THE FLIGHT OF CHÊP, THE BIRD
INA large Sâkai camp on the banks of the upper reaches of the Jělai River, at a point some miles above the last of the scattered Malay villages, the annual harvest home was being held one autumn night in the year of grace 1893. The occasion of the feast was the same as that which all tillers of the soil are wont to celebrate with bucolic rejoicings, when the year’s crop has been got in; and the name which I have applied to it awakens the perennial nostalgia of the exile by conjuring up the picture of many a long summer day in the quiet country at Home. Again, in imagination, he watches the loaded farm-wains labouring over the grass or lumbering down the leafy lanes; again the scent of the hay is in his nostrils, and the soft English gloaming—so delicious by contrast with the short-lived twilight of the tropics—is lingering over the land. The reapers astride upon the load exchange their barbarous badinage with those who follow afoot; the pleasant glow of health, that follows upon a long day of hard work in the open air, warms the blood; and in the eyes of all is the light of expectation, born of the thought of the good red meat, and the lashings of ale and cider, awaiting them at the farmhouse two miles across the meadows.
But in the distant Sâkai country the harvest home
has little in common with such scenes as these.
The rice-crop planted in the clearing in the forest,
hard by the spot in which the camp is pitched, has
been reaped laboriously in the native fashion, each
car being severed from its stalk separately and by
hand. Then, after many days, the grain has at last
been stored in the big circular boxes, formed of the
bark of a giant tree, and securely thatched with
palm leaves; and the Sakai women, who throughout
have performed the lion’s share of the work, are set
to husk some portions of it for the evening meal.
This they do with clumsy wooden pestels, held as
they stand around a troughlike mortar fashioned
from the same material, the ding-dong-ding of the
pounders carrying far and wide through the forest.
At the joyful sound, all wanderers from the eamp-
whose inhabitants have for months been subsisting
upon roots and berries -turn their faces homeward
with the eagerness bred of empty stomachs and the
prospect of a long-expected surfeit. The rice is
boiled in cooking-pots, manufactured in Europe and
sold to them by the Malays, if the tribe be so fortu-
nate as to possess such luxuries; otherwise a length of
bamboo is used, for that marvellous vegetable
growth is made to serve every conceivable purpose
by the natives of the far interior of the Peninsula.
The fat, new rice is sweet to eat, for when freshly
reaped, its natural, oleaginous properties have not
yet evaporated. It differs as widely from the parched
and arid stuff you know in Europe as does the butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from the liquid, yellow
train oil we pour out of tins and dignify by that
name in the sweltering tropics. The Sâkai devour
it ravenously and in incredible quantities, for not
only does it afford them their first full meal for
months, but they are eating against time, since they
know that in a day or two the Malays will come up-
stream to “barter” with them, and that then the
bulk of the priceless stuff will be taken from them,
almost by force, in exchange for a few axe heads,
flints and steels, and the blades of native wood-
knives. Therefore, they pack themselves while the
opportunity is still with them, and so long as their
distended stomachs will bear the strain of a few ad-
ditional mouthfuls.
Thus, while the darkness is shutting down over the
forest, is the harvest supper devoured in a Sâkai
camp, with gluttony and beast noises of satisfaction
and repletion; but when the meal has been finished,
the sleep of the full-fed may not fall upon the
people. The Sakai, who quail before the appalling
strength of Nature, at whose hands they have suf-
fered an eternal defeat, lie in perpetual terror of the
superhuman beings by whom they believe Nature to
be animated. Before rest can be sought, the spirits
of the forest and of the streams, and the demons of
the grain ust be thanked for their gifts, and pro-
pitiated for such evil as has been done to them. The
inviolate jungle has been felled to make the clearing,
its virgin growths being ravaged with axe head and
fire brand. The rice has been reaped and brought into store. Clearly the spirits stand in need of com-
fort and reparation for the injury which has been
wrought, and for the loss which. they have sustained.
An apologetic mood is felt by the tribe to be appro-
priate upon their part, and Sakai custom-well-nigh
as ancient as the hills in which these people live-
provides for such emergencies.
The house of the headman or of the local wizard-
and the Sakai, as the Malays will tell you, are deeply
versed in magic arts is filled to the roof with the
sodden green growths of the jungle. The Sâkai,
having trespassed upon the domain of the spirits,
now invite the demons of the woods and of the grain
to share with them the dwellings of men. Then,
when night has fallen, the whole tribe of Sakai-
men, women, and little children-casting aside their
bark loin-clouts, creep into the house, stark naked
and entirely unarmed. Grovelling together in the
darkness, anid the leaves and branches with which
the place is crammed, they raise their voices in a weird
chant, which peals skyward till the dawn has come
again.
No man can say how ancient are these annual
orgies, nor trace with certainty the beginnings in
which they originated. Perhaps they date back to a
period when huts, and garments even of bark, were
newly acquired things, and when the Sâkai suffered
both ungladly, after the manner of all wild jungle
creatures. It may be that, in those days, they cast
aside their bark loin-cloths to revel once more in
pristine nakedness, amid the green boughs of the jungle, on occasions of rejoicing, and at such times.
thrust behind them all memory of the more or less
decorous mating of man with the maid of his choice.
and of the bars of close consanguinity which ex-
perience was teaching them to rear up between mem-
bers of the opposite sexes. Be that how it may, the
same ceremony is performed, to the immense scandal
of the Malays, in every camp scattered throughout
the broad Sakai country, and the same ancient chant
is sung during the long, still night which follows the
garnering of the rice crop. The Malays call this cus-
tom ber-jermun-which more or less literally means
“to pig it” because they trace a not altogether fanci-
ful resemblance between the huts stuffed with jungle, in
which these orgies are held, and the jermun, or nestlike
shelters which wild boars construct for their protection
and comfort.
But though the Malays, very properly, despise the
Sakai, and reprobate all their heathenish ways and
works, upon the occasion of which I write. Sentul-
a man of the former race-was not only present, but
was debasing himself to the extent of taking an active
part in the demon worship and the unclean ceremonies
of the infidels.
He was a Malay of the Malaysa Muhammadan
who, in his saner moments, hated all who prayed to
devils (other than those enshrined in the traditions
of his own people) or who bowed down to stocks and
stones. But for the time being, he was mad. He
Irad come upstream, a few weeks earlier, to trade with
the forest-dwellers, and when his companions had returned to the Malay villages, he had remained
behind. Since then he had shared the life of the
inmates of the Sâkai camp, forgetful of his superiority
of religion and of race, and to-night was herding
naked, amid the green stuff, with the chanting jungle
people. And all this had befallen him because the
flashing glance from a pair of pretty eyes,, set in the
face of a slender Sakai girl, had blinded him and
deprived him of reason.
The wife of his own race, and the child whom he
had left with her in the hul downriver, troubled him
not at all. All considerations of honour and duty
and of the public opinion, which in the matter of a
haison with an infidel woman can, among Malays,
be uncommonly rigid, were forgotten. He only knew
that life no longer seemed to hold for him anything
of good unless Chép, the Bird, as her people named
her, could be his. In the abstract, he despised the
Sakai even more vehemently than of old; but for
this girl’s sake he smothered his feelings, dwelt among
her kinsfolk as one of themselves, losing thereby the
last atom of his self-respect, and consciously risking
his soul’s salvation. Yet all this sacrifice of his
ideals had hitherto been unavailing, for Chêp was
the wife of a Sakai named Ku-ish the Porcupine—-
who had not only declined to sell her at even the
extravagant price which the Malay had offered for
her, but guarded her jealously, and gave Sentul no
opportunity of prosecuting his intimacy.
On her side, she had quickly divined Sentul’s pas-
sion for her; and as he was younger and richer than Ku-ish, better favoured in his person, and more-
over a Malay-a man of the dominant race-she was
both pleased and flattered by his admiration. Such
exotic notions as a distinction between right and
wrong boiled themselves down in her intelligence into
a desire to be well fed and clothed, and a reluctance
to risk a severe whipping at the hands of the muscular
Ku-ish. She knew that Seutul, who also attracted
her physically, could provide her with hitherto un-
attainable luxuries. She hoped he would be able to
protect her from the wrath and violence of her hus-
band, since there are few Sâkai who dare to defy a
Malay; and having thus thought the matter out, so
far as such a process was possible to her, she now
merely awaited a fitting opportunity to clope with
her lover.
Their chance came on the night of the harvest
home. In the darkness Sentul crept close to Chép,
and when the chant was at its loudest, he whispered.
in her ear that his dugout canoe lay ready yonder,
moored to the river bank, and that he loved her.
Together they stole out of the hut, unobserved by the
Sakai folk, who sang and grovelled in the darkness.
The boat was speedily found, and the lovers, stepping
into it, pushed noiselessly out into the stream.
The river at this point hustles its shallow waters,
with much fuss and uproar, down a long, sloping
bed of shingle, and the noise swallowed up the sound.
of the paddles. Chêp, seated in the stern, held the
steering oar, and Sentul, squatting in the bows, pro-
pelled the boat downstream with rapid and vigorous strokes. Thus they journeyed on in silence through
a shadowy world. The wonderful virgin forest-im-
mense banks of vegetation rising sheer from the
river’s brink on either hand-made of the stream a
narrow defile between lowering walls of darkness.
The boughs and tree-tops overhead, converging
closely, reduced the sky to a slender, star-bespangled
ribbon. A steel-like glint played here and there upon
the surface of the running water, and its insistent
roar. sinking now and again to a mere murmur, was
bleut with mysterious whisperings. Once in a long
while an argus pheasant would yell its ringing chal-
lenge from its drumming-ground on a neighbouring
hill-cap or the abrupt bark of a spotted deer, or the
cry of some wild beast would momentarily break in
upon the stillness. Sentul and Chêp were travelling
on a half-freshet, and this, in the far upper country,
where the streams tear over their beds of rocks or
pebbles through the gorges formed by their high
banks, and where each drains a big catchment area,
means that their boat was tilted downriver at a head-
long pace. The dawn was breaking when the fugi-
tives reached their destination-the Malay village in
which Sentul had his home; and by then a good fifty
miles separated them from the Sâkai camp, and they
felt themselves to be safe from pursuit.
To understand this, you must realize what the
Sakai of the interior is. Men of the aboriginal race
who have lived for years surrounded by Malay habi-
Latious are as different from him as are the fallow
deer in an English park from the sambhur of the jungles. Sakai who have spent all their lives among
Malays, who have learned to wear clothes, to count
up to ten, or it may be even twenty, are hardly to
be distinguished from their neighbours, the other
primitive upcountry natives. They are not afraid
to wander through the Malay villages; they do not
rush into the jungle or hide behind trees at the ap-
proach of strangers; a water-buffalo does not inspire
them with as much terror as a tiger; and they do not
hesitate to make, comparatively speaking, long jour-
neys from their homes if occasion requires. In all
this they are immeasurably more sophisticated than
their kinsmen, the semi-wild Sakai of the centre of the
Peninsula. These folk trade with the Malays, it is
true; but the traffic has to be carried on by visitors
who penetrate for the purpose into the Sâkai coun-
try. Most of them have learned to speak Malay,
though many are familiar only with their own jerky,
monosyllabic jargon, and when their three numerals
have been used, fall back, for further arithmetical
expression, upon the word kerp”, which means
“many.” For clothes they wear the narrow loin-
clout, fashioned of the prepared bark of certain
trees a form of garment which only very partially
covers their nudities; they go, not without reason,
in great terror of the Malays, and are as shy as the
beasts of the forest; and never willingly do they quit
that portion of the country which is still exclusively
inhabited by the aboriginal tribes. It was to semi-
savage Sâkai such as these that Chêp and her
people belonged.
There are tribes of other and wilder jungle-dwellers
living in the fastnesses of the forests of the broad
Sakai country–men who fly at the approach of even
the lamer tribesmen. Their camps may occasion-
ally be seen, on a clear day, far up the hillsides on
the jungle-covered uplands of the remote interior;
their tracks are sometimes met with, mixed with
those of the bison and rhinoceros, the deer and the
wild swine; but the people themselves are but rarely
encountered, and when glimpsed for an instant, van-
ish like shadows. The tamer Sakai trade with them
in the silent fashion of the aborigines, depositing the
articles of barter at certain spots in the forest, whence
they are removed by the wild men and replaced by
various kinds of jungle produce. Of these, the inost
valued are the long, straight reeds, found only in the
more remote parts of the forest, which are used by the
will men and by the tamer tribes folk alike to form
the inner casings of their blowpipes. All these
aborigines are straight-haired peoples, the colour
of whose skins is, if anything, somewhat fighter than
is usual among their Malayan neighbours; but the
jungles of the Peninsula harbour also a race of negrits
-little sturdy black men with jutting, prognathous
features, and short curly hair that clings closely to
their scalps. They resemble an African negro seen
through the wrong end of a field-glass; they live in
improvised shelters, and are nomadic hunters; and
through some of the tamer among them curb their
restlessness sufficiently to plant an occasional eateh-
crop. their civilization is somewhat lower than that of the Sakai, and they prefer to wander about in small
family groups rather than to dwell together in village
communities.
Chêp, of course, was deeply embued with the tradi-
tions of her people, and her fancy for Sentul, her ap-
preciation of the material comfort with which he
would be able to surround her, and her confidence
in his ability to protect her, had alone succeeded in
nerving her to leave her tribe and to turn back upon
the forest country with which she was familiar. A
great fear fell upon her when, the last of her known
landmarks having been left far behind, she found
herself floating downstream through cluster after
cluster of Malay villages. The instinct of her race,
which bids the Sâkai plunge headlong into the forest
at the approach of a stranger, was strong upon her,
and her heart beat violently, like that of some wild
bird held in the human hand. All her life the Malays,
who preyed upon her people, had been spoken of with
fear and suspicion by the simple Sâkai grouped at
night-time around the fires in their squalid camps.
Now she found herself alone in the very heart–for
such to her it seemed–of the Malayan country.
She gazed with awe and admiration at the primitive
houses around her, which were poor enough speci-
mens of their kind, but which revolutionized her
notions as to the possibilities of architectural achieve-
ment. The groves of palms and fruit trees were
another marvel, for her experience of agriculture had
hitherto been confined to a temporary clearing in
the forest. She felt, as the Malays put it, like a deer astray in a royal city. Sentul, moreover, was
changed in her sight. While he had lived among her
people as one of themselves, he had seemed to her to
be merely a superior sort of Sâkai. Now she realized,
seeing him in his proper environment, that he was, in
truth, a Malay-a man of the dominant, foreign
race which, from time imeniorial, had enslaved her
people; and at that thought her spirit sank. Pur-
suit. which she had feared during the earlier hours of
the night, became now for her a hope. It meant, in
spite of the very workmanlike whipping which would
accompany recapture, a possibility of deliverance-
escape from this strangers’ land, and a return to the
peaceful forest she had so foolishly quitted. But
in her eyes the prospect was infinitely remote.
She knew how hearty was the fear with which hier
people regarded the Malays; how averse they were
from being lured out of the jungles with which they
were familiar; and Sentul, who had acquired a
fairly intimate knowledge of the ways and character
of the Sâkai, fully shared her conviction that he and
the girl he had abducted were now out of the reach
of the tribesmen.
Accordingly Chêp and her lover halted at the
latter’s village, and took up their abode in his house.
Of that homecoming I possess no details. Sentul’s
Malay wife, who was the mother of his children.
must have regarded the new importation from up
river with peculiar disfavour. A co-wife is always
a disagreeable accretion, but when she chances to
belong to the despised Sâkai race, the natural discontent which her arrival in the household occasions
is inevitably transformed into a blazing indignation.
Malay women, however, can sometimes patch up a
modus virendi with the obviously intolerable as well
as any of their sex, when circumstances are too strong
for them; and Sentul’s lawful wife did not carry
her opposition farther than to stipulate that Chêp
and she should be accommodated in separate buts.
The Sâkai girl was delighted with her new home.
In her eyes it was a veritable palace compared with
the miserable shacks which contented her own people;
and the number and variety of the cooking-pots,
the large stock of household stores, the incredibly
luxurious flock sleeping mat, and above all the pretty
Malayan garments of silk and cotton of which she
had suddenly become the bewildered possessor filled
her woman’s soul with pleasure. Also, Sentul was
kind to her, and she ate good boiled rice twice
daily, which was to her an mndreamed-of content.
Sooner or later the irresistible longing for the jungle,
which is bred in the very marrow of the forest-dwell-
ers, would awaken in her, and drive her back to her
own people; but of this she knew nothing as yet, and
for the time she was happy.
In the Sakai camp it was not until the day had
lawned that the devil-worshippers, looking at one
another’s tired and pallid faces through heavy, sleep-
less eyes, as they crawled forth from the sodden,
draggled tangle of vegetation in the house, noted that
two of their number were missing. The quick sight of the jungle-people at once spied the trail left by the
passage of the man and woman, and following it,
they crowded down to the place where the dugout
had been moored. Here they squatted on the ground
and began to smoke.
“Rěj-ň-rēj!” they exclaimed, in the barbarous jargon of
the jungle-folk. “Lost!” and then relapsed into silence.
“May she be devoured by a tiger!” snarled Ku-ish,
the Porcupine, who was making guttural noises deep
down in his throat; and at the word all his hearers.
shuddered, and drew closer one to another. The
curse is the most terrible that the jungle-people
know; and if you shared your home with the great
cats, as they do, you also would regard it with fear
and respect. To speak of a tiger openly, in such a
fashion, is moreover extraordinarily unlucky, as the
monster, hearing itself mentioned, may look upon it.
as an invitation to put in an immediate appearance.
Ku-ish said little more, for the Sâkai, when prey
to emotion, make but a slight use of the meagre
vocabulary at their command. He presently rose,
however, and went back to the camp and unslung
an exceedingly ancient matchlock, which was sus-
pended from a beam in the roof of the headman’s
hut. It was the only gun which the tribe possessed,
and was their most precious possession; but no one
interfered with the Porcupine or tried to stay him
when, musket on shoulder, he slipped into the forest.
heading downstream.
Two days later, in the cool of the afternoon, Sentul left Chêp, the Bird, in her new house, busying herseli
with the preparation of the evening meal, and ac-
companied by his small son-the child of his out-
raged wife went forth to catch fish in one of the
swamps at the back of the village. These marshy
places, which are to be found in the neighbourhood
of so many Malay habitations, are ready-made rice-
fields; but as the cultivation of a pada swamp de-
mands more exacting labour than most Malays are
willing to expend upon it, they are often left to lie
fallow, while crops are grown in clearings on the hills
round about. In dry weather the cracked, parched
earth, upon which no vegetation sprouts, alone
marks the places which, in the rainy season, are pools
of stagnant water; but so surely as these ponds re-
appear, the little muddy fishes, which the Malays
call rúan and sepat, are to be found in them. What
is the manner of their subterranean existence during
the months of drought, or how they then contrive to
support life, no man clearly knows, but a heavy
shower suffices to bring them once more to the sur-
face, and they never appear to be any the worse for
their temporary interment.
Sentul carried two long joran, or Malayan fishing-
rods, over his shoulder, and his small naked son
pattered along at his heels bearing in his hands a tin
containing bait. The child erooned to himself, after
the manner of native children, but his father paced
ahead of him in silence. He was in a contented and
comfortable mood, for the satisfaction of his desire
for Chép had soothed him body and soul.
Arrived at the swamp, which was now a broad pool
of water with here and there a tuft or two of rank
rushes showing above the surface, Sentul and his son
each took a rod and began patiently angling for the
little fishes. The sun crept lower and lower, quick-
ening its pace as it neared the western horizon, till
its slanting rays flooded the surface of the pool with the
crimson hue of blood. The sky overhead was dyed
a thousand gorgeous tints, and the soft light of the
sunset hour in Malaya mellowed all the land. Sen-
tul had watched many a hundred times the miracle
of beauty which, in these latitudes, is daily wrought
by the rising and the setting sun, and he looked now
upon the colour-drenched landscape about him with
the complete indifference to the glories of nature
which is one of the least attractive qualities of the
Malays. If the orgy of splendour above and the
reddened pool at his feet suggested anything to him,
it was only that the day was waning, and that it was
time to be wending his way homeward.
He set to work to gather up his fishing-tackle
while his son, squatting on the ground at his side,
passed a rattan cord through the fishes’ gills to their
mouths, so that the take might be carried with
greater case. While they were thus engaged a slight
rustle in the high grass behind them caused both
father and son to start and look round. Not a
breath of wind was blowing; but none the less, a few
feet away from lemn, the spear-shaped grass tufts
were agitated slightly, as though the stalks were being
rushed against by the passage of some wild animal.
“Hasten, little one,” said Sentul uneasily. “Per-
chance it is the striped one.”
But as he spoke the words the grass was parted
by human hands, and Sentul found himself gazing
into the wild and bloodshot eyes of Ku-ish, the Por-
cupine, along the length of an ancient gun-barrel.
He had time to note the rust upon the dulled metal,
the fantastic shape of the clumsy sight, and the blue
tattoo-marks on the nose and forehead of his enemy.
All these things he saw mechanically, in an instant
of time; but ere he could move hand or foot the
world around him seemed to be shattered into a thou-
sand fragments to the sound of a deafening explosion,
and he lay dead upon the grass, with his skull blowu
to atomis.
At the sight Sentul’s son fled screaming along the
edge of the pool; but Ku-ish’s blood was up, and lie
started in pursuit. The little boy, finding flight
itseless, flung himself down in the long grass, and
cowering there, raised his arms above his head,
shrieking for mercy in his childish treble. Ku-îsh,
for answer, plunged his spear again and again into
the writhing body at his feet; and at the second blow
the distortions of terror faded from his victim’s face
and was replaced by that expression of perfect peace
that is only to be seen in its completeness in the coun-
tenance of a sleeping child.
Ku-ish gathered up the fish and took all the to-
bacco that he could find upon Sentul’s body; for a
Sakai never quite loses sight of those perennial
cravings of appetite which he is doomed never altogether to satisfy. Then, when the darkness had
shut down over the land, he crept softly to Chêp’s
house, and bade her come forth and join him. She
came at once, and without a word; for your Sâkai
woman holds herself to be the chattel of whatever
man chances at the moment to have possessed him-
self of her, forcibly or otherwise. She wept furtively
when Ku-ish told her, in a few passionless sentences,
of how he had killed Sentul and his child; and she
bewailed herself at the top of her voice when, at the
first convenient halting-place, she received the hand-
some trouncing which Sentul dealt out to her, with no
grudging hand, as her share in the general chastise-
ment. But when the welting was over she followed
him meekly enough, with the tears still wet upon her
cheeks, and made no effort to escape. Thus Ku-ish,
the Porcupine, and Chêp, the Bird, made their way
back through the strange forests, until they had once
more regained the familiar Sakai country, and were
safe among their own people.
Pursuit in such a place is hopeless; for a Sâkai
comes and goes like a shadow, and can efface himself
utterly if he desire so to do. Thus, though Sentul’s
relatives clamoured for vengeance, little could be
done. I was at that time in charge of the district
where these things occurred, and it was only with
the greatest difficulty, and after pledging myself to
guarantee their personal immunity, that I was able
to induce the various Sakai headmen to meet me
near the confines of their country. My request that
Ku-ish should be handed over to me for trial was received by the assembled elders as a suggestion that
was manifestly ridiculous. Ku-ish, they observed
sententiously, was in the jungle, the portals of which
were closed to all save the Sâkai. Unaided by them,
neither white man nor Malay could ever hope to set
hands upon him. They would take no part in the
hunt. I could not bring any material pressure to
bear, as I had undertaken that no harm should befall
them at the meeting, and when we had once separated
they could vanish quite as effectively as Ku-ish
had done. They were fully aware of all this, and
were irritatingly placid and happy. It looked like
an absolute impasse.
At length a very aged man, the principal Sâkai
elder present, a wrinkled and unimaginably dirty
old savage, scarred by encounters with wild beasts,
and gray with skin diseases and wood-ashes, lifted
up his voice and spoke, shaking his straggling mop
of grizzled hair in time to the cadence of his words.
“There is a custom, Tian,” he said. “There is a
custom when such things befall. The Porcupine
hath killed the Gob, and our tribe must repay
sevenfold. Seven lives for the life of a Gob. It is
the custom.”
He spoke in Malay, which gave him an unusual
command of numerals, and he had attained to a degree
of civilization and experience which enabled him to
perform the brain-cracking feat of counting up to ten.
The proposal sounded generous, but a little in-
quiry presently revealed the old chief’s real inten-
to be exacted from his tribe should take the form of
seven human beings, who were to be duly delivered
to the relatives of the dead man as slaves. These
seven unfortunates were not to be members of his
own or Ku-ish’s tribe, but were to be captured by
them from among the really wild people of the hills,
who had had no share in the ill-doing, which it
was my object to punish. The Porcupine and his
brethren, he explained, would run some risk, and
would be put to a considerable amount of trouble
and exertion before the seven wild Sâkai could be
caught, and this was to be the measure of their
punishment. The blameless savages of the moun-
tains I was, moreover, assured, were not deserving
of any pity, as they had obviously been created in
order to provide the wherewithal to meet such emier-
gencies, and to supply their more civilized neighbours
with a valuable commodity for barter. The old
chief went on to tell me that his tribe would be merci-
fully free from all fear of reprisals as owing to some
incomprehensible but providential superstition, the
wild Sakai never pursued a raiding party beyond a
spot where the latter had left a spear sticking up-
right in the ground. This, he said, was well known
to the marauders, who took care to avail themselves
of the protection thus afforded to them as soon as
ever their captives had been secured. The assembled
Sakai were unable to account for the paralysis with
which the sight of this abandoned spear invariably
smote the wild folk, but the extraordinary conven ience of the thing evidently appealed strongly to their
utilitarian minds.
Blood-money in past times, I was assured by Ma-
lays and Sâkai alike, had always been paid in this
manner when it was due from the semi-wild tribes of
the interior. It was the custom; and Sentul’s
relatives were urgent in their prayers to me to accept
the proposal. Instead, I exacted a heavy fine of
getah* and other jungle produce from the tribe to
which Ku-ish, the Porcupine, belonged. This was
regarded as a monstrous injustice by the Sakai, and
as an inadequate indemnity by the Malays; and I
thus gave complete dissatisfaction to all parties
concerned, as is not infrequently the fate of the
adjudicating white man. However, as the Oriental
proverb has it, “an order is an order till one is strong
enough to lisobey it”; so the fine was paid by the
Sakai and accepted by the Malays with grumblings
of which I only heard the echoes.
The really remarkable features of the incidents
related are that Ku-ish ever plucked up the courage
to quit the jungles with which he was familiar and
to penetrate alone into the Malayan country, and
that he, the son of a down-trodden race, dared for
once to pay a portion of the heavy debt of vengeance
for long years of grinding cruelty and wicked wrong
which the Sakai owe to the Malays.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — The Further Side of Silence/The Flight of Chêp, the Bird. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.