Part 3

But if the company be well chosen, the _venue_ and the climate such as can be found at a hundred places between St. Tropez and Salerno, if there is in the costumes and the luncheon only a fair application of Art to Nature, the Eastern pastime is capable of easy and successful acclimatisation in the West. And as the knights and dames stroll slowly down the wooded glen, and the sinking sun strikes long shafts of light across their path, glorifying all colours, not least the tint of hair and eyes, the pleasure-seekers, if they have not by then found some more mutually interesting topic, will be very unanimous in their praise of _Mĕng-gĕlunchor_.

VI

ÂMOK

There comes a time When the insatiate brute within the man, Weary with wallowing in the mire, leaps forth Devouring ... and the soul sinks And leaves the man a devil

LEWIS MORRIS

Mention has been made of the Malay _âmok_, and, as what, with our happy faculty for mispronunciation and misspelling of the words of other languages, is called “running amuck,” is with many English people their only idea of the Malay, and that a very vague one, it may be of interest to briefly describe this form of homicidal mania.

_Mĕng-âmok_ is to make a sudden, murderous attack, and though it is applied to the onslaught of a body of men in war time, or where plunder is the object and murder the means to arrive at it, the term is more commonly used to describe the action of an individual who, suddenly and without apparent cause, seizes a weapon and strikes out blindly, killing and wounding all who come in his way, regardless of age or sex, whether they be friends, strangers, or his own nearest relatives.

Just before sunset on the evening of the 11th February, 1891, a Malay named Imam Mamat (that is Mamat the priest) came quietly into the house of his brother-in-law at Pâsir Gâram on the Perak River, carrying a spear and a _gôlok_, _i.e._ a sharp, pointed cutting knife.

The Imam went up to his brother-in-law, took his hand and asked his pardon. He then approached his own wife and similarly asked her pardon, immediately stabbing her fatally in the abdomen with the _gôlok_. She fell, and her brother, rushing to assist her, received a mortal wound in the heart. The brother-in-law’s wife was in the house with four children, and they managed to get out before the Imam had time to do more than stab the last of them, a boy, in the back as he left the door. At this moment, a man, who had heard the screams of the women, attempted to enter the house, when the Imam rushed at him and inflicted a slight wound, the man falling to the ground and getting away.

Having secured two more spears which he found in the house, the murderer now gave chase to the woman and her three little children and made short work of them. A tiny girl of four years old and a boy of seven were killed, while the third child received two wounds in the back; a spear thrust disposed of the mother—all this within one hundred yards of the house.

The Imam now walked down the river bank, where he was met by a friend named Uda Majid, rash enough to think his unarmed influence would prevail over the other’s madness.

He greeted the Imam respectfully, and said, “You recognise me, don’t let there be any trouble.”

The Imam replied, “Yes, I know you, but my spear does not,” and immediately stabbed him twice.

Though terribly injured, Uda Majid wrested the spear from the Imam, who again stabbed him twice, this time in lung and windpipe, and he fell. Another man coming up ran unarmed to the assistance of Uda Majid, when the murderer turned on the new-comer and pursued him; but, seeing Uda Majid get up and attempt to stagger away, the Imam went back to him and, with two more stabs in the back, killed him. Out of the six wounds inflicted on this man three would have proved fatal.

The murderer now rushed along the river bank, and was twice seen to wade far out into the water and return. Then he was lost sight of.

By this time the news had spread up stream and down, and every one was aware that there was abroad an armed man who would neither give nor receive quarter.

For two days, a body of not less than two hundred armed men under the village chiefs made ceaseless but unavailing search for the murderer. At 6 P.M. on the second day, Imam Mamat suddenly appeared in front of the house of a man called Lasam, who had barely time to slam the door in his face and fasten it. The house at that moment contained four men, five women, and seven children, and the only weapon they possessed was one spear.

Lasam asked the Imam what he wanted, and he said he wished to be allowed to sleep in the house. He was told he could do so if he would throw away his arms, and to this the Imam replied by an attempt to spear Lasam through the window. The latter, however, seized the weapon, and with the help of his son, wrested it out of the Imam’s hands, Lasam receiving a stab in the face from the _gôlok_. During this struggle, the Imam had forced himself halfway through the window, and Lasam seizing his own spear, thrust it into the thigh of the murderer, who fell to the ground. In the fall, the shaft of the spear broke off, leaving the blade in the wound.

It was now pitch dark, and, as the people of the house did not know the extent of the Imam’s injury or what he was doing, a man went out by the back to spread the news and call the village headman. On his arrival the light of a torch showed the Imam lying on the ground with his weapons out of reach, and the headman promptly pounced upon him and secured him.

The Imam was duly handed over to the police and conveyed to Teluk Anson, but he died from loss of blood within twenty-four hours of receiving his wound.

Here is the official list of killed and wounded—

KILLED.

Alang Rasak, wife of Imam Mamat _aged_ 33 Bilal Abu, brother-in-law of Mamat ” 35 Ngah Intan, wife of Bilal Abu ” 32 Puteh, daughter of Bilal Abu ” 4 Mumin, son of Bilal Abu ” 7 Uda Majid ” 35

WOUNDED.

Kâsim, son of Bilal Abu _aged_ 14 Teh, daughter of Bilal Abu ” 6 Mat Sah ” 45 Lasam —

It is terrible to have to add that both the women were far advanced in pregnancy.

Imam Mamat was a man of over forty years of age, of good repute with his neighbours, and I never heard any cause suggested why this quiet, elderly man of devotional habits should suddenly, without apparent reason, develop the most inhuman instincts and brutally murder a number of men, women, and children, his nearest relatives and friends. It is, however, quite possible that the man was suffering under the burden of some real or fancied wrong which, after long brooding, darkened his eyes and possessed him with this insane desire to kill.

An autopsy was performed on the murderer’s body, and the published report of the surgeon says: “I hereby certify that I this day made a _post-mortem_ examination of the body of Imam Mahomed, and find him to have died from hæmorrhage from a wound on the outer side of right thigh; the internal organs were healthy except that the membranes of the right side of brain were more adherent than usual.”

VII

THE JÔGET

Every footstep fell as lightly As a sunbeam on the river

LONGFELLOW’S _Spanish Student_

Malays are not dancers, but they pay professional performers to dance for their amusement, and consider that “the better part” is with those who watch, at their ease, the exertions of a small class whose members are not held in the highest respect. The spectacle usually provided is strangely wanting in attraction; a couple of women shuffling their feet, and swaying their hands in gestures that are practically devoid of grace or even variety—that is the Malay dance—and it is accompanied by the beating of native drums, the striking together of two short sticks held in either hand, and the occasional boom of a metal gong. The entertainment has an undoubted fascination for Malays but it generally forms part of a theatrical performance, and for Western spectators it is immeasurably dull.

In one of the Malay States, however, Păhang, it has for years been the custom for the ruler and one or two of his near relatives to keep trained dancing girls, who perform what is called the “Jôget”—a real dance with an accompaniment of something like real music, though the orchestral instruments are very rude indeed.

The dancers, _bûdak jôget_, belong to the Raja’s household, they may even be attached to him by a closer tie; they perform seldom, only for the amusement of their lord and his friends, and the public are not admitted. Years ago I saw such a dance, and though peculiar to Păhang as far as the Malay States are concerned, it is probable that it came originally from Java; the instruments used by the orchestra and the airs played are certainly far more common in Java and Sumatra than in the Peninsula.

I had gone to Păhang on a political mission accompanied by a friend, and we were vainly courting sleep in a miserable lodging, when at 1 A.M. a message came from the Sultan inviting us to witness a _jôget_. We accepted with alacrity, and at once made our way to the _astâna_, a picturesque, well-built and commodious house on the right bank of the Păhang river. A palisade enclosed the courtyard, and the front of the house was a very large hall, open on three sides, but covered by a lofty roof of fantastic design supported on pillars. The floor of this hall was approached by three wide steps continued round the three open sides, the fourth being closed by a wooden wall which entirely shut off the private apartments save for one central door over which hung a heavy curtain. The three steps were to provide sitting accommodation according to their rank for those admitted to the _astâna_. The middle of the floor, on the night in question, was covered by a large carpet, chairs were placed for us, and the rest of the guests sat on the steps of the daïs.

When we entered, we saw, seated on the carpet, four girls, two of them about eighteen and two about eleven years old, all attractive according to Malay ideas of beauty, and all gorgeously and picturesquely clothed.

On their heads they each wore a large and curious but very pretty ornament of delicate workmanship—a sort of square flower garden where all the flowers were gold, trembling and glittering with every movement of the wearer. These ornaments were secured to the head by twisted cords of silver and gold. The girls’ hair, combed down in a fringe, was cut in a perfect oval round their foreheads and very becomingly dressed behind.

The bodices of their dresses were made of tight-fitting silk, leaving the neck and arms bare, whilst a white band of fine cambric (about 1½ inches wide), passing round the neck, came down on the front of the bodice in the form of a V, and was there fastened by a golden flower.

Round their waists were belts fastened with large and curiously worked _pinding_ or buckles of gold, so large that they reached quite across the waist. The rest of the costume consisted of a skirt of cloth of gold (not at all like the _sârong_), reaching to the ankles, while a scarf of the same material, fastened in its centre to the waist-buckle, hung down to the hem of the skirt.

All four dancers were dressed alike, except that the elder girls wore white silk bodices with a red and gold handkerchief, folded cornerwise, tied under the arms and knotted in front. The points of the handkerchief hung to the middle of the back. In the case of the two younger girls the entire dress was of one material.

On their arms the dancers wore numbers of gold bangles, and their fingers were covered with diamond rings. In their ears were fastened the diamond buttons so much affected by Malays, and indeed now by Western ladies. Their feet, of course, were bare.

We had ample time to minutely observe these details before the dance commenced, for when we came into the hall the four girls were sitting down in the usual[1] Eastern fashion, on the carpet, bending forward, their elbows resting on their thighs, and hiding the sides of their faces, which were towards the audience, with fans made of crimson and gilt paper which sparkled in the light.

On our entrance the band struck up, and our special attention was called to the orchestra, as the instruments are seldom seen in the Malay Peninsula.

There were two chief performers, one playing on a sort of harmonicon, the notes of which he struck with pieces of stick held in each hand. The other, with similar pieces of wood, played on inverted metal bowls. Both these performers seemed to have sufficiently hard work, but they played with the greatest spirit from 10 P.M. till 5 A.M.

The harmonicon is called by Malays _chĕlempong_, and the inverted bowls, which give a pleasant and musical sound like the noise of rippling water, a _gambang_. The other members of the orchestra consisted of a very small boy who played, with a very large and thick stick, on a gigantic gong—an old woman who beat a drum with two sticks, and several other boys who played on instruments like triangles called _chânang_.

All these performers, we were told with much solemnity, were artists of the first order, masters and a mistress in their craft, and if vigour of execution counts for excellence they proved the justice of the praise.

The Hall, of considerable size, capable of accommodating several hundreds of people, was only dimly lighted, but the fact that, while the audience was in semi-darkness, the light was concentrated on the performers added to the effect. Besides ourselves I question whether there were more than twenty spectators, but sitting on the top of the daïs near to the dancers it was hard to pierce the surrounding gloom.

The orchestra was placed on the left of the entrance to the Hall, that is rather to the side and rather in the background, a position evidently chosen with due regard to the feelings of the audience.

From the elaborate and vehement execution of the players, and the want of regular time in the music, I judged, and rightly, that we had entered as the overture began. During its performance, the dancers sat leaning forward, hiding their faces as I have described; but when it concluded and, without any break, the music changed into the regular rhythm for dancing, the four girls dropped their fans, raised their hands in the act of _Sèmbah_ or homage, and then began the dance by swaying their bodies and slowly waving their arms and hands in the most graceful movements, making much and effective use all the while of the scarf hanging from their belts.

Gradually raising themselves from a sitting to a kneeling posture, acting in perfect accord in every motion, then rising to their feet, they floated through a series of figures hardly to be exceeded in grace and difficulty, considering that the movements are essentially slow, the arms, hands and body being the real performers whilst the feet are scarcely noticed and for half the time not visible.

They danced five or six dances, each lasting quite half an hour, with materially different figures and time in the music. All these dances I was told were symbolical; one, of agriculture, with the tilling of the soil, the sowing of the seed, the reaping and winnowing of the grain, might easily have been guessed from the dancer’s movements. But those of the audience whom I was near enough to question were, Malay-like, unable to give me much information. Attendants stood or sat near the dancers and from time to time, as the girls tossed one thing on the floor, handed them another. Sometimes it was a fan or a mirror they held, sometimes a flower or small vessel, but oftener their hands were empty, as it is in the management of the fingers that the chief art of Malay dancers consists.

The last dance, symbolical of war, was perhaps the best, the music being much faster, almost inspiriting, and the movements of the dancers more free and even abandoned. For the latter half of the dance they each held a wand, to represent a sword, bound with three rings of burnished gold which glittered in the light like precious stones.

This nautch, which began soberly, like the others, grew to a wild revel until the dancers were, or pretended to be, possessed by the Spirit of Dancing, _hantu mĕnâri_ as they called it, and leaving the Hall for a moment to smear their fingers and faces with a fragrant oil, they returned, and the two eldest, striking at each other with their wands seemed inclined to turn the symbolical into a real battle. They were, however, after some trouble, caught by four or five women and carried forcibly out of the Hall, but not until their captors had been made to feel the weight of the magic wands. The two younger girls, who looked as if they too would like to be “possessed,” but did not know how to accomplish it, were easily caught and removed.

The band, whose strains had been increasing in wildness and in time, ceased playing on the removal of the dancers, and the nautch, which had begun at 10 P.M., was over.

The Raja, who had only appeared at 4 A.M., told me that one of the elder girls, when she became “properly possessed,” lived for months on nothing but flowers, a pretty and poetic conceit.

As we left the Astâna, and taking boat rowed slowly to the vessel waiting for us off the river’s mouth, the rising sun was driving the fog from the numbers of lovely green islets, that seemed to float like dew-drenched lotus leaves on the surface of the shallow stream.

VIII

THE STORY OF MAT ARIS

I smote him as I would a worm, With heart as steeled, with nerve as firm; He never woke again

WHITTIER

It was in the year 1876 that a man named Mat Aris, of no occupation and less repute, persuaded one Sâhit to take his wife Salâmah and start on a journey through the jungle to a distant country. The interest of Mat Aris in this couple was a desire to get rid of Sâhit and possess himself of the woman Salâmah, for whom he had conceived an overmastering passion.

The travellers began their journey at a spot many miles up the Perak River; their road lay along a jungle track, and so sparsely inhabited was the country they were to pass through, that they could not even find a habitation in which to pass the night. They had to look forward to many days’ journey through the primæval forest, the home of wild beasts and Sakai people, aboriginal tribes almost as shy and untamed as the elephant, the bison and the rhinoceros, with which they share the forests of the interior.

Sâhit and his wife started on their journey in the company of two brothers of Mat Aris, but meeting him the brothers returned, Mat Aris undertaking the part of escort. In the afternoon of the first day’s march a Sakai named Pah Patin met the three, and, being known to Mat Aris, that worthy ordered him to accompany them. Pah Patin did as he was told, and when evening came on, as there was no dwelling within miles, a shelter was built in the jungle wherein the night was to be passed.

It is as well to understand what a Malay jungle is like, for a good soil, well watered, in one of the hottest and dampest climates in the world, produces a forest that is not altogether the counterpart of all other forests.

The reading public, no doubt, believes that the jungle of Darkest Africa is a place of gloom, terror and difficulty without parallel. It may be so, but few of those who know it have visited Malâya, and one is apt to exaggerate one’s own troubles. Whatever gruesome peculiarities there are about the African jungle, it seems possible for large bodies of men and women to make their way through it at a fair pace without great difficulty. In that respect at least it has the advantage of the Malay forest.

To begin with there are the trees of all sizes, from the smallest shoot to the giants of the jungle, towering to a height of 150 feet. I know that is not excessive, but in this forcing climate there are an enormous number of such trees, treading on each others roots and crowding the older and feebler out of existence. These are nothing, they afford a pleasant shade from the pitiless rays of the sun, and though this mitigated light cannot by any stretch of imagination be called darkness, it is possible to take off your hat without fear of sunstroke. If it were only for the trees jungle walking would be pleasant enough.

Under them, however, there is an undergrowth so thick as to beggar description. Every conceivable kind of palm, of bush, of creeper, flourishes there with a luxuriance, with a prodigality of vegetable life, that shows how richly Nature deserves her title of Mother. It is a curious fact, remarked by every one who has been brought in contact with the Malay forest, that a very large number of its shrubs, many of its palms, and most of its creepers are armed with spikes of various length, but all of about equal sharpness. Some are so formidable that the thickest skinned beasts avoid contact with them, and no human apparel has been devised, short of armour, that will resist their powers of penetration and destruction. Under the creepers lie fallen trees, and the ground is covered with ferns, rank grasses, and what is generally termed undergrowth, so thick that the soil is often entirely hidden. It may be added as a minor but unpleasant detail that this tangle of vegetation harbours every species of crawling, jumping, and flying unpleasantness; myriads of leeches that work their way through stockings and garments of any but the closest texture; centipedes, scorpions, wasps, and stinging flies, caterpillars that thrust their hairs into the skin and leave them there to cause intolerable irritation, snakes poisonous and otherwise, ants with the most murderous proclivities, and last, but not least, mosquitoes that, when they find a human being, make the most of their opportunity. I have not exhausted the catalogue of pests, but only given a sample of what any traveller will meet in a day’s journey through a Malay jungle. There is a wasp called “the reminder,” a thorn called “Kite’s talons,” and an ant known as the “fire ant.” The names are as apt as they are suggestive.

To force a way through such a place is an impossibility, even on all fours it could not be crawled through, the only means of progress is by cutting a path.