Part 6

Last, there is something else here, and, if you are not quite a stranger, you will look first, look longest, and look always for this other thing. Perhaps it is the extraordinary fitness of her surroundings (I say _her_ advisedly), perhaps the art with which nature has designed the body of the saurian to make you think her a log, or a stranded palm-branch, a half-buried spar of a wrecked boat, or even a lighter or darker ridge of the surrounding mud—certain it is that as the crocodile lies there, basking in the sun which makes air and water and blistering slime shimmer and dance before your eyes, you will not notice the creature, nay, even when pointed out to you, it is ten to one that you will not even then realise that she is there.

But get nearer, speak no word and let your rowers pull a long and noiseless stroke till some one with a quick eye and a steady hand can put a bullet in the reptile’s neck. As that great mouth suddenly opens, disclosing the rows of shining teeth, as it shuts again with the noise of a steel trap, as the horrible scaly claws dig deep into the mud in their agony and the great spiked tail lashes round in fury, as the loathsome yellow belly slides over the ooze and you catch sight of the stony cruelty of the crocodile’s eye, then you will realise what manner of thing she is, and you will probably conceive for her and all her kind a deadly horror and loathing, and a consuming desire to slay the whole brood will seize you then and remain with you for all time.

If it should happen to you to have to fight a wounded crocodile at close quarters, if accident brings you in contact with a man who has just lost arm or leg, or with a corpse out of which a crocodile has torn the life, your feelings towards these river-murderers will not be softened.

There are Malay rivers so infested by these reptiles that at low water for a mile or two from the river’s mouth they will be seen, in twos and threes or larger groups, lying on either bank basking or sleeping in the sun. It repeatedly happens that they knock people out of their boats and then kill and devour them, and in places where the creatures are specially numerous, if a crocodile is shot dead on the bank, in less than half an hour the carcase will be dragged into the river and a crowd of the reptiles will be tearing it in pieces and fighting for the remains.

Villages on the Malay coast are nearly always situated on the bank of a river; the sea is full of fish and the men of a coast village are mostly fishermen. If the village is of any size and the industry of any importance, the catching of fish is supplemented by curing—that is, salting and drying them.

The whereabouts of a village of this kind may be recognised by the traveller on sea or land when he is yet a great way off. Probably for that reason, and because the cleaning of thousands of fish loads the water with food of a kind that is specially attractive to the saurian, the immediate neighbourhood of a fishing village is the favourite resort of the crocodile.

At the mouth of a wide river on the Perak coast there is just such a village. It is thriving, and as there are a number of Chinese as well as Malay fishermen, it boasts a police-station. The houses are built for the most part on piles; at high water the sea washes under them, and the means of inter-communication are wooden stagings from house to house. At low water there is mud, great stretches of mud, running from the edge of the mangrove swamp which backs the village far out to the west and the waters of the Straits of Malacca.

It was in the month of Ramthân, when begin those forty days of fast observed by all good Muhammadans—though so few of them know why they fast, or the details of the touching story which tells the sufferings of the Martyrs of Kerbela—that one night, past the middle of the month, but when the moon still lit up the water and made things plain as day, a strange thing happened at this small coast village.

In it there lived a Malay revenue officer with his wife and child, and on the night in question these three, being at home, went to sleep about 10 P.M. as was their wont.

A slight breeze was blowing off the sea, blowing against the falling tide, and the moonlight glorified the hideous expanse of slime till it looked like a limitless mirror, blending far away with the haze-enshrouded waters of the sea, but bordered landwards by that dark fringe of mangroves, the thick forest forming a striking contrast to the moonlit beauty of the glistening shore.

The wind sighed up the river, played through the great brown nets hanging up to dry, and, scarcely stirring the tops of the mangroves, swept gently towards the distant hills.

All the village slept, except the one Guardian of the Peace, who showed his devotion to duty by punctually striking the hours on a huge metal gong.

The night was far advanced, when suddenly he heard a child crying in the house of the Malay revenue clerk. Then there was the noise of footsteps and the voice of the man calling to his wife, but no answer. After a few minutes there was the sound of approaching feet, a shout from the Malay, followed by the man himself.

The constable called out, “What is the matter, Che Mat?”

Che Mat replied, “I was asleep, but awoke hearing the child crying for its mother. I could not see her anywhere, and she did not answer when I spoke. Then I got up and saw at once the door of the house was open, but she is nowhere to be seen. Have you heard anything of her?”

The constable had heard nothing, but there was evidently something uncanny about this disappearance, for, in a village such as this, where the houses are more in the water than on land, where the pathless mangrove is the background, and the waters of the river the foreground, there are few places left in which to look for any one or anything with any chance of finding them.

The man on guard roused his comrades, and, as Malays do not sit down and discuss plans of action, some one at once made a move; the others followed, and they all walked out to the last house on the platform, and then listened.

“Hark! did you not hear something?” Yes, through the silence of the night, wafted on the incoming breeze, there was a distinct but faint cry from the direction of the sea.

It did not take the men long to get down to the ground, and first hurrying along the edge of the trees, they went some distance, hearing the cries at intervals and ever more plainly, till it became necessary to strike right out across the mud. By this time there was no doubt about the source of the cries, for the voice of the object of their search was recognised, and that the woman was in sore distress did not admit of doubt. Making all the speed they could, sinking above their knees at every step, stumbling, falling, but ever pressing on, they saw at last to their horror, in the brilliant moonlight, the woman on the ground being literally worried by three crocodiles, each six or eight feet in length.

As crocodiles go, six or eight feet is no great length, but to go to sleep in your own house and wake up at midnight within a hundred feet of the sea, but with half a mile of mud between you and anything like dry land, and at the same time assailed by _three_ crocodiles quite big enough to kill you, is calculated to shock the strongest nerves.

After a short but exciting fight, the police beat off the scaly beasts with difficulty, and found the woman had been badly torn in legs, and arms, and neck.

Whilst the men were arranging to carry her back, no easy matter over half a mile of soft but sticky wet mud and ooze, she told her tale:

“I was sleeping,” she said, “and had a vision. Two radiant Beings appeared to me and bid me rise and follow them, and they would show me a sight more glorious than is vouchsafed to mortals. Transported with joy, I rose and followed them, and whilst filled with ecstatic rapture by the companionship of these Celestial Beings, I seemed to be borne along without effort of my own through enchanted fields of more than earthly beauty. Suddenly I was awakened by feeling the teeth of a crocodile in my leg, and, to my horror, I found I was out here on this mud-flat half a mile from home, but close to the sea, with three crocodiles attacking me, no means of defending myself, and little hope of help. I fell, and the beasts tore and worried me, biting my arms, and legs, and neck, while I screamed for help until you came and rescued me.”

Well, after all, there is nothing very strange in that. A woman of peculiar nervous organisation, a somnambulist, dreams a dream and walks out into the balmy atmosphere of a moonlit Eastern night. She walks rather far, and has a rude awakening. That is nothing; other sleepers have walked further, and their awakening has been to the life beyond the grave.

Only this was curious: that while the men sank deep into the mud at every step, the woman had never sunk in at all. When found, there was only mud on the _soles_ of her feet, and, though she had walked half a mile across the flat, and her tracks were plainly visible in the moonlight, they were all on the surface, and she had crossed the soft, unstable mire as easily as though it had been a metalled road.

So the men bore her home, not wondering overmuch, for in this thing they saw the hand of the Celestial Beings who guided her feet with such consideration, to abandon her to the ferocious attentions of the crocodiles.

The woman herself, her husband, and the police were satisfied as to the means, but found the end too hard for their understanding.

The ideal woman, the product of higher education and deep research in divers subjects, supplies the real clue to the phenomenon, for, when asked “where the true Spirit of God is,” she modestly replies, “I can tell you: it is in us _women_. We have preserved it and handed it down from one generation to another of our own sex unsullied.”[2]

Doubtless—from the time when the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and, later, on the Sea of Galilee; but it is more difficult to understand how woman, unaided, has handed anything down from one generation to another.

The same idea is, however, more happily conveyed in the injunction of the President of the Scraggsville Woman’s Suffrage League to her husband, when ordering him to go and purchase a divided skirt. “If you are afraid, pray to God for courage; _She_ will help you.”

The mere male has his uses, one of which is to assist the unsullied sex to perpetuate the Spirit of God, and another to be within hail when there are crocodiles about.

XII

VAN HAGEN AND CAVALIERO

How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot, A heap of dust alone remains of thee

POPE

Not many months after my first arrival in the East I met, in a club in Singapore, an Italian called Cavaliero. He was quite young, tall, dark, and good-looking, of a pronounced Italian type. What his occupation was I have no idea; I suppose he had some sort of business, but it could not have been very attractive or profitable, for one day I was told that he and a Hollander named Van Hagen had collected about a hundred natives of all sorts and conditions and had accepted service with the Viceroy of the Sultan of Selangor.

Selangor was then an absolutely independent Malay State, so independent in fact that the principal and almost only employment of its inhabitants was fighting.

The Sultan was and is an old gentleman for whom I have the highest regard, and I desire to speak of him with the greatest respect. He had had his own fighting day and was tired of it, he wished to be left alone, that was all; but he recognised that boys will be boys, and if the young Selangor Rajas took their pleasure in this way, he was inclined to regard their escapades with an indulgent eye, provided they did not interfere with his _opium cum dignitate_ and his immediate surroundings.

The Sultan’s own sons were very much interested in the guerilla warfare that was then being carried on throughout Selangor, and the feature of the disturbances was that every chief said he had the Sultan’s approval of his proceedings. Some time later I was myself in Selangor, and, as this statement was constantly being dinned into my ears, I took the liberty of asking his Highness what it meant.

He promptly pointed out that each of these Rajas in turn came to him, stated his case, and asked the Sultan if that was not correct. His Highness always replied, “Quite correct,” but, as he explained to me, “_bĕnar ka-pâda dia, bûkan bĕnar ka-pâda kami_,” which being interpreted means, “correct in their view, not in mine.” He was evidently tickled by this happy inspiration and laughed heartily at his own ingenuity.

The gossips declared that his Highness was always requested to give a tangible proof of his approval in the shape of gunpowder and lead, and that he gave them to every applicant with strict impartiality. On this point the Sultan told me nothing, and I was not indiscreet enough to inquire, but as Selangor is no more free from gossip than its neighbours, I put the statement down to irresponsible chatter.

All this is, however, by the way. Certain Rajas held certain important strategical points from which other Rajas kept trying to oust them, and the fight waxed hottest about Klang, the principal port of the State, and Kuala Lumpor, the principal mining centre.

As to Klang, it had just been captured by a notable warrior named Raja Mahdi, and its whilom defenders driven out when the Sultan gave his only daughter in marriage to Tunku dia Udin, brother of the Sultan of Kĕdah. The Sultan’s son-in-law espoused the cause of those who had been driven from Klang, and, as he was created Viceroy and had powerful support in Singapore, matters were further complicated.

The Viceroy and his friends recovered possession of Klang and secured the friendship and assistance of the Chinese miners at Kuala Lumpor.

These Chinese were led by one Ah Loi, a remarkable man, styled the “Capitan China,” whose instincts were distinctly warlike and his authority with his countrymen supreme.

Raja Mahdi also had friends who were acting against the Chinese in the interior, and supporters outside the State who helped him with money, stores, and arms, and thus the ball rolled merrily along.

Dame Fortune was, as usual, fickle, and success was now with the Viceroy and now with Mahdi and his friends. The Capitan China did his share in his own way. He offered fifty silver dollars for every enemy’s head delivered in the market-place in front of his house at Kuala Lumpor, and he told me himself that his man who stood there ready to receive the hideous trophies and pay the money did quite a brisk business.

As with all Malay war, the operations languished and revived by fits and starts. Plenty of money meant plenty of men, arms, and ammunition, and with them a spasmodic effort would be made and probably a success gained. Then would follow dire scarcity, and the other side, having raised some money, would in their turn gain an advantage.

Thus the tide of battle ebbed and flowed for months and years, and the only plain and evident result was that the population of Selangor was rapidly diminishing, the ground in the immediate neighbourhood of Kuala Lumpor town being thickly planted with corpses, for there the battle was always the hottest, both because of the Capitan China’s special method and because of the value of the mines. The survivors on both sides were not only being reduced to penury, but their leaders were becoming involved in debts which only the complete success of one side followed by lasting peace and order could enable the victors to pay from the revenues derived from the tin-mines. The debts of the defeated would naturally be irrecoverable.

While the State was distracted by all this trouble the Sultan still secured a comparative tranquillity by his diplomatic sympathy with the combatants, and whichever side held the Klang custom-house supplied him with funds. That was the price of his qualified approval.

It was at this time that the Viceroy’s party, being in funds, conceived the plan of raising a force in Singapore with which they hoped to deal an effective blow to their enemies.

I have said I knew little of Cavaliero, but of Van Hagen, who took command of the recruits, I know less. I was told that he had been an officer in the Netherlands army, and that he lost his commission owing to some breach of discipline, but that he was a man of birth, character, and courage.

His heterogeneous force, composed of natives of half-a-dozen nationalities, went by sea to Klang, disembarked and made its way with guides through the jungle to Kuala Lumpor. There they stockaded themselves on a hill above the town and did valiantly in its defence. But the place was invested by the enemy, supplies were cut off, and while the force was daily harassed by the fire from the enemy’s works, provisions ran short and the men were threatened at once with starvation and the probability of being surrounded and entirely cut off from their base at Klang, twenty-five miles distant by a jungle track.

Under these circumstances, and probably moved by the growing discontent of their men, Van Hagen and Cavaliero determined, ere it should be too late, to endeavour to make their way back to the port.

They were all strangers in the country, and they could find no one to guide them through the jungle, but their difficulties became so great that they decided to risk the journey as a choice of evils, and early one morning they set out.

I have elsewhere tried to describe a Malay jungle, and the path which these men had to traverse was, as I know from my own experience, beset with peculiar difficulty, and led for a great deal of the way through swamp and water, where, of course, there was no track visible. It is not surprising that the party lost its way. Not only that, but weak from want of food, wanting in cohesion and discipline, and with the knowledge that they were seeking blindly for a road unknown to all, a feeling of despair overcame many of them, and they wandered off in different directions never to be seen or heard of again.

The main body, with Van Hagen and Cavaliero, after a weary day’s march and no food, arrived in the evening, utterly exhausted, at a place called Patâling, only four miles from Kuala Lumpor! They had been walking in a circle, and had got back to a point not far from that of their original departure.

Patâling was held by a considerable body of the enemy under two Malay Rajas, and the weary wanderers walked straight into their arms and gave themselves up without a struggle.

Another story says that, at the last moment before leaving Kuala Lumpor, a guide presented himself and offered his services, which were accepted; that he led the party hither and thither through the jungle, and in the evening, when thoroughly exhausted, took them into Patâling.

I never heard rightly what became of the rank and file; they may have been given their liberty and told to find their own way out of the State. For the officers was reserved another fate.

Finding the principal defenders of Kuala Lumpor had withdrawn, the place was occupied without difficulty by those who had for so long invested it. The leading Chinese were made very uncomfortable, but on them depended the working of the mines, and they were allowed to purchase their lives.

I do not think this alternative was offered to Van Hagen and Cavaliero. They were escorted from Patâling to Kuala Lumpor, and, arrived there, they were taken out and shot.

In excavating for the foundations of the houses which now form the town of Kuala Lumpor, it was usual to dig up a large number of skeletons, the bones of those who had fallen during the years of Selangor’s internecine strife. As many as sixteen skeletons have been discovered in digging out the foundations for one house.

One day, not many years ago, two skeletons were thus discovered. The bones were larger, the figures taller, than those usually met with. They were the skeletons of two men face to face, and locked in each other’s arms.

XIII

THE PASSING OF PĔNGLIMA PRANG SĔMAUN

Oh vengeance! thou art sweet

LEWIS MORRIS

On the Perak River, about fifty miles from its mouth, and just above the tidal influence, where the water is clear and shallow and the banks are lined with palm groves and orchards, there is a large Malay village called Bandar.

More than twenty years ago there dwelt in this village a man named Mĕgat Raja, married to a particularly well-favoured girl named Mĕriam. The fact of her marriage drew her into some sort of notoriety, and her attractions were soon the gossip of the place. The gilded youths of Bandar were fired by the description of Mĕriam’s charms, and one of them, a boy of good family, position, and means, got sight of and fell in love with her.

The husband, Mĕgat Raja, was conveniently called away to accompany the Sultan on a journey to Penang and Che Nuh, the youth aforesaid, profiting by that opportunity, pushed his addresses with such fervour and success that he became the lady’s lover.

Late one night when Che Nuh was in the house of his mistress, Mĕgat Raja unexpectedly returned and the first the lovers knew of their danger was the demand of the husband to be admitted. The house was a large one enclosed by a palisade, and Mĕriam thus suddenly surprised, and fearing instant death if her husband should discover Che Nuh, implored her lover to escape by the door at the back of the house while that at the front was being opened.

Che Nuh complied, but the husband had evidently heard something of what had been going on in his absence, and, as the lover was about to descend the steps, he drew back seeing Mĕgat Raja waiting on the ground beneath them.

He drew back, but not before his presence had been perceived.

Mĕgat Raja called out “Who is that?”

Che Nuh replied “It is I, Che Nuh.”

The husband, drawing his _kris_, said “What are you doing in my house at this time? Come down on to the ground.”