Tales of the Malayan Coast Part 1

Tales of the Malayan Coast.

by Rounsevelle Wildman.

PREFACE

These stories are the result of nine years' residence and experience on the Malayan coast--that land of romance and adventure which the ancients knew as the Golden Chersonesus, and which, in modern times, has been brought again into the atmosphere of valor and performance by Rajah Brooke of Sarawak, the hero of English expansion, and Admiral George Dewey of the Asiatic squadron, the hero of American achievement. The author, in his official duties as Special Commissioner of the United States for the Straits Settlement and Siam, and, later, as Consul General of the United States at Hong Kong, has mingled with and studied the diverse people of the Malayan coast, from the Sultan of Joh.o.r.e and Aguinaldo the Filipino to the lowest Eurasian and "China boy" of that wonderful Oriental land. These stories are based on his experiences afloat and ash.o.r.e, and are offered to the American public at this time when all glimpses of the land that Columbus sailed to find are of especial interest to the modern possessors of the land he really did discover.

TALES OF THE MALAYAN COAST FROM PENANG TO THE PHILIPPINES

BABOO'S GOOD TIGER

A Tale of the Malacca Jungle

Aboo Din's first-born, Baboo, was only four years old when he had his famous adventure with the tiger he had found sleeping in the hot lallang gra.s.s within the distance of a child's voice from Aboo Din's bungalow.

For a long time before that hardly a day had pa.s.sed but Aboo-Din, who was our syce, or groom, and wore the American colors proudly on his right arm, came in from the servants' quarters with an anxious look on his kindly brown face and asked respectfully for the tuan (lord) or mem (lady).

"What is it, Aboo Din?" the mistress would inquire, as visions of Baboo drowned in the great Shanghai jar, or of Baboo lying crushed by a boa among the yellow bamboos beyond the hedge, pa.s.sed swiftly through her mind.

"Mem see Baboo?" came the inevitable question.

It was unnecessary to say more. At once Ah Minga, the "boy"; Zim, the cook; the kebuns (gardeners); the tukanayer (water-boy), and even the sleek Hindu dirzee, who sat sewing, dozing, and chewing betel-nut, on the shady side of the veranda, turned out with one accord and commenced a systematic search for the missing Baboo.

Sometimes he was no farther off than the protecting screen of the "compound" hedge, or the cool, green shadows beneath the bungalow. But oftener the government Sikhs had to be appealed to, and Kampong Glam in Singapore searched from the great market to the courtyards of Sultan Ali. It was useless to whip him, for whippings seemed only to make Baboo grow. He would lisp serenely as Aboo Din took down the rattan withe from above the door, "Baboo baniak jahat!" (Baboo very bad!) and there was something so charmingly impersonal in all his mischief, that we came between his own brown body and the rod, time and again. There was nothing distinctive in Baboo's features or form. To the casual observer he might have been any one of a half-dozen of his playmates. Like them, he went about perfectly naked, his soft, brown skin s.h.i.+ning like polished rosewood in the fierce Malayan sun.

His hair was black, straight, and short, and his eyes as black as coals. Like his companions, he stood as straight as an arrow, and could carry a pail of water on his head without spilling a drop.

He, too, ate rice three times a day. It puffed him up like a little old man, which added to his grotesqueness and gave him a certain air of dignity that went well with his features when they were in repose. Around his waist he wore a silver chain with a silver heart suspended from it. Its purpose was to keep off the evil spirits.

There was always an atmosphere of sandalwood and Arab essence about Baboo that reminded me of the holds of the old sailing-s.h.i.+ps that used to come into Boston harbor from the Indies. I think his mother must have rubbed the perfumes into his hair as the one way of declaring to the world her affection for him. She could not give him clothes, or ornaments, or toys: such was not the fas.h.i.+on of Baboo's race. Neither was he old enough to wear the silk sarong that his Aunt Fatima had woven for him on her loom.

Baboo had been well trained, and however lordly he might be in the quarters, he was marked in his respect to the mistress. He would touch his forehead to the red earth when I drove away of a morning to the office; though the next moment I might catch him blowing a tiny ball of clay from his sumpitan into the ear of his father, the syce, as he stood majestically on the step behind me.

Baboo went to school for two hours every day to a fat old Arab penager, or teacher, whose schoolroom was an open stall, and whose only furniture a bench, on which he sat cross-legged, and flourished a whip in one hand and a chapter of the Koran in the other.

There were a dozen little fellows in the school; all naked. They stood up in line, and in a soft musical treble chanted in chorus the glorious promises of the Koran, even while their eyes wandered from the dusky corner where a cheko lizard was struggling with an atlas moth, to the frantic gesticulations of a naked Hindu who was calling his meek-eyed bullocks hard names because they insisted on lying down in the middle of the road for their noonday siesta.

Baboo's father, Aboo Din, was a Hadji, for he had been to Mecca. When nothing else could make Baboo forget the effects of the green durian he had eaten, Aboo Din would take the child on his knees and sing to him of his trip to Mecca, in a quaint, monotonous voice, full of sorrowful quavers. Baboo believed he himself could have left Singapore any day and found Mecca in the dark.

We had been living some weeks in a government bungalow, fourteen miles from Singapore, across the island that looks out on the Straits of Malacca. The fis.h.i.+ng and hunting were excellent. I had shot wild pig, deer, tapirs, and for some days had been getting ready to track down a tiger that had been prowling in the jungle about the bungalow.

But of a morning, as we lay lazily chatting in our long chairs behind the bamboo chicks, the cries of "Harimau! Harimau!" and "Baboo"

came up to us from the servants' quarters.

Aboo Din sprang over the railing of the veranda, and without stopping even to touch the back of his hand to his forehead, cried,--

"Tuan Consul, tiger have eat chow dog and got Baboo!"

Then he rushed into the dining room, s.n.a.t.c.hed up my Winchester and cartridge-belt, and handed them to me with a "Lekas (quick)! Come!"

He sprang back off the veranda and ran to his quarters where the men were arming themselves with ugly krises and heavy parangs.

I had not much hope of finding the tiger, much less of rescuing Baboo, dead or alive. The jungle loomed up like an impa.s.sable wall on all three sides of the compound, so dense, compact, and interwoven, that a bird could not fly through it. Still I knew that my men, if they had the courage, could follow where the tiger led, and could cut a path for me.

Aboo Din unloosed a half-dozen pariah dogs that we kept for wild pig, and led them to the spot where the tiger had last lain. In an instant the entire pack sent up a doleful howl and slunk back to their kennels.

Aboo Din lashed them mercilessly and drove them into the jungle, where he followed on his hands and knees. I only waited to don my green kaki suit and canvas shooting hat and despatch a man to the neighboring kampong, or village, to ask the punghulo (chief) to send me his s.h.i.+karis, or hunters. Then I plunged into the jungle path that my kebuns had cut with their keen parangs, or jungle-knives. Ten feet within the confines of the forest the metallic glare of the sun and the pitiless reflections of the China Sea were lost in a dim, green twilight. Far ahead I could hear the half-hearted snarls of the cowardly, deserting curs, and Aboo Din's angry voice rapidly exhausting the curses of the Koran on their heads.

My men, who were naked save for a cotton sarong wound around their waists, slashed here a rubber-vine, there a th.o.r.n.y rattan, and again a ma.s.s of creepers that were as tenacious as iron ropes, all the time pressing forward at a rapid walk. Ofttimes the trail led from the solid ground through a swamp where grew great sago palms, and out of which a black, sluggish stream flowed toward the straits. Gray iguanas and pendants of dove orchids hung from the limbs above, and green and gold lizards scuttled up the trees at our approach.

At the first plot of wet ground Aboo Din sent up a shout, and awaited my coming. I found him on his hands and knees, gazing stupidly at the prints in the moist earth.

"Tuan," he shouted, "see Baboo's feet, one--two--three--more! Praise be to Allah!"

I dropped down among the lily-pads and pitcher-plants beside him.

There, sure enough, close by the catlike footmarks of the tiger, was the perfect impression of one of Baboo's bare feet. Farther on was the imprint of another, and then a third. Wonderful! The intervals between the several footmarks were far enough apart for the stride of a man!

"Apa?" (What does it mean?) I said.

Aboo Din tore his hair and called upon Allah and the a.s.sembled Malays to witness that he was the father of this Baboo, but that, in the sight of Mohammed, he was innocent of this witchcraft. He had striven from Hari Rahmadan to Hari Rahmanan to bring this four-year-old up in the light of the Koran, but here he was striding through the jungle, three feet and more at a step, holding to a tiger's tail!

I shouted with laughter as the truth dawned upon me. It must be so,--Baboo was alive. His footprints were before me. He was being dragged through the jungle by a full-grown Malayan tiger! How else explain his impossible strides, overlapping the beast's marks!

Aboo Din turned his face toward Mecca, and his lips moved in prayer.

"May Allah be kind to this tiger!" he mumbled. "He is in the hands of a witch. We shall find him as harmless as an old cat. Baboo will break out his teeth with a club of billion wood and bite off his claws with his own teeth. Allah is merciful!"

We pushed on for half an hour over a dry, foliage-cus.h.i.+oned strip of ground that left no trace of the pursued. At the second wet spot we dashed forward eagerly and scanned the trail for signs of Baboo, but only the pads of the tiger marred the surface of the slime.

Aboo Din squatted at the root of a huge mangrove and broke forth into loud lamentations, while the last remaining cur took advantage of his preoccupation to sneak back on the homeward trail.

"Aboo," I commanded sarcastically, "pergie! (move on!) Baboo is a man and a witch. He is tired of walking, and is riding on the back of the tiger!"

Aboo gazed into my face incredulously for a moment; then, picking up his parang and tightening his sarong, strode on ahead without a word.

At noon we came upon a sandy stretch of soil that contained a few diseased cocoanut palms, fringed by a sluggish lagoon, and a great banian tree whose trunk was hardly more than a ma.s.s of interlaced roots. A troop of long-armed wah-wah monkeys were scolding and whistling within its dense foliage with surprising intensity. Occasionally one would drop from an outreaching limb to one of the pendulous roots, and then, with a shrill whistle of fright, spring back to the protection of his mates.

A Malay silenced them by throwing a half-ripe cocoanut into the midst of the tree, and we moved on to the shade of the st.u.r.diest palm. There we sat down to rest and eat some biscuits softened in the milk of a cocoanut.

"There is a boa in the roots of the banian, Aboo," I said, looking longingly toward its deep shadow.

He nodded his head, and drew from the pouch in the knot in his sarong a few broken fragments of areca nut. These he wrapped in a lemon leaf well smeared with lime, and tucked the entire ma.s.s into the corner of his mouth.