Part 6

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

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

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

"Is he a year old?"

"If the Tuan please."

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

"What your Excellency can give."

"Twenty-five dollars?" I asked.

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

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

So commenced our acquaintance with Lepas. We got into the habit of calling him Lepas, because it was the Malay for "let go," which definition we broadened until it became a term of correction for every form of mischief. He was such a restless, active little imp, with hands into everything and upon everything, that it was "Lepas!" from morning to night.

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

It did not take Lepas as long to forget his former master as it did to forget his former habits. In truth, his civilization was never more than skin deep.

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

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

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

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

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

I expected as a matter of course to lose another pair of shoes or something, in payment for this unneighborly behavior, but the colony in the trees seemed to know that I was innocent. It was not long before they caught the true culprit, and gave him such a beating that he was quiet and subdued for days.

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

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

So we forgave him when he pulled all the feathers out of a ring-dove that was a valued present from an old native rajah; when he turned lamp-oil into the ice cream, and when he broke a rare Satsuma bowl in trying to catch a lizard. He was always so penitent after each misadventure!

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

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

But Lepas started off on a voyage of discovery one day, and not only invaded his compound, but actually entered his house. The official caught him in the act of hiding his shaving-set between the palm thatch of the roof and the cheese-cloth ceiling. Recognizing Lepas, he did not kill him, but took him by his leathern girdle and soused him in his bath-tub, until he was so near dead that it took him hours to crawl home.

Lepas went around with a sad, injured expression on his wrinkled little face, for days. Not even a mangosteen sprinkled with sugar could awaken his enthusiasm.

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

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

And so it proved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A finger bowl struck the butler full in the face, and gave the monkey time to make his escape out into the darkness through the wide-open doors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I never saw Lepas but once again, and that was one evening on the ocean esplanade. He was in the centre of an admiring circle of half-nude Malay and Hindu boys, going through his quaint antics, while Hamat squatted before him beating on a crocodile-hide drum and singing a plaintive, monotonous song.

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

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

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

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

KING SOLOMON'S MINES

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

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

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

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

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

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

Directly below me, a soldier in a uniform of duck and a rimless cap with a gold band was pacing up and down the gravelled walk. A little farther on a bevy of women and children were bathing in the tepid waters of the river, while a man in an unpainted prau was keeping watch for a possible crocodile.

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

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

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

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

A great white punkah was lazily vibrating over the heavy rosewood table.

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

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

"I have done worse," I answered.

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

I turned to the Tuan Hakim, or Chief Justice, with a gesture of unconcealed pleasure. We had shot crocodiles the day previous along the banks of the Maur, and I had found him a good shot and an agreeable companion. While not as handsome a man or as striking a representative of his race as the Unko, or Prince, he was a scholar, and could aid me more than any one else in my exploration of the ancient gold workings about the base of the famous mountain.

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

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

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

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

For a moment we caught a view of the wooden minarets of the little mosque at Bander Maharani; then we dashed on into the heart of another great curve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I bowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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