Chapter 15

He of the Hairy Face killed quickly and silently, while there were yet some alive to resist him. Then, purring gently, he drank a deep draught of blood from each of his slaughtered victims. At last he reached Che' Seman, and Minah, seeing him approach, made a feeble effort to evade him. Then began a fearful scene, the tiger playing with, and torturing the girl, just as we all have seen a cat do with a maimed mouse. Again and again Minah crawled feebly away from her tormentor, only to be drawn back again just when escape seemed possible. Again and again she lay still in the utter inertia of exhaustion, only to be quickened into agonised movement once more by the touch of the tiger's cruel claws. Yet so cunningly did he play with her, that, as Mat described it, a time as long as it would take to cook rice had elapsed, before the girl was finally put out of her misery.

Even then He of the Hairy Face did not quit the scene of slaughter. Mat, as he lay trembling in the shelf overhead, watched the tiger, through the long hours of that fearful night, play with the mangled bodies of each of his victims in turn. He leaped from one to the other, inflicting a fresh blow with teeth or claws on their torn flesh, with all the airy, light-hearted agility and sinuous grace of a kitten playing with its shadow in the sun. Then when the dawn was breaking, the tiger tore down the door, leaped lightly to the ground, and betook himself to the jungle.

When the sun was up, an armed party of neighbours came to the house to see if ought could be done. But they found the place a shambles, the bodies hardly to be recognised, the floor-laths dripping blood, and Mat lying face downward on the shelf, with his reason tottering in the balance. The bodies, though they had been horribly mutilated, had not been eaten, the tiger having contented himself with drinking the blood of his victims, and playing his ghastly game with them till the dawn broke.

This is, I believe, the only recorded instance in the Peninsula of a tiger having dared to attack men within their closed houses; and the circumstances are so remarkable in every way, that I, for one, cannot find it in me to greatly blame the Malays for attributing the fearlessness of mankind, and the lust for blood displayed by Him of the Hairy Face, to the fact that he owed his existence to magic agencies, and was in reality no mere wild beast, but a member of the race upon which he so cruelly preyed.

IN THE DAYS WHEN THE LAND WAS FREE

Alas, the shifting years have sped, Since we were hale and strong, Who oft have seen the hot blood shed, Nor held the deed a wrong; When the flames leap'd bright, thro' the frightened night, When the _scrak_ rang thro' the lea, When a man might fight, and when might was right, In the Days when the Land was Free.

_The Song of the Fettered Folk._

In 1873 the people of Pahang who, then as now, were ever ready to go upon the war-path, poured over the cool summits of the range that forms at once the backbone of the Peninsula and the boundary between Pahang and Selangor. They went, at the invitation of the British Government, to bring to a final conclusion the protracted struggles, in which Malay _Rajas_, foreign mercenaries, and Chinese miners had alike been engaged for years, distracting the State of Selangor, and breaking the peace of the Peninsula. A few months later, the Pahang Army, albeit sadly reduced by cholera, poured back again across the mountains, the survivors slapping their chests and their _kris_-hilts, and boasting loudly of their deeds, as befitted victorious warriors in a Malay land. The same stories are still told 'with circumstance and much embroidery,' by those who took part in the campaign, throughout the length and breadth of Pahang even unto this day.

Among the great Chiefs who led their people across the range, one of the last to go, and one of those whose heart was most uplifted by victory, was the present Mahraja Perba of Jelai, commonly called To' Raja. His own people, even at that time, gave him the title he now bears, but the Bendahara of Pahang (since styled Sultan) had never formally installed him in the hereditary office of which he was the heir, so by the Court Faction he was still addressed as Panglima Prang Mamat.

On his arrival at Pekan, the Panglima Prang, unmindful of the fate which, at an earlier period, had befallen his brother Wan Bong, whose severed head lay buried somewhere near the palace in a nameless grave, began to assert himself in a manner which no Malay King could be expected to tolerate. Not content with receiving from his own people the semi-royal honours, which successive To' Rajas have insisted upon from the natives of the interior, Panglima Prang allowed his pride to run away with both his prudence and his manners. He landed at Pekan with a following of nearly fifty men, all wearing shoes, the spoils of war, it is said, which had fallen to his lot through the capture of a Chinese store; he walked down the principal street of the town with an umbrella carried by one of his henchmen; and he ascended into the King's _Balai_ with his _kris_ uncovered by the folds of his _sarong_! The enormity of these proceedings may not, perhaps, be apparent; but, in those days, the wearing of shoes of a European type, and the public use of an umbrella, were among the proudest privileges of royalty. To ascend the _Balai_ with an uncloaked weapon in one's girdle was, moreover, a warlike proceeding, which can only be compared to the snapping of fingers in the face of royalty. Therefore, when Panglima Prang left Pekan, and betook himself up river to his house in the Jelai, he left a flustered court, and a very angry King behind him.

But at this time there was a man in Pahang who was not slow to seize an opportunity, and in the King's anger he saw a chance that he had long been seeking. This man was Dato' Imam Prang Indera Gajah Pahang, a title which, being interpreted, meaneth, The War Chief, the Elephant of Pahang. Magnificent and high sounding as was this name, it was found too large a mouthful for everyday use, and to the people of Pahang he was always known by the abbreviated title of To' Gajah. He had risen from small beginnings by his genius for war, and more especially for that branch of the science which the Malays call _tipu prang_--the deception of strife--a term which is more accurately rendered into English by the word treachery, than by that more dignified epithet strategy. He had already been the recipient of various land grants from the King, which carried with them some hundreds of devoted families who chanced to live on the alienated territories; he already took rank as a great Chief; but his ambition was to become the master of the Lipis Valley, in which he had been born, by displacing the aged To' Kaya Stia-wangsa, the hereditary Chief of the District.

To' Gajah knew that To' Kaya of Lipis, and all his people were more or less closely related to Panglima Prang, and to the Jelai natives. He foresaw that, if war was declared against Panglima Prang by the King, the Lipis people would throw in their fortunes with the former. It was here, therefore, that he saw his chance, and, as the fates would have it, an instrument lay ready to his hand.

At Kuala Lipis there dwelt in those days an old and cross-grained madman, a Jelai native by birth, who, in the days before his trouble came upon him, had been a great Chief in Pahang. He bore the title of Orang Kaya Haji, and his eldest son was named Wan Lingga. The latter was as wax in To' Gajah's hands, and when they had arranged between themselves that in the event of a campaign against Panglima Prang proving successful, Wan Lingga should replace the latter by becoming To' Raja of Jelai, while the Lipis Valley should be allotted to To' Gajah, with the title of Dato' Kaya Stia-wangsa, they together approached the Bendahara on the subject.

They found him willing enough to entertain any scheme, which included the humbling of his proud vassal Panglima Prang, who so lately had done him dishonour in his own capital. Moreover the Bendahara of Pahang was as astute as it is given to most men to be, and he saw that strife between the great Chiefs must, by weakening all, eventually strengthen his own hand, since he would, in the end, be the peacemaker between them. Therefore he granted a letter of authority to Wan Lingga and To' Gajah, and thus the war began.

The people of Pahang flocked to the interior, all noisily eager to stamp out of existence the upstart Chief, who had dared to wear shoes, and to carry an umbrella in the streets of their King's capital. The aged Chief of Lipis and his people, however, clove to Panglima Prang, or To' Raja, as he now openly called himself, and the war did not prosper. To' Gajah had inspired but little love in the hearts of the men whom the Bendahara had given him for a following, and they allowed their stockades to be taken without a blow by the Jelai people, and on one occasion To' Gajah only escaped by being paddled hastily down stream concealed in the rolled up hide of a buffalo.

At last it became evident that war alone could never subdue the Jelai and Lipis districts, and consequently negotiations were opened. A Chief named the Orang Kaya Pahlawan of Semantan visited To' Raja in the Jelai, and besought him to make his peace by coming to Pekan.

'Thou hast been victorious until now,' said he, 'but thy food is running low. How then wilt thou fare? It were better to submit to the Bendahara, and I will go warrant that no harm befalls thee. If the Bendahara shears off thy head, he shall only do so when thy neck has been used as a block for mine own. And thou knowest that the King loveth me.' To' Raja therefore allowed himself to be persuaded, but stipulated that Wan Lingga, who was then at Kuala Lipis, should also go down to Pekan, since if he remained in the interior he might succeed in subverting the loyalty of the Jelai people who hitherto had been faithful to To' Raja. Accordingly Wan Lingga left Kuala Lipis, ostensibly for Pekan, but, after descending the river for a few miles, he turned off into a side stream, named the Kichan, where he lay hidden biding his time.

When To' Raja heard of this, he at first declined to continue his journey down stream, but at length, making a virtue of necessity, he again set forward, saying that he entertained no fear of Wan Lingga, since one who could hide in the forest 'like a fawn or a mouse-deer' could never, he said, fill the seat of To' Raja of Jelai.

It is whispered, that it had been To' Gajah's intention to make away with To' Raja, on his way down stream, by means of that 'warlike' art for which, I have said, he had a special aptitude; but the Jelai people knew the particular turn of the genius with which they had to deal, and consequently they remained very much on their guard. They travelled, some forty or fifty strong, on an enormous bamboo raft, with a large fortified house erected in its centre. They never parted with their arms, taking them both to bed and to bath; they turned out in force at the very faintest alarm of danger; they moored the raft in mid-stream when the evening fell; and, wonderful to relate, for Malays make bad sentinels, they kept faithful watch both by day and by night. Thus at length they won to Pekan without mishap; and thereafter they were suffered to remain in peace, no further and immediate attempts being made upon their lives.

To' Raja--or Panglima Prang as he was still called by the King and the Court Faction--remained at the capital a prisoner in all but the name. The Bendahara declined to accord him an interview, pointedly avoided speech with him, when they chanced to meet in public, and resolutely declined to allow him to leave Pekan. This, in ancient days, was practically the King's only means of punishing a powerful vassal, against whom he did not deem it prudent to take more active measures; and as, at a Malay Court, the _entourage_ of the Raja slavishly follow any example which their King may set them, the position of a great Chief living at the capital in disgrace was sufficiently isolated, dreary, humiliating, and galling.

But To' Raja's own followers clove to him with the loyalty for which, on occasion, the natives of Pahang are remarkable. The Bendahara spared no pains to seduce them from their allegiance, and the three principal Chieftains who followed in To' Raja's train were constantly called into the King's presence, and were shown other acts of favour, which were steadfastly denied to their master. But it profited the Bendahara nothing, for Imam Bakar, the oldest of the three, set an example of loyalty which his two companions, Imam Prang Samah and Khatib Bujang, followed resolutely. Imam Bakar himself acted from principle. He was a man whom Nature had endowed with firm nerves, a faithful heart, and that touch of recklessness and fatalism which is needed to put the finishing touch to the courage of an oriental. He loved To' Raja and all his house, nor could he be tempted or scared into a denial of his affection and loyalty. Imam Prang Samah and Khatib Bujang, both of whom I know well, are men of a different type. They belong to the weak-kneed brethren, and they followed Imam Bakar because they feared him and To' Raja. They found themselves, to use an emphatic colloquialism, between the Devil and the Deep Sea, nor had they sufficient originality between them to suggest a compromise. Thus they imitated Imam Bakar, repeated his phrases after him, and, in the end, but narrowly escaped sharing with him the fate which awaits those who arouse the wrath of a King.

At each interview which these Chieftains had with their monarch, the latter invariably concluded the conversation by calling upon them to testify to the faith that was in them.

'Who,' he would ask, 'is your Master, and who is your Chief?'

And the three, led by Imam Bakar, would make answer with equal regularity:

'Thou, O Highness, art Master of thy servants, and His Highness To' Raja is thy servants' Chief.'

Now, from the point of view of the Bendahara, this answer was most foully treasonable. That in speaking to him, the King, they should give To' Raja--the vassal he had been at such pains to humble--a royal title equal to his own, was in itself bad enough. But that, not content with this outrage, they should decline to acknowledge the Bendahara as both Master and Chief was the sorest offence of all. A man may own duty to any Chief he pleases, until such time as he comes into the presence of his King, who is the Chief of Chiefs. Then all loyalty to minor personages must be laid aside, and the Monarch must be acknowledged as the Master and Lord above all others. But it was just this one thing that Imam Bakar was determined not to do, and at each succeeding interview the anger of the Bendahara waxed hotter and hotter.

At the last interview of all, and before the fatal question had been asked and answered, the King spoke with the three Chieftains concerning the manner of their life in the remote interior, and, turning to Imam Bakar, he asked how they of the upper country lived.

'Thy servants live on earth,' replied the Imam, meaning thereby that they were tillers of the soil.

When they had once more given the hateful answer to the oft put question, and had withdrawn in fear and trembling before the King's anger, the latter called To' Gajah to him and said:

'Imam Bakar and the men his friends told me a moment since that they eat earth. Verily the Earth will have its revenge, for I foresee that in a little space the Earth will swallow Imam Bakar.'

Next day the three recalcitrant Chiefs left Pekan for their homes in the interior, and, a day or two later, To' Gajah, by the Bendahara's order, followed them in pursuit. His instructions were to kill all three without further questionings, should he chance to overtake them before they reached their homes at Kuala Tembeling. If, however, they should win to their homes in safety, they were once more to be asked the fatal question, and their lives were to depend upon the nature of their answer. This was done, lest a rising of the Chieftains' relations should give needless trouble to the King's people; for the clan was not a small one, and any unprovoked attack upon the villages, in which the Chieftains lived, would be calculated to give offence.

Imam Bakar and his friends were punted up the long reaches of the Pahang river, past the middle country, where the banks are lined with villages nestling in the palm and fruit trees; past Gunong Senuyum--the Smiling Mountain--that great limestone rock, which raises its crest high above the forest that clothes the plain in which it stands in solitary beauty; past Lubok Plang, where in a nameless grave lies the Princess of ancient story, the legend of whose loveliness alone survives; past Glanggi's Fort, those gigantic caves which seem to lend some probability to the tradition that, before they changed to stone, they were once the palace of a King; and on and on, until, at last, the yellow sandbanks of Pasir Tambang came in sight. And close at their heels, though they knew it not, followed To' Gajah and those of the King's Youths who had been deputed to cover their Master's shame.

At Kuala Tembeling, where the waters of the river of that name make common cause with those of the Jelai, and where the united streams first take the name of Pahang, there lies a broad stretch of sand glistening in the fierce sunlight. It has been heaped up, during countless generations, by little tributes from the streams which meet at its feet, and it is never still. Every flood increases or diminishes its size, and weaves its restless sands into some new fantastic curve or billow. The sun which beats upon it bakes the sand almost to boiling point, and the heat-haze dances above it, like some restless phantom above a grave. And who shall say that ghosts of the dead and gone do not haunt this sandbank far away in the heart of the Peninsula? If native report speaks true, the spot is haunted, for the sand, they say, is 'hard ground' such as the devils love to dwell upon. Full well may it be so, for Pasir Tambang has been the scene of many a cruel tragedy, and could its sands but speak, what tales would they have to tell us of woe and murder, of valour and treachery, of shrieking souls torn before their time from their sheaths of flesh and blood, and of all the savage deeds of this

race of venomous worms That sting each other here in the dust.

It was on this sandbank that To' Gajah and his people pitched their camp, building a small open house with rude uprights, and thatching it with palm leaves cut in the neighbouring jungle. To' Gajah knew that Imam Bakar was the man with whom he really had to deal. Imam Prang Samah and Khatib Bujang he rated at their proper worth, and it was to Imam Bakar, therefore, that he first sent a message, desiring him once more to answer as to who was his Master and who his Chief. Imam Bakar, after consulting his two friends, once more returned the answer that while he acknowledged the Bendahara as his King and his Master, his immediate Chief was no other than 'His Highness To' Raja.' That answer sealed his doom.

On the following day To' Gajah sent for Imam Bakar, and made all things ready against his coming. To this end he buried his spears and other arms under the sand within his hut.

When the summons to visit To' Gajah reached Imam Bakar, he feared that his time had come. He was not a man, however, who would willingly fly from danger, and he foresaw moreover that if he took refuge in flight all his possessions would be destroyed by his enemies, while he himself, with his wife and little ones, would die in the jungles or fall into the hands of his pursuers. He already regarded himself as a dead man, but though he knew that he could save himself even now by a tardy desertion of To' Raja, the idea of adopting this means of escape was never entertained by him for an instant.

'If I sit down, I die, and if I stand up, I die!' he said to the messenger. 'Better then does it befit a man to die standing. Come, let us go to Pasir Tambang and learn what To' Gajah hath in store for me!'

The sun was half-mast high in the heavens as Imam Bakar crossed the river to Pasir Tambang in his tiny dug-out. Until the sun's rays fall more or less perpendicularly, the slanting light paints broad reaches of water a brilliant dazzling white, unrelieved by shadow or reflection. The green of the masses of jungle on the river banks takes to itself a paler hue than usual, and the yellow of the sandbanks changes its shade from the colour of a cowslip to that of a pale and early primrose. It was on such a white morning as this that Imam Bakar crossed slowly to meet his fate. His dug-out grounded on the sandbank, and when it had been made fast to a pole, its owner, fully armed, walked towards the hut in which To' Gajah was seated.

This Chief was a very heavily built man, with a bullet-shaped head, and a square resolute jaw, partially cloaked by a short sparse beard of coarse wiry hair. His voice and his laugh were both loud and boisterous, and he usually affected an air of open, noisy good-fellowship, which was but little in keeping with his character. When he saw Imam Bakar approaching him, with the slow and solemn tread of one who believes himself to be walking to his death, he cried out to him, while he was yet some way off, with every appearance of friendship and cordiality:

'O Imam Bakar! What is the news? Come hither to me and fear nothing. I come as thy friend, in peace and love. Come let us touch hands in salutation as befits those who harbour no evil one to another.'

Imam Bakar was astonished at this reception. His heart bounded against his ribs with relief at finding his worst fears so speedily dispelled, and being, for the moment, off his guard, he placed his two hands between those of To' Gajah in the usual manner of Malay formal salutation. Quick as thought, To' Gajah seized him by the wrists, his whole demeanour changing in a moment from that of the rough good-fellowship of the boon companion, to excited and cruel ferocity.

'Stab! Stab! Stab! Ye sons of evil women!' he yelled to his men, and before poor Imam Bakar could free himself from the powerful grasp which held him, the spears were unearthed, and half a dozen of their blades met in his shuddering flesh. It was soon over, and Imam Bakar lay dead upon the sandbank, his body still quivering, while the peaceful morning song of the birds came uninterrupted from the forest around.

Then Khatib Bujang and Imam Prang Samah were sent for, and as they came trembling into the presence of To' Gajah, whose hands were still red with the blood of their friend and kinsman, they squatted humbly on the sand at his feet.

'Behold a sample of what ye also may soon be,' said To' Gajah, spurning the dead body of Imam Bakar as he spoke. 'Mark it well, and then tell me who is your Master and who your Chief!'

Khatib Bujang and Imam Prang Samah stuttered and stammered, but not because they hesitated about the answer, but rather through over eagerness to speak, and a deadly fear which held them dumb. At last, however, they found words and cried together:

'The Bendahara is our Master, and our Chief is whomsoever thou mayest be pleased to appoint.'

Thus they saved their lives, and are still living, while To' Gajah lies buried in an exile's grave; but many will agree in thinking that such a death as Imam Bakar's is a better thing for a man to win, than empty years such as his companions have survived to pass in scorn and in dishonour.