the quiet dignity and self-respect of the true Malay. Round his waist he wore the national garment, a sarong, which is in shape like a somewhat wide sack with the bottom cut off. His coat was nearly as primitive, for it was innocent of buttons and could only be put on and taken off by being pulled over the head. A big colored handkerchief was tied round his forehead, with a fantastic peak carefully arranged in front. Sarong, coat and handkerchief were all of native Malay weaving and colored with native dyes, and nothing could be more simple, or more effective and becoming to the wearer. We took boat at the mouth of one of the rivers; the Malays at first using their paddles in the tidal waters, where the inflowing tide bore us swiftly past mangrove-covered banks, and afterwards exchanging their paddles for poles when at last a sandy bottom was reached. We poled slowly against a strong current until the river became so narrow and so shallow that further progress by boat was difficult. Then we left the river and struck inland at right angles to it. For a whole day we made our way along a narrow track through dense forest, where the great trees afforded shade and coolness even at midday. At sunset we camped on a ridge that formed the water-shed between the river we had left and the one for which we were making. An armful of leaves was thrown down to make a bed for each, and a deftly plaited screen of wild palm leaves was placed over the beds to keep off the dew. We heard, two or three times during the night, the trumpeting of some wild elephants that had been alarmed by meeting our tracks. The next morning we continued our journey, which lay through dense forest the whole day, and emerged at nightfall upon a little village on the bank of the river we sought. Here we requisitioned a dugout, and the next morning started down stream. The pleasant, easy progress of the boat, which was carried by the swift current and only required the gentlest paddling to give it steering-way, was a welcome rest after days of laborious poling and travelling. To'Kaya and I sat under a little awning made of palm leaves sewn together, and talked the long day away, while reach after reach the bends of the river opened a gleaming way before us, and reach after reach the forest-clad banks closed in behind us. The small Malay clearings that appeared at intervals on the banks only accentuated the sense of the overpowering dominion and vastness of the all-encompassing forest. Its mastery held us, and our conversation, for the most part, turned upon its inhabitants, both animal and supernatural. we came to the discussion of weretigers, which are in the Malay Peninsula the counterpart of the were-wolves of Europe. The existence of weretigers no Malay doubts, and the popular belief is that the men from the district of Korinchi in Sumatra have the power of assuming the form of a tiger at will, and that in this guise they range the forest, hunting the wild game and, occasionally, killing mankind. Thus The Korinchi men, who are mostly pedlars of cloths, naturally resent the imputation, and contend that it is only some of the men of Chenaku, a subdistrict of Korinchi, who have this unholy power. But, as the contention admits the existence of the power amongst certain of the suspected class, the Malays of the Peninsula are only strengthened in their opinion, and believe the charge to be true of all Korinchis. To'Kaya told me of a village where for some months the fowls had been harried by a tiger, or panther (both of which are known to the Malays by the same generic term), and where one day a Korinchi man, lying sick with fever in the house of the head-man, who had had pity on him, had vomited quantities of undigested chickens' feathers. I, in my turn, told him a story that I had heard in the reaches near the source of the Slim River. There, in an isolated hill padi clearing, lived a Malay, his wife, and their two children -young boys of the age when they learn to read the Koran. One night came a rap at the door of the house, which, like all Malay dwellings, was built upon posts some ten feet above the ground. In answer to a demand from the father as to who was at the door and what was wanted, a voice replied, "We ask for a light; our torches are extinguished, and we have still some distance to go to the house where we are expected." Now, it is well known that this is a common device of jinns and evil spirits to obtain admission to a house, and one should always beware of opening the door to give a light to a stranger who pretends to be belated. Well, the two boys, while the father was questioning and cross-questioning the stranger, slipped out of the house by the ladder behind the kitchen. Excited by the visit of a stranger at such an hour, they moved silently along the ground under the bamboo flooring to peep upwards at the threshold. There, on the rung of the ladder next below the door, stood a man talking to their father; but, even while he spoke, a tail striped in black and yellow dropped down behind his legs, and then up and down his lower limbs ran successive ripples of change and color. The toes became talons, the feet turned to paws, and the knee-joints, already striped with the awful black and yellow, were turning from front to back. And all the time, the human face of the creature was giving specious explanations to the questions of the mas ter of the house. Half in fascination, half in desperation, the two boys seized the tail that dangled before them, and shouted to their father to kill the thing. But before he could reach for his spear, the animal, now nearly all tiger, tore itself from the puny grasp of the youngsters and fled into the darkness of the forest. Though I did not tell the story as a true one, To'Kaya shook his head and said, "That was a narrow escape; but it is fitting that we should talk of weretigers, for here in the village of Bentong, which we are approaching, there was a were-tiger not many years ago." This is the story-not, it will be seen, in the form in which To'Kaya told it, but as I have reconstructed it. A few years ago, Bentong-a village of considerable importance in a sparsely populated district, for it consisted of some fifty houses-had suffered much from the depredations of a tiger. Scarcely a month passed without a buffalo or two being taken, and the Malays were in despair. They had tied up goats with spring guns set over them, and they had made elaborate traps, like gigantic mouse-traps, baited with dogs. But the tiger would have none of them, and the Malays were beginning to talk of abandoning the village, for they depended upon the buffaloes to plough the padi fields, and their possible extermination meant nothing less than utter ruin. Such was the state of things in Bentong when, late one afternoon, in drenching rain and growing darkness, an old Korinchi pedlar named Haji Brahim was hastening towards the village, where he intended to spend the night. He had a regular round through the district, in which he had been known for years; and the next day would peddle cloths and silks to the women-folk, collect his small debts, and then move on to the next village. The inclement weather and slippery path had made him much later than he had expected, for, like every one else in the district, he had heard of the Bentong tiger. He was making his way somewhat nervously, therefore, hoping that every turn in the narrow forest track would disclose the village clearing, when he was panic-stricken to hear the tiger roar within a short distance of him. Shaking with fear, he ran for his life towards the village. He had not gone far before he came on a tiger trap built at the side of the track, ready set with its bait of village cur and with the door wide open. Struck by the idea that the timbers, which would keep a tiger in, would also keep one out, he dropped on his hands and knees, crawled in, and let the heavy door fall behind him. And when the tiger roared again in still closer proximity, on one occasion within a few feet of him, and continued to roar in the vicinity at intervals throughout the night, he forgave the presence of the unclean dog that cowered beside him, and blessed the thought that had led him to seek such a refuge. When morning broke it found him stiff and shivering from the effects of the night's rain, the exposure and the cramped position, but it found him alive, and for that he added special thanksgiving to the morning prayer of every Muhammadan believer. He discovered that from the inside of the trap he was unable to raise the heavy falling door, but remained where he was, content with the knowledge that before long some one would certainly pass along the track. In this he was not disappointed, for soon he heard a man approaching, and shouted to him for assistance. The man looked round him on all sides, but failed to discover whence the voice came. "Where are you?" he replied. "Here! Here in the tiger trap!" The Malay came up, and, peering into the darkness of the trap, cried, "Who are you? What is it?" swer. "It is I, Haji Brahim," was the an"I am in the tiger trap." The man peered yet closer, his somewhat dull wits puzzled by the strangeness of the situation, and then suddenly recognized the features of the captive. As suddenly a light struck him: "It is Haji Brahim, the Korinchi," he yelled, in an access of terror. He forgot the helpless position of the inmate of the trap: he could only realize one factthat the tiger which for so long had been the pest of Bentong was a weretiger; and without another word he turned and ran down the track as though he ran for his life. The boom of the mosque drum soon reverberated through the village, and in answer to its summons every ablebodied Malay thronged to the house of the chief, Raja Alang. The man who had given the alarm told his story, and then, after due deliberation and consultation, the men proceeded to visit the tiger-trap. The raja led the way, and behind him crowded the Malays, each armed with a spear and with a belt full of krises and daggers. As they left the cultivated area, and entered the forest, they strung out into single line upon the narrow track, again massing in thick array behind the raja when they reached the trap. Raja Alang stepped up to the door and demanded of the prisoner, "What is the name of this work?" The old man's heart sank at the tone of the stern inquiry. During the long weary vigil of the night it had not occurred to him to connect his nationality with the fact of his entering the trap; the villager's alarm had been a shock to him, but he had persuaded himself that it was the mere temporary panic of an ignorant clown. But he now saw that he was on his trial, "That cannot be," replied the raja. "First you must explain how you came to be in this trap." "Yes," agreed the voices in the background, "for who would release a tiger when once it is caught?" "How came you here? Was it not you whom we heard roaring last night?" demanded the raja. "No, raja, no," answered the old pedlar; "the tiger, which is always here, roared close to me last night, and it was to save my life that I ran into this trap." "Can any one believe such a story?" murmured the crowd. "The sole of your foot on the crown of my head, raja; have not you and all these men known me for many years? Am I not an old man and feeble, and could I do such a thing as this that you think of me?" "But who ever heard of an honest man in a tiger-trap?" reiterated with dull persistency the voices behind the raja. "The tracks will prove the truth of what I say," cried the pedlar. The justice of the contention appealed to all, and the ground was carefully examined. But the crowd had obliterated the footprints round the trap, and all that could be seen were the tiger's tracks following a wild game path to its junction with the main forest path, and then losing themselves in the trampled ground around the trap. The inspection was carried out thoroughly and impartially, and its result, which of course tended to confirm the suspicions of the Malays, was communicated to the trembling tive. cap "But I can prove that I left the village of Siputeh yesterday afternoon to come to Bentong. Every one saw me there," wept the old man. "That may be," retorted some one in the crowd, with relentless logic, "but it is of last night that we talk. The tiger was here last night, and you are in the tiger-trap this morning." The pedlar, who throughout had been on his hands and knees, the only position of which the cramped space of the trap would permit, seeing the futility of argument, turned his face up to the judges who stood massed in front of the trap, and tried through his tears to recognize them. He called to the village imaum, and offered to swear on the Koran of the mosque, in any form of oath that might be imposed, that his story was true. But though the Malays are, as a rule, in favor of the ordeal by oath, they felt at once that there was an obvious objection to its use in this case. The question which they had to decide was whether their captive was an ordinary Malay, like themselves, or that awful horror, a were-tiger. It was plain that a creature so unnatural as that which they imagined their prisoner to be, would not hesitate to forswear itself in order to attain its liberty: not only, then, would the oath fail in its effect, but their mosque and Koran would have been polluted by the presence and touch of the unclean thing. When this last resource failed him, the poor old man cried to those who had known him longest and best, and begged for his life for pity's sake: he promised to do anything that was asked of him, and if necessary to leave the country for ever. But the Malays did not dare to let themselves be influenced by any thoughts of pity or compassion. They had to decide a question upon which their herds, their crops, and their very lives depended. and that question was put to them, with Malay terseness and directness, by the raja. "If we open the trap door and let this, that we have here now, go loose, what is our position?" he said, turning to the men who leant upon their spears be hind him. In answer, a Malay, whose chief wealth lay in his diminishing herd of buffaloes, stood forth. "Who of us has not lost one or more of his buffaloes? Who does not know that these Kornichis can turn themselves into tigers? Did we not all hear the tiger roar last night? Have we not got his tracks here? And here, where the tracks lead up to the trap, have we not, by the grace of Allah, got the Korinchi trapped? What more?" "What more?" said old To'Kaya, turning to me as he ended his story. "At a sign from the raja, one of the men stepped up to the trap, and thrusting through the open bars of the woodwork, drove his spear through the old man's side." For a moment I was silent with horror, and then said, "Pity for an old man to die in such a manner." "What pity does a tiger show?" retorted To'Kaya, "and what pity can it expect? And that the man was a were-tiger who can doubt? It was not that he was unjustly or unfairly tried. The men of Bentong had known Haji Brahim for many years, and against him, as a man, they had no ill feeling: the raja, Raja Alang, whom we shall see in the village if we stop the boat and call in, is both mild and just. And was not the case too clear for any other punishment? If a woman is accused of sin, or a man of murder, and evidence not half so strong as that in this case is advanced against them in the justice halls of the states under British rule, nay, even in the great Court House of Singapore, does not the judge convict them?" I made an expostulation, and was painfully aware of its feebleness. To Kara bowed politely, and replied, Pall Mall Magazine, "That may be, but I ask again, have not men been hanged on slighter evidence?" I could not think of a suitable reply; and it must be remembered that I was on a somewhat delicate mission in a state of which To'Kaya was one of the principal chiefs. There was therefore silence for a space as our little boat broke the sparkle of the water. We were now passing the village; the banks were covered with green turf cropped close by buffaloes, a few of whom, animals that perhaps had seen the tiger which poor Haji Brahim had met, raised their heads to stare at us. Farther back from the river was a grove of cocoanut palms, whose slender heads and graceful curves were outlined against the blue sky, and at their feet, dotted at intervals, were the Malay houses, which are built of bamboo and plaited bertam palm fronds, and whose color is that of ripe dead leaves. A woman was pounding rice with a pestle worked by her foot, and in the river a number of children were playing and splashing; but the men, for the most part, were in their houses, seeking a refuge from the heat of the day. Then suddenly a little dug-out shot forth from the bank to cross the river. One man poled, another steered with a paddle, and in the centre sat a fine-looking old Malay. "It is Raja Alang," said To'Kaya, We stopped for a while, to exchange the greetings and the courtesies due to and expected from our various ranks. Then we parted, and at the next bend of the river the great forest swept down again to the bank on either side, shutting us off from the view of aught else, and telling us that the little village of Bentong now lay behind us. George Maxwell. |
