the man is well aware that a plan of any kind 
 has been formed in the mind. 
 
 A moment later, Chaling felt himself lifted clear 
 from off his feet, hard held by neck and arm, in the 
 grip of hands that were still invisible to him. His 
 head was slightly depressed, and, in a flash, he saw the 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DYAK 253 
 
 sodden jungle leaf- carpet drop from under him, saw 
 his feet dangling limply, saw the blade of his knife 
 glisten where it lay, and heard his neck crack again, 
 as the strain of supporting most of the weight of his 
 body was put upon it. He was swung lightly up- 
 wards into the lower branches of a tree, resisting and 
 struggling fiercely, but with as much effect as the 
 efforts of a bird might have had to free itself from the 
 grip of a hand that held it firmly. A pause followed, 
 during which Chaling's eyes started prominently from 
 his head, and his breath came in hard, sobbing gasps. 
 Then, once more he was swung upwards, and again 
 upwards, until he found himself upon a huge bough, 
 some fifty feet above the ground. He was not giddy, 
 and he balanced himself instinctively upon the limb of 
 the tree, on which he was now seated, for the Dyaks 
 have never quite deserted the arboreal habits of the 
 human race, and they are still as much at home among 
 the branches and tree- tops, as is possible for a people 
 who have learned to build huts upon the ground. 
 
 Then, suddenly, the grip upon his arm and neck 
 relaxed, and, a moment later, two vast hairy arms were 
 wound about his body, and a long, leathery face, like 
 a human countenance covered with a taut mask 
 fashioned from goldbeater's skin, was thrust forward 
 over dialing's shoulder. The hair on the iron arms 
 was red and shaggy ; the hair on the head was a 
 straggling mass of ruddy wires ; the nails were horny 
 tips to fingers that seemed made of steel ; the thumbs 
 were disproportionately small compared to the size of 
 the rest of the hand ; and the palms were rough and 
 hard where they touched Chali ng, so that they rasped 
 
254 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 his flesh painfully. But it was the monster's face, 
 which was thrust round to look at him, that filled 
 Chaling with a fear and a loathing that made him 
 sick. It was the colour of bad parchment, with brutal 
 creases and wrinkles, that seemed to mark every evil 
 passion known to man. It measured nearly nine 
 inches across, and the eyes set in it, under lowering 
 brows and a low, narrow, animal forehead, were red 
 and angry, and filled with a horrible eagerness. The 
 small flat nose, with its two gaping nostrils, seemed 
 to point upwards, and Chaling found himself wonder- 
 ing whether the rain water fell into it, and thence 
 into the interior of the beast's head, when the weather 
 chanced to be wet. At a moment of the greatest 
 mental tension, it is always the most trivial and in- 
 congruous thoughts that hurry through the mind. 
 But it was the prominent, bestial mouth, the heavy 
 brutal jaw, the long yellow fangs, and the dwarfing 
 effect that the protruding muzzle had upon the rest 
 of the face, that made Chaling tremble with fear as 
 the monster thrust its head forward against his cheek, 
 and licked him with its rough hot tongue. 
 
 After this for a space, Chaling remembered little. 
 Later on, he had a confused recollection of climbing 
 from tree to tree, and of making his way along a maze 
 of branches, with the creature forcing him onwards, 
 swinging him now upwards, now downwards, now 
 back, now forward, and occasionally halting to crush 
 him to its hairy breast in a horrible embrace that 
 filled Chaling with loathing, and drove the breath from 
 his body, while his ribs cracked and groaned under 
 the pressure. How far they travelled on this strange 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DTAK 255 
 
 journey, Chaling never knew, but, when the sun was 
 beginning to sink, the captive found himself squatting 
 disconsolately upon a bough, high up among the tree- 
 tops, mechanically watching his keeper building a rude 
 nest with a skill that seemed more than half human. 
 
 The tree, in which they were perched, was a giant 
 of the forest, a good hundred feet of gray-white trunk 
 separating its lower branches from the ground, which was 
 densely covered with thick underwood. The brute had 
 chosen the very highest point available, and it now sat 
 breaking off large branches, with a sharp turn of its mighty 
 wrist, and laying them across and across one another, 
 until a rude platform, screened by the leaves, which still 
 grew upon the severed boughs, had been constructed. 
 
 While the beast was working quickly and deftly at 
 the construction of this nest, Chaling had time to 
 observe it more closely. It, or rather she, was a 
 full-grown female Mais — an orang-utan^ to use the 
 ludicrously misapplied Malay phrase, which has been 
 embodied into European languages without reference 
 to its proper meaning of 'jungle dweller,' and is usually 
 given more vowels and consonants than it can possibly 
 know what to do with. She measured nearly four 
 feet in height, and the spread of her arms, from finger 
 tip to finger tip, could not have been less than six feet. 
 Her legs were disproportionately short, and this caused 
 her to assume a semi-erect attitude as she moved about 
 among the branches, now and again walking on all- 
 fours with the knuckles and back of her hands, not 
 the palms, serving as the soles of her front feet. 
 Every now and then she paused in her work to cock 
 an evil, cunning, brutal eye at Chaling, and, though 
 
256 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 he longed for escape, as he had never before longed 
 for anything, he knew that any attempt at flight 
 would be useless while that ugly glance was upon him. 
 She was very quiet even in her movements and ne^er 
 once did she articulate a sound ; and this complete 
 silence, in a creature so strangely, hideously human, 
 filled Chaling with an added dread, for which he found 
 it difficult to account. 
 
 When her work was completed, the Mais put out 
 a leisurely arm, and, seizing Chaling in an iron grip, 
 swung him into the nest without visible effort. Then 
 she threw herself down by his side, and pressed him 
 fiercely against her great hairy body. Her limbs 
 wound about him, crushing him with a strength of 
 which their owner was quite unconscious. The 
 rough, shaggy masses of hair forced their way into 
 Chaling's mouth and throat, choking him, and causing 
 him to cough painfully. The reek of the beast filled 
 his nostrils with a horrible odour, and the black jungle 
 ticks, with which she was covered, began to swarm 
 over the thin-skinned body of the man. Chaling felt 
 no hunger, for fear takes all longing from a man's 
 stomach, but his throat was parched with thirst, and, 
 since he dared not attempt to creep away to the 
 brook, which he heard babbling through the forest 
 beneath him, he was fain to lick the dew from the 
 leaves around the nest. The Mais was an uneasy 
 bedfellow, for she constantly woke up, or changed 
 her grip upon her victim, and now and again she tore 
 at her hairy hide with an energy that set the tree-top 
 rocking. At such times Chaling would be nearly 
 thrown out of the nest, and, long before morning, he 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DTAK 257 
 
 was black and blue with the bruises received from the 
 beast's jerking elbows. While she was awake, her 
 attentions to the man were unremitting, and Chaling 
 was driven to a state bordering upon frenzy, by her 
 horrible blandishments, and by the acute physical pain 
 which her clutching grip caused him. None the less, 
 exhausted nature would have its way, and Chaling 
 slept fitfully upon his rough couch, and, for a space, 
 till the inevitable nightmare seized him, he was able 
 to forget the miseries of his horrible slavery. 
 
 The dawn-wind, faintly breathing over the forest, 
 was gently swaying the tree-tops when Chaling finally 
 awoke, and the first thing that he saw was the hideous 
 head of the Mais pillowed upon his shoulder, blinking 
 sleepy, bleary eyes at him, through a tangle of sparse 
 red hair. To Chaling the beast represented all the 
 Fates and Furies rolled into one, and, when the full 
 horror of his helplessness broke freshly upon him, he 
 burst into a passion of weeping. The Mais snuggled 
 up against him, blowing hot, fetid breaths over his 
 face, and licking his cheeks, till they were sore, with 
 her rough, feverish tongue. Then she began picking 
 the ticks off him, causing him intense pain, for these 
 crab -shaped insects drive their prongs into nerve 
 centres, and any attempt to remove them by force is 
 an agony. Soon sharp despairing cries mingled with 
 Chaling's sobs and tears, and, at length, in a fit of 
 utter recklessness, he struck the Mais full in the face. 
 As his hand clapped upon her leathery countenance, 
 Chaling felt more keenly than ever how completely 
 impotent his little strength was against this hairy 
 giantess. The Mais snarled, and showed her teeth. 
 
 s 
 
258 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 Then she apparently came to the conclusion that this 
 was a game, and presently the flat of her iron hand 
 told loudly on the man's tender face. It was a 
 stunning blow, though she only struck half-handedly, 
 without any attempt at real violence, and Chaling's 
 one eye was almost closed by it, and then came large 
 purple bruises, swelling rapidly, so that his face was 
 soon a shapeless, discoloured mass. 
 
 Then Chaling cowered down upon the rude plat- 
 form, and moaned aloud, and the Mais pawed him 
 mercilessly, with rasping hands, much as a child treats 
 a favourite and long-suffering kitten. 
 
 Later, when the sun began to rise, the Mais set off 
 on her daily roaming through the forest. She moved 
 along at a leisurely pace, swinging from tree to tree, 
 walking along branches, but always keeping at some 
 distance from the ground, and she took Chaling with 
 her wherever she went. The pinch of hunger was 
 gripping him now, and his mind dwelt most insistently 
 on the fat rice, and roots, the rich pork, and the fish, 
 and the condiments, which he knew were that day 
 cooking, in the house of Minang's parents. His heart, 
 no doubt, was very much in Minang's keeping, but his 
 stomach was a free agent, and it stimulated his imagina- 
 tion into constantly conjuring up alluring visions of the 
 sweet human viands for which his whole being now 
 craved unceasingly. The Mais seemed to feed upon 
 almost every fruit that grew, but she appeared to be 
 specially addicted to those which were most sour, acrid, 
 and astringent. Hunger drove Chaling to partake of 
 such food as the Mais permitted him to approach, and 
 it must be confessed that he made the acquaintance of 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DYAK 259 
 
 more unpleasant tastes, during the time that he was 
 with her, than he had hitherto known to exist in all 
 the world. But Chaling's sufferings did not end here. 
 The Mais never bathed in the streams which, every 
 now and again, Chaling could see glistening below 
 them, as he looked downwards through the tree-tops, 
 and often, for days together, she never drank at all. 
 The unfortunate Chaling was forced to do what the 
 Mais regarded as right and proper, wherefore he had 
 to slake his thirst as best he could, by lapping up the 
 water he occasionally found lying in the hollows of 
 trees, and in other similar uncleanly places. For the 
 rest, he sucked the dew-drenched leaves that, at night- 
 time, formed his bed-curtains, and prayed fervently, to 
 every Demon in the Dyak Mythology, for deliverance 
 from his terrible slavery. 
 
 Chaling never knew clearly how long his captivity 
 lasted. It seemed to him that the whole of his life 
 had been spent in wandering through the forest, with 
 his horrible companion. Ever since he could re- 
 member anything at all, so he sometimes thought, his 
 bones had been racked with aches, his skin had been 
 covered with abrasions, his stomach had been consumed 
 with importunate longings for food, and his heart filled 
 with a wild desire for escape. It would not have been 
 so difficult to bear, if only the Mais had not been 
 so horribly, so clumsily attentive to him. Doubtless, 
 with the kindest of intentions, she insisted upon 
 forcing the most repulsive objects down the man's 
 unwilling throat, nearly strangling him the while with 
 the brawny grip she fixed upon his neck. When she 
 waxed playful, and she was often a most hilarious 
 
260 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 creature, she was really the worst of company, for she 
 had no notion of her own strength, and she bruised 
 and tore the man's soft body, tfith a cruel indifference 
 to the sufferings which she occasioned. She travelled 
 through the jungle in a very leisurely fashion, some- 
 times spending an hour or more upon one tree, before 
 quitting it for the next, and thus Chaling, as he sat 
 huddled up on a bough, like a sick bird, had many 
 hours at his disposal during which to mourn over the 
 hardness of his lot, and to plan wholly impracticable 
 schemes of revenge, and of escape. 
 
 One day, the Mais dragged Chaling down to the 
 ground, at a spot where there was a large brake of 
 bamboos, and began tearing up the great round stems, 
 in order to get at the edible shoots. Her giant hands 
 rent the shrieking bamboos, with as much ease as a 
 child might rend long grass, and Chaling, watching 
 her sullenly, saw herein the chance for which he was 
 always looking. He had long ago abandoned as 
 hopeless all idea of saving himself by flight, for the 
 Mais, he knew, had the legs of him in the jungle, and, 
 since he had no weapon, he could do nothing to render 
 her unable to pursue him. But, in the shivered 
 bamboos, Chaling thought that he saw, at last, a means 
 of supplying himself with a fairly good substitute for 
 a knife. He knew that the edge of a newly split 
 bamboo is as keen as tempered steel, and, in the 
 wreckage around him, he had a wide choice of weapons. 
 He selected two long splinters, which particularly 
 commended themselves to him on account of their 
 superior strength and sharpness, and, when, late in the 
 afternoon, the Mais quitted the bamboo-brake, and 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DYAK 261 
 
 again ascended into the trees, Chaling carried the two 
 fragments of wood, held cross-wise in his mouth, as he 
 climbed. £ 
 
 The Mais made the nut-like nest, as usual, and, as 
 the night drew on, she composed herself to sleep, under 
 the covering of pandanus leaves with which she some- 
 times provided herself, for the purpose. Chaling lay 
 very still, feigning sleep, until the heavy breathing of 
 the unclean monster, at his side, showed him that the 
 Mais was slumbering profoundly. Then, moving with 
 extreme caution, he sat up, and very gently raised the 
 pandanus leaf from the beast's face. The moon was 
 near the full, and the pale rays, struggling through the 
 canopy of foliage overhead, showed Chaling the face of 
 the sleeping brute, as clearly as if it had been day. 
 The Mais lay upon her back, with arms and legs 
 extended widely, and her hideous, leathery face looked 
 strangely and most repulsively human. Her mouth was 
 wide open, and her evil-smelling breath came in heavy 
 snoring grunts, like that of a drunken man. Chaling 
 looked at her very carefully, for he knew that every- 
 thing depended upon no mistake being made, at this 
 critical moment. Like all jungle-dwellers, the Dyak 
 had a fair working knowledge of anatomy, and he 
 was anxious to make the incision he contemplated in 
 the exactly correct spot. For perhaps five minutes, 
 Chaling sat thus gazing at the upturned face of the 
 Mais, and gently running his light fingers along the 
 surface of the creature's extended throat. Then, 
 suddenly, putting out all his force, he drew the keen 
 edge of the bamboo swiftly and firmly across the 
 beast's neck, severing the jugular artery. The bamboo 
 
 ( 
 
262 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 knife was so sharp that, as is the case when a cut is a 
 very clean one, the Mais, for the moment, did not feel 
 a pang ; and Chaling had time to drop over the edge 
 of the nest-platform, before the creature was fairly 
 awake. Then the Mais leaped up, and started in 
 pursuit. A warm jet of blood burst downwards as 
 the animal looked over the edge of the nest at the 
 descending man, and the pungent, reeking stream 
 struck Chaling full in the face, temporarily blinding 
 him. He could hear the Mais crashing through the 
 branches above him, and giving vent to sick, thick 
 coughs. He could hear all the noises of the jungle 
 night plainly and distinctly, but for a moment he 
 could see nothing. He was now in an agony of fear, 
 and terror lent speed to his descent. Hardly knowing 
 how he did it, he half climbed, half fell through the 
 branches, and never paused until he felt the solid earth 
 once more beneath his feet. He halted then, for an 
 instant, but the sounds overhead, that told him that 
 the Mais was in pursuit, soon drove him again into 
 headlong panic-stricken flight. 
 
 All that night, and all the next day, Chaling made 
 his way through the forest, until, in the fulness of 
 time, he came out upon a track, which he recognised 
 as one that led to a village with which he was 
 acquainted. He spent the night in this place, and, 
 after eating as he had never eaten before, and obtaining 
 the loan of some old clothes, he next day pushed 
 forward to his own village. 
 
 On his arrival here, he at once sought the Headman, 
 and reported to him the extraordinary misfortune of 
 which he had been the victim. He came in time to 
 
ELOPEMENT OF CHALING THE DYAK 263 
 
 save Minang from the suicide which, as befitted a 
 well-educated Dyalc girl, she had been by way of 
 contemplating, ever since her lover failed to put in an 
 appearance at the marriage feast, but his future parents- 
 in-law were not to be so easily satisfied. The im- 
 mutable Dyak customs provide punishment by fine for 
 recalcitrant fiancis^ and no excuse can be accepted in 
 extenuation or mitigation of the offence. Thus it 
 came about that the luckless Chaling found his sojourn 
 with the Mais almost as expensive as it had been un- 
 pleasant. It was in vain that he pleaded that he had 
 been the victim of circumstances over which he had had 
 no control ; for, as the Headman shrewdly remarked, 
 all the young men in the Dyak country would be 
 running away with the beasts of the forest, if thereby 
 they might avoid paying the price of their infidelities. 
 The girls of the village did their best to shame Minang 
 out of marrying Chaling, but in this attempt they 
 failed. What did it matter to her, she said, that 
 Chaling should have been forced to mate with a Mais, 
 whom he assured her that he had never loved ? Was 
 it not yet one more proof of his beauty and attractive- 
 ness that even the animals in the jungle fell in love 
 with him at first sight ? And would not these other 
 girls, who jeered at her, willingly forsake their own 
 miserable men-folk, if thereby they might win Chaling 
 for themselves ? So Minang and Chaling were married, 
 with great state, in accordance with the ancient Dyak 
 custom and ritual, and their after years were probably 
 of little interest to any one except themselves. The 
 Pinghulu of the Dyaks, when he told me the story, 
 said that he could remember Chaling, who was then a 
 
264 STUDIES IN BROWN HUMANITY 
 
 very old man, being pointed out to him, in the far off 
 days, when the Penghulu himself was a child, and, 
 so far as he could recollect, there was nothing remark- 
 able in his appearance. That is the worst of your 
 hero of romance ; — he is usually so very commonplace 
 to look at. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 IN COURT AND KAMPONG : 
 
 Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the 
 Malay Peninsula. 
 
 By HUGH CLIFFORD 
 
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 MARIE AND ROBERT LEIGHTON. 
 
 CONVICT 99: A Novel. With eight full -page Illustrations by 
 Stanley L. Wood. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 3s. 6d. 
 
 HELMUTH SCHWARTZE. 
 
 THE LAUGHTER OF JOVE : A Novel. With Cover designed by 
 W. H. Horton. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 6s. 
 
 EDWARD SPENCER (" Nathaniel Gubbins "). 
 
 CAKES AND ALE : A Memory of Many Meals ; the whole inter- 
 spersed with various recipes, more or less original, and anecdotes, 
 mainly veracious. With Cover designed by Phil May. Small 
 4to. Cloth. 5s. [Third Edition. 
 
 LOUISA SHORE. 
 
 HANNIBAL: A Drama. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 5s.net. 
 
 LAURENCE BINYON. 
 
 PORPI1YRION, AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. Buckram. 
 5-;. net. 
 
 FREDERIC BRETON. 
 
 TRUE HEART : A Novel. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 6s. 
 
 GRANT RICHARDS, 9 HENRIETTA STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN, W.C 
 
 7 
 
Mr. Grant Richards's Publications — Continued. 
 
 GEORGE EGERTON. 
 THE WHEEL OF GOD : A Novel. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 6s. 
 
 H ALDAN E MACFALL. 
 THE BLACK VAGABOND : A Novel. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 6s. 
 
 MARTIN LEACH WARBOROUGH, 
 
 TOM, UNLIMITED : A Story for Children. With Fifty Illustrations 
 by Gertrude Bradley. Globe 8vo. Cloth. 5s. 
 
 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 PLAYS PLEASANT AND UNPLEASANT. With Portrait of the 
 Author. Two vols. 5s. each. 
 
 DECKLES WILLSON. 
 
 THE TENTH ISLAND : Being some Account of Newfoundland, its 
 People, its Politics, and its Peculiarities. With an Introduction 
 by Sir William Whiteway, K.C.M.G., Premier of the Colony, 
 and an Appendix by Lord Charles Beresford. With Map. 
 Glol>e 8vo. Buckram. 3s. 6d. 
 
 R. S. WARREN BELL. 
 
 THE CUB IN LOVE: In Twelve Twinges. With six additional 
 Stories. With Cover designed by Maurice Greiffenhagen. 
 Tauchnitz Size. Paper Cover, is. 6d. Copies also obtainable 
 in cloth. 2s. 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE SURFACE SERIES. 
 By Gordon Seymour. 16 mo. Buckram. 2s. each. 
 
 1. The Rudeness of the Honourable Mr. Leatherhead. 
 
 2. A Homburg Story. 
 
 3. Cui Bono? 
 
 GRANT RICHARDS, 9 HENRIETTA STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 
 PUBLISHED by Mr. GRANT 
 RICHARDS AT 9 HENRI- 
 ETTA STREET, COVENT 
 GARDEN, LONDON. 
 
 This List includes Books by Grant Allen, 
 Miss Alma Tadema, G. B. Burgin, 
 Edward Clodd, George Egerton, George 
 Fleming, R. Murray Gilchrist, Vernon 
 Lee, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Richard le 
 Gallienne, Maurice Maeterlinck, Leonard 
 Merrick, Mrs. Meynell, IVill Rothenstein, 
 G. Bernard Shaw, IV. T. Stead, IV. J. 
 Stillman, and Sidney Webb. 
 
For the convenience of 
 Booksellers a List of 
 these Books classified 
 according to price ap- 
 pears at the end of the 
 Catalogue. 
 
Autumn, 1897 
 
 ALLEN, GRANT. 
 
 The Evolution of the Idea of God : an Inquiry 
 into the Origins of Religions. Demy 8vo. Cloth. 
 20s. net. 
 
 Grant Allen's Historical Guides : 
 
 Paris. [Ready. 
 
 Florence. „ 
 
 The Cities of Belgium. ,, 
 
 Venice. [In preparation. 
 
 Rome. „ 
 
 j>. 8vo. Cloth. 3s. 6<1. each, net. 
 
 >d work in the way of showing students the fight manner of approaching the 
 history of a great city. . . . These useful little volumes." — Times. 
 
 ise who travel for the sake of culture will be well catered for in Mr. Grant 
 Allen's new series of historical guides. . . . There are few more satisfactory books 
 for a student who wishes to dig out the Paris of the past from the immense super- 
 incumbent mass of coffee-houses, kiosks, fashionable hotels, and other temples of 
 
 >;ion, beneath which it is now submerged. Florence is more easily du^ 
 you have only to go into the picture galleries, or into the churches or nm 
 whither Mr. Allen's guide accordingly conducts you, and tells you what to look at 
 if you want to understand the art treasures of the city. The books, in a word, 
 explain rather than describe. Such books are wanted nowadays. . . . The more 
 sober-minded among tourists will be grateful to him for the skill with which the new 
 series promises to minister to their needs."— Scotsman. 
 
 kfr. Grant Allen, as a traveller of thirty-five years experience in foreign lands, 
 is well qualified to command success in the task he has set himself, and nothing in 
 the two volumes under notice is more striking than the strong sense conveyed of his 
 powers of observation and the facility with which he describes the objects of art and 
 the architectural glories which he has met and lingered over. ... It would be a 
 pity indeed were his assiduous researches and the fruits of his immense experience, 
 now so happily exemplified, to pass unnoticed either by 'globe trotters' or by 
 students of art and history who have perforce to stay at home. — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " No traveller going to Florence with any idea of understanding its art tr--. 
 can afford to dispense with Mr. (irant Allen's guide. He is so saturated with in- 
 formation gained by close observation and close study. He is so candid, so sincere, 
 so fearless, so interesting, and his little book is so portable and so pretty." — Queen. 
 
 "That much abused class of people, the tourists, have often been taunted with 
 their ignorance and want of culture, and the perfunctory manner in which they hurry 
 through, and ' do ' the Art Galleries of Europe. There is a large amount of truth, no 
 doubt, but they might very well retort on their critics that no one had come forward to 
 meet their wants, or assist in dispelling their ignorance. No doubt there are guide- 
 books, very excellent ones in their way, but on all matters of art very little better than 
 mere indices ; something fuller was required to enable the average man intelligently to 
 appreciate the treasures submitted to his view. Mr. Grant Allen has offered to meet 
 their wants, and offers these handbooks to the public at a price that ought to be with- 
 in the reach of every one who can afford to travel at all. The idea is a good one, and 
 should insure the success which Mr. Allen deserves." — Morning Post. 
 
 " Not only admirable, but also, to the intelligent tourist, indispensable. . . . Mr. 
 Allen has the artistic temperament. . . . With his origins, his traditions, his art 
 criticisms, be goes to the heart of the matter, is outspoken concerning those things he 
 despises, and earnest when describing those in which his soul delights. . . . The 
 books art genuinely interesting to the ordinary reader, whether he have travelled 
 or not, and unlike the ordinary guide-book may be read with advantage both before 
 and after the immediate occasion of their use. ' —Birmingham Gaxette. 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 An African Millionaire : Episodes in the Life of 
 the Illustrious Colonel Clay. With over Sixty Illus- 
 trations by Gordon Browne. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 6s. [Fifth Edition. 
 
 "It is not often that the short story of this class can be made as attractive and 
 as exciting as are many of the Colonel's episodes. Let us be thankful for these, and 
 hasten to commend ' An African Millionaire ' to the notice of all travellers. We can 
 imagine no book of the season more suitable for an afternoon in a hammock or a 
 lazy day in the woods. And the capital illustrations help an excellent dozen of stories 
 on their way." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " For resourcefulness, for sardonic humour, for a sense of the comedy of the situa- 
 tion, and for pluck to carry it through, it would be difficult to And a more entertain- 
 ing scoundrel than Colonel Clay."— Daily News. 
 
 " A volume which, excepting to those devoid of humour, will have afforded some 
 wholly genuine amusement." — Morning Post. 
 
 " The interest of the book never flags, and it is perfectly clean and wholesome, no 
 book of detective stories could be more suited for drawing-room reading."— Queen. 
 
 " When Mr. Grant Allen is not elevating the human mind, but only instructing or 
 amusing it, one knows few pleasanter writers. He is equally at home with the 
 scientific essay, or the short story, and by no means holds a back seat as a novelist. 
 This book is a good example of his talents. It is only a collection of tales describing 
 how a very rich man is again and again victimised by the same adventurer, but it 
 has not only plenty of dramatic incident, but of shrewd and wise reflection, such as 
 is seldom found in the modern iftvel."— Mr. James Payn, in the Illustrated London 
 News. 
 
 ALMA TADEMA, LAURENCE. 
 
 Realms of Unknown Kings : Poems. Fcap. 8vo. 
 Paper Covers. 2s. net. Buckram. 3s. net. 
 
 BELL, R. S. WARREN. 
 (See Henrietta Volumes.) 
 
 BURGIN, G. B. 
 
 " Old Man's " Marriage : A Novel. (A Sequel to 
 "The Judge of the Four Corners.") Crown 8vo. 
 Cloth. 6s. 
 
 Mr. Burgin's best qualities come to the front in ' " Old Man's" Marriage.' . . . 
 Miss Wilkes has nearly as much individuality as any one in the story, which is saying 
 a good deal, fur reality seems to gather round all the characters in spite of the 
 romance that belongs to them as well ... the story is fresh and full of charm."— 
 Standard. 
 
 " Mr. Burgin's humour is both shrewd and kindly, and his book should prove as 
 welcome as a breath of fresh air to the weary readers of realistic fiction."— Daily 
 TeUgrafih. 
 
 "'Old Man's' Marriage is told with such humour, high-spirit, simplicity, and 
 straightforwardness that the reader is amused and entertained from the first page to 
 the last. Once I had begun it I had to go on to the end *, when I put it down 
 it was with a sigh to part with such excellent company. . . . As thoroughly enjoy- 
 able and racily written a story as has been published for a long time."— Mr. Coulson 
 Kkrnahan in the Star. 
 
 " It would be difficult to speak too highly o( the delicate pathos and humour of 
 this beautiful sketch of a choice friendship in humble life. ... A study at once 
 simple and subtle and full of the dignity and sincerity of natural man."— Manchester 
 Guardian. 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 CLIFFORD, HUGH (British Resident at Pahang). 
 
 In Court and Kampong : being Tales and Sketches 
 of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula. Large 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth. 7s. 6d. 
 
 " The chief aim is to portray character, to reveal to the European thoughts, passions, 
 and aspirations which unfold themselves but slowly even to him who for long years 
 has lived the life of his Asiatic associates in places remote from the sound of western 
 civilisation. . . . In this effort Mr. Clifford has achieved a considerable success ; and 
 as he writes also in a bright style, which has a distinctly literary flavour, his work i> 
 not less welcome for the information which it gives than interesting as a story- 
 book." — A theturum. 
 
 " Mr. Clifford undoubtedly possesses the gift of graphic description in a high 
 degree, and each one of these stories grips the reader's attention most insistently. 
 The whole book is alive with drama and passion ; but, as we have said, its greatest 
 charm lies in the fact that it paints in strikingly minute detail a state of things which, 
 whether for good or ill, is rapidly vanishing from the face of the earth." — Speaker. 
 
 " Tti Clifford tells with a force and life-likeness such as is only to be 
 
 equalled in the stories of Kudyard Kipling. Take, for instance, the gruesome st.«r\ 
 of the were-tiger, man by day and man-eater by night. . . . Every one of these tales 
 leaves its impression, dramatic yet lifelike. Moreover, they are valuable as giving 
 je, distorted civilisation which, under the influence of Hritish 
 residents ami officials, will soon pass away or hide itself jealously from the gaze of 
 :i eyes." — Pall Mall Gau 
 
 CLODD, EDWARD. 
 
 Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley, 
 
 with an intermediate chapter on the Causes of Arrest 
 of the Movement. With portraits in photogravure 
 of Charles Darwin, Professor Huxley, Mr. A. R. 
 Wallace, and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Crown 8vo. 
 Linen. 5s. net. [Second Edition. 
 
 ; ' We arc always glad to meet Mr. Edward Clodd. He is never dull ; he is a: 
 well informed, and he says what he has to say with clearness and Incision. . . . The 
 interest ( lodd attempts to show the part really played in the growth 
 
 of the doctrine of evolution by men like- \ srin, Huxley, and Spencer. Mr. 
 
 Clodd clears away prevalent misconceptions as to the work of these modern pioneers. 
 Lilly does he | >cncer the credit which is his due, but which is often 
 
 <-nly awarded to Darwin. Mr. Clodd does not seek in the least to lower 1 1 
 from the lofty pedestal which he rightly occupies ; he only seeks to show precisely why 
 he deserves to occupy such a position. We commend the lxx>k to those who want to 
 know what evolution really means ; but they should be warned beforehand that they 
 have to tackle strong meat."— Times. 
 
 "The goal to which Mr. Clodd leads us in so masterly a fashion in the present 
 volume is but the starting-point of fresh achievements, .uul, in due course, fresh 
 theories. Hi« book furnishes an important contribution to a liberal education."— 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 I icre is no better book on the subject for a general reader, and while its matter 
 
 is largely familiar to professed students of science, and indeed to most men who are 
 
 well read, no one could go through the book without being both refreshed and newly 
 
 instructed by its masterly survey of the growth of the most powerful idea of modem 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 DUMPY BOOKS FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 i. The Flamp, the Ameliorator, and the 
 Schoolboy's Apprentice : Three Stories. By 
 
 Ldward Verrall Lucas. 
 5 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 2. Mrs. Turner's Cautionary Stories. Edited, 
 with a Chapter on Bad and Good Children, by 
 Edward Verrall Lucas. 
 
 With end-papers designed by Mrs. Farmiloe. i8mo. 
 Cloth, is. 6& each. 
 
 EGERTON, GEORGE. 
 
 Detached : a Novel. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 6s. 
 
 \In preparation. 
 
 ETHICS OF THE SURFACE SERIES. 
 
 i. The Rudeness of the Honourable Mr. 
 Leatherhead. 
 
 2. A Homburg Story. 
 
 3. Cui Bono. 
 
 By Gordon Seymour. i6mo. Buckram. 2 s. each. 
 
 "The stories are remarkable for their originality, their careful characterisation, 
 their genuine thoughtfulness, and the sincerity of their purpose. They certainly 
 open up a fresh field of thought on the problems set by the philosopher of the super- 
 ficial, problems which, though they seem to lie on the surface, strike their roots deep 
 down into human life ; and they make us think for ourselves (though perhaps some- 
 what gropingly), which is more than can be said for the genera] run of modern 
 novels. — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " An able and well written little bit of fiction. . . . Amongst the short descriptive 
 portions of the hook there are some excellent examples of graceful prose, and if the 
 dialogues occasionally resolve themselves into disquisitions on life and society too 
 elaborate for the reader who is chiefly concerned to get the story, they will repay the 
 reader who can appreciate the analysis of delicate shades of thought and feeling.' — 
 Aberdeen Free Press. 
 
 "The book is altogether an ingenious one, and is also interesting as being a kind 
 of modern revival of the old-time ' moral tales' and other old-fashioned ways of com- 
 bining instruction with entertainment."— Perthshire Advertiser. 
 
 FLEMING, GEORGE. 
 
 Little Stories about Women. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 "All novel readers must welcome the decision which has caused these stories, many 
 of which are gems, to appear in volume form. . . . Story is hardly the name to em- 
 ploy in the case of these impressionist pictures. They have the suggestive merit of 
 the school and none of its vagueness." — Morning Post. 
 
 " It is impossible to read ' Little Stories about Women ' without a feeling of blank 
 astonishment that their author should be so very little more than a name to the read- 
 ing public. ... It is difficult to imagine anything better in its way— and its way is 
 thoroughly modern and up to date — than the first of the collection, ' By Accident.' 
 It is very short, very terse, but the whole story is suggested with admirable art. 
 There is nothing unfinished about it, and the grip with which the carriage accident 
 which opens it is presented never relaxes." — World. 
 
 GILCHRIST, R. MURRAY. 
 (See Sylvan Series.) 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 HENRIETTA VOLUMES, THE 
 
 The Cub in Love : in Twelve Twinges ; with Six 
 additional Stories. By R. S. Warren Bell. With 
 Cover by Maurice Greiffenhagen. Tauchnitz size, 
 is. 6d. (Copies also obtainable in Cloth. 2s.) 
 
 " Light and amusing withal is Mr. Warren Bell's sketch of a very young man 
 suffering from the bitter-sweet of an unrequited affection. . . . The Cub seems to be 
 a near relation of Dolly (of the ' Dolly Dialogues '). and the sprightliness of his 
 dialogue makes him worthy of the kinship." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " Under the title 'The Cub in Love' Mr. Grant Richards sends out the first of 
 a series of light stories to be styled ' The Henrietta Volumes.' The writer is Mr. 
 R. S. Warren Bell, and his bright colloquial style, lightened by flashes of wit and 
 abundant humour, makes this story of the love-sickness of a healthy well-to-do young 
 Englishman infinitely entertaining. . . . The book makes excellent reading for 
 travelling or a holiday, or, indeed, for any occasion on which amusement is the thing 
 desired. If the subsequent volumes of the Henrietta series are up to this standard, 
 there need be no question of their success." — Scotsman. 
 
 "This is one of the most brightly written books we have read for some time. . . . 
 We cannot conceive a more enjoyable book for a couple of hours' reading at the sea- 
 ning TeUgra}h. 
 
 H.R.H. the Prince of Wales: an Account of His 
 Career, including his Birth, Education, Travels, 
 Marriage and Home Life, and Philanthropic, Social, 
 and Political Work. Royal 8vo. Cloth. 7s. 6d. 
 With over Sixty Portraits and other Illustrations. 
 
 MRS. PERCY. 
 
 The Ethics of Browning's Poems. With Intro- 
 duction by the Bishop of Winchester. Fcap. 8vo. 
 Cloth. 2s. 6d. 
 
 LEE, VERNON. 
 
 Limbo and other Essays: with Frontispiece. 
 Fcap. 8vo. Buckram. 5 s. net. 
 
 "The brilliant and versatile writer who adopts the pseudonym of Vernon Lee 
 affords a dainty feast to her readers in this charming little volume." — Times. 
 
 ! arm, that 'delicate and capricious foster-child of leisure,' Vernon Lee's 
 latest work, small as it Is, is the equal of anything that she has yet produced." — 
 Morning Post. 
 
 "This little volume might be called a manual of the cultivated soul adventuring 
 among masterpieces of art and natural beauties. It brings to the enjoyment of these 
 a power of association which traverses seas and years, and refreshes the mind with 
 images summoned from the recesses of memory. They are pitched in a pleasant 
 conversational way, frankly, even daringly, personal, and are strewn with vivid 
 descriptions of Italian scenes and places. ... A quiet strain of genuine feeling and 
 
 Snuine discernment runs through these essays, and it would be thankless to deny 
 eir charm as companions for a summer afternoon." — Manchester Guardian. 
 " ' Limbo and other Kssays ' is amongst the most welcome of recent books. . . . 
 Few essayists see so many beautiful things as Vernon Lee, and fewer still, having 
 seen them, say so many beautiful things about them."- Mr. Richard le Gallienne 
 in the Star. 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 LEE-HAMILTON, EUGENE. 
 
 The Inferno of Dante translated into English 
 Verse. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 5s. 
 
 LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD. 
 
 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam : a Paraphrase from 
 several Literal Translations. From the press of 
 Messrs. T. and A. Constable of Edinburgh. Long 
 Fcap. 8vo. Parchment. 5s. Also a very limited 
 Edition on Japanese vellum, numbered and signed 
 by the author. 15s. net. 
 
 LEIGHTON, MARIE CONNOR, and ROBERT 
 LEIGHTON. 
 
 Convict 99: a Novel. With Eight full-page Illus- 
 trations by Stanley L. Wood. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 LOWNDES, FREDERIC SAWREY. 
 
 Bishops of the Day : a Biographical Dictionary of 
 the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of 
 England, and of All Churches in Communion 
 therewith throughout the World. Fcap. 8vo. 
 Cloth. 5s. 
 
 " While the assembly of nearly 200 Bishops of the Anglican Communion at the 
 Lambeth Conference makes the publication of the volume at the present time 
 especially opportune, Mr. Lowndes's work is likely to command a more permanent 
 interest. It gives a full and lucid sketch of the career of each Bishop, without any 
 suggestion ofpartisan bias on the part of the author." — Times. 
 
 " Few works of reference could be more acceptable to Churchmen of the present 
 time. . . . Plenty of dates of the right sort, as well as matters of more human 
 interest. " — Guardian. 
 
 " The work is thoroughly up to date, as one may see from the Episcopal events of 
 1896 and 1897 here recorded. It abounds in personal incidents and anecdotes not to 
 be found elsewhere, and evidently derived from original and accredited sources. . . . 
 Much valuable information on Church matters generally incidental to Episcopal 
 administration.*' — Morning Post. 
 
 11 Mr. Lowndes has spared no pains to make his compendium as perfect as 
 possible. . . . This book is, as far as we can know, the first of the kind that has 
 been published, and supplies, in good time, a want that would have soon become 
 urgent. " — Standard. 
 
 " Valuable for reference on account of much of the information contained in the 
 neatly got-up volume being supplied by the prelates themselves."— World. 
 
 " The book should be bought and read at once. There is no Churchman whom it 
 will not interest, and it contains a sufficiency of blank spaces to admit of MS. addi- 
 tions, which may record the inevitable changes brought about by death or by 
 translation. Mr. Lowndes deserves our very cordial thanks for a piece of work 
 which few would have undertaken, and none could have achieved more perfectly." — 
 Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 
 
 8 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 LUCAS, EDWARD VERRALL. 
 
 A Book of Verses for Children : an Anthology. 
 With Cover, title-page, and end-papers designed 
 in colours by F. D. Bedford. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 6s. 
 
 ''The principle of this Anthology, Mr. Lucas explained at length in the Fort- 
 nightly Rcvinv for September 1896, in an article entitled ' Some Notes on Poetry for 
 Children.' The Daily Chronicle, commenting in a leading article on thiv 
 •Very wise, as well as very witty notes they are. . . . If the new 'Child's An- 
 thology ' is going to be up to sample, we should like to subscribe to a copy in advance. 
 . . . Why should not Mr. Lucas compile it himself? No one, clearly, is better fitted 
 for the ta 
 
 (See also Dumpy Books for Children.) 
 
 MAETERLINCK, MAURICE. 
 
 Aglavaine and Selysette : a Drama in Five Acts. 
 Translated by Alfred Sutro. With Introduction by 
 J. W. Mackail, and Title-page designed by W. H. 
 Margetson. Globe 8vo. Half-buckram. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 " To read the play is to have^ one's sense of beauty quickened and enlarged, to be 
 touched by the inward and spiritual grace of things. . . . Mi. Sutro is the most 
 i curious, and at the same time the most f translators; not content 
 
 with reproducing the author's thought, he strives after the same effect of language — 
 the pi. 1 the dying cadence, the Maeterlincked sweetness long drawn out. 
 
 And more often than not he succeeds, — which is saying a good deal when one con- 
 the enormous difficulties of the task."— Mr. A. B. Walklev, in the Speaker. 
 
 " The book is a treasury of beautiful things. No one now writing loves beauty as 
 M Maeterlinck does. Sneer, essential beauty has no such lover. He will have 
 nothing else.'' — Academy 
 
 " Mr. Alfred Sutro's careful and delicate translation of Mr. Maurice Maeterlinck's 
 new play gives readers of English every opportunity of appreciating a work which, 
 so to .peak, 1 ,f the century. . . . The book, fcpl the 
 
 best yet published by which an English-speaking stranger to M. Maeterlinck could 
 make his acquaintance." — Scotsman. 
 
 MERRICK, LEONARD. 
 
 One Man's View : a Novel. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 ■ <1 over which we could at a pinch fancy ourselves sitting up till the small 
 hours. . . . The characters are realised, the emotion is felt and communicated." — 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " An uncommonly well written story. . . . The men in the book are excellent, and 
 the hero ... is an admirable portrait.'' — Standard. 
 
 itiard Merrick's work is exceptionally good : his style is literary, he has 
 
 haracter, and he can touch on delicate matters without being coarse or 
 
 View' is keenly interesting. . . . 'On- 
 
 e rare books in which, without a superfluous touch, each character 
 
 stands out clear and individually. It holds the reader's attention from first to last."— 
 
 Guardian. 
 
 " Mr. Merrick's fascinating story — a story written in a vivacious style, containing 
 many humorous and pathetic passages, and pervaded throughout by a high and 
 
 Cure tone. . . . There is not a dull passage in th« he character of the 
 
 rave, unselfish, magnanimous b.r mirably drawn." — Aberdeen Free Press. 
 
 9 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 MEYNELL, ALICE. 
 
 The Flower of the Mind : a Choice among the 
 best Poems. With Cover designed by Lawrence 
 Housman. Crown 8vo. Buckram. 6s. 
 
 " Partial collections of English poems, decided by a common subject or bounded 
 by the dates and periods of literary history, are made more than once in ever> 
 and the makers are safe from the reproach of proposing their own personal taste u a 
 guide for the reading of others. But a general Anthology gathered from the whole 
 of English literature — the whole from Chaucer to Wordsworth — by a gatherer intent 
 upon nothing except the quality of poetry, is a more rare attempt." — Extract from 
 Introduction. 
 
 ROTHENSTEIN, WILL. 
 
 English Portraits : a Series of Lithographed 
 Drawings. With short texts by various hands. 
 
 Part I. — Sir Frederick Pollock ; Mr. Thomas 
 
 Hardy. 
 Part II.— Sir F. Seymour Haden; Mr. William 
 
 Archer. 
 Part III. — Rt. Rev. Dr. Creighton, Bishop of 
 
 London ; Marchioness of Granby. 
 Part IV.— Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, P.C., M.P. ; Mr. 
 
 John Sargent, R.A. 
 Part V.— Mr. W. E. Henley; Mr. A. W. Pinero. 
 Part VI.— Miss Ellen Terry ; Mr. Sidney Colvin. 
 [ These parts are now ready. 
 
 In Twelve Parts, each in a Wrapper arranged by the Artist. 2s. 6d. 
 each, net ; or, the subscription to the Series of Twelve, post free with 
 a Case for binding, designed by the Artist, 30s. net. 
 
 " Admirably life-like, . . . and the style of publication makes it very attractive." 
 — Speaker. 
 
 "The drawings are lithographs, rough sketches rather than elaborate drawings, but 
 they show that Mr. Rothenstein has thoroughly mastered his method and knows how 
 to use it with most commendable self-restraint. They are admirable examples of the 
 style of drawing which he has made his own, and which has much to recommend it. 
 The drawings are accompanied by the briefest personal paragraphs."— Scotsman. 
 
 " The portraits, which are of a large portfolio size, are vivid likenesses, and their 
 ipearance is a gratifying indication of the revival of lithography in fine art." — 
 berdeen Free Press. 
 
 " The introductory examples fulfil to the full the promises made in the publisher s 
 announcements, and it is certain that the series will be keenly appreciated by art 
 
 lovers." — Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 SCHWARTZE, HELMUTH. 
 
 The Laughter of Jove : a Novel. Crown 8vo. 
 Cloth. 6s. 
 
 TO 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 SEYMOUR, GORDON. 
 
 (See Ethics of the Surface Series.) 
 
 SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD. 
 
 Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant. 
 
 I. Unpleasant 
 II. Pleasant. 
 
 These Volumes will contain all Mr. Shaw's Dramatic 
 work, acted and unacted, with special Introductions, 
 and Prefaces to Each Play. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 
 5 s. each. 
 
 (See also Politics in 1 896.) 
 
 I )RE, ARABELLA and LOUISA. 
 Poems by A. and L. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 5s. net. 
 
 SPENCER, EDWARD ("Nathaniel Gubbins.") 
 
 Cakes and Ale : a Memory of Many Meals ; the 
 whole interspersed with various recipes, more or 
 less original, and anecdotes, many veracious. With 
 cover designed by Phil May. Small 4to. Cloth. 5s. 
 
 [Third Edition. 
 
 :xx>k from which every restaurant-keeper can, if he will, get ideas enough to 
 make a fortune. Sportsmen, stock-brokers and others with large appetites, robust 
 yet sensitive palates, and ample means, will find it invaluable when they are ordering 
 the next little dinner for a select party of male friends." — Saturday Revieiv. 
 
 "Exceedingly readable, clever, and, moreover, highly informative. . . . From 
 racy chapter to racy chapter the reader is irresistibly carried on. . . . The mistress 
 tiouse will read it carefully for the sake of the valuable recipes and hints, and 
 mine host will esteem it for the smart style in which it is written, and for the 
 plenitude of humour displayed in anecdote, story, and reminiscence." — Dundee 
 Advertiser* 
 
 I low me to say that it is a little book on a great subject that deserves to 
 occupy an honourable place in every library, on the same shelf as Kettner's ' Book of 
 the Table,' Sala's 'A Thin I 'K>k,' and perhaps that over-praised but un- 
 
 doubtedly entertaining da nomy as a Fine Art,' by Brillat-Savarin." — 
 
 Spotting Life. 
 
 "This little volume should have its place among the wedding presents of .every 
 bride."— Lady s Pictorial. 
 
 " There are many useful hints on table matters, and the recipes are^all eminently 
 practical. No country house should be without it."— Guardian. 
 
 II 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 stead, w. T. 
 
 Real Ghost Stories: A Revised Reprint of the 
 Christmas and New Year Numbers of the 
 "Review of Reviews," 1891-92. With new Intro- 
 duction. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 5s. 
 
 STILLMAN, W. J. 
 
 The Old Rome and the New, and Other 
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 SYLVAN SERIES, THE 
 
 A Peakland Faggot : Tales told of Milton Folk. 
 By R. Murray Gilchrist. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 2s. 6& 
 
 " Not only are the sketches themselves full of charm and real literary value, but 
 the little volume is as pleasant to the eye and to the touch as its contents are 
 stimulating to the imagination. . . . We do not envy the person who could lay down 
 the book without feeling refreshed in spirit by its perusal. . . . We cannot give our 
 readers better counsel than in advising them to procure without delay this charming 
 and cheery volume." — Speaker. 
 
 "We have no hesitation in saying that this is the very best work which Mr. 
 Gilchrist has given us. As studies of Black Country character it is superb. In fact 
 he is a master of our feelings and emotions in this daintily produced little volume, and 
 * A Peakland Faggot ' will solidify that reputation which he has been steadily building 
 up of late years. The style is thoroughly poetic . . . Our hearty congratulations to 
 Mr. Murray Gilchrist upon this performance — the magic he has used u the magic of 
 true genius." — Birmingham Gazette. 
 
 " The writer who gives us glimpses into the psychology of the poor and illiterate 
 ought always to be welcome. . . . Mr. Murray Gilchrist has introduced us to a new 
 world of profound human interest."— Mr. T. P. O'Connor, in the Graphic. 
 
 " I have read no book outside Mr. Hardy's so learned in such minutiae of country 
 'wit' and sentiment. "—Mr. Richard lb G allien ne, in the Star. 
 
 TROUBRIDGE, LADY. 
 
 Paul's Stepmother, and One Other Story. 
 With Frontispiece by Mrs. Annie Hope. Crown 
 8vo. Cloth. 3 s. 6d. 
 
 "There is a fine natural interest in both these stories, and Lady Troubridge 
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 enhanced." — Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 " It is with a genuine feeling of pleasure that the reader will linger over ' Paul's 
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 situation is treated with real feeling, and there is not a discordant note throughout 
 the story. . . . Both stories are marked as the work of a fine and cultured writer.' 
 —Weekly Sun. 
 
 TURNER, ELIZABETH. 
 
 (See Dumpy Books for Children.) 
 12 
 
Grant Richards' s Publications 
 
 WALDSTEIN, LOUIS, M.D. 
 
 The Subconscious Self and its Relation to 
 Education and Health. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 WARBOROUGH, MARTIN LEACH. 
 
 Tom, Unlimited : A Story for Children. With 
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 WEBB, SIDNEY. 
 
 Labour in the Longest Reign (1837 -1897). 
 
 Issued under the Auspices of the Fabian Society, 
 ap. 8vo. Cloth, is. 
 
 is, considering the source from which it comes, a singularly temperate and 
 . iew of the changes in the lot of the labourer which the reign has brought." — 
 Scotsman. 
 
 ■1 r. Sidney Webb has set forth some expert and telling comparisons between the 
 condition of the working-classes in 1837 and 1897. His remarks on wages, on the 
 irregularity of employment, on hours of labour, and on the housing of the poor, are 
 worthy of earnest consideration." — Daily Mail. 
 
 WHELEN, FREDERICK (Editor). 
 
 Politics in 1896. With Contributions by H. D. 
 Traill, D.C.L. ; H. W. Massingham ; G. Bernard 
 Shaw; G. W. Steevens ; H. W. Wilson; Captain 
 F. N. Maude; Albert Shaw and Robert Donald. 
 Globe 8vo. Cloth. 3s. net. 
 
 r more reasons than one Mr. Whelen's Political Annual, of which the present 
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 light in which they are regarded by various shades of public opinion, but it 
 calls for recognition as a record of the development of political thought, that, if 
 regularly issued, will be of value to the future historian. . . . The book has . 
 
 understand the various ideas actuating contending parties, 
 and such readers will certainly find entertaining matter in the several contrilm 
 
 : . Whelen has undertaken a difficult task, but the volume which he has just 
 issued is a very interesting and useful retrospect, and all who are interested in con- 
 temporary affairs will be glad to know that it is intended to be an annual. The plan 
 ;jle and comprehensive. ... Mr. Whelen has done a useful work in starting 
 ! venture, and we wish him all success." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 "Those who can afford it, which includes at least every Labour Club, ought to 
 a copy for their library." — Mr. Keir Hakdie, in the Labour Leader. 
 
 13 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 WHITTEN, WILFRED. 
 
 The London - Lover's Enchiridion : An Anth- 
 ology of Prose and Poetry inspired by London, 
 With an Introduction. Crown 8vo. Buckram. 
 6s. \In Preparation. 
 
 WILLSON, BECKLES. 
 
 The Tenth Island ; Being some Account of New- 
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 ties. With an Introduction by Sir William Whiteway, 
 KX.M.G., Premier of the Colony, and an Appendix 
 by Lord Charles Beresford. Globe 8vo. Buckram. 
 3s. 6d. With Map. 
 
 14 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
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 Labour in the Longest Reign (1837-1897). 
 
 1s. 6d. 
 
 The Cub in Love. (Paper. ) 
 
 Dumpy Books for Children. 
 
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 II. A Homburg Story. 
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 Realms of Unknown Kings. 
 
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 English Portraits. (Twelve Parts.) 
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 Realms of Unknown Kings. (Buckram.) 
 Politics in 1896. 
 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 The Tenth Island : An Account of New- 
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 Convict 99. 
 
 The Subconscious Self. 
 Little Stories about Women. 
 One Man's View. 
 Paul's Stepmother. 
 
 15 
 
Grant Richards s Publications 
 
 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 Grant Allen's Historical Guides. 
 
 I. Paris. 
 
 II. Florence. 
 
 III. Cities of Belgium. 
 
 IV. Venice. [In Preparation. 
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 Real Ghost Stories. 
 
 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 
 
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 Poems by A. and L. 
 Pioneers of Evolution. 
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 " Old Man's " Marriage. 
 
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