VI
ÂMOK
There comes a time
When the insatiate brute within the man,
Weary with wallowing in the mire, leaps forth
Devouring . . . . and the soul sinks
And leaves the man a devil
Lewis Morris
MENTION has been made of the Malay âmok, and, as what, with our happy faculty for mispronunciation and misspelling of the words of other languages, is called "running amuck," is with many English people their only idea of the Malay, and that a very vague one, it may be of interest to briefly describe this form of homicidal mania.
Mĕng-âmok is to make a sudden, murderous attack, and though it is applied to the onslaught of a body of men in war time, or where plunder is the object and murder the means to arrive at it, the term is more commonly used to describe the action of an individual who, suddenly and without apparent cause, seizes a weapon and strikes out blindly, kill-
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