Tales of the Malayan Coast Part 18

A peal of thunder that shook the bungalow from its attap roof to its nebong pillars drowned the melody and drove me inside.

A PIG HUNT

In the Malayan Jungle

The thermometer stood at 155 degrees in the sun. The dry lallang gra.s.s crackled and glowed and returned long irregular waves of heat to the quivering metallic dome above.

The sensitive mimosa, at our feet, had long since surrendered to the fierce wooing of the sun-G.o.d, submissively folding its leaves and then its branches and putting aside its morning dress of green for one more in keeping with the color of the earth and sky. Even the clamorous cicada had hushed its insistent whir.

We were dressed in brown kaki suits. Wide-spreading cork helmets were filled with the stiff varnished leaves of the mango, and wet handkerchiefs were draped from underneath their rims; yet, after an hour of exposure, our flesh ached--it was tender to the touch. The barrel of my Express scorched my hand, and I wrapped my camerabuna about it. But then it was no hotter than any other day. In fact, we never gave a thought to the weather.

We were formed in a line, perhaps two miles in length, in a deserted pepper plantation, fronting a jungle of timboso trees and rubber-vines. I squatted patiently under the checkered shade of a neglected coffee tree and kept my eyes fixed on the seemingly impenetrable walls of the jungle. A hundred feet to the right and the left, under like protection, were two of my companions, determined like myself to be successful in three points,--to have the first shot at the pigs, to avoid getting shot, or shooting a neighbor. But our minds rose above mental cautions with the first faint halloos of the Hindu s.h.i.+karis on the opposite side of the jungle. In another moment the babel gave place to a confusion of shrieks, howls, yells, laughs, barking of dogs, beating of tins, blowing of horns, explosions of crackers, and a din that represents all that is wild and untamable in three nations. It is a weird, almost appalling prologue. Those laughs!--they are a study--they fairly chill the blood--they would make the fortune of a comic actor--so intense, thrilling, surprising, and seemingly filled with a ghoulish glee. Over and over they would break out clear and distinct above the tintamarre. I have never been able to find out whether it belongs to the Malay or the Kling or the Tamil.

The yelling became more distinct. A troop of brown and silver wah-wahs swung with their long arms out to the very edge of the jungle and then up to the tops of the highest trees, the while uttering the full, clear note from which they take their name; followed by a troop of gray little jungle monkeys, whistling and scolding at the unwonted disturbance. A colony of cicadas on the limbs of a great gutta tree awoke into life and pierced our ears with buzz-saw strains.

In an instant we were all alert,--the heat was forgotten. At any minute a herd of pigs might dart out and on to us, or possibly our drivers might rouse a tiger. The screaming ascended to a delirious pitch--the pigs were discovered! I threw my cartridge from the magazine into the barrel. It was a 5095 Express and I had perfect confidence that one ball to a pig was sufficient.

The yelling grew nearer until, with a sudden deploy, one hundred Klings and Malays dashed out into the open, close on the heels of a dozen wild pigs. We could just see their black backs above the gra.s.s, as they broke down a little ravine in single file, led by a big, h.o.a.ry boar with tusks. They were three hundred yards off, but I could not resist the temptation. I brought my rifle to my shoulder and fired twice in rapid succession. Two or three more shots were heard beyond. I threw out the sh.e.l.ls as the herd lunged on me. It was so sudden that I was dazed, but fortunately so were the pigs, with the exception of a wary old leader, who made into the jungle behind, almost between my legs. One little fellow threw himself on his haunches for an instant and stared at me. I came to my senses first and put a ball into his wondering eyes. My second shot was so near that it tore away a pound of meat from his shoulder and killed him instantly.

The firing had opened up all along the line. The drivers were pus.h.i.+ng in nearer and nearer, beating the gra.s.s and clumps of bushes, seemingly regardless of the widely flying b.a.l.l.s. I suspect they held our prowess in contempt. I know they looked it, when it was discovered that out of the dozen pigs they had raised, we had allowed over half to escape. Then, too, their lives were insured, in a way; for they knew that their deaths would cost us twenty big Mexican dollars.

Pig-hunting is the one big-game hunt that can be indulged in on the Malay Peninsula without great preparation and danger. Deer and tapirs are scarce. Tigers, or harimau as the Malays call them, abound, but live in the depths of the almost inaccessible jungle, and come forth only at rare intervals, except in the case of the man-eaters, who are usually ignominiously caught in pitfalls, very seldom affording true sport. Elephants are still hunted in the native states north of Singapore, but the sport is too expensive for the generality of sportsmen. One of the peculiar attributes of the Malayan tiger is his decided penchant for Chinese flesh, repeatedly striking down Chinese coolies in the fields to the exclusion of the Malays or Europeans who are working by their side. Perhaps once a month, a tiger or his skin will be brought into the city by natives, and several times at night I have heard them in the jungle; but to my knowledge only three have been shot by European sportsmen during my residence in the island. So wild pigs really remain the one item of big game.

The pigs live in the jungle bordering plantations in which they can range for pineapples, sweet potatoes, and tapioca root. They are the ordinary wild hog, black in color, and fleet of foot. The older ones have good-sized tusks and show fight when cornered. The lone sportsman has very little chance of obtaining a shot, so they are hunted in large companies of from five to fifteen guns. Such parties generally organize a hunt at least once a week and leave Singapore early in the morning for an all-day shoot.

The pig hunts organized by the officers of the Royal Artillery are the largest, and as a description of one is a description of all, I will take one up in regular order, rather than quote from many.

We left Singapore at six o'clock in the morning in a four-horse dray. As the sun had not reached the tops of the trees, the atmosphere was mild and pleasant. A half-hour took us outside the great cosmopolitan city, of three hundred thousand inhabitants. The low, cool bungalows with their wide-spreading lawns gave place to the gra.s.s-thatched huts of the Chinese coolies, and the omnipresent eating-stalls. A hard-packed road carried us through almost endless cocoanut groves. At intervals a Malay kampong, or village, was revealed in the heart of the grove, its queer attap-thatched houses raised a man's height from the ground, and connected with it by rickety ladders. Dozens of nude little children played under the shadow of the palms, while the comely faces and syrah-stained teeth of their mothers peeped at us from behind low barred windows. The cocoanut groves were superseded by tapioca, pepper, and coffee plantations. At regular distances were neat stations, manned by Malay and Sikh police. The roads over which we dashed were in perfect repair. In another hour we were nine miles from Singapore and near our first "beat."

Major Rich had sent his s.h.i.+karis on the night before to collect beaters, so that when we arrived we were welcomed by a small army of Klings, Tamils, and Malays, and the usual sprinkling of pariah dogs. A wild, strange set are these beaters. They toil not, neither do they spin. Their wives do that occasionally, making a few sarongs for home use and an odd one for the market. Cocoanuts, pineapples, a little patch of paddy with a dozen half-wild chickens, and perchance, if they are not Mohammedans, a pig with its litter, afford them sustenance. For their day's beating they were to receive fifteen cents apiece. They were all ranged in line and counted, after which we took up our march through a plantation of tapioca, the brush standing about level with our heads. Chinese coolies were working about its roots keeping down the great pest of Malayan farmers,--lallang gra.s.s. The tapioca was broken in places by a few acres of pepper vines and again by neglected coffee shrubs.

Our procession was truly formidable. Fifty or more natives went on ahead making a path. Then we followed, fifteen in number, each with a native to carry his gun. The rear was brought up by twoscore more and half as many dogs. Three-quarters of an hour's walk brought us to our first beat. The head s.h.i.+karis placed us in an open position, from fifty to one hundred yards apart, facing the jungle. The beaters, in the meantime, had gone by a long detour around the jungle to drive whatever it contained within reach of our guns.

In the second of these beats (I described the first in the opening of this chapter) a deer ran out far in advance of the pigs. We caught but a fleeting glimpse of it above the gra.s.s. My gun and that of my neighbor went off simultaneously. The deer disappeared. We rushed to the spot and found the leaves dyed with blood. Then commenced a chase, which, although fruitless, was well worth the exertion. All the panorama of tropical life seemed to lay in our tracks. For an half-hour we traversed the rolling plain with its burden of gra.s.s. Some smoker dropped a match in it, and in an instant it was all ablaze, spreading away like a whirlwind, burning only the very tips, toward a distant jungle. Then we dove into a bosky wood by a narrow winding path, and through a stream of water. The path was like a tunnel, the dense foliage shutting it in on both sides and above. The thorns of the rattans reached down and tore our clothes, and long trailing rubber-vines caught up our helmets and held our feet. In a marshy bit of jungle, a small colony of unwieldy sago palms found root, while pitcher-plants and orchids hung from almost every limb. Clumsy gray iguanas and long-tailed lizards of a brilliant green rushed up the trunks of lichen-covered trees. Troops of monkeys went scattering away on all sides, and black squirrels chattered on in the perfect security of the dim obscurity. In a bit of sandy bottom, a silken-haired, zebra-striped tapir scuttled away ere we were half alive to his presence.

Outside was the metallic glare of the Malayan sun once more, now at its height, and another march was before us, over the burning hot mesa. At one o'clock we came upon a half-neglected plantation. The b.l.o.o.d.y trail of the deer led through it. In the centre of the plantation we found a huge wedge-shaped attap house for drying pepper, and there we rested.

Our tiffin baskets were six miles away in the dray, and sending after them was out of the question. So we foraged for eatables. Cocoanuts were easily obtained from trees all about, and a little whiskey mixed with its milk made a very refres.h.i.+ng drink. Pineapples, small oranges, limes, papayas, custard apples, and bananas were in large quant.i.ties. Our drivers added to this bill of fare by roasting the sweet-potato-like roots of the tapioca. After this impromptu lunch they compounded their quids of areca-nut and lime, and were ready once more to beat up an adjacent jungle for deer, pig, or tiger.

As before, we were soon in position in the open before the jungle and the beaters were yelling at the top of their voices.

I was half dozing in the sun, trying to smoke a Manila cigar that my mouth was too dry to draw, when I was aroused by my neighbor, who called my attention to a file of pigs at the extreme end of the line. I could just see what was going on from the knoll on which I was standing. They were received by Major Rich, one of his subalterns, and his Hindu gun-carrier. One of the file fell at the first volley, two more broke through the line, and the remaining six or seven, led by a fierce old fellow, from whose long tusks the foam dripped, turned up the line and charged point-blank on the next gunner, who fired and missed, but succeeded in keeping them between the line and the jungle. The fourth gun brought down the second pig and wounded the boar in the shoulder. Frantic with rage and pain, the old fellow tore up the ground and gra.s.s with his tusks and then, seeming to give up all idea of escape, wheeled sharply around and with his back bristles standing erect and his mouth open, charged directly on to the fifth, who was in the act of throwing the cartridge into the barrel. Taken completely by surprise, the officer gave one l.u.s.ty yell and started to run in line with the gun on his right. The boar was gaining on him at every step when he tripped and fell. The report of No. 6's Winchester Express rang out almost simultaneously. For an instant we held our breaths, wondering whether the man or boar had been hit. It was a splendid shot and took a steady hand. The boar's shoulder was shattered and his heart reached. Two or three angry grunts and he lay quiet. He weighed close to three hundred pounds. The bristles on his back were white with age. All in all, he was not nice to look at.

As half of our beaters were Mohammedans and so forbidden to touch pork, the burden of carrying our pigs the six miles through lallang gra.s.s, jungle and swamp land, came hard on our Brahmists. We knew that the only way to make them work was to call them "Sons of dogs" and walk off and leave them with a parting injunction to "get in by the time we did if they wanted their wages."

This we did without deigning to notice their pathetic gestures, heart-rending appeals and protestations to the "Sons of the Heaven-Born" that they could not lift one hundredth part of such burdens.

IN THE COURT OF JOh.o.r.e

The Crowning of a Malayan Prince

Tunku Ibrahim was just past seventeen when his father, the Sultan Abubaker, chose to recognize him as his heir and Crown Prince of Joh.o.r.e.

From the day when the little prince had been deemed old enough to leave his mother and the women's palace until the day he had entered the native artillery as a lieutenant, he had been schooled and trained by the English missionaries and the Tuan Kadi, or Mohammedan high priest, as becomes a son of so ill.u.s.trious a father.

Tunku Ibrahim had made one trip to England when he was fifteen years old, and with his little cousin, the Tunku, or Prince, Othman, had dined with the Queen at Windsor.

So, when the Sultan returned from a long stay at Carlsbad and found that the Sultana was dead and that Ibrahim had shot up into a man, he said:--

"I am getting to be an old man and may die at any time. I will call all my n.o.bles and people to the palace, and they shall see me place the crown on Ibrahim's head. Then if I die, he will rule, and the British will not take his country from him as long as he is wise and kingly."

Whereupon his Highness sent out invitations to the Governor and all the foreign consuls in Singapore to be his guests and witness the crowning of his son.

We started in quaint little box-like carriages, called gharries, long before the fierce Malayan sun had risen above the palms, accomplis.h.i.+ng the fourteen miles across the beautiful island in little over an hour.

The diminutive Deli ponies, not larger than Newfoundland dogs, broke into a run the moment we closed the lattice doors, and it was all their half-naked drivers could do to keep their perches on the swaying shafts.

When we arrived at the little half-Malay, half-Chinese village of Kranji, on the sh.o.r.es of the famous old Straits of Malacca, our ponies were panting with heat, and the sun beat down on our white cork helmets with a quivering, naked intensity.

Close up to the sh.o.r.e we found a long, keel boat manned by a dozen Malays in canary-colored suits. An aide-de-camp in a gorgeous uniform of gold and blue came forward and touched his forehead with the back of his brown palm and said in good English:--

"His Highness awaits your excellencies."

We stepped into the boat. The men lightly dipped their spear-shaped paddles in the tepid water, the rattan oarlocks squeaked shrilly, and the light prow shot out into the strait. We could see the istana, or palace, close down to the opposite sh.o.r.e, with the royal standard of white, with black star and crescent in centre, floating above it.

For a moment I felt as though I had invaded some dreamland of my childhood.

As our boat drew up to the iron pier that extended from the broad palace steps out into the straits, the guns from the little fort on the hill above the town boomed out a welcome and the flags of our several countries were run to the tops of the poles. A squad of native soldiers presented arms, and we were conducted up the stone steps, to the cool, dim corridors of the reception or waiting room. Malays in red fezzes and silken sarongs that hung about their legs like skirts conducted us along a marble hall to our rooms in a wing of the palace. Crowds were already gathering outside on the palace grounds, and we could look down from our windows and watch them as we bathed, dressed, and drank tea.

The Chinese in their holiday pantaloons and s.h.i.+rts of pink, lavender, and blue silk: outnumbered all the other races; for, strange as it may seem, this Malay Sultan numbers among his 250,000 or 300,000 subjects 175,000 Chinamen. They are as loyal and a great deal more industrious than the Malays, and many of them, styled Baboos, do not even know their native tongue.

The Malays, dressed in gayly colored sarongs and bajus (jackets), with little rimless caps on their heads, squatted on their heels and chewed betel-nut, with eyes half closed and mouths distended.

The Arab traders and shopkeepers were grouped about in little knots, gravely conversing and watching the files of gharries or carriages, and even rickshaws, that were bringing Malay unkus (princes not of the royal blood), patos (peers), holy men, and rich Chinese mandarins to the steps that led up to the plaza before the throne-room.

The palace was two stories high, long and narrow. The interior rooms were separated from the outer walls by wide, airy corridors. The lattice-work windows were without gla.s.s and were arranged to admit the breezes from the ocean and ward off the searching rays of the equatorial sun. In these dusky corridors were long rattan chairs, divans, and tables covered with refreshments, and along its walls were arranged weapons of war and chase, j.a.panese suits of straw armor, Javanese s.h.i.+elds, and Malay krises and limbings.

In a little court at the end of our corridor, where a fountain splashed over a clump of lotus flowers and blue water lilies, a long-armed silver wah-wah monkey played with a black Malay cat that had a kink in its tail like the joint in a stovepipe, and chased the clucking little gray lizards up the polished walls.